Gadgets

VoIP on Apple iPhone a No Go unless over WiFi

March 11, 2008

At the Apple iPhone SDK event, Steve Jobs stated that if someone develops a VoIP program for the iPhone, Apple will allow it if it goes over WiFi and not the cellular network. Apple will in fact BLOCK VoIP applications from running over the cellular data network. What in the bloody hell kind of half-ass crippling of VoIP is that? Apparently, Steve Jobs aims to protect their cell network buddy AT&T from having VoIP calls be "minute stealers" from the regular cell network.

Posted in Apple, Gadgets, Mobile Phones, Wireless

Magellan RoadMate 1425

March 5, 2008

The Magellan RoadMate 1425 is nearly identical to RoadMate 1415 however, the RoadMate 1425 adds an integrated live traffic feature and lifetime traffic subscription that uses real-time traffic update information to display incidents and suggest alternative routes. The lifetime subscription to traffic reports is a nice edition. One million POIs (points of interest) are included with this GPS unit. Importantly the entire RoadMate series comes preloaded with NAVTEQ® road maps, of which I am a huge fan (over TeleAtlas maps).

Posted in GPS, Gadgets

TomTom GO 930T & 730T

March 4, 2008

TomTom, today launched the new TomTom GO 930 and TomTom GO 730, where are updates to the popular 720 and 920 TomTom models. These new TomTom GPS units will feature TomTom's IQ Routes technology and Advanced Lane Guidance. According to TomTom the IQ Routes technology is based on actual average speeds measured on roads, rather than posted speed limits. Thus, the new TomTom GO range determines a route by considering all possible routes and then selecting the one that takes the least time based on recent historical data.

Posted in GPS, Gadgets, TMCnet

Nuvio sues Garmin over nuvifone

February 27, 2008

Nuvio announced a trademark infringement lawsuit against Garmin today. The dispute is against Garmin's uber cool GPS mobile phone called the Nuvifone just recently announced and due out later this year. Nuvi claims they filed this lawsuit January 31st of 2008. Ok, I'll grant Nuvio that Nuvi is "close" in spelling.

Posted in GPS, Gadgets, Mobile Phones, TMCnet, Wireless

TeVeStream FrameSeeker Detects Video Frame Changes

February 25, 2008

Arcosoft Inc., those same rascals that built 8 simultaneous video streams only Star Trek's Data could love, today announced the release of TeVeStream FrameSeeker. According to Arcosoft, "Surveillance video, such as those captured for security, paranormal investigation, and wildlife study, often contains many frames that are essentially static. Without FrameSeeker, a reviewer must spend many tedious hours watching the video completely to find interesting events. FrameSeeker reduces the effort by scanning for changes frame by frame.

Posted in Gadgets, Home Entertainment, Technology and Science, Video Hardware & Software

SimplyWiFi SIP Phone

February 22, 2008

SimplyWiFi is a new SIP-based WiFi phone based on Linux that not only lets you make free or low-cost calls, it also lets you IM/chat using the SIMPLE standard. SimplyWiFi is a small lightweight phone with a superb talk time of 10 hours and 250 hours stand-by time. The WiFi SIP phone features a 65,000 color 2.0" TFT-LCD with 176x220 resolution.

Wisecom Technologies' SimplyWiFi phone features the ability to make encrypted calls, manage your contacts and send instant messages. The WiFi features include all the usual suspects, including DHCP, authentication and encryption.

Posted in Gadgets, Mobile Phones, TMCnet, VoIP, Wireless

Garmin nuvifone

February 12, 2008

Garmin is the big bad boy in the GPS market, but they've now thrown their hat into the mobile phone ring with the Garmin nuvifone (not nuviphone). Garmin recently announced the quad-band nuvifone, a full-fledged GSM HSDPA smartphone built using Garmin's proprietary operating system. The nuvifone of course sports GPS navigation but it also adds web surfing, e-mail, and a built-in camera.

How Garmin was able to extend their "specialized" GPS operating system into something with full-fledged mobile phone and web surfing capabilities is an amazing feat. Though perhaps they started their operating system from scratch.

Posted in Apple, GPS, Gadgets, Google, Mobile Phones, Wireless

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1

February 11, 2008

Sony Ericsson just announced the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1. Sony Ericsson has signed a deal with Microsoft to produce a phone using the Windows Mobile operating system. This marks the first time that Sony Ericsson has not used the Symbian operating system.

The deal between Microsoft and Sony Ericsson was revealed at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where Sony Ericsson announced the launch of seven new mobile handsets.

One of the coolest new models is the Windows Mobile-based Sony Ericsson Xperia X1, which sports a 3" touch screen similar to Apple's iPhone, a nice 800x400 resolution, 3.2 megapixel camera and a tilt and slide keyboard running on Windown Mobile 6. Sony Ericsson's goal is for the XL to "deliver a seamless blend of mobile web communication and multimedia entertainment."

The Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 has a slick GUI that they call a panel interface which are shortcuts to various features or web locations.

Posted in Gadgets, Mobile Phones, Wireless

FaceFon Video Phone on its way?

February 7, 2008

Mork over at Trademork informed me about LG Electronics filing a patent filing a patent for FaceFon.

On January 29, 2008, electronics behemoth LG Electronics filed to protect the trademark FaceFon in relation to “telephones; videophones; cellular telephones; wireless local loop telephones; telephone handsets; computer telephony software (enables telephone activities to be performed through a computer); computer terminals”.

I'm going to assume from the name which sounds like "face phone" that this is some sort of face-to-face video phone. Even the two letter F's face each other with one of them backwards. And lest we forget, I wrote about the LG-Nortel Microsoft OCS phones here.

Here's a photo of the LG-Nortel 8540, which already sports a nice color LCD display, so adding video wouldn't be a stretch:

So my friends, is this (FaceFon) going to be another LG-Nortel phone for the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS) platform? Or is this going to be a SIP-compliant video phone that works on any SIP-compliant PBX?

Posted in Gadgets, TMCnet, Video Hardware & Software, VoIP

Intel Silverthorne Back in the Mobile Game

February 6, 2008

Intel has revealed details of Silverthorne at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco. Intel's new chip is a tiny 25mm2 and the full package is just 14x13mm2. The small 64-bit multithreaded chip is based on Intel's new 45nm Hi-k low power microarchitecture, and is targetting MIDs or "mobile internet devices". I should point out that Intel abandoned the MID market last year when they sold their XScale ARM division to Maxell Technology Group.

Posted in Gadgets, Mobile Phones, Wireless

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