German LCD Shift Knob

April 30, 2007 by 2 Comments

Shifter Knob
This gear knob has an LCD display in the top of it to let you know what gear you are in. I am not sure how handy this could be as I cannot remember the last time I actually looked at the gear stick while I was driving. I guess it will appeal to the Fiat Punto or Vauxhall Corsa driver as they like the extra lights and flashy interior more then the average person. But, it does add another gadget to your vehicle so I thought it would be worth a mention.

It is priced at $169 which to be quite honest, is a bit crazy. Never mind, I am going to pass on this one 🙂

Via: SlashGear

Filed Under: Cool Gadgets, Displays

Cool Concept USB Drives

April 30, 2007 by Leave a Comment

Latest USB Drives
Concept devices tend to be cool with some weird and wonderful ideas. These new USB flash drives are no exception and extremely cool although probably a little bit crazy. Sponge bob is the first drive which starts its life as a USB drive and when the drive fills up with data it slowly changes in to a blowfish. This is a unique way of showing how much data is on the flash drive. It is supposedly going to work with a micro pump powered by USB which can inflate the cover of the drive.

The next USB drive is some kind of weird Orange. Again, it works by the same way the sponge bob drive does in that it is inflated according to the amount of free space available on the USB drive. More pictures after the jump.
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Filed Under: Concept Gadgets, Cool Gadgets

Motion Sensing Devices

April 29, 2007 by Leave a Comment

Motion sensors or accelerometers are little devices that fit inside electronic devices which allow the device to know when it is moved and which way it is tilted and at what speed it moved. With these sensors a computer or similar device can get a whole new dimension in the way it is controlled. One of the more popular devices to use this technology is the Nintendo Wii. The Wii has a controller which has accelerometers inside and this allows your actions to be converted in to movement on the screen. Take the bowling game for example, you hold down a button, pull your arm back and move your arm forwards as though you were bowling the ball. Twisting your wrist allows for spin to be added to the ball. Accelerometers are cool and becoming more popular in devices.
Nintendo Wii Controller

As well as being in gaming controllers you can find accelerometers in cameras, phones and laptop computers. The iPhone from Apple which is due out soon features a sensor which when the phone is turned on its side the image follows rotating it in to landscape mode. As well as being able to follow the movement there, the phone can also sense when it is lifted up to your ear when on a call and it then switches the screen off to save battery power.

The Apple PowerBook is also another device to feature sensors in allowing for all sorts of different applications to make use of them. Some of the more simple ideas are controls for your music. You tap the laptop to the left to skip back, tap it to the right to jump forwards and tilt it to play.

For such a tiny device the accelerometer is a great device which is appearing more in mobile phones and gaming devices. Although in some cases they do not do much they are still cool little devices which can add a new dimension to your device and well worth looking out for.

Filed Under: Cell Phones, Computer Gadgets, Cool Gadgets, Laptops

Tiny HD Camcorder from Sony

April 28, 2007 by Leave a Comment

Sony HDR-CX6EK
Sony who the kings of making things small have been working on a new Camcorder named the Handycam HDR-CX6EK. This is a HD (high definition) camera and weighs just 370g without the battery. The lens is by Carl Zeiss and is capable of a nice 10x optical zoom. To store all this data it uses Sonys own format which is the Memory Stick DUO which currently maxes out at 8GB. With the 8GB stick you can still store 1 hour of 1080i video and up to 3 hours on the lowest quality. The camcorder can also be used as a camera and it snaps shots at 6.1 mega pixels.

As well as being small and powerful the camera does have some other cool features. It has Face Index which detects faces and can highlight faces with in a picture which we assume can automatically zoom or follow around.

The camcorder will cost around $1200+ when launched in July and no date is set for a UK launch yet.

Via: Gizmodo

Filed Under: Cool Gadgets

Griffin iTrip 2G and iTalkPro

April 28, 2007 by Leave a Comment

iTrip
iTrips are handy little devices that connect to your iPod and transmit an FM signal to a nearby radio. This cuts out the need for cables and allows you to more easily use it in your car. The first iTrip was quite fiddly to work with as you had to download a ton of MP3s from the CD which contained beeps and then play the corresponding beeps for the frequency that you wanted. The iTrip 2 has solved this problem by having an LCD screen on the device and a small switch to the side which can be used to scroll through the frequencies. An extra assistance is given in finding a clear more available frequency which comes in handy for those in a city where a lot of radio stations are broadcasting and filling up the frequencies. The iTrip is available in black and white and is also available for the Nano.

Product Page

Read on for the iTalk.
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Filed Under: Cell Phones, Cool Gadgets, Displays

787 designed by BMWs Designworks

April 27, 2007 by Leave a Comment

BMW Designworks 787
Above you will see a seriously nice designed interior for the Boeing 787 plane. It was designed by Designworks and shows off their capabilities as designers. As can be also seen is the glass floor featuring a BMW parked below. For more pictures of the sleek design check out the link at the bottom of this blog. The images show features such as a cinema which uses the wall of the plane as the screen. The plane is multi level and hosts a bar, conference room and much more.

I have no idea if this plane will be made, but I could imagine some rich dude could request one from BMW designworks. Unfortunatly for me it wont be me who puts in the request 🙂

Via: AutoBlog

Filed Under: Cool Gadgets

Palmsize Helicopter – RC Living Room Flyer

April 27, 2007 by 3 Comments

Palmsize RC Helicopter
Tiny RC helicopters are great fun to play with. The main one you are probably aware of is the Picoz which came out late last year. The palmsize helicopter looks to be slightly smaller then the Picoz and it capable of being fully controlled. The helicopter can be turned left or right as is slowly moves forwards. It can also take off right from the palm of your hand. This is a perfect toy for those like me who like toys in the office.

The helicopter comes in 2 colour which are red or silver and each has a different frequency which allows 2 helicopters to be flown together. Luckily the helicopter is light enough not to actually break when it crashes.

The remote control is infrared, so you need to be in line of sight to use it although you would be stupid attempting to fly a helicopter you couldnt see. Attached on the front is a Multi colour LED for night flying. The helicopter is supposed to be flown indoors but can fly outside if there is ZERO wind. I did try an indoor helicopter once outside and smashed it with in seconds because of ignoring a zero wind rule 🙂 For 15 mintues of charging you can get around 7 minutes of flying time… so maybe you need to purchase 3 to keep one in the air constantly.

Via: ThinkGeek

Filed Under: Cool Gadgets, Office Gadgets

Belkin Network USB Hub

April 26, 2007 by Leave a Comment

Belkin Network USB Hub
Belkin is set to release a network USB hub which allows you to connect to USB devices wirelessly. The hub makes it appear that the USB device is right there connected to your machine. This type of hub is very handy for those networked type of devices like printers as the built in Linux software allows certain readouts from the printer to be passed to the machine connected wirelessly. The hub features 5 USB 2.0 ports with 2 of them mounted on the front and 3 on the back of the device.

The Belkin Network USB Hub will be on sale in the US in June for $130 with the UK version following a little later.

Via: RegHardware

Filed Under: Cool Gadgets

Channel Bonding ADSL – 144Mbps

April 26, 2007 by Leave a Comment

Channel Bonding
Channel bonding is a method used in networking to increase reliability or increase throughput on a connection. By combing 2 or more channels of data together you can reach faster speeds, or decrease downtime due to the second channel taking over when the first dies. Ambit Broadband have released information on their channel bonding cable modem which allows you to connect 3 ADSL connections to it allowing for a current maximum download speed of 144Mbps and a maximum upload speed of 30Mbps. This is a nice increase on the standard low XX speed figures we are used to seeing. Just remember that you will need to update your network if you want to achieve these speeds as a number of Ethernet ports are still limited to 100Mbps although newer connections can accept up to 1Gbps.

Hanaro is currently the only ISP who will be accepting this ADSL modem. Hanaro is a Korean ISP. With this technology unleashed you can no doubt expect it to hit this side of the world in some shape or form. The speed is there… but lets hope the infrastructure can keep up with it.

Via: SlashGear

Filed Under: Cool Gadgets

Blueant Supertooth Light

April 26, 2007 by Leave a Comment

Blueant Supertooth Light
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.

Filed Under: Cell Phones, Cool Gadgets

Playstation 3 EyeToy

April 26, 2007 by 3 Comments

Playstation 3 EyeToy
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.

Via: TechEBlog

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Filed Under: Cool Gadgets

Vonage Permanent Injunction

April 25, 2007 by Leave a Comment

Vonage
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.

Via: SlashGear

Filed Under: Cool Gadgets, Tech News