Tom Keating : VoIP & Gadgets Blog
Tom Keating
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Gadgets

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.

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.

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.

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.



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.

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.

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

March 5, 2007

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.

RockYou.com cool slideshows with music

February 28, 2007

RockYou.com has a very cool site that lets you upload your favorite photos and then instantly add music, videos, themes, pins, movie posters, instant posting. I added a few of my own photos to test it. In just 5 minutes I created this slideshow with music. You have to pick their selection of music - probably so they don't run afoul of the RIAA complaining about copyrighted music.I didn't even have to register on their website, though the advantage of registering is that you can edit the photos you uploaded.

MIT develops ultra-fast rope climbing device

February 23, 2007

According to Technology Review, it takes about six minutes for a firefighter with a full load of gear to reach the top of a 30-story building by running up the stairs. Of course, one the firefighter gets there, they are exhausted and are less capable of rescuing/carrying someone than if they took the elevator. Of course, they can't take the elevator since the fire could cut the power or the elevator cables leaving the firefighter trapped - or worse freefalling to the bottom.

Well, a group of MIT students have designed a rope-climbing device that can carry 250 pounds at a top speed of 10 feet per second. The U.S.

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