Gadgety News

Kingston, the renowned memory maker have just pushed their DataTraveler line a bit further and released the Kingston DataTraveler 150 USB 64GB.

Why bother with a portable hard drive when you could just drop this in your pocket, bag or even attach it to your keys? 

The only downside I can see is that you’re probably more likely to leave all your saved stuff on the pub table or lose it down the back of the sofa.

According to Jaja Lin, Kingston’s Flash business development manager: “The new 64GB DataTraveler 150 takes transportable storage to the next level with big capacity in a small package. As file sizes increase with digital media content such as music and photos, the need for USB Flash drives with high capacities will continue to rise. The DT150 certainly addresses those needs today.”

The Kingston DataTraveler 150 64GB will run on pretty much everything - but should you have any problems each stick comes with a five-year warranty and 24/7 tech support.

Look to pay around £120 for this chunk of memory portability

Good ol’ Auntie Beeb!

After bringing us the joy of the iPlayer the Beeb is going to be showing content from BBC One and BBC live online.

From the 27th November web visitors will be able to watch shows including Never Mind The Buzzcocks (fab!), EastEnders (never mind eh?) and Heroes (Yatta!) as they are broadcast.

BBC Three, BBC Four, CBBC, CBeebies and BBC News are already broadcast on their channel websites.

Director of BBC vision Jana Bennett told BBC News that this move “completes our commitment” to make channels available online.

“From 27 November licence fee payers will be able to watch BBC programmes live wherever they are in the UK on their computers, mobile phones and other portable devices,” Bennett added.

Via - BBC News

When Asus mentioned that they were gonna produce an Ultra Mobile PC that was going to be priced somewhere around the €500 mark I thought to myself, “well it had better be good”

Well, they’ve  done it and the Asus R50A is actually shipping at €1,475!

It’s up to whether you think that a pocket PC that runs Windows Vista with a 1.33GHz Intel Atom processor, a gig of RAM, a 32GB SSD hard drive, a 5.6” screen at 1024 x 600, three USB ports, a microSD slot, a wireless keyboard, and an external DVD reader / writer is worth the cash.

You get hooked up to all the good stuff via 802.11 b/g WiFi, Bluetooth, and 3G.

All in all it reads like a netbook but in a hand held stylee.

If you wanna earn those Geek-Points and have the cash - well, why not eh?
Pocketables

I think you guys know that I’m a fan of Mimobot’s.

Well, last year Mimoco started the Vimobot Design Contest.

They released a bunch of oversized blank vinyl toys for artists and fans to doodle on and then the plenty-many designs were eventually whittled down to 20 and then finally down to six by Mimobot forum members.

This sextuplet of designer magic is available to buy today (click the pic for a decent spread).

The VDC Mimobot Series is available in 1GB to 8GB models starting at $24.95 and go right up to $80.

It’s time that Santa got up-to-date and also gave Rudolf et al a Christmas off for once.

It seems that he’s letting the Reindeer have a crimbo-party and delivering the gifts by way of a ‘Little Nellie’ style copter - which is nice.

This R/C flying Santa micro copter is guided about the place via a 3-channel remote and like the latest breed of tiny radio-controlled helicopters there are controls for trim as well as the tricksy up, down, forward, left and right mullarky.

Specifications

• Materials: Carbon fiber
• Flying Time: 8 minutes
• Flying Range: 6 meters
• Power: Internal rechargeable Li-ion polymer battery
• Dimension: Helicopter 160(L) x 72(H) x 28(W) mm, Blade=135 mm
• Flight Control: up/down, forward/backward, left/right, left/right trim
• Power: 6 x AA battery (not included)

The Santa R/C Helicopter is available from Chinavision for 11.72 EUR (about $15 USD).

Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho!……etc.

This is a glimpse into the mobile handset future through Sony Ericsson’s eyes - date: 2012.

Ignore todays cutbacks to R&D budgets and the global economy shuddering to a halt

Whilst LTE and fast CPUs are no real surprise and Japanese superphones are already not to far from that 1,024 x 768 XGA screen resolution.

What is most interesting is the embedded camera sensors: Between 12-20 megapixels and capable of recording Full HD video.

Stacking on the MPs is all very well as long the optics and image processing are there and up to the job of supporting this resolution.  I also think that we’ll be needing a hefty bit of built in memory as well!

Anyone else think that a lot of these projection will be seen before 2012?

Yup, those know-it-alls at Wired are going to open their fourth annual store from November 21 until December 28 in New Yoik.

There will be more than 150 items including the latest electronics, toys and transportation, which can also be purchased online from November 20.

The Wired Store will also recognise four different charities, and is set to feature a brand new green section created by Adrian Grenier and Peter Glatzer of Reconcile Productions as well.

Is Christmas coming or something?

Wired

What you are looking at is a lovely iPod/iPhone dock that features wireless speakers.

The EOps 124R3 has Just been unveiled at Tokyo Designer’s Week and is quite possibly up for the award for being the best-looking speaker system for the iPod/iPhone ever!

This Michael Young designed idock comes with a woofer-equipped base station and is paired with up to eight remote stereo speakers and rocks a wireless dongle to let you stream music from a Mac or PC.

A full-function RF-remote control is packaged with it as well as having the gesture control of iPhone touchiness - you just wiggle your hand in front of the base station and control volume and equaliser functions.

Nice.

Would you buy one?

We bid farewell to the Polaroid camera and shakey-shakey developing film and the world has never been the same since.

The basic idea is still alive thanks to Tomy!

Yup - the toy maker.

Tomy and Zink have joined forces to make the Xiao TIP-521, a digital camera with a printer built in.

The Xiao has an middle-of-the-road res of 5mp and will be up against Polaroid’s Pogo Zink offering.

Market Watch

It looks like 3’s new Facebook phone is due to be unveiled officially next Thursday.

Three’s made no secret that its new handset will allow access to the social networking site and that they buddied up with INQ Mobile to manufacture its own-brand blowers.

INQ’s chief executive Frank Meehan even let slip to Reuters that its newest handset (the INQ1), will have a sub £125 price tag as well as offering “tight integration [between the phone’s] contacts book [and] with popular social sites like Facebook.”

So - I’m assuming that the INQ1 is the same beast as the 3 Facebook phone….

This “tight integration” of Facebook’s services will probably mean that you’ll see your friends’ status updates along with their names - which is hardly the bleeding edge of wowness to be honest.

Word is that the new handset will also hook up with Three’s Skypephone service which is very credit-crunch friendly of them.

INQ promises a full web browser using the same Webkit engine as the iPhone and T-Mobile G1, the ability to use the phone as a USB dongle for laptops and other software niceties, like an eBay tracker and Windows Live Messenger.

Let’s just see eh?

If you’re looking for something that’s like an iPod then you could do a lot worse than to check this little beauty out!

The Cowon O2 is coming to the UK and it is more than adequate to taunt the iPod and blow raspberries at the best of the rest.

Memory for all your media ranges from 16GB to a lovely 32GB of flash storage.

That’s not enough? Then whack in an SDHC card for up to 32GB more!

Video caresses those eyes of yours via the HD-friendly 4.3-inch TFT LCD screen and there’s compatibility for just about every audio and video format around - yes, even MP3’s!

If it wont play; well……you’ve probably made it up yourself!

Throw in video recording, photo viewing, a respectable battery life of 18 hours of music per charge and an open source operating system - the latter of which could bring forth some interesting downloads, stuff and things.

There’s no pricing details as yet, but as most of us know, Cowon players are generally very competitively priced

Cowon

MP3 music downloads at seven big UK online stores are to be marked with this highly attractive, new and cutting-edge MP3 compatible sign. How cool is that? ~insert sarcasm where applicable~

It’s part of an initiative (to spend pointless money) led by the Entertainment Retailers Association to make consumers aware of the “advantages of the format and the fact that it can be used across multiple brands of music players and across PCs and Macs”.

7digital, Digitalstores, Tescodigital, Tunetribe, Play.com, HMV and Woolworths are all on board for the launch. The ERA digital chairman Russel Coultart said the move was to take the message to music fans “that they can legally buy downloads which are not locked to specific players or computers or mobile phones”.

7digital said consumers much prefer the MP3 format because it is so easy to use. If the MP3 logo is successful, it could be rolled out by the equivalent trade bodies internationally and Coultart also said it is in discussions with music retail organisations globally “to make ‘MP3 compatible’ an international standard”.

This is all very well but how long have MP3’s been with us? Surly it’s not far off from being old enough to smoke and drink? I would understand all this fuss if there hadn’t been a new version of this tech available – I’d call it MP4 or something

The other thing that confuses me about this ‘push’ is that MP3’s aren’t that great quality and now that even small players can manage 4gb why can’t we be upping the quality? Surly we should be pushing CD quality by now?

If it’s a problem about downloading – most people have access to broadband now (especially with all these mobile interweb dongles flying about the place – you don’t even need a BT line!).

Soon there will be a generation of music lovers that will expect that highly compressed low quality vibe – weren’t we dragged away from vinyl and promised a golden-age of high quality, high fidelity listening through a surround sound immersive environment at one point? Or did I dream it?

ERA credits MP3s with much of the growth of music downloads sales, which have risen 41% year-on-year to October this year, according to the Official UK Charts Company, and album sales are up 69% - Before anyone hails iTunes as the leader………….as far as I’m aware (and please correct me if I’m wrong) iTunes started by using MP3 but then quickly moved over to AAC……

~End Rant~

Asus, the name behind the popularity of Netbooks and no frills computing pioneers are set to put a stop to the smaller models.

If you’re after an Asus netbook with a screen smaller than 10-inches you’d better get your skates on!

The president of Asus has confirmed the company is intending to get rid of its older and smaller Eee PC models in favour of larger and more recent models such as the 1002HA model and S101. And it has no plans to unleash anymore netbooks with a display size of 10-inches or under.

The phasing out of the smaller models begins with the introduction of a $200 model for our American cousins.

My mind is still boggled as they created this niche and broke through - perhaps they’re quitting whilst they are ahead. Perhaps they can’t see longevity in this market.

Ah, remember the positive and forward thinking of last year……….those long summer days….

What do you reckon?

Tech Digest

The N7010 is pretty much a full featured laptop with its 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo Processor, 16-inch 16:9 LCD, Blu-ray ROM drive and HDMI-out.

It also packs up to 4GB RAM, 256 MB ATI HD 3470 video card, SD card reader, 1.3 MP Camera, eSATA port, Bluetooth, 802.11N wi-fi and hard drives come as big as 320 GB.

Nice but nothing outstanding - so why have it on this wonderful blog?

Well - look at the pic a bit closer my friends…………go on - click the pic to make it easier for yourself!

The cool part about the Lifebook N7010 is the 4-inch, 480×272 pixel touchscreen integrated into the keyboard area.

It works as an application launcher, but according to Fujitsu’s Paul Moore, you can use it as a second (really teeny-small) screen, with the ability to drag whatever you want down to the second screen like any other external monitor.

Aside from the app launcher, its intended to be used as a CD/DVD control panel, or as a photo viewer.

This groovy feature is considered to be an industry first for laptops but it probably is worth noting that it isn’t connected in any way to Windows Vista Sideshow.

The N7010 will begin shipping on November 10 and will start at $1500 on the Fujitsu website.

Fujitsu

I downloaded this yesterday while it is still free

iTalk is a new sound recording app for iPhone, iPhone 3G, and 2nd generation iPod touch.

This natty little app allows you to create one-touch, high-quality recordings which can be transferred over to your Mac or PC.

You’ll need to download the iTalk app from the iTunes App Store and whack it onto your iPhone/iPod touch for the recoding/playback bit while the buddy prog, iTalk Sync, runs on your computer to transfer recordings from iPod or iPhone for editing and sharing. 

iTalk Sync connects to your iPod touch or iPhone wirelessly via your local Wi-Fi network, with recordings saved as high-quality AIFF files, playable in iTunes and most other media players.

I’ve only had a quick play around with it and the quality sounds pretty good for a free app - handy for a quick recording of a riff before I forget it or a melody line that comes to me on the bus or tube - it happens!

Griffin’s iTalk is free for a limited time, and is now available at the iTunes App Store.

iTalk Sync is now available as a free download at www.italksync.com.

Grab it while it’s hot (and free!).

I’ve seen double-adapters for headphones plenty of times but if you’re anything like me you’re gonna end up leaving them at home.

Some bright spark has had the brains to shove a splitter on a keyring - genius!

Now a pair of friends can happily share tunes safe in the knowledge there will be an acceptable earphone to ear ratio - although I’m not sure how it affects sound quality and/or volume.

Buy it here: Gadgets.co.uk for under 7 quid!

The Nokia N85 has been released in the UK and is a great alternative to the N96.

I loved my N95 and it was probably the best all-rounder of a phone that I’ve owned - the N85 looks to be more up-to-date in its looks with the sleek, black fascia. It’s also 5mm thinner than the N95 and weighs 128g.

Like the N95, the N85 is a dual slider handset.  Slide one way to reveal the keypad, slide the other way to reveal dedicated media keys.

The screen has also been updated with a state-of-the-art 2.5” OLED screen. This offers enhanced colour and contrast but also reduces power consumption.

It keeps the good ol’ Nokia 5mp camera with Carl Zeiss lens, autofocus and duel LED flash.  All this ensures high quality happy snapping.

Videos are recorded at 30fps and a secondary lens on the front of the handset for vid-calls.

Now, unlike the N96 and its 16GB internal memory, the N85 only has 74MB internal dynamic memory.

However, it does have a ‘hot swappable’ microSD card slot available for up to 8GB.

The new Nok gives you direct access to the Nokia Music Store and has the all important 3.5mm jack socket. so you can use your fave cans.

A neat feature is the FM Transmitter. This lets you send your mp3 tracks over FM radio waves to the nearest radio tuned into the correct frequency. Clever; and perfect for use in the car!  No need to buy a little add-on.

Gamers will be pleased to know that the N85 features Nokia’s N-Gage gaming service.

The handset comes with 15 pre-installed game demos. Chose your favourite from the demos and Nokia will send a code to activate one of the games for free!

You can hook up to 3G as well as 3.6Mbps HSDPA, EDGE, GPRS, WiFi connection and A2DP Bluetooth.

I reckon this is a great, cheaper option to the N96

Happy birthday to this gadget blog. Happy birthday to this tech blog. Happy birthday dear Jay’s Gadget News.  Happy birthday to yooooooooooooooooou!

Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog!

Well, what started off as a test to see if there was room for another gadget and tech blog site a year ago has slowly gained enough of you lovely readers for me to carry on writing about things that have caught my eye and that you (hopefully) find interesting.

My first posts (ie not ones dragged over from my temporary test site) were posted this very day 12 months ago - I know, how Goth to choose Samhain/Halloween to start a blog

I would like to take this moment and space to thank all of you for coming here and making this place feel loved - whether you were here from the very start or have only just found this place.

If there are anythings that you would rather see more/less of now is your chance. Either email me or just leave a comment here and I’ll do my best to please - the new look was prompted by a comment a lo, it was done.

So, thanks once more and here’s hopefully to another year of gadget grooviness and tech tremendousness

Much gadgety love

Jay

Cast your minds back to September 12th where I wrote about the new Panasonic Lumix G1.

Well, I’ve spent a week with the clever four-thirds camera and have been pleasantly surprised.

I’m not a photographer; never claimed to be, and probably never will be classed as such - but I do enjoy taking snaps.

So, for me, a nice compact such as the Panasonic TZ-5 is a very great cam and does the job pretty damn well.

On opening the box of the G1 there were 2 lenses and a body - now this made me very scared indeed!

Chris, my bro, writes a blog about DSLRs and the dark art that is real photography so I generally leave the clever stuff to him.

But after popping over to Primrose Hill with about £700 worth of kit and an uncertainty of how to use any of it I was releived to find that the camera is really easy to use and that the optional zoom was fantastic!

The body was light and the whole kit (body and 2 lenses) hardly took up any space in my man-bag.

I could see that people with smaller hands, people travelling but want a “proper” camera and people like me that would like to try DSLR’s but put off by their complexity, size, weight and cost will love this.

The construction of the thing is top-notch.  It has a metal chassis and feels really top-end, as do the lenses.

A little mentioned point is the fact that the large screen flips out and can be twisted so that over-head shots at gigs/”Hail Mary” paparazzi shots can be taken or indeed help avoid the need to lay on the floor to take ground-level photos.

It of course has a full manual mode for those that know what they’re doing but also a lot of toys such as stability control, etc as well as the full iA auto.

Panasonic plan on releasing some more lenses as well as an adapter which will open up the choice no end.

For the more fashion conscious it will also come in 3 colours - Red, Blue and naturally black.

A bit of news - there will in the future be a HD model that will take HD video: Another World’s First. This has generally not been possible with “system cameras” as there is an auto-focus lens problem but the G1 HD (perhaps it’ll have a different name by then) will have a special lens.  You heard that here first

The Panasonic Lumix G1 will be released in the UK on November 1st

Softbank has just come up with this rather interesting mobile TV add-on for Japanese iPhone and iPod owners.

it’s a separate unit with tuner and aerial that retransmits the signal over Wi-fi to the phone.

The rechargeable device will give about three hours of TV eye-candy and connects to a special iPhone app that’ll be distributed free when the device hits the streets in mid December!

It’ll cost somewhere around the $100 mark but also doubles as an iPhone battery top-up when you link it via the dock connector.

Just gotta wait for it to be adapted and shipped over here.

AVWatch