For those of you who are regular users of hands free kits in cars you will be familiar with how difficult it sometimes is to hear with traffic noise, road noise and the speaker often in a hidden place in the car which muffles the sound. The Blueant Supertooth Light has technology built in to cancel background noise allowing you to heat the conversation more clearly. The video on youtube also suggests that you can hear this device with the windows down which is interesting to hear. The device it's self is portable and can hook on to your sun visor allowing close proximity to your mouth for the built in microphone to pick up your voice. As the name suggests, this device is Bluetooth too and allows you to connect directly to your phone.
The device is powered by a lithium-ion battery which allows for 15 hours of talk time and 33 days of standby time which makes this device excellent for portability. To add to that you can charge it with the in car charger which makes it an even more attractive option.
Other features of this device are voice dialling which makes this device more usable while on the road and it can be paired with 5 devices.
For those who have used a Sony EyeToy you will either love it or probably hate it. I happen to think they are cool and a great laugh on the multi player games as it ads a different dimension to games. The EyeToy is now coming to the Sony PS3 and the specs have also been boosted a little to match. The camera is USB 2.0 and can capture 120 frames per second at 320 x 240 and 60 FPS at 640 x 480. This isnt bad at all for the camera and should allow for some nice interactivity with games. As well as having a nice frame rate the camera also has digital zoom and also has the ability to capture images with either a 56 or 75 degree field of view.
One last feature that we know about is that it is supposed to work in lower light conditions which is handy to have as light can kill the eyetoys ability to capture movement if it's way out. Unfortunatly no prices yet, but it should be out later on this year.
If you are unfamiliar with Vonage and the recent court order put on them which forced them to stop taking on new customers. This has now been reversed and Vonage are now accepting signups to their services. I am not sure where this will go as it is unlikely to be the end of the main problem which happened over a patent, but as far as things go now, business is as usual.
This satellite receiver is an amazing looking device. It is named the MBR-501A and is capable of 4 hours of watching while receiving and 7 hours of recorded videos. The device has an SD card slot which currently allows up to a 2GB card to be inserted allowing for 9 hours of video to be recorded. The screen is a QVGA TFT screen which has a 320 x 240 resolution. Audio is produced through the mono speaker on the device although when docking the device it allows you to connect it to your stereo to play the audio.
I am interested in taking a look at this device to see what the quality of the Satellite receiver is like and what exactly it can pick up. It will be priced at just short of 20000 YEN.
Having power to your mobile gadget is essential for the traveller. I have personally run in to times where my phone or PDA ran out of juice when I needed it most. The Powermonkey it a battery storage solution which allows you to run your gadget after its battery has run out. The power output of the powermonkey is what caught my attention as it is capable of keeping an iPod running for 40 hours. A mobile phone can be kept powered for 96 hours with a PSP powered for 5 hours.
Costing $59.99 from ThinkGeek you are getting a very handy device which can hold its charge if un used for a year.
Griffin have launched the AirDock which doesnt look too shabby. It is white and quite a small package. From what I read over at Fosfor, the remote control uses RF rather then infrared thus allowing you to change tracks in another room without line of sight. It costs $70 which is still a little too much in my book, but for it to have the RF remote control it might win a quite a few people over.
If you are the paraniod type who think you are being recorded then check out the Spycatcher tape recorder blocker. It exploits a flaw which audio recording devices have. The human ear is only capable of hearing certain frequencies, but the microphone can pick up even the lowest of frequencies. All you need to do is play some very low range audio below human hearing and it apparantly destroys the recording. This is due to it drowning out the normal hearing range of frequencies. It apparantly works over the phone too, although I am not convinced with this due to wondering what would be heard on the other side. If the device drowns out other frequencies then how can the other hearer receive those drowned out frequencies?
Unfortunatly I do not have a spare $4500 to buy this device so might have to resort to borrowing a frequency generator and calling a friend to see if he can hear me while my sub kicks out some seriously low tones.
Solid State Drives have moved forwards over the last year and we are now seeing SSDs which are actually worth looking at for storage solutions. What sets these drives apart from the regular spinning platter is that there are no moving parts, they give out less heat and use less power. All 3 of these are perfect for users on the go as battery power needs to be cut back as much as possible to squeeze the most amount of usage out of one charge.
Dell is one company who have latched on to the idea and now have laptops with SSD. The SSD laptop will be introduced in the Ultramobile Latitude D420 and also the semi-rugged D620 ATG laptops. The SSDs in these will be 32GB versions which are just 1.8 inches in size. The drives are from SanDisk. To select this option when buying the laptop, it will set you back around $549. This is a little higher then the off the shelf price of $350, but cheaper then other vendors who are commanding $700 for the same device. [click to continue…]
The guys at TokyoFlash launch some seriously interesting watches and this latest watch is no exception. It is named the Shinshoku and is a continuous stainless steel band which wraps around your wrist. Holes have been put in the band allowing for several colours of LED to shine through which some how show the time. 3 versions of this watch are available with the 3 colour LED watch being the easiest to read. The other options are all red or all green LEDs. To tell the time you will see that the watch is divided in to 3 sections. The left shows the number of hours, the right lower shows the quarter past marks (15, 30, 45) while the upper right is the minutes with in the quarter past marks.
Its a crazy but kind of cool looking watch which has animated effects when wanting to see the time. It is available from TokyoFlash and costs around $114 which isnt bad.
I am not one for using pen and paper too much any more, but a mixture of pen, paper and an electronics does catch my attention. The EPOS is a pen which is capable of writing on any type of paper and it does not require anything special to work except a USB flash drive to clip on to the top of your notebook. Once connected you can start writing as normal, and the device at the top of the paper records every movement of the pen creating it digitally in its flash memory. Once you have finished writing you can then plug in the flash drive to your laptop or PC and view the text as handwriting. Once on the computer you have the option to use OCR on the text to change it in to editable text or keep it as it is.
Overall it appears to be a great little device which is ideal for those who like the simple use of pen and paper, but do not like the task of typing up notes in to the computer. With this, you get the best of both worlds. To add to the great little idea, the pen and USB drive should cost only $80 later on this year.
As soon as more details come I will be sure to post them hear.
SanDisk have created a very unique MP3 player which has a function I have not seen before on an MP3 player. The Sansa Shaker allows you to change tracks by shaking the device. Motion sensors inside detect the movement and act accordingly. It's a cool looking device and aimed at kids. Built in is an SD card slot allowing you to use a current SD for playing music, or you can also opt to use the 512MB SD which comes supplied with the device.
Costing just $40 this is an excellent MP3 player and a very unique way in to the MP3 market.
Microsoft have finally launched details on the latest hard drive upgrade for the XBox 360. This has been long awaited due to the smaller drives filling up. The drive will cost $179.99 which seems way over priced for that sized drive. However, Microsoft justified this by saying the official drive had to be chosen and proved and perform at specific speeds all the time as to not interupt game play on the console.
I personally am not convinced at the higher price and feel that MS should open up the firmware to allow for other drives to be connected just as Sony have done with the PS3. No one wants to spend a few hundred on a console and then fork out another couple of hundred to upgrade the drive. Ok, I am sure some will
