Folks these days spend a large amount of time right smack in front of the computer, hence making it extremely important to have good hardware from reputable manufacturers, and Logitech is one of those who tend to come up with above average devices with the Logitech Wireless Desktop MK 700 mouse-and-keyboard combination being one of them. This keyboard will come with Logitech Incurve keys that cradle your fingers for greater comfort, while the integrated LCD dashboard allows you to check out all important keyboard functions and status at a glance.
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T-Mobile have found a unique way to keep high-paying customers coming back for more. Or a least, unique for legal operations: selling unlocked iPhone 3Gs! Yes, the 3Gs that are exclusive to O2. Yes, unlocked the way that Apple are extremely litigiously against. It’s definitely a case of “Give them what they want.”
T-Mobile are managing this by being pretty quiet about it (though not quite quiet enough, what with this being on the internet and all) and jumping through a series of legal loopholes that’d make someone suing McDonald’s for making hot food blush. They’re only offering the iPhones to upgrading customers, technically meaning they’re reselling phones that happen to be unSIMmed, and they’re doing it in small numbers – thereby maintaining high paying customers while (they hope) not shifting enough units to enrage Apple. We’ll have to wait and see if they get away with it.
A few new Plug Computing applications were just announced and they include: WebTVPlug, Eyecon and TonidoPlug.
WebTVPlug connects to WebTView (a video search service) to make WebTView videos accessible to a DLNA/uPNP home device. For example, your PlayStation 3 could access WebTView, even if there’s no WebTView application for PS3. This is pretty cool.
Eyecon also relies on DLNA/uPNP to give you access to a virtual library of all the media content that the Plug can find in your home. The virtual library can also contain media files hosted elsewhere on the web. Users can access the library from (select) smartphones to play the content. The idea is to give a single view to many media sources.
TonidoPlug was discussed by its creators on the web last week, but it’s basically a tiny home server that lets you share data (photo, music, media, calendar…) with other users inside your home or on the internet. Read the rest of this entry »
Art Levedev Studio’s have created another concept gadget. This time they created the Navigarius which is a satnav unit that sports a round screen. It has touchscreen controls, a USB port, microSD slot and is powered by either battery or a lighter socket on your car.
It looks like it belongs in a future concept car and other than looking rather cool it looks like a pretty standard setup with the usual maps and features of ordinary satnav units.
The picture above and a bunch more can be found on the Art Levedev site.
Welsh is spoken by approximately 725,000 people in England and Wales and although there are very few solely Welsh speakers, there are enough people who undoubtably prefer to express themselves in their native tongue. Seeing as phone manufacturers need to adapt keyboards and add language packs for many European dialects, it makes sense to add Welsh to the list!
Samsung are the company in question and from the 1st September the S5600 will contain a library of 44,000 Welsh words to make texting somewhat easier than using an English only T9 system! Also known as the Preston – Samsung should have nicknamed it the Swansea, as Preston is not in Wales – the S5600 is a 3G phone with HSDPA, a 3.2 megapixel camera, the TouchWiz interface, expandable memory and A2DP Bluetooth v2.1. Even without the Welsh language add-on, the S5600 is a great touchscreen phone available at a competitive price.
This isn’t the first time Samsung have identified a niche language market in need of filling, as last year they were the first to add Gaeilge – the Irish language – to a mobile phone, in this case the Tocco. It will be interesting to see the sales figures of the S5600 in Wales at the start of next year to see exactly how well this new function has been received.
Netgear have created a new home theatre internet connection kit named the XAVB1004 that is capable of allowing 4 network devices to be connected up to it and allows them to use your home electrical wiring for connecting devices together. It houses a 4 port ethernet switch that can be used to prioritize traffic across the network. Anything plugged in to Port 1 of the switch gets high priority while port 2 drops that to medium priority and ports 3 and 4 are both assigned a low priority.
The Powerline system allows bandwidth up to 200Mbps over your mains power lines and allows for various applications such as VoIP, HD streaming and internet gaming to be performed.
To make use of the Poweline features a couple of adapters are included in the pack with one used to send and the other used to receive.
The Netgear kit costs $179.99 and is already available (although not on Netgears site just yet). If you already make use of a Powerline system at home then you can buy extra individual components to make use of this new system.
At first it was hoped Samsung’s first Android phone would be on sale in the UK during June, but at the beginning of July this date was pushed forward to the second week of August, which we hope remains accurate. Coming at the same time as this adjusted release date was the news that O2 would be the UK operator flying the Galaxy flag.
Reports indicate the phone will have both an 8GB internal memory and a MicroSD card slot for another 32GB, plus a 3.5mm jack plug for using you own headphones. The design may be a typically Samsung-style approach, but its 11mm chassis thickness is slightly slimmer than the Magic and is rumoured to be metallic.
All the initial photos of the i7500 showed a model in black, but now we have some leaked images showing a very fetching white version, a colour which seems to suit Android phones rather well. So what have we got to look forward to in this Samsung offering? Aside from the Cupcake Android OS, it has a 5 megapixel camera, 3G with 7.2Mbps HSDPA and HSUPA, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, 8GB internal memory and a 320×480 AMOLED touchscreen.
Buffalo has announced a super tiny microSD card reader which is just about the size of a USB connector. Look, as shown in the picture, at one end of the card reader lets you insert a microSD card into it and another end is the USB connector that hooks up to your computer’s USB port.
The Buffalo microSD card reader also comes with a built-in storage of 16GB, meaning it can also work as a USB flash drive when there is no removable media inserted into it. It should be a handy one, which works as your usual USB flash drive as well as letting you read those microSD cards taken off from your digital cameras, or other gadgets.
If it wasn’t for Verizon’s habit of castrating WIFI capable phones, there would not be any excitement about the spyshots that show a BlackBerry Storm 2 mobile phone – with WIFI support. WiFi? Duh! Even my photo frame has WiFi, so what’s the big deal? What we would be excited about would be to learn that the Storm 2 handset has a much faster graphics interface with decent hardware acceleration. When we asked about OpenGL ES support, we were told by RIM that 3D graphics were “not a priority right now”. That’s too bad.
Sony has unveiled two very non-pricey, highly affordable point and shoot Cyber-shots with high end specs. The DSC-TX1 and DSC-WX1 are both new additions to Sony’s Cyber-shot range. Sony has blessed the TX1 and WX1 with a back-illuminated CMOS sensor, the Exmor R. If you’re wondering why the duo will have near DSLR specs, its mainly because of its sensor. Their sensors will be based on those found in Sony’s DSLRs, this promises to deliver optimal low-light performance without help from a flash or tripod – something that not many point and shoots are doing so well at the moment.
Both 10.2 megapixel TX1 and WX1 will be under the stunning budget price of $380. The $350 WX1 features the exact same G Lens, low-light optimized Exmor R CMOS sensor and Sweep Panaroma mode as seen in Sony’s $500 HX1 mega zoom camera.
On the other hand, the rather slimmer $380 Cyber-shot TX1 falls in step with other T series model with a 3.0 inch touch screen on the back panel. Though without the Sony G Lens on the WX1, it still boasts low-light optimized Exmor R CMOS Sensor and Sony’s new Twilight mode. Twilight mode works simply by combining a range of shots taken at various exposures to produce photos with greater dynamic range, this again hopes to enable users to get the most out of low-light photography. The TX1 has a shutter button, but all other controls are via the touch screen, which also lets you flick through images with a finger.
