gdgt

Big thanks to everyone who joined us for Samsung’s launch of the Galaxy Note 10.1 last week. Samsung put together this video recapping the day’s events, check it out!

Our friends at Samsung are introducing a brand new member of their Galaxy Family at what promises to be an incredible event on Wednesday, Aug 15th at Jazz at Lincoln Center in the Time Warner Center.

There will be catering, celebrities, entertainment, hands-on demos with the new device, and even a few giveaways.

They have set aside space for some very lucky members of the gdgt community. RSVP below to sign up!

When: Wednesday, August 15th, 7:00pm – 11:00pm (must arrive by 8 pm to register for giveaways, performances begins at 8:30 pm ).

Where: Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, is located on Broadway at 60th Street, New York. Frederick P. Rose Hall can be accessed using the JAZZ elevators located on the ground floor of The Shops at Columbus Circle across from Hugo Boss, located in the Time Warner Center.

Sorry, but this event is 21+ only.

Don’t wait to RSVP, we only have a limited number of slots!

Remember a few months ago when we launched the gdgt Databox on a little blog you may have heard of called Engadget? Well, since then you may have seen the Databox showing up on a few other tech sites here and there, and now I’m super excited to announce that we’re now opening up the gdgt Databox for WordPress to additional beta testers everywhere!

What it is
The Databox is a completely seamless way to make your posts about gadgets and technology more valuable to your readers. Our team of product researchers works day and night building our database of tens of thousands of consumer electronics products — finally, other sites can benefit from this extremely well-organized and up-to-date database! (We use WordPress for the gdgt blog, and you can see a live Databox right at the top of this post!)

How it works
We built a special, highly-optimized version of our Databox for WordPress (already compatible with version 3.4), which automatically matches your posts to our awesome structured product database. If we can’t exactly match any products to your post, the Databox simply won’t appear at all on that post — which means even if you only write about electronics every once in a while you’ll never have to deal with any additional junk on your site. It was built from the ground up to stay completely out of your way.

Installation
Once you’ve got your API key it takes five minutes. Seriously, it’s crazy easy. Rarely are any code or template changes even required.

Getting access
First thing’s first: sign up for a gdgt API key here! From there we’ll let you know when we’ve got your API account ready. Please note: we’re slowly scaling up our API infrastructure, so even if you don’t hear from us immediately, you may hear from us soon!

Also: special thanks and big ups to the smart, handsome folks Rackspace who host our API (as well as our live event coverage).

A big thank you to everyone who came out to the eBay Instant Sale we co-hosted with our pals from eBay last night! Everyone who showed up got a spin at the giant eBay slot machine dispensing eBay gift cards, with one lucky attendee walking away with a brand new iPad.

If you couldn’t make it, there’s still time to trade in your used gadgets. The eBay crew will be at the Ainsworth at 122 West 26th Street here in New York every evening this week between 6pm and 9pm. Make sure you stop by!

Hello there, welcome to the new gdgt! A lot’s changed since the last time you were here.

First things first: the new gdgt is all about making it fun and frictionless to find your next device. What does that mean? Reviews, recommendations, and new ways to make discovering and buying gadgets better.

Hard to believe, but it’s 2012 and finding your next gadget still sucks. It’s kind of funny when you think about it — even though these products are capable of making our lives easier and saving us all kinds of time, figuring out which one to buy is often really difficult and extremely time-consuming. That’s where the new gdgt comes in.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re throwing a party in New York with our friends from eBay on Monday, March 26th to celebrate eBay Instant Sale, their new electronics trade-in and buy back online tool, and you’re invited!

Where: The Ainsworth (122 W. 26th – between 6th & 7th)
When: 6:00 – 9:00pm Monday March 26th
Bring: Your old electronics (phones, game systems, laptops, tablets, cameras, etc.)
Who: 21+ only

RSVP here

You will be able to trade in all those old, unwanted gadgets you have lying around, so make sure to bring them with you to the event!

If they’re not worth anything anymore, eBay will make sure they get recycled properly.

Everyone who shows up will walk away with an eBay Gift Card worth between $5 and $100, and one lucky person will win a Grand Prize worth a lot more.

There’ll be plenty of free food and drink to enjoy, plus members of the gdgt team, including gdgt co-founder Peter Rojas, will be on hand to show you the gdgt site and chat about our favorite gadgets.

RSVP is required for our event on Monday, but if you can’t make it the eBay team will be at the Ainsworth Tuesday through Friday if you want to come by and check out eBay Instant Sale and trade in some old gadgets.

This is a 21 and over only event, but gdgt live will be back in NYC in June and you can be sure that will be all-ages.

Hope to see you there!

Our friends at Samsung are opening up their annual New York City Product Showcase to some very lucky members of the gdgt community!

The event takes place Tuesday, March 6th from 6pm to 8pm at the Metropolitan Pavilion.

The first 100 folks to RSVP here will join us for a sneak peek at all the latest features in Samsung’s new Smart TVs. They’ll also be showing off new digital cameras, home audio, and lots more.

When: Tuesday, March 6th – 6:00pm – 8:00pm
Where: The Metropolitan Pavilion – 125 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011

Sorry, but this event is 21+ only. (Don’t worry, we’ll be back in NY this summer for an all-ages event!)

This is the kind of event that is almost never opened up to members of the public, so don’t wait to RSVP, we have a very limited number of slots!

Read the rest of this entry »

This week we’re introducing a brand new design for our tens of thousands of product pages here on gdgt, and I have to admit, it’s one of the most beautiful projects we’ve yet undertaken.

The first thing you’ll notice is, of course, an even bigger, more stunning product image. (Great product photography is sorta one of our things around here.) We’ve also made it even easier to write a review of your device — and just wait until you do write a review, because it’s pretty slick.

We’ve also brought back shopping to gdgt! We’re doing everything through one of our favorite electronics retailers — a little company you may have heard of called Amazon — but coming pretty soon you’ll be seeing a lot more vendors. We’ve also added some handy shortcuts at the bottom of the page to kick off product comparisons, and find other similar products by the same company. (Apple’s other great tablets picks are pretty great — scroll to the bottom here.)

And, last, but certainly not least, we have our awesome criteria-based product reviews, now upgraded with even easier to read graphs and criteria review data from critics, too.

Researching, discovering, and buying products is a process that’s at worst pretty painful, and at best something of a chore. The ways we help lift that experience into something simple, easy, even fun, is something our users have told us they’ve always loved about gdgt, and it’s something that deserves a lot more of our attention — and yours too, we hope!

So what are you waiting for, go check it out!

We just launched our new and improved product comparison tool last week, and to celebrate we’re giving away three $50 Amazon gift cards! All you have to do to enter is create a product comparison using our new tool (make it something interesting, like a list of your last five cellphones or favorite game consoles or whatever — here’s one I made listing all the Treos I once owned) and then share your comparison on Twitter before 11:59pm EST on Friday, February 10th. We’ll be keeping a close eye on Twitter between now and then and will pick three winners at random from everyone who shares a comparison (make sure you’re following @gdgt on Twitter so we can contact you). Contest is open to everyone — except gdgt employees, of course.

Good news everyone!

It wasn’t so long ago that gdgt launched the best product comparison tool on the block. But we weren’t satisfied. So we went back to the drawing board to design and build an even better way to compare (and even suggest) the tens of thousands of products in the gdgt database.

We’ve been hard at work over the past few months rebuilding the whole thing from scratch, and we’re all really stoked for you to use it! Whether you’re speccing out a fancy new flat-panel HDTV, a digital camera for your next vacation, or an e-book reader to dig into a good book, it’s easier than ever to get the hard data on your next device.

So, what’s new in compare? Well, we rebuilt the whole thing from scratch for speed and simplicity. Sorting by specs and highlighting products is incredibly fast, and now all gdgt users — whether registered or a guest — can save their comparisons for later. We also made it possible to add products to your comparisons all over the site! Just look for the compare icon (or hover over any product image you see around the site).

You can also start a fresh comparison by selecting a category from the compare link in the nav bar. Save as many categories of comparisons as you like — they’ll be waiting for you the next time you come back. Best of all, you can even easily share your comparisons with friends, family, and the whole interwebs.

We hope you find our compare tool as fun to use as it is useful!

tl;dr http://gdgt.com/compare/

Happy comparing!

P.S. -Sharing comparisons on gdgt is so easy, we couldn’t help but throw a few together ourselves! Check ‘em out:

• iPhone 4S vs. Galaxy Nexus vs. Lumia 900
• Ultrabook party!
• Nintendo 3DS vs. PlayStation VITA
• Top tablets
• Some of our favorite fitness devices
• Game Boys!
• E-book reader smackdown
• Some of Jon’s favorite cheap headphones
• Some of Mike’s favorite all-time game console bombs