Archive for the ‘Latest Gadgets’ Category
Australian company Mint Wireless is claiming their Mint V10 is the smallest commercial pocket projector in the world.
Do you have a bunch of holiday snaps sitting on your computer that you are dying to bore your friends with? With a pocket-sized projector you can bore dozens of friends at a time.
Australian company Mint Wireless is gearing up for the local release of the V10 projector, a device it is dubbing as the “world’s smallest pocket projector”. This gadget measures up at around the same size as an iPhone, though twice as thick, and includes a handy range of inputs.
The V10 projects a VGA resolution image up to 50 inches. We had a chance to see the projector in action during the launch in Sydney and from our brief look we can say it creates a pretty decent picture. The pocket projector comes bundled with a mini tripod to make sure this picture remains steady.
The obvious market for this product is small business who will make the most of a low-cost, portable alternative to dragging full size projectors around to business meetings. For these customers, the V10 sports a USB input for connecting a laptop.
But it’s the alternate uses for this projector that had our ears pricking up with interest. The V10 also supports conventional three plug AV RCA inputs (you know, the red, white and yellow plugs) so theoretically you can plug in a DVD player or gaming console and project your movies or games onto any flat surface.
A few other key specs for the V10 includes 1GB of internal storage plus expandable memory via microSD, and media file support for MP4, AVI and ASF video files, MP3 audio, and JPEG images. The only downside we can see on paper is a total of 60 minutes battery life, which obviously falls short of a full-length feature film.
Stay tuned for more info about the V10 and a full review before it’s released locally in September.
Digital Signature has released the US$179 Mint 220, a music station that features an iPod dock, wireless connectivity to stream any audio from your Mac or PC, and takes a standard eigthth-inch stereo head set connector.
It allows wireless streaming from a Mac or PC, as well. The Mint 220 features Texas Instrument’s PurePath Digital audio technology, with wireless transmission via Digital Signature’s proprietary 2.4 GHz USB transmitter, which is completely lossless over ranges of up to 45 feet, according to Joyce Ahn of Digital Signature.
A remote control is included. The Mint 220 is available at Best Buys and from the Digital Signature web site.
In a surprising move BIC, well-known for making disposable shavers and pens, has decided to release a mobile phone.
This isn’t your typical fully-featured, buy on a contract mobile phone though. This is a disposable device you buy off-the-shelf at most retail outlets.
The BIC phone will cost 49 Euros (US$78) and is capable of just making phone calls and sending text messages. It comes with a SIM card, 60 minutes of free calls, a phone number included in the packaging and a fully-charged battery. Extra minutes can be bought through the use of a mobicarte and works the same way as most pay-as-you-go schemes. The phone will initially only be available to buy in France.
BIC is marketing the phone as a second line, something for your kids to use or for situations where you need to give out a phone number publicly for a short period of time e.g. selling your car.
The phone itself is made by TCL, better known through its Alcatel brand, and the service provider is Orange France. Each phone guarantees the number included for at least 12 months and the 60 minutes of free calls are valid for 2 months after you activate the phone.
Read more at BIC, found via Register Hardware
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) cut on Sunday the price of its best-selling Xbox 360 Pro model game console with a 20 gigabyte hard drive to $299 from $349.
The company also introduced a new Xbox 360 model with a 60 gigabyte hard drive, which will go on sale in stores in the U.S. and Canada for $349 in early August.
Microsoft announced the price cut and a new model before the start of this week’s E3 video game industry trade show in Los Angeles. The price cut was widely reported in game industry blogs since last week.
The company last cut the price of the Xbox Pro in August, from $399 to $349, prior to the release of blockbuster title, “Halo 3,” the following month.
A cut to $299 makes the Xbox 360 Pro $100 less than Sony Corp’s (6758.T) PlayStation 3 with a 40 gigabyte hard drive. Microsoft is locked in a three-way competition with Nintendo Co Ltd’s (7974.OS) Wii and the PlayStation 3, which comes with a high-definition Blu-ray video player.
Price cuts from Nintendo and Sony seem unlikely. Nintendo’s $249 Wii is still in short supply at many retailers, while Sony has said it aims to turn its video game business profitable this year, making a cut hard to swallow.
(Reporting by Daisuke Wakabayashi; Editing by Louise Heavens)
New foreign language phrasebook application for iPhone-toting travelers provides “talking translations” on digital flashcards, available through Apple’s new iTunes App Store
 We set out to offer global travelers a fun and useful tool to communicate abroad  |
Princeton, NJ, (PRWEB) July 11, 2008 — Among the first iPhone and iPod Touch software applications available on Apple’s highly anticipated iTunes Apps Store this week is Lingolook, the clever new foreign language phrasebook application that offers travelers indispensable words and phrases through “talking translations” and enticing graphic design. Lingolook for iPhone and iTouch will launch in four editions — China, France, Italy and Japan — and will cost $4.99 per download. All Lingolook applications are featured in the Travel and Education categories of the new iTunes App Store.
Each edition of Lingolook Flashcards for Foreign Travel includes over 500 translations; 300 are audio translations recorded by native speakers to help users perfect pronunciation and communicate abroad with ease. All words and phrases are showcased on 75 illustrated, digital flashcards and helpfully organized by travel category and searchable through a comprehensive index. The Reference section includes all-important menu readers, numbers, travel tips and more.
“We set out to offer global travelers a fun and useful tool to communicate abroad,” says Lingolook co-founder Dominique Godefroy. “Our goal is to give travelers practical content in an easy-to-use, well-designed format, and the iPhone’s Multi-Touch technology certainly helps accomplish that. Users can master pronunciation of essential phrases with instant replay of audio translations, whether it’s ‘airport’ to a taxi driver, ‘wine’ at a restaurant, or ‘check-in’ at a hotel. We hope travelers will get by in a flash — with a tap of their touch-screens!”
Lingolook’s iPhone and iTouch versions are based on the company’s print editions, launched in late 2007 and available at www.amazon.com and www.Lingolook.net for $11.95 each.
About Lingolook Flashcards for Foreign Travel
Lingolook Flashcards for Foreign Travel are designed to help English-speaking travelers get by abroad in a flash. These clever, new language guides feature basic keywords travelers need — helpfully organized on “75+” electronic flashcards. These fully illustrated cards feature translations in extra large type, audio recordings by native speakers, and easy phonetics. Travelers just flash their iPhones or repeat the pronunciation to get a point across fast. Lingolook guides also contain destination-specific travel tips, menu readers and more. Print editions for China, France and Japan are also available at Amazon.com and www.lingolook.net. The print versions of Lingolook Flashcards for Foreign Travel come encased in a soft, clear PVC box and retail for $11.95 each.
Pioneer’s Blu-ray technology can hold 400GB of data, or 48 hours of movies, on a single disc with 16 layers. Currently the technology is read-only, but Pioneer has indicated that a writable version is being developed. Pioneer also indicated that its technology is compatible with current Blu-ray players, although some modifications may be needed. |
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 Get ready to never leave your home. Pioneer announced this week a read-only Blu-ray technology that could put up to 48 hours, or 400GB, of movies on a single disc.By comparison, the current Blu-ray Disc format stores 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer version. A 50GB Blu-ray disc can hold up to about six hours of high-definition video.
16 Layers The new Pioneer technology has 16 layers on a conventional 12-centimeter optical disc, and is currently a play-only version. The company has indicated that a writable version is being developed. Pioneer’s announcement said “it is possible to maintain compatibility” between the new, very high-density Blu-ray format and existing players. However, the company indicated that some kind of modification may be necessary, either in the production of the discs or in the players. The key to making such storage possible, Pioneer said, is reducing interference between adjacent layers, as its prototype does. A formal announcement of the 400GB technology is expected at the International Symposium on Optical Memory and Optical Data Storage, which begins Sunday in Hawaii. Industry observers anticipate that Pioneer will not commercially produce the discs, but will work with manufacturers. TDK has also announced a high-capacity disc, with six layers and a 150GB capacity. In a separate announcement, Pioneer said it will start selling Blu-ray recorders in Japan before next March. The recorders, to be sold under the Pioneer brand, will be made with Sharp Electronics. Sharp, Sony and Matsushita control virtually the entire Blu-ray market in Japan. Matsushita makes Panasonic products. No plans for sales of the recorder in the U.S. or elsewhere were announced. ‘Not Earth-Shattering’ Josh Martin, an analyst with industry research firm Yankee Group, said the new, high-capacity disc is “interesting, but not earth-shattering.” He said the last time he checked, it was not much cheaper to produce a Blu-ray disc with, say, three times the capacity of a single disc, than to produce three discs. And then there’s the matter of value for the average consumer. Martin said “there is value to a consumer in having multiple discs for, say, a $100 set.” He added that a single disc with the same amount of movies, at the same price, doesn’t have the same perceived value. But, Martin noted, a high-capacity recordable Blu-ray disc might have value in some businesses. In general, he said Blu-ray player and disc sales appear to be picking up momentum, but there probably won’t be any significant sales until closer to the holiday season. Martin noted that some retailers, such as Amazon and Wal-Mart, have reduced the price of some titles to $15 from about $25 or $30, and this could spur sales. |
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The cell phone market is a busy one and today nearly everyone has a cell phone, from your children to the oldest person in your family. Technology is really moving ahead and the biggest brands are launching high-end handsets full of the best gadgets, this means you got to be extra good to attract consumers. It’s been reported that Sprint has lost many customers for different reasons but now we see two new phones hoping to get users back.
The Sprint Samsung Instinct and Treo 800w could help bring people back to Sprint; will you keep being a customer or become a new customer thanks to these two phones on Sprint?
Today we are hearing that the Sprint Treo 800w will be released a week before many previous rumors, the date is said to be July 13th. The Treo 800w features Live Search for Windows Mobile, Built-in GPS functionality that will allow points of interests searching and mapping, WIFI, EVDO Rev A data speeds and Windows Mobile 6.1. The unsubsidized price is well over $500, making this phone far from cheap unless you get a good deal.
The Samsung Instinct seems to be the popular of the two phones and has even been matched up to the 3G iPhone, the phone features a 3.5mm headset jack that means you can connect headphones without the need for any adapters, the Web browser is excellent and has some cool browsing features.
The call quality and navigation is very good but on the downside you get no tethered modem support, onboard memory is lacking and the Samsung Instinct has no IM client, which is a great feature in this day and age of keeping in touch with Wi-Fi.
The Instinct was released this month for $230; you can see the full features on both these phones on Phones Review.
When looking at all the latest thin laptops you will be forgiven for thinking that they look almost the same, the main three are the HP Voodoo Envy, Apple MacBook Air and the ThinkPad X300. Yes they are all thin, but it is not just in looks where they are the same, when you look inside there are many more common features. When it comes to the processing power, the Hewlett-Packard Voodoo silicon shares the same one used in the MacBook Air, this is the low-power Intel SP7700 and SP7500.
Don’t try looking for these processors on any price list from Intel; these CPU’s were designed especially for the MacBook Air. The processors have a thermal envelope of just 20 watts at 1.8GHz and 1.6GHz, CPU’s which run at those speeds usually have a power rating of 35 watts. The ThinkPad X300 uses a different processor, an Intel SL7100. This CPU still comes in a small package, but has a lower clock speed of just 1.2GHz and only uses 12 watts of power.
One thing that we notice about these CPU’s is the fact that they are the older 65-nanometer “Merom” processors, we would have thought that they would have used the newer 45-nanometer Penryn generation. There are rumours of an upgrade of these processors coming, which will be able to fit into these slim notebooks.
There are also a number of other similarities with these laptops; all three use the Intel X3100 integrated graphics as well as offering a choice of 80GB hard disk drive (4200RPM) or a 64GB solid state drive. One thing is certain about the HP Voodoo silicon, MacBook Air & ThinkPad X300; they are the future in laptops.
T-Mobile have been committed at launching cell phones that support their innovative wireless service HotSpot@Home, and a year on they now launch a new cheap handset called the Samsung T339. This phone will cost $49 with a 2-year agreement and although its features are nothing special, you can get a lot of free calling.
The Samsung T339 features up to 11 days standby time and up to 6 hours talk time, it weighs 3.3 ounces, measures 1.8 x 3.6 x 0.8 inches, the phone book stores names and numbers for easy retrieval and dialing, speakerphone gives you convenient talking with no hands and the music player lets you play your favorite music wherever you are. You can use Caller ID pictures to see who is calling, Bluetooth for computer connections and stereo headsets and a 1.3 Megapixel camera.
The Wi-Fi and Mobile Calling is where this cell phone really shines, with this feature from T-Mobile you can use a T-Mobile HotSpot@Home wireless router for making unlimited nationwide calls over Wi-Fi. The wireless network calling is not just for home; you can also use any U.S. T-Mobile HotSpot.
T-Mobile has build a large portfolio of handsets to support the HotSpot@Home wireless service, the Samsung T339 is one of the more basic handsets in this range. The benefit of these phones is mainly taking advantage of unlimited nationwide calling.
When the first Apple iPhone was released it was the hottest handset on the market, and no one could stop talking about it. Well now there is the new 3G version which will be coming on the market very soon, and once again this is the hottest handset, one that everybody wants to know about. As yet we do not know much about the new updated Apple iPhone, we do know that it will be a 3G version, but the rest are just rumors or speculation.
Here we have yet another few rumors just to wet your appetite, the first is that it will be lighter, also the ultimate handset will come in a choice of other colors, however it is not sure if the other colors will be released as soon as the new 3G handset comes out. As always the phone will be centred on the multimedia aspect, the handset will come with better video recording as well as video conferencing.
Pricing rumors say that the 16GB version will cost $499 and the 32GB should cost about $699, ok the price is a little steep, but maybe that might come down a bit. As we know the new 3G Apple iPhone will use the same screen and resolution, the recessed headphone jack will now be a standard one. The 3G is able to be switched of and use the standard 2G.