New Philips Portable Media Players Coming Soon
August 11, 2008
There’s a big assortment of choices when it comes to Portable Media Players. It seems that electronics manufacturers see them as being as trendy and modern as many consumers do and no discerning home entertainment manufacturer would dare to claim they can compete if they don’t have at least one range of PMPs.
Philips are ensuring that they’ve got their contenders in by, despite already having a very popular and positive selection of such devices, have announced they will be releasing more and that they will look better and offer a sleeker form than their counterparts.
One of the seven new devices they plan to launch over the space of this year, the DCP951 has an iPod Dock that expands from the device when required. The dock is completely retractable so once you’ve docked your pod you can close everything back up again ensuring that no harm comes to your beloved little Apple.
Many of the range will offer unique features. Another device planned for release includes an SD slot and can be used as a digital photo frame rather than a PMP, if you really want to spend all that money and then waste it with photos. The devices will cost anywhere from £120 up to £200 depending on the model and features.
Sony Ericsson Xperia X1
August 11, 2008
It would seem that there’s an official enough release date for the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 smartphone. Sim free pre-orders are being taken on the Play.com website although the price is likely to separate the genuinely enthusiastic from the mildly curious because sim free it will cost you a breath taking £600.
Off the bat, it looks a nice design for a smart phone. The QWERTY keyboard slides down from behind the screen, in landscape rather than portrait so it feels like a laptop that the Borrower’s might use. The design of the slider is arced so that it apparently offers a better user experience.
It is small and happily sits in the palm of your hand although that obviously means that while it does offer a full QWERTY keyboard you will be thumbing it, as it were. When you don’t require the use of a full keyboard, the touch screen interface and there’s even handwriting recognition as well as some beneficial personal features.
The phone will run a modified variant of the Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system, which also includes Outlook Mobile and Office Mobile. The 3.2MP camera is coupled with video recording and playback as well as advanced GPS tracking capabilities.
The price is a little on the weighty side, but the phone packs a serious punch. Has some excellent features and provides a good looking and feature rich device for personal and business use.
Guitar Hero Air Guitar Rocker
August 11, 2008
This is the Rolls Royce in air guitar, borne undoubtedly through the incredible success of the Rock Band and Guitar Hero games. But you don’t need a PC or console for this one, because it comes with its own amp, belt buckle based sensor, and ten signature riffs that you can jam along with including classics like Smoke on the Water and Iron Man.
You clip the belt buckle on, flick the switch on the amp, choose your track and then start strumming the air strings of the the best air guitar you’ll ever own. The sensor in the belt buckle will register whenever you pluck a note around the buckle region and the result can be heard over the amp; although you can, should you wish, plug in external speaker for an even bigger noise.
In true rock style, the volume goes up to 11 and if that isn’t enough you can plug in your stereo speakers or even your home entertainment surround sound system if you really want to make friends and influence people. It’s available from IWOOT for an impressive £30 which is a lot cheaper than buying the full Rock Band set.
BTs Self Organising Robot Network Thing
August 10, 2008
BT is attempting to take over the world through the use of automated systems and intelligent… erm… servers. They intend to integrate their networks with certain human characteristics (other than the stubbornness that they already seem to have adopted to well) such as the ability to self heal and self regulate. It’s one step closer to world domination, in my eyes, but “Anything you can do with self-organisation is basically a ‘free lunch’” according to Fabrice Saffe, a chief researcher for BT.
Self organisation, despite sounding like a cream you buy from Ann Summers, gives networks the ability to regulate and control themselves, diagnosing any problem they might have and then taking the necessary steps to fix that problem.
The concept was discussed at the Artificial Life XI in Winchester this week. The Artificial Life program is geared specifically towards mimicing or recreating life in order to generate software or hardware that improves daily lives in some way or another. BT is one of several companies that research heavily into this area in the hope that ideas like the self organising networks can automate even unexpected events.
PlayStation Home Beta
August 10, 2008
I’ve been holding out on the purchase of a PS3, as yet. They do represent the only truly worthwhile way of entering the Blu Ray market and Home, when it’s finally released looks like it is going to be quite an accomplishment. Until then, it’s a lot of money. However, the good news is that PlayStation Home is one step closer to completion.
Home has entered a closed Beta testing stage in Japan and existing, regular European users should expect to receive an invite to the testing soon. For those that don’t know, Home is a community based application where users create their own character or avatar and then upgrade a free apartment with items from games and other sources. The plan is to continue expanding the service to include other upgrades.
As you can see from the picture, it looks incredible, although that is presuming that the real thing offers a similar quality. Presumably the system is going to be used in a similar way to Xbox achievements and gamer score, which certainly adds a different layer to Xbox 360 gaming. Home has now faced a couple of delays that have set the project back some way, so it had definitely better be worth the wait.
Lenovo IdeaPad S10
August 10, 2008
The Netbook trend is in full flow and fine form with manufacturers willing to bite their own appendages off in order to be the next to release one. An unfortunate by-product of this is that the prices have actually been increasing as manufacturers begin trying to cram more and more into the tiny little laptops. Lenovo, as it turns out, appear to have stolen a march on many of their competitors.
The IdeaPad S10 has been pencilled in for an October release in the States and the price is being kept to a respectable $399 for the entry model. The IdeaPad has a 10.2” screen and uses the Intel Atom processor to deliver the goods. The basic model, costing around £200 will have 512MB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive. Increase your budget marginally to $449 and you can increase to 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive.
White, red, or black are your colour options and the IdeaPad will also offer a 4-in-1 card reader, twin USB ports, and an ExpressCard slot. On paper, there’s a good balance between beneficial features and a budget price bracket. Let’s see how it works out in real life.
Nokia 6650 Launched In The UK
August 9, 2008
It was only announced a few weeks back in June but the new clamshell phone from Nokia, the 6650, has been launched exclusively with T-Mobile today in the UK. Not only does it look good but the range of features that’s offered is pretty impressive too with decent camera, great multimedia, and a number of applications that have been designed specifically to make the most of the T-Mobile network (apparently).
The 2MP camera include flash while the phone also has built-in GPS receiver, mp3 player functionality, web TV, and the T Mobile Web n Walk service. The keypad will also change colours, just in case that’s the kind of thing that floats your boat and makes you run out to buy a new mobile phone.
The handset can be snared for free on the Combi30 package or higher and other features of the steel encased phone include the 2.2” TFT display, HSDPA high speed connectivity, multimedia keys, and 30MB of internal memory as well as a flash SD card slot so that you can upgrade this (which you will probably want to if you intend to do anything other than people – perish the thought).
R2D2 Projector Clock
August 9, 2008
Stuck for a gadget? You can always rely on a bit of Star Wars branding on household items. For those of you that can’t afford the full on R2 D2 projector, universal remote thing (the one that comes with a Death Star remote) the R2-D2 projector clock is smaller and thankfully much less expensive at around £20.
R2 will beam the time onto a spare bit of wall, and altohugh it’s difficult to find out more details about this clock, if worse comes to worst you can flip him on his back and will project at the ceiling, which is a lot more convenient. He doesn’t do that much in the way of Star Wars trickery but he is a clock and not the real R2 after all.
You can set the alarm so that R2 sound effects wake you up. It’s always a pleasant change to see a Star Wars gadgetthat isn’t priced so ridiculously high that only George Lucas himself could afford one (although you can probably get a cheaper copy off Ebay).
Like most projector clocks you won’t get much change during the day because these things come into their own at night when you can easily read them on just about any reasonably flat surface.
The RoboStool Party Stalker
August 9, 2008
The RoboStool must be one of the best party gadgets of all time. The leather style stool will gently meander around a room looking for the perfect individual to seat. We presume it does it gently anyway, although there’s no doubt some way to mod it in order that it “hilariously” moves out of the way whenever somebody attempts to sit on it.
There are three settings – the remote control, a waypoint settings (you can set the stool to patrol a specific area if you wish), and the free roam setting. It’s this free roam setting that’s particularly impressive using thermal sensors to seek out hot spots and then offer one of those hotspots somewhere to sit down.
When in stalking mode, the RoboStool will rear its laser guided head from the top of its construction. The sensor that forms part of the stool’s head will then help it detect any objects that might be in its path. The head also intelligently prevents the stool from shorting when it has an option of two bums to pick (not literally) and has the three rules of robotics hardwired in too, for good measure.
Epson Photo Viewers
August 8, 2008
Epson has announced that it will be launching two specialist multimedia photo viewers that are designed for the professional and extremely keen photographer. That is, you need to either be extremely keen, or are looking for things to buy in order to hide a recent inheritance you’ve come in to. For the convenience of being able to view photographs before you get home and store everything from your memory card in a photo viewer, the price tags of £300 to £400 are a little restrictive to all but the most obsessive.
With that said, the feature range is pretty good and enables you to store and watch video and audio as well. Between 80GB and a massive 160GB of storage you shouldn’t run out of room too quickly at all unless you’re attempting to record the next Batman film in high def and store all the takes on either of these models.
The P-6000 is the entry level model costing about £300 and featuring an 80GB hard drive while the P-7000 costs about £400 and has 160GB of storage. The interface is reasonably well designed and the Epson photo software offers some basic open, zoom, and save functions but little else.
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