Gadgety News

If, like me, you still think that the iPhone is a work of art and that the standard Apple dock is a tad perfunctionary then have I got news for you.

ASD have a real neat looking docking station that makes the 3Gesus phone look more like an art piece on a display stand - Click the pic for the full beauty

The device is cleverly called the iPhone 3G Dock Station and connects the phone via USB to your computer for dock and sync functions. The dock features video out, audio out, 110/240V, and an IR remote.

The dock will also work with the original iPhone by the way.

The audio and video out allow the iPhone to be connected to your gogglebox or home stereo.

I can’t seem to find any pricing info at the moment.

Design for iPhone

The Samsung X360 is pretty impressive.

Its size and weight (very light and very thin) and is ready to taunt the MacBook Air.

It has a 13.3-inch, 1200 x 800 pixel screen and by all reports is also very good.

It’s also all ported up, more so than Apple’s notebook: direct HDMI out, three USB ports, Express Card slot, 7-in-1 flash card reader, external optical unit included, and fingerprint reader for security.

For Windows users the Samsung X360 looks like a great choice but Apple fanboys will argue that a revision of the MacBook Air is just around the corner and that the Sammy wont play OS X.

For me though on the surface of it all the winner is the Samsung X360.

The only drawback for me is the lack of colour choices - you get the usual ‘Piano Black’ but even for an ardent fan of black such as me - it would be nice to have a choice.

Sammy aint pulling any punches either as it’s being branded it as “lighter than air” and say it’s the “lightest notebook in its 13.3 inch class” since it weighs just 1.27 kg.

Under the hood there’s a 45nm Core 2 Duo mobile processor and it comes with an external DVD drive.

The battery life is claimed to be 10 hours, by Samsung.

It’ll be available in September in some European countries, and Russia, China and Hong Kong, but there’s no info on the US release or pricing.

Just check this out.

Take the idea of the iPhone-style touch navigation and then times that by two.

This totally cool dual-sided transparent touch display from Teraokaseiko is definitely on the right track.

Perhaps someday it will develop beyond wicked games of, Naughts and Crosses, Battleship and Connect 4.

At the moment it’s just a monochrome 256 x 120 EL-panel prototype for now, but it recognises those multitouch gestures like pinching so there’s plenty of promise in the idea.

Via Techon

Yup - me reviewing a book!

I was as amazed as the rest of you when Liz from publishers Dorling Kindersley sent me this particular tome to read and review for this site!

But once I got it in my hands all became clear.

Cool Stuff Exploded sounds a tad dangerous and pretty much bad news for the likes of the iPhone, top end Swiss Watches and Free Play radios - but it’s all ok my fellow gadget lovers!

This colourful tech book “explodes” everyday objects in the same way as those Haynes manuals do but through fantastically photographed spreads.

The pics show a piece-by-piece breakdown of Robots, mobile phones, computers, digital pens and gives details about how each part works and how they all fit together.

Even though I get the feeling it’s aimed at a younger market I found it great to flick through and also learned a few things which is never a bad thing - and if the you feel that the pics are a tad flat then the CD-ROM that it comes with will please you as it contains animations of the “exploded” views featured in the book.

A cool book for all ages I reckon

The cover price is £19.99 and is available now.

If you prefer your iPod dock to have more of a retro-anglepoise lamp vibe here’s just the thing!

The Hi-Fi Hi-Light has a built in 6 inch speaker and that all important dock for iPods and even a 3.5mm audio input for other MP3 players.

Its iron and plastic construction comes in a range of colours befitting your study or bedroom and you can buy your own Hi-Fi Hi-Light from the PBteen website for $149.

I can remember my brother coming home from piantballing covered in bruises but sporting that grin that says he was actually enjoying this form of ‘friendly fire’.

Now, this is more my thing:

The Paintball Panzer from Funtrak is a mini-tank that will spew forth colourful death (well, pain at least) whilst keeping your body haematoma free!

The integrated paintball gun is designed to fire while driving so there’s no need to stop and aim - all this from the safety of that reinforced plastic shell

To try out the Panzer, there are four locations in the UK which features them on their paintball circuits.

These road-legal tanks will take about 3 months to arrive after you’ve placed your order and cost from £8,300 for a basic model.

Yeah that’s alot of cash but just think about the look on the next drunken swines face when he decides that your rose-bush is the ideal place to use as a latrine on the stagger home as your garage door opens to reveal your own tank….

Source: Funtrak

Ooooo………sparkly!

Harman-Kardon have released these very fetching cut glass speakers that will sit nicely with the whisky glass that generally sits atop my leather bound bureau. Yup, that’s where I am working right now; in the library in the east wing of my manor house……..

Nuff dreaming!

In reality they have the standard 3.5mm mini-jack connection to pump out the choonz from puter or player.

They produce 56 watts of tunage and they’ll be available some time in the autumn for the usual undisclosed price.

Love what they’ve done with the name - GLA-55 = Glass.  Very clever huh?

Those people over at Phone Report have listed all the specs of the upcoming HTC Dream and even popped their own comments afterwards.

They also seem to have got artist Neo Carlo Magno, from Neoworxspace to work on a ‘perhaps this is what it will look like’ rendering - looks kinda tasty if you ask me

Here are the highlights but for the full dirt go right over to Phone Report

Ok, so in no particular order……….

• 64MB Internal RAM - Only?
• 128MB Internal ROM - Also very low
• 1GB MicroSD card - Very low
• 5 Row QWERTY keypad - We’ll see how that works
• Trackball - Nice
• Dedicated camera button - Needed
• 3.1MP camera (no flash) 2048 x 1536 - Not a breakthrough camera
• Video playback files - H.264, streaming, 3GPP, MPEG4, and Codec 3GP - It better have that
• Audio playback files - MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, MPEG4, WAV, MIDI, REAL AUDIO, OGG - Nice
• HTTP, WAP Push, xHTML - the usual
• SMS and MMS support (Take that Apple!) - needed
• POP, IMAP, and SMTP, AOL, and GMAIL email - needed
• 3G - which bands?
• 802.11b & 802.11g - nice
• UMTS (1,4), HSDPA, SUPL  - WiFi?
• Screen size is 3.17? with HVGA (480  x 320) - nice
• Handset 117 x 55 x 16mm - we’ll see
• Downloadable content via Android Marketplace - nice
• Google Streetview with built-in compass - well done, where’s the GPS?

It’s green and great looking - this seems to be the new chant for eco-friendly techsters!

This groovy concept from designer Vivien Muller is one of those attractive and potentially world-saving gadgets.

It’s a modular, almost Lego-esque little bonsai PhotonSynthesis tree that has 54 mini photovoltaic leaves that will soak up the suns glorious rays and slip that power into your electric-guzzlers.

Adapters get tucked away beneath a nice little tray, and your gadgets lay on top, basking in the shade of the tech tree.

This would be a sure-fire winner if/when it goes into production.

Just don’t water it!!

Vivien Muller Portfolio, Behance Network

What do you get when you cross a Home Theatre in a box (HTIB) and an iPhone/iPod dock?

The Philips CinemaOne, that’s what!

It’s an iPod speaker system, a DVD player, and a soundbar all in one pretty package.

Connect it to your flatscreen via HDMI and it will provide surround audio through five DSP-driven speakers and a 4 inch sub, - all this is squeezed into something around the size of a football.

The DivX-compatible DVD player seems decent, with 1080p scaling and Dolby Digital and DTS support.

My stumbling block is that it doesn’t use a separate sub speaker; you know, the one that generally gets hidden away?  These speakers use one when shoved in their Ambisound bars so what makes this so different?

As with most things today, there’s no pricing or release date yet and I do hope that this actually sounds as good as it looks though - until I actually hear it I’m reserving my judgment.

TheElectricPig have a very cool article and listed their favourite 5 iPhone applications for all you Londoners.

Some I’ve already mentioned before but there’s some other great gems.

They cover all from helping you select a restaurant, GPS tagging your ride so that you can find it again through to weather reports (how very British).

Nip over here to see their reviews and rundown :)

It’s finally been announced that Sony’s cute dancing MP3 player, aka Rolly, has been given the nod for its European launch!.

It’s said that it will go on sale in October but there’s no price info yet - In the States the gadget costs around the $400 mark so if all things were equal it should be around £200 - but don’t get your hopes up

The Rolly offers 2GB of memory, built-in lights, four to five hours of battery life, and Bluetooth connectivity.

Rolly will ship in Europe with three pre-choreographed tracks: “The Pretender” by the Foo Fighters, “Girlfriend” by Avril Lavigne and “Acceptable In The 80’s” by Calvin Harris as well as two demo tracks that will get the little bot flapping and busting some moves!

There are moments (apparently) that more private viewing of the interweb is required.

Microsoft has confirmed IE 8 would get its own “porn mode” (there’s such things on the internet??? ) albeit they’re calling it a “private browsing mode”.

They have gone and named it “InPrivate” which still sounds a bit ‘dirty raincoat’ to me, but perhaps that’s just how my mind works….

Beta 2 is now available here.

IE Blog via The Register via BGR

LG KC910 have now added an 8-meg camera phone to their stable.

The octo-meg camera is aided by a Xenon flash and your handiwork can be viewed upon its 3″ screen and the blower is a mere 14mm thick.

Memory is aided by a MicroSD slot that gobble up any size upto an 8 Gig card.

No pricing info but word on the street is that it will appear around OCTOber

LG has decided to join the throng and have launched the LG Netbook X110 at IFA in Berlin.

Available in white, black and pink, the mini laptop will be powered by Intel’s Atom 1.6Ghz chip, have an 80GB hard drive and 3G support right out of the box.

The LG Netbook hooks up to WLAN 802.11 b/g and 10/100 Ethernet for fast and stable connectivity and pretty pictures arrive to your peepers via a WSVGA 10-inch widescreen.

Following the UK launch, Phones 4u will be initially selling the Netbook in pink and white, there will be a black variant available in due course.

Over at BoyGeniusReports they’ve managed to get hold of images and specs of Samsung’s upcoming A837 cellphone.

It’s a quad-band, HSDPA-enabled phone, with push-to-talk, aGPS, MP3 player, Bluetooth and a 1.3-megapixel cam.

That all sounds fairly run-of-the-mill so far yeah?

Well, I reckon the military-spec design and toughness will make it stand out from all of those similar phones - but not as much as that pierced gold-color grill on the face.

I’m thinking original Star Trek communicator as a styling cue - whatcha think?

It’s due around September 15 in the US for between $99 and $150.

Beam over to BGR for more details

Everyone of a certain age that marvelled at the 3D projected scene in the first screened Star Wars film have longed to see a mini Princess utter those immortal words, “Help me Obi-wan Knobe, You’re my only hope” in real life.

Well, if you have an iPhone it’s about to become a reality (well, kinda).

iHologram has been created for the iPod Touch and iPhone by designer David O’Reilly.

The application apparently gives the viewer the idea that the graphic is a 3D hologram jumping off the screen.

“The application works by assuming a constant viewing angle (35-45 degrees), typical for when the device is placed on a tabletop. The 3d scene’s perspective is warped using anamorphosis, the same technique used in Hans Holbein’s painting The Ambassadors. This application does the exact same but updates dynamically”, says O’Reilly.

Using the iGadget’s acceleromter, the software calculates rotation on the y-axis, so we can look around the environment around by turning the device, there are also controls for manual rotation with a slider on the left-hand side of the screen.

O’Reilly is currently looking for developers to help him further the project - frankly I NEED THIS APP!!!


Sprint to the link - Davidoreilly.com

Step back into the light and away from The Dark Side.

Light your path with this pretty funky Star Wars Lightsaber LED Torch.

Switch on this full sized replica and not only will it throw purifying blue light forth from the ultra bright LED, but you also get the trademark power-up noise.

Features:

• Full size replica Lightsaber style LED Torch
• Ultra bright blue LED never needs replacing
• Authentic sound effects when turning on/off

Get one now at Gadgets.co.uk

There’s been plenty of chat about thin tele’s and most make me feel uninspired to write even the briefest of remarks on this site.

But at least this one has made me sit up and put pen-to-paper….well, finger to keyboard at any rate.

This new gogglebox from Sony is (at the moment) the thinnest LCD HDTV.

Measuring at a size 0 model-like 9.9mm thick the KDL-40ZX1 nearly halves the depth of Hitachi’s former champ (likely to be hitting the lemon-juice and two-fingers down the throat diet) and comes within a fag-papers width of Pioneer’s Kuro concept (9mm).

Into this remarkable frame it squeezes such nice things as LED backlighting, a 3,000:1 contrast ratio, 120Hz MotionFlow tech, x.v.Color and BRAVIA Engine 2 image processing (this is pretty much like having the actors perform in your living room behind a 40-inch picture frame).

Only one HDMI in is directly on the screen itself.

All of the other HDMI, USB, etc component inputs are relegated to a base station.

All this skinny lovliness can be yours for a found-underneath-your-sofa 490,000 yen ($4,474) and will be at your local Japanese (if you live in Japan) tv vendor on November 10th.

AV Watch

First thing that has caught my eye is this tiny puter.

I do have a soft-spot for the little micros that you can hide away and still are usable if you’d prefer a desktop when at home.

This two-inch-square Space Cube computer has apparently been making the rounds in Japan for quite a while but PC Pro have finally managed to sneak one into the UK!

The little stow-away is packing a 300MHz NEC VR5701 processor, 64MB of RAM, a 1GB CompactFlash card, and a special version of Red Hat Linux, along with a single USB port, VGA out, built-in Ethernet and, most importantly for its target market, a SpaceWire port, which is used by the likes of NASA and the European Space Agency.

The bad news is that the initial price was quite a reasonable $325 looks as though it may be heading more to the region of £1,500 (or over $2,700)!

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