26 Jun, 2008
by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted Jun 26th 2008 at 9:12AM So here’s the scene. We’re at the Digital Experience show, trying to get our hands on a powered-up Sony Xperia X1. Sure, we found a unit that wasn’t powered up, but that does you — and us — no good. Sony told us to come back in 15 minutes, so we grabbed some press kits, made a round of booths, and came back.Sure enough, when we came back the X1 was powered up, but the nice booth lady tried to tell us that things weren’t working just right and the unit was stuck on the config screen. After some jiggering, we determined the little X1 was just stuck on the touch screen calibration, and we were cruising through menus within minutes. (Read the full post about ‘Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 hands-on, sorta’…)
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26 Jun, 2008
by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted Jun 26th 2008 at 6:06PM We already told you about Vizio’s new cheap plasmas, but we recently had a chance to witness the 32-inch VP322 in person. The set’s case design is very tasteful, and a welcome departure from the flashy, uber-lit displays we’ve come to expect from Vizio. As for picture quality, the set exhibited the deep blacks one would expect from a plasma display, but the snowy feed of a basketball game — which we assume was coming form the set’s internal ATSC tuner — wasn’t good enough to tell how the VP322 scales and processes to its native 768 lines. The promised three HDMI and component inputs were all there, confirming that this TV is a decent choice for those making the digital transition. (Read the full post about ‘Vizio VP322 32-inch plasma eyes-on’…)
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26 Jun, 2008
by Donald Melanson, posted Jun 26th 2008 at 11:42AM There may be bigger NASs out there, but there are few more impressively named than Seagate’s new Maxtor Central Axis — a name that’s all the more imposing when combined with the drive’s monolithic appearance. If that’s not enough to sell you on it, however, you may be slightly more impressed with its 1TB 7,200 rpm drive with 32MB of cache, or its support for DLNA and UPnP media streaming, dual USB ports, and magical auto-sorting software, not to mention all the expected security features. $330 and it’s yours this July, with folks in Europe and Asia set to get theirs later this year. (Read the full post about ‘Seagate rolls out 1TB Maxtor Central Axis NAS’…)
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26 Jun, 2008
Have you ever wished that a rechargeable battery would work as soon as you removed it from the package? Apparently, the folks at Duracell have been wishing for the same thing and have finally done something about it.
The Duracell Pre-Charged Rechargeables come in AA and AAA configurations, and like the name says, come pre-charged. In addition, the batteries will remain 75 percent charged even after a year of not being used and can be recharged 100’s of times.
The batteries were released in Fall of 07 but now Duracell is kicking the marketing into high gear and have launched a new website called Museumoftheobvious.com which features a video poking fun at how rechargables are not powered when they come out of the packaging.
(Read the full post about ‘Duracell pre-charges its rechargeable batteries’…)
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26 Jun, 2008
T-Mobile has decided to offer a new home service at a price many consumers will find hard to pass up. The service called T-Mobile@Home will begin July 2nd and will be offered for just US$10 a month. In order to receive the home service you need only subscribe to a qualifying T-Mobile wireless plan. The home phone service will include unlimited nationwide long-distance calling, call waiting, caller ID, three-way conferencing, voicemail in addition to call forwarding. Subscribers will also be able to take advantage of CallerTunes. This is a ringback tones service typically associated with wireless services. The T-Mobile@Home service was initially piloted in Dallas and Seattle before it was launched to other T-Mobile subscribers. (Read the full post about ‘T-Mobile offers home phone service for US$10′…)
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26 Jun, 2008
Last night I had the occasion to play around with the new crop of phones put out by the industry’s big players. It always surprises me how quickly a phone can feel great or not so great in your hand vs staring at it on the screen. I was shocked at how quickly I hated one of these supposedly sexy models and how much I liked one I really didn’t think I would. Here is the run down: HTC Touch Diamond. (Read the full post about ‘Hands on: hot phone shoot out: HTC, Samsung, Sony and Blackberry’…)
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26 Jun, 2008
You may not get excited by mice, but I have quite a collection of the cute critters. There’s the Logitech multi-media zoomer, my pink Kensington travel model, the Wow-Pen ergonomic version, not to mention the drawer full of reject mice that weren’t up to my exacting standards. The SlimBlade Presented Mouse by Kensington is my newest pet. It combines a full-function laser mouse and presenter in one sleek device, and is still small enough to fit in your pocket. Bluetooth connection; switch to go to presentation mode; goes to sleep when your notebook does; ultra-thin design for traveling - what’s not to love? $59.99 at Kensington. Tags: lcd, gadgets, video games, tech (Read the full post about ‘Kensington’s SlimBlade mobile Bluetooth presenter mouse’…)
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26 Jun, 2008
Being a cyclist often leaves you somewhere near the bottom of the road user food chain, and despite having laws that help prevent untoward accidents on cyclists, bad things still happen due to a large number of factors - poor judgement, low visibility, and even the lack of turn signals that lead to confusion. This unique turn signal biking jacket solves at least one of those problems (two, if you happen to have fluorescent strips all over the jacket), featuring a turn signal that lets other people know just where you’re going at a junction. It works best against a dark background, but that could work against you in low light conditions. (Read the full post about ‘Turn Signal Biking Jacket’…)
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26 Jun, 2008
Ah, finally the day has come where e-book readers resemble the traditional tome more and more, this time with a dual screen display for a more natural reading feel to it. This prototype functions like a normal book, and you can fold it back into a single-page version if you decide to conserve battery life, or choose to separate the pages so that you can share whatever you’re reading with another reader on the other side. It would be interesting to see just how long the battery life is on something like this. No idea on when the prototype will be turned into a mass manufactured device though. Publisher’s note: Is there a need for dual-display ebooks? I don’t think so. (Read the full post about ‘Dual Screen eBook in the Works’…)
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26 Jun, 2008
Matrox Graphics (are they still alive?) has a new range of graphic cards - the M-Series. “M” stands for Multi-monitor, and the cards offer (only?) 512MB memory, native PCIe x16 and the ability to support up to 4 monitors. They’re not meant for ordinary office drones, but was specially designed to cater for display-hungry professionals including financial analysts, media professionals, bloggers, and folks who need to work on more than a single monitor at the same time. You can install up to two monitors per card, with resolutions maxing out at 2,560 x 1,600 per display, or four monitors at lower resolutions, depending on the card model. (Read the full post about ‘Matrox M-Series Graphic Cards’…)
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