Gadgets

Apple iPhone has launch date

March 30, 2007

According to CNet, the much-anticipated Apple iPhone release is sooner than you think. The CNet article states, "Cingular is confirming that the release date will be June 11. A customer service manager at Cingular (we called 800-947-5096 and were transferred to sales) gave us that date late Thursday, but, alas, said he didn't have any additional information beyond that. That date is no coincidence. It's the first day of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference."

Well then, let's hope riots, murders, and out of control eBay auctions don't hit the Apple iPhone launch like it did for the Sony Playstation 3.

Posted in Gadgets, MP3 Players & Digital Audio, Mobile Phones, Wireless

NAVTEQ's Traffic.com Selects Acuity Mobile to Drive Mobile Advertising

March 26, 2007

Acuity Mobile, a provider of mobile marketing content delivery technology, announced today its EMAP technology has been selected for the embedded mobile advertising for Traffic.com, a NAVTEQ company. Traffic.com, a leading provider of real-time personalized traffic information for drivers coast-to-coast, was recently acquired by NAVTEQ, a leading global provider of digital maps for vehicle navigation and location-based solutions. Just what we need right, advertisements on our GPS units! I'm still waiting for my p2p GPS traffic idea to take shape, since I hate traffic with a passion.

Acuity Mobileâs EMAP technology delivers Spot Relevance -- content based on time, context, location and user preference.

Posted in GPS, Gadgets

Sandisk 8GB SDHC Flash Card

March 19, 2007

SanDisk introduced an 8-gigabyte SD High Capacity (SDHC) card—the highest capacity now available in the SD format. The new 8GB SDHC card holds more than 4,000 high-resolution pictures, as many as 2,000 digital songs or up to 15 hours of MPEG 4 video. The 8GB SDHC card will come bundled with a SanDisk MicroMate USB 2.0 reader free of charge. SDHC cards require an SDHC-compatible reader, so providing the USB-based SDHC reader with the card ensures that users will be able to connect the 8GB card to their computers.

Posted in Accessories, Digital Cameras, Gadgets, MP3 Players & Digital Audio, Mobile Phones, PDAs & Handhelds

P2P GPS Traffic Reports

March 18, 2007

Using P2P technology along with GPS coordinates sent to fellow drivers to calculate the most optimal navigation route is something I wrote about and predicted would one day happen in my "I hate traffic - GPS to the rescue" blog post. Well, according to a BBC article, vehicles may soon be swapping information about road conditions to warn drivers about jams and dangers. A German research project on show at hi-tech trade fair Cebit envisions a peer-to-peer network for vehicles on a road passing data back and forth. Cars or bikes experiencing problems would pass data that would ripple down the chain of vehicles behind them.

Posted in GPS, Gadgets, Wireless

Clocky the alarm clock hides to block your snooze addiction

March 15, 2007

Do you hate getting up and the blaring alarm clock only results in you hitting the snooze 5 times and arriving to work late? Surely, you curse the alarm clock and accuse it of snoozing for only 9 minutes instead of 10, robbing you of 1 minute extra sleep. (Actually, little known fact, most alarm clocks snooze for 9 minutes not 10.)

Truly, you want to make it to work on time, but ohhhhh how tempting hitting the snooze button just 1 more time is. More Americans suffer from "snooze button addiction" than any other.

Posted in Gadgets, Home Entertainment, TMCnet, Technology and Science

Scramby disguises your Voice over IP voice

March 14, 2007

RapidSolution Software has a cool add-on product for VoIP and online games called Scramby, which "scrambles" your voice to sound like Darth Vader, an evil warlock, an android, child, and many more voices. Scramby is a vocoder add-on for VoIP softphone clients, such as Skype. It can work with any VoIP softphone application or any Windows sound application for that matter.

Essentially, it allows users to use distortion effects to give their voices another sound or personality, and to add background noises and "fun-sounds" into the audio stream like a nuclear explosion or Terminator's "I'll be back".

According to RapidSolution Software, players of Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) and Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG) usually communicate with each other using headsets and VoIP technology like Teamspeak. With Scramby, players are able to alter their voices to take on the voices of the characters their game figures represent.

Posted in Android, Gadgets, Home Entertainment, Video Games & Gaming, VoIP

BeyondTel's VM-01L Optical USB Skype mouse

March 14, 2007

Convergence seems to be all the rage, including combining multiple products and functions into a single product (i.e. iPod MP3 player + mobile phone = Apple iPhone). So perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise to learn about a new Optical USB mouse from Beyondtel that supports Skype. Yeah, you guessed it, it's a clamshell USB mouse with a built-in microphone & speaker.

Posted in Gadgets, Skype, VoIP

Plantronics .Audio <strike>910</strike> 920 headset

March 6, 2007

The Plantronics .Audio 910 (replaced by the new 920) Bluetooth VoIP headset was recently released. It works with Skype and other VoIP softphones, so I'll have to get my hands on one to review. Looking at the Plantronics .Audio 910/920 features, it looks very similar to the Plantronics 510-USB headset I reviewed. Just look at the product photos to the right, including one from my Plantronics 510-USB review.

Posted in Avaya, Gadgets, Headsets, Mobile Phones, PDAs & Handhelds, Skype, VoIP, Wireless

Patent Office Opens Its Doors -- What Would Einstein Do?

March 5, 2007

Yes, it's true, the U.S. Patent Office is going to open its doors to let all of us see what's been filed, and even better yet, make our own comments on the applications.

(All via the miracle of the Internet, of course.)

Kinda makes you wonder how that bad boy of the Patent Office, Albert Einstein, who used to labor there a century ago (the Swiss Patent Office, that is), would think about that idea.

And would it be a mathematical answer?

Check out this report for more details.

And thanks to Nobelprize.org for the early photograph.

Posted in Gadgets

Gadgets Move Up the Marriott Food Chain

March 1, 2007

Now you're talking!

The Marriott Corp. said this week it will begin installing a new technology that will give its patrons the ability to connect various personal devices (let's just call them gadgets) to HD screens in its hotel rooms.

(About time!)

Current in-room sets reportedly are being replaced with 32-inch LCD HD units.

Posted in Gadgets

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