I got into the MP3 player market a little late. I was in high school during the early years of the
digital music revolution, so I couldn't really afford the players of the time. My very first foray
into MP3 hardware was with a very, very poorly made RCA MP3-CD player. I upgraded from that to a
Creative Muvo2 with the microdrive ripped out and a 512MB CompactFlash card installed. I never used
it much, because the interface was clunky and annoying to use.
Recently, Katie at BLAST Outdoors sent Julie one of DropZone Corporation’s new HangTimer extreme sports watches for review. Of course this review required the services of The Gadgeteer’s extreme sports and aberrant behavior specialist – Seth (my son). Seth gravitates towards activities known to cause skin loss, bruises, and the occasional broken bone. In a nutshell – he is nuts.
I don't know about all of you, but the first thing I do after getting seated on a flight is to open the seat back pocket to find the latest issue of the Skymall catalog. I didn't change that habit on my last trip when I went out to San Francisco for MacWorld Expo. One of the more interesting items that I saw in the catalog was the tiny iwave cube portable microwave from icube designs. Coincidently, a few days after returning from the trip, I was contacted asking if I might like to review this mini appliance. Of course I said yes. Let's take a look...
I wish I had one of these last spring when raccoons were digging up my lawn. It's a motion activated lawn sprinkler, for the express purpose of scaring away garden pests such as raccoons, dogs, cats, and other animals. When triggered by its infrared day-or-night motion sensor, it sprays a forceful stream of water at the intruders.
I've seen so many watches lately that record and display all sorts of data that I'd forgotten what a watch is really for: to tell you the time. But how do you make sure your watch has the right time? With Casio's atomic time watch, you don't need to worry about it.
The watch receives radio signals from five atomic clocks across the world, thus ensuring that your watch will tell you the correct time for the next 30 million years. Other features include the usual multiple alarms (4), timer, stopwatch, and solar power!
ATI seems to be so enamored with its 40nm DirectX 11 Evergreen chips that at this point it's bringing out new graphics cards just to remind us of how awesome its technology is. Slotting in between the $100 HD 5670 and $50 HD 5450, the new Radeon HD 5570 will predictably retail at around $75 to $80, with up to 1GB of onboard GDDR3, a 650MHz core clock speed, and a thrifty 43W power budget under full load. Reviewers were big fans of its performance relative to the HD 5450 -- nearly doubling it in some cases -- but still struggled to recommend this as a better value for gamers than the only marginally more expensive HD 5670. Then again, the low profile card, single-slot cooler, and minimal power requirements make the 5570 an absolute gem for HTPC or SFF setups, so whether you're in that particular market or just curious, we recommend you check out the full reviews below.
By now you're undoubtedly aware than Samsung has a new smartphone OS (Bada) and touchscreen technology (Super AMOLED) in the works. In this case, putting 2 and 2 together yields 14, a number that matches Samsung's February 14th press event at Mobile World Congress. How so? Well, first of all, Sammy is promoting the Samsung Unpacked teaser page from its Bada site. The ocean-themed teaser ("bada" means "ocean" in Korean) says, "on 2.14 a new mobile from Samsung is born. See it first in Barcelona." A quick look at the teaser site's source reveals the keywords "Bada," "smartphone," and "AMOLED." In other words, you can bet that Samsung will be unveiling a 3.3-inch, 800 x 480 pixel Super AMOLED (already rumored for a next week reveal) touchscreen Bada phone on February 14th.
P.S. The image above comes courtesy of GSM Arena. While the site won't say what the device is on the left it's clearly running Samsung's Bada UI and is likely AMOLED judging by those deep blacks. The display is also slightly smaller than the iPhone 3G's 3.5-inch display. Gee... what could it be?
Sometimes it's nothing, but often, especially when it's a Tuesday and we're sitting on a stack of overdue rumors, an Apple Store outage is a tell that new products are due. Especially when the store goes down on a global basis as it has just now. So take a moment to reflect on the latest rumors and chime in with your predictions in the comments. Our guess? Refreshed MacBook Pros... or iPonies, either or. Then check back at 08:30 ET (as is the norm) to see who got it right.
InfoWorld - It's almost a pathetic assertion: This year, the Mac will break out of its ghetto and become a mainstream computer for individuals and businesses alike. That unfulfilled desire is foretold every year and has been since the mid-1980s, when Apple's then-groundbreaking computer was quickly sidelined by the IBM PC and, later, Microsoft Windows.
PC World - Microsoft is researching how gadgets like the company's Xbox game machine, surface computers and accelerometers in mobile phones could be used to improve health care.
A few leaks here and there, and voila—Samsung's Monte S5620 is revealed ahead of MWC. Running the TouchWiz 2.0 Plus OS, it has full HTML browsing and the usual array of social networking tricks.
A 3.0-inch capacitive WQVGA TFT touchscreen, 3.2-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, A-GPS, Bluetooth 2.1, and Google Maps 3.0 seems to be the crux of it, with memory listed as 200MB, expandable via the microSD card slot. Yes, it's a budgetphone, but it's the first that we've seen using TouchWiz 2.0 Plus, (with the Jet, Omnia II and Tocca Ultra being some of the phones using TouchWiz 2.0), so hopefully we'll see a few new UI features when we catch a glimpse of it next week at MWC. [Samsung]
Not only has Navigon added a bunch of new features to its iPhone app, the price is $20 cheaper—although if you want Traffic Live and 3D maps, it still adds up to $100. Nonetheless, it sounds worth it.
The update has a few nifty angles—there's the connection to your Facebook or Twitter accounts for updating friends on your current position, destination and time you're due to arrive; the aforementioned Panorama View 3D views (which use NASA height and terrain data) and personalized route delivery, called MyRoutes.
The addition of NASA's data is a nice touch, meaning you'll be able to find out more about the location you're in, such as elevations and shadows. Discover a hill before you reach it—and maneuver around it if you're not keen on heights.
MyRoutes, on the other hand, collects data on your preferences and habits, giving you customized routes along side the fastest/easiest ways to reach your destination.
Here we come to the price. I mentioned before that it'll cost $100 if you want the full service for your iPhone or iPod Touch, with the actual price of the MobileNavigator app being lowered by $20 to $69.99. The Traffic Live has also been discounted slightly, from $24.99 to $19.99 (only available until the 15th of February), and the Panorama View 3D will cost $9.99. Those who bought the app before will get the update for free, according to Navigon.
Yes, it's pricey. Yes, it's not far off what you'd spend on a stand-along satnav. But as our iPhone navigation battlemodo deduced last August, the MobileNavigator is the best money can buy. And that was before all these new updates.
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Gasp! Whatever could it be? I'm hoping for new MacBook Pros, what about you? [
A few leaks here and there, and voila—Samsung's Monte S5620 is revealed ahead of MWC. Running the TouchWiz 2.0 Plus OS, it has full HTML browsing and the usual array of social networking tricks.
Not only has Navigon added a bunch of new features to