There are tons of USB devices out now ranging from the seasonal christmas tree, rool up piano and more. We now have the rechargeable USB shaver which is charged via your laptop. This is very useful for the business traveler who forgets their regular shaver or a compatible power supply. There isnt too much to the USB shaver. It has an LED which lights up when it is being charged and the USB connector which can fold in to the case to compact it even more.
It weighs just 74 grams and power consumption is low and it shouldnt kill your battery in your laptop.
The Wiimote continues to be used from controlling an RC car, playing the drums, playing the guitar and more. The latest is now FlightGear. FlightGear is an open source game for linux based systems. Pigeon here demonstrates what those accelerometers can do. The script was adjusted and now it will play the game with the Wiimote.
The Nokia N95 is a great phone which has some amazing reviews so far. It has a huge display measuring at 2.6 inch. The camera is 5 megapixels and has built in GPS, Wi-Fi and more. The N95 is a dual slider phone with the keypad sliding out of the bottom of the phone. When you slide it back the other way the screen goes landscape mode and a few multimedia keys are then displayed allowing you to browse, play music and other multimedia features. The memory can be increased via the microSD card, and the phone already has 150 meg of built in memory. One thing that stands out to me is the ATI 3D graphics card. It will be interesting to see what extra power that gives the phone. [click to continue…]
A new pricing structure is going to be announced for Skype on Jan 18th 2007. The new pricing structure will now include a connection fee per call which is expected to be from 0 – 0.039 euros per call. No word yet on if this pricing change will increase call charges per minute or not. The new prices are for SkypeOut. Skype Unlimited users in North America are not affected by the changes.
I am not one for writing about jewellery on the gadget venue dot com blog, but when it involves magnetic jewellery then I though it was cool enough for a mention. Mag-net-ic is a cool set of magnetic cylinders that appear to be very powerful. There are probably a good 40 – 50 of these small magnetic cylinders which hold together very strongly. They can wrap around your wrist and you would probably spend a good amount of time each day playing around with them and making them in to different shapes. Check out the video below and let us know what you think.
For those who love the little AI creatures, then Tamagotchi version 4 is now available. It has 20 games, new secret codes, new items and a messaging system. Also it boasts more online integration. If you want a virtual pet for christmas then pick one up now.
If you are not sure what a tamagotchi is then I do not know where you must have been hiding for the last 10 years. A Tamagotchi is a small electronic toy that has a pet which you look after. You need to play with it and basically look after it so it doesnt die. If you have a habbit of forgetting to feed a rabbit then this might be for you.
If features a large LCD screen, infrared connections and of course.. a virtual pet is included, or as many as you need if you kill it by accident.
Wireless HD has been mentioned for a while now and Neosonik are going to be showing off their wireless HD video and audio kit at next months CES. The new A/V controller can apparantly transmit the uncompressed data wireleslly. This will be a great step forwards although I do wonder if they can send the infomation uncompressed with it being so detailed and needing a lot of bandwidth. Who knows… I hope that they do impress us all at CES. The kit will set you back 6k dollars for the controller, 15k for the receiver and I believe it includes speakers in that.
Since the launch of the Nintendo Wii and it’s cool Wiimote as it is more comonly known as, we have seen a number of hacks that make use of the wiimote to do lots of things that it wasnt intended for. Among these we have the wiisabre, wii drums to name a couple. We have now compiled a list of the top 5 (not by any order of popularity) of the ones we think are cool and worthy of another mention. [click to continue…]
An iPod user wanted to ask the simple question “will it blend?”. This was in reference to an iPod and you can see some interesting results I wont tell you what happens because the video is just cool to see what happens to the poor thing.
A list has been posted of 25 gadgets that will pay for themselves. This is a really cool list that I found linked over at coolest-gadgets and does make you realise that you can spend money to actually save money. Items such as battery chargers and rechargable batteries cover their costs with in months of having them. How many of these money saving gadgets do you own?
The list can be found at Thesimpledollar and has some interesting points like a laptop that you use at home on battery and charge in the office could pay for it’s self in saved electricity each year.
One I didnt see on their which is a big saving for me is saving 5 quid a month cutting my own hair My clippers only cost about 30 quid and they have been in use well over 5 years.. thats a 270 pound saving!
China are to be praised for this decision. They made a rule that in China, all mobile phones are to use a standardized USB charger. This is a GREAT move forwards for China and I hope that all mobile phone companies follow suit and do this. This basically means that any mobile can be used with 1 charger and not a charger for every phone. It will be very handy for those who either forget to charge their phone, or want to charge their device via their laptop or another USB device.
The ricavision vista remote has a 2.5 inch colour screen and get this… a 100 meter operating radius. The ricavision remote will be able to control Media center and will be hitting the shops for 200 dollars early next year.
We just love the Wii hacks here for the Wiimote control. The latest I came across today was the Wiimote controlled car. It comes from a german modder who made a script for the wiimote enabling movement of the wiimote to control the car. It can control the car in the basic moves which are backwards, forwards, left and right.
The system works with the help of a laptop and a bluetooth dongle. Pair up the wiimote with the laptop and run the script on the laptop. Then the script passes signals on to the remote control via a serial cable which inturn controlls the car.
The Kokuyo mouse is designed as a defense weapon for those using a PC with important data on it. The laser is the weapon that can be drawn at any time to warn off foes. Ok, I lied. The Kokuyo mouse is handy for those who do powerpoint presentations and need to point out something on the screen. Unfortunatly it is not cordless and it seems it might not be as useful as it is meant to be. The laser has a range of 25 meters and no more details are available yet.
You have probably walked through an airport to see one of those fancy spinning screens which seems to always face you. You have also probably seen the frisby with a bank of LEDs on which you can throw and it spells out words in the air. The POV Christmas tree works on a similar principle. It is a bank of LEDs in the shape of a tree. The LEDs spin around a central point fast and it shows the appearance of a christmas tree out of LEDs. They are cool to watch. The tree is powered by 9V batteries and full instructions can be found at the link at the bottom of this post.
For those of you who are not sure what POV means, it is persistance of vision.
Since the launch of the Nintendo Wii and it’s cool Wiimote as it is more comonly known as, we have seen a number of hacks that make use of the wiimote to do lots of things that it wasnt intended for. Among these we have the wiisabre, wii drums to name a couple. We have now compiled a list of the top 5 (not by any order of popularity) of the ones we think are cool and worthy of another mention.
I wont tell you what happens because the video is just cool to see what happens to the poor thing.
