Posted by admin in : Tech Reviews ,
Filed under: Networking
It'd be absolutely spectacular to actually see one of these admittedly
ambitious municipal WiFi projects actually work out every now and then, but instead, we're seeing the nails start to sink into
yet another citywide WiFi coffin. This go 'round, the network
blanketing most of
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is on the verge of sending out its last signals unless the city can devise a plan in short order to take it over from EarthLink, who
unsurprisingly wants
out on the double. Unfortunately, we don't have a great feeling about the system's future -- history has a way of forecasting, you know?
[Via
CNET, image courtesy of
Stippling]
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Posted by admin in : Tech Reviews ,
Filed under: Networking
It'd be absolutely spectacular to actually see one of these admittedly
ambitious municipal WiFi projects actually work out every now and then, but instead, we're seeing the nails start to sink into
yet another citywide WiFi coffin. This go 'round, the network
blanketing most of
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is on the verge of sending out its last signals unless the city can devise a plan in short order to take it over from EarthLink, who
unsurprisingly wants
out on the double. Unfortunately, we don't have a great feeling about the system's future -- history has a way of forecasting, you know?
[Via
CNET, image courtesy of
Stippling]
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Filed under: Displays, Portable Audio, Portable Video, Wearables
Surely you remember that
Solo Plus HMD that Myvu aimed at iPod owners late last year? Wait, what? You purged that from your memory as soon as you saw it? Ah well, looks like you'll be on yet another blotting mission after peeking this, as the aforesaid outfit has delivered yet another option for those looking to check out iPod clips on their own personal theater
and destroy any chance at garnering friends. The Shades 301 iPod Edition, which is set to cost two Benjamins, actually looks quite different (and dare we say, a smidgen better) than the Solo Plus, and reportedly comes bundled with a pair of Ultimate Ears earbuds, detachable Dock Connector cable, remote, integrated battery and a two-piece cable manager for its neck cabling. If you're inexplicably overcome with an urge to see more, you can check out a brief hands-on by following the read link below.
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Posted by admin in : Tech Reviews ,
Filed under: Displays, Portable Audio, Portable Video, Wearables
Surely you remember that
Solo Plus HMD that Myvu aimed at iPod owners late last year? Wait, what? You purged that from your memory as soon as you saw it? Ah well, looks like you'll be on yet another blotting mission after peeking this, as the aforesaid outfit has delivered yet another option for those looking to check out iPod clips on their own personal theater
and destroy any chance at garnering friends. The Shades 301 iPod Edition, which is set to cost two Benjamins, actually looks quite different (and dare we say, a smidgen better) than the Solo Plus, and reportedly comes bundled with a pair of Ultimate Ears earbuds, detachable Dock Connector cable, remote, integrated battery and a two-piece cable manager for its neck cabling. If you're inexplicably overcome with an urge to see more, you can check out a brief hands-on by following the read link below.
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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds
You'll never believe this, but it looks like Cupertino might be getting ready to drop a bomb this summer -- a 3G bomb, in fact! The latest beta release of
firmware 2.0 for the
iPhone has apparently revealed a preference screen that allows users of the new model to disable the 3G radio and fall back to GPRS / EDGE because the faster service "decreases battery life." Gotta pay to play, as they say. The ability to disable 3G service in favor of improved standby performance is a pretty common one in modern phones, so we're not surprised to see it here -- just a little disappointed that Apple hasn't incorporated enough fairy dust to magically make the problem go away.
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Posted by admin in : Tech Reviews ,
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds
You'll never believe this, but it looks like Cupertino might be getting ready to drop a bomb this summer -- a 3G bomb, in fact! The latest beta release of
firmware 2.0 for the
iPhone has apparently revealed a preference screen that allows users of the new model to disable the 3G radio and fall back to GPRS / EDGE because the faster service "decreases battery life." Gotta pay to play, as they say. The ability to disable 3G service in favor of improved standby performance is a pretty common one in modern phones, so we're not surprised to see it here -- just a little disappointed that Apple hasn't incorporated enough fairy dust to magically make the problem go away.
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Posted by admin in : Tech Reviews ,
Filed under: Peripherals
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment.
The best and most popular portable electronics products don't work for long without them, but the general consumer sentiment toward AC adapters is evident in the terms of endearment such as "bricks" and "wall warts" given to them. They're referred to with even more colorful language when they're accidentally left behind on a trip or are otherwise unavailable when needed.
But if a startup GreenPlug has its way, future portable electronics products may not come with an AC adapter, much like many printers today don't come with a USB cable. With engineering talent that ran design for Apple's DC power systems for the iPod and the MagSafe connector, GreenPlug is taking on one of gadetry's holy grails - a universal connector that can work on practically any portable electronics device. GreenPlug would turn the frequently forgotten and mismatched AC adapter into an accessory ecosystem. The company envisions DC charging hubs that would be available in conference tables at the workplace and in tables and walls at coffee shops.
Continue reading Swtched On: Green Plug tries to replace the worry warts (Part 1)
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Filed under: Storage
It's been a hot minute since we've seen any fresh new kit from
Plextor, but the firm has just rolled out a new pair of NAS drives for those on the hunt for -- what else? -- networked storage. The StorX PX-NAS500L / PX-NAS1000L drives offer up 500GB and 1TB of capacity, respectively, and each unit includes a gigabit Ethernet port, one-touch USB back-up button and the ability to grow thanks to a pair of USB 2.0 sockets. Beyond that, you won't find much else special about the new duo, and your guess is as good as ours on pricing / availability.
[Via
BIOS]
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Filed under: Storage
It's been a hot minute since we've seen any fresh new kit from
Plextor, but the firm has just rolled out a new pair of NAS drives for those on the hunt for -- what else? -- networked storage. The StorX PX-NAS500L / PX-NAS1000L drives offer up 500GB and 1TB of capacity, respectively, and each unit includes a gigabit Ethernet port, one-touch USB back-up button and the ability to grow thanks to a pair of USB 2.0 sockets. Beyond that, you won't find much else special about the new duo, and your guess is as good as ours on pricing / availability.
[Via
BIOS]
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Posted by admin in : Tech Reviews ,
Filed under: Portable Audio
Good lord. No, really.
Good lord. The TEO MP-301 MP3 player from IceTech USA crams 1GB of media storage into -- as you can see -- a very
Jesus-friendly form factor. The $49 player features a built-in microphone with voice recorder, mirrored front panel, and even a little speaker. According to reviews, the player has some serious interface issues and a weak screen, but if crucifixion is your thing, you can't go wrong with this necklace cross-cum-MP3 player. Or is that the other way around? Is this an MP3 player that's also a cross? Anyway, there you have it: the cross-shaped MP3 player, indeed.
[Via
Crave]
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Posted by admin in : Tech Reviews ,
Filed under: Portable Audio
Good lord. No, really.
Good lord. The TEO MP-301 MP3 player from IceTech USA crams 1GB of media storage into -- as you can see -- a very Jesus-friendly form factor. The $49 player features a built-in microphone with voice recorder, mirrored front panel, and even a little speaker. According to reviews, the player has some serious interface issues and a weak screen, but if crucifixion is your thing, you can't go wrong with this necklace cross-cum-MP3 player. Or is that the other way around? Is this an MP3 player that's also a cross? Anyway, there you have it: the cross-shaped MP3 player, indeed.
[Via
Crave]
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Posted by admin in : Tech Reviews ,
Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video
Microsoft is still toiling away at the Zune, but there isn't a whole terrible much to show for it so far in regards to market impact. They just broke the 2 million mark, almost a year after
they hit 1 million in May 2007. That means growth has hardly accelerated since the second-gen players hit the scene. Zune's overall market share has grown from three to four percent, but that's most likely a steal from Creative (which sunk from four to two percent) than a steal from Apple or second-place SanDisk (with a billionty and 11 percent, respectively). But don't worry, we're sure that
2.5 update is going to change
everything.
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Filed under: Laptops
If you haven't faced MacBook Air overheating issues, you're
clearly in the minority, and regular ol' MacBook users have been faced with plenty burnination of their own. While there are
plenty of laptop coolers out there, none have been so specifically designed to address these two perennial overheaters as Moshi's Zefyr. The aluminum heatsink setup has an "ultra-silent" USB-powered fan and is quite minimal, just concentrating on the MacBooks' problem spots up top. Even better for Air users: you won't be monopolizing your lone USB plug to work it. Zefyr is available now for $75 in silver or black.
[Via
Laptop Logic]
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Posted by admin in : Tech Reviews ,
Filed under: Laptops
If you haven't faced MacBook Air overheating issues, you're
clearly in the minority, and regular ol' MacBook users have been faced with plenty burnination of their own. While there are
plenty of laptop coolers out there, none have been so specifically designed to address these two perennial overheaters as Moshi's Zefyr. The aluminum heatsink setup has an "ultra-silent" USB-powered fan and is quite minimal, just concentrating on the MacBooks' problem spots up top. Even better for Air users: you won't be monopolizing your lone USB plug to work it. Zefyr is available now for $75 in silver or black.
[Via
Laptop Logic]
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Filed under: Laptops
While Microsoft has seen it fit to keep XP around as its "relatively non-bloated OS" alternative to the Linux that has dominated this new category of "ultra low-cost PCs" (ULPCs), they're certainly not giving away the farm. Microsoft doesn't want this version of XP Home creeping into mainstream laptops and desktops, where it might compete with Vista sales and high-margin machines from PC manufacturers. To that end, Microsoft is setting the limits for ULPCs at 10.2-inch screens, 80GB of storage, 1GB of RAM, 1GHz processors (with some exceptions) and no touchscreens. The upshot is that licenses for XP will go for $26 in developing nations and $32 elsewhere. Too bad the XP faithful among us will need to try a bit harder to wrangle XP onto new machines of theirs that don't fit these narrow specifications.
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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds
If we saw the typical "Ships in 1-2 weeks" here or whatever, we wouldn't be sounding an alarm, but
something is going on here. Both Apple's US and UK online stores are
joining the O2 choir and are now reporting the
iPhone as "currently unavailable" -- no 8GB, no 16GB, no nothing. It seems that Apple either significantly underestimated demand for the 2.5G models ahead of the 3G release that's still a few weeks (or months) down the road, or the 3G model is a whole heck of a lot closer than we could've imagined. Is anyone suddenly having a nasty case of "I only want what I can't have" syndrome and regretting that they didn't order one of these bad boys a day or two ago?
[Via
GadgetKing, thanks to everyone who sent this in]
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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds
If we saw the typical "Ships in 1-2 weeks" here or whatever, we wouldn't be sounding an alarm, but
something is going on here. Both Apple's US and UK online stores are
joining the O2 choir and are now reporting the
iPhone as "currently unavailable" -- no 8GB, no 16GB, no nothing. It seems that Apple either significantly underestimated demand for the 2.5G models ahead of the 3G release that's still a few weeks (or months) down the road, or the 3G model is a whole heck of a lot closer than we could've imagined. Is anyone suddenly having a nasty case of "I only want what I can't have" syndrome and regretting that they didn't order one of these bad boys a day or two ago?
[Via
GadgetKing, thanks to everyone who sent this in]
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Posted by admin in : Tech Reviews ,
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds
The
Samsung Glyde was one of the most hyped phones on an American carrier in recent memory leading up to its launch, and there's one small problem with that: it's hard to live up to the fanfare, no matter how good (or bad) the phone might be. A common early complaint coming out of the gate seems to be the lack of support for Verizon's
MediaFLO-based
VCAST TV service, a service that the Glyde's main competition, the
Voyager, supports. The UI's also getting panned for being a little more confusing that it needs to be; compounding matters is the fact that Phone Scoop describes it as a "push UI" on account of a fiddly touchscreen. For what it's worth, it seems that the keyboard is at least quite good -- so if you can put up with the negatives, the Glyde might still have a place in your pocket. Otherwise, the Voyager's still looking awfully good, isn't it?
Read - LAPTOP Magazine (2.5 / 5 stars, "...limited by a poor UI and unreliable performance")
Read - Phone Scoop ("The Glyde pairs a few of the best things from the physical and touch worlds")
Read - PHONE Magazine ("The Verizon Glyde isn't a bad cellphone, but it's outshone by its rivals")
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Posted by admin in : Tech Reviews ,
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds
The
Samsung Glyde was one of the most hyped phones on an American carrier in recent memory leading up to its launch, and there's one small problem with that: it's hard to live up to the fanfare, no matter how good (or bad) the phone might be. A common early complaint coming out of the gate seems to be the lack of support for Verizon's
MediaFLO-based
VCAST TV service, a service that the Glyde's main competition, the
Voyager, supports. The UI's also getting panned for being a little more confusing that it needs to be; compounding matters is the fact that Phone Scoop describes it as a "push UI" on account of a fiddly touchscreen. For what it's worth, it seems that the keyboard is at least quite good -- so if you can put up with the negatives, the Glyde might still have a place in your pocket. Otherwise, the Voyager's still looking awfully good, isn't it?
Read - LAPTOP Magazine (2.5 / 5 stars, "...limited by a poor UI and unreliable performance")
Read - Phone Scoop ("The Glyde pairs a few of the best things from the physical and touch worlds")
Read - PHONE Magazine ("The Verizon Glyde isn't a bad cellphone, but it's outshone by its rivals")
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Filed under: Transportation
Make no mistake, Terrafugia's outlandish airplane / motorcar hybrid has been on the drawing board for years, but it looks like the rubber is about to hit the proverbial road (or take to the skies, whichever) this July. A team of ten is working feverishly to ready the Transition for its debut at this year's AirVenture, where it hopes to catch more than a few eyes with its zany "roadable aircraft." As you can likely guess, this thing is meant to both fly and drive, and yes, that means it'll have to pass safety regulations from both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. If all goes well, the startup expects to deliver its first vehicle to a customer in 2009, while mass production isn't scheduled to happen until 2012. We're no experts in the field, but it seems like it'll take a Christmas miracle for either of those feats to actually be accomplished.
[Via
Slashdot]
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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video
Newman has never had much luck cranking out portable media players that were
easy on the eyes, and unfortunately, things aren't getting any better with the M8000. The bulky PMP features a 4-inch 320 x 240 resolution display, support for NES emulation and text viewing, a 1.3-megapixel camera, integrated speaker / microphone, video output, USB 2.0 connectivity and compatibility with a smattering of file formats. Unlike many craptacular rivals, this one comes in black or white and can be equipped with up to 250GB of internal hard drive space. Of course, it's not like anyone with a shred of dignity is going to fork out $388 for the quarter-terabyte edition, but if you've got the coin to roll, you can certainly test the limits of buyer's remorse.
[Via
PMPToday]
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Typically, new technologies tend to promise more than they deliver. That has not been the case with Web services, which are being integrated into just about every new e-commerce application. "Support for Web services has come from application vendors, application development tool suppliers and middleware vendors," said Jason Bloomberg, a managing partner with market research firm ZapThink. The support has been widespread because Web services enable companies to simplify application design, deliver enhancements more quickly, and reuse software more easily.
Posted by admin in : Tech Reviews ,
There are some games that play well when you are alone, and there are some that beg for another player before any fun can be had. EA Mobile's "Scrabble" nicely falls into the former category, while its version of "Yahtzee" for the iPod is smack in the middle of the latter. In "Yahtzee," you roll five dice up to three times and attempt to match one of 13 scoring categories. You can keep any of the dice and roll the remaining if you want. After your third roll, you decide which category to take your score from. Use up all the categories, and the game ends with the player having the highest score winning.
Posted by admin in : Tech Reviews ,
It was 1986 when John Snyder, then managing a Florida animal-control facility, saw his first microchip. He thought it was The Solution when it came to lost pets. "We thought it was 'Star Wars,' really cool," said Snyder, now vice president, companion animals, for the Humane Society of the United States. "It solved all the problems -- it won't come off like collars and tags, people won't remove them when they bathe the pet." However, microchips haven't been a panacea.
Posted by admin in : Tech Reviews ,
There are some games that play well when you are alone, and there are some that beg for another player before any fun can be had. EA Mobile's "Scrabble" nicely falls into the former category, while its version of "Yahtzee" for the iPod is smack in the middle of the latter. In "Yahtzee," you roll five dice up to three times and attempt to match one of 13 scoring categories. You can keep any of the dice and roll the remaining if you want. After your third roll, you decide which category to take your score from. Use up all the categories, and the game ends with the player having the highest score winning.
Posted by admin in : Tech Reviews ,
Filed under: Wearables
It's a tough call -- are you willing to get your eyeballs within the driver's seat of your remote-controlled vehicle, even if it means looking freakishly like
Geordi La Forge? If you've thrown aside your pride and confidently answered "yes," you should certainly have a gander at the Pilot View FPV 2400. Designed for use in radio-controlled aircraft and cars, the system places a wireless camera in the cockpit and then beams back live first-person footage to those horrifically unsightly goggles you see consuming the face of that poor gal above. In all seriousness, we'd bet the experience is fairly novel, if not a touch fantastic, but we could probably think of more enthralling ways to spend $549 if we were really pressed.
[Thanks, Claudio]
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Filed under: GPS
It's times like these when holding our fingers back from buying that one-way ticket to Tokyo is so incredibly difficult. Just today, Pioneer has introduced the Air Navi AVIC-T10, a portable car navigation system that "supports communications modules and provides drivers with new communications services for the Japanese market." According to the release, this bad boy is "clearly distinguished from conventional PNDs," provides oodles of information about traffic, weather, local events, gas station prices, etc. and packs a pretty impressive list of specs. We're talking a 5.8-inch WVGA display, 1-seg TV tuner, 4GB of flash memory, integrated gyro sensor and built-in Bluetooth to boot. Those lucky enough to be in the right nation can snatch this gem next month for a currently undisclosed price.
[Via
AkihabaraNews]
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Make your mouse mighty, tweak Windows massively, and crush cosmic creepy-crawlies.
Posted by admin in : Tech Reviews ,
Make your mouse mighty, tweak Windows massively, and crush cosmic creepy-crawlies.
