Gadgety News

There has been the promise of wireless charging for a few years now and there has been plenty of companies demo’ing such things.

But the reality of charging your gadgets wirelessly could almost be here!

Powermat reckons it will have docks capable of charging three devices at once and sleeves for common gadgets available by the summer. The technology is based on magnetic induction, and is claimed to be over 90 per cent efficent.

It’s crunch-friendly as well for new tech.

The charger will initially cost $100 in the US, with adaptors priced at $29.99.

There has been plenty of chat about a tablet-style device from Apple for a number of years.

It has actually got to the point that people were fed up of waiting so they ended up making and selling one and called it the ModBook!

But Christmas 2009 could finally see a fully legit Apple tablet:  The iPad.

Ok, we now have our feet firmly planted in Rumourville, Hypetown and Hearsay City but those folks over at TechCrunch claim that:

‘three independent sources close to Apple’ have confirmed details of a prototype device to them.

From what I gather this iPad is likely to be a large-sized iPod Touch sporting either a 7 inch or 9 inch screen.

It will obviously have access to the iTunes app store with iTunes and a Safari web browser.

TC also add that prototypes have been ‘handled’ by those sources and that Apple is now in discussions in Asia about mass production.

Still, TechCrunch doesn’t say this is an absolutely guaranteed happening:

“I’m not saying Apple is definitely launching a large form iPod Touch.”

As with all rumored Apple products, we’ll see it when we see it, probably 12 hours before it’s actually announced (if it ever is) courtesy of Mr/Miss/Mrs Blurry Cam.

So, for now, file this under ‘believe it when I see it’ and wait for those ’spy shots’.

TechCrunch

Well, it’s now time for my next Canadian Club and ginger and for me to start to unwind.

It’s been a busy year - I’ve made a variety of changes to the site that are all leading to 2009’s GadgetyNews.com unveiling.

At least 2 of my bands should have EP/Album releases in the coming few months (just the mixing and mastering to take care of).

Most importantly of all though is what you people have accomplished.

You have subscribed, commented and notified me of cool stuff that may have passed me by otherwise.

I thank you all for coming here and making this worthwhile.

I wish you all an outstanding Christmas.

Merry Christmas to all my Gadgety friends.

Much love and peace from

Jay

If you fancy yourself as a bit of a James Bond type and love the chunkiness featured in 70s digital watches you are going to love Thanko’s MP4 watch.

At first it looks like a typically retro digital time-piece with a decent sized face but when you discover that it’s packing a camera that’s able to shoot video in 352×288 and take stills at 640×480 then the geekahol starts to flow!

That’s not all people!

The MP4 also doubles up as a wrist-based entertainment centre able to dish out MP3/WMA audio playback, AVI video and a photo/text file viewer.

Ok, so it’s not exactly going to be kind to your peepers when trying to watch the video playback or read those text files - but it is more than likely going to impress the lads down the pub.

The watch is out in Japan for £108 and, lets face it, Thanko’s wares usually hit the UK eventually.

So, OO8 - Q will be in touch soon
 

Update:  This is now available at Brando’s webstore for $129.oo!!

Thanko via Akihabara News

Sony’s Walkman series of media players has done its best to keep pace but generally, sadly, fall by the wayside as young upstarts such as Creative and Apple lure us all away.

Sony have (finally) realised that touchscreens is where it’s at and now seem ready to break down and get all touchable.

According to Sony Insider there will be 16 and 32GB touchscreen Walkman players at CES 2009 this coming January.

The new machine is said to be rockin a 3-inch OLED display (praps even that 3.3-inch panel making the rounds, or something more Sony specific).

Also planned for the Touchy Walkman is WiFi, enabling a YouTube app, over the air podcast downloads, built-in access to Amazon’s MP3 store and an unspecified web browser.

The shots of the player above are obviously mockups, and the real hardware is supposed to have physical music control buttons and will be drawn to scale.

All this info is exclusive to the Sony Insider know-alls so it’s still not hard n fast truth til Sony says so but hey - I’m sure lots of the Sony faithful will be looking forward to the verification of such a beast.

Sony Insider

AMD and NVIDIA are still thrashing out who is the bestest in the video card business.

NVIDIA is making a strong stand with its latest move.

Nope, it isn’t based on more frames per second.  This time NVIDIA are concentrating on getting friends in high places.

EA and 2K Games (creators of Bioshock) have both agreed to use NVIDIA’s PhysX technology to drive their physics engines in upcoming games.

I know what you’re thinking:  “So, what? A couple of big hitters have licensed somebody or others tech. How does that touch me?”

Well, if you’re loving your PC gaming then it might make sense to get some GeForce under the hood if you haven’t already!

Take into account that there’s been some pretty spanky performance incresases and the fact that AMD needed a bit of a tax break recently it would be smart to go the GeForce way.

We all like leaves moving when we brush past them in gaming worlds such as Crysis and physics simulation is becoming a must have feature in games so developers are going to be relying more on hybrid technology like PhysX in order to make sure that their games are running nice and smooooooth.

I think it’s safe to say that both ‘Bioshock 2′ and the ‘Crysis’ follow-up are going to run best on a GeForce-based system.

So. You know what you need

CrunchGear

Remember the RFID tagging doohickey from Violet dubbed Mir:ror?

Well, it’s out and ready to buy according to the email that I’ve just got!

For a “mere 45 Euros” you get your Mir:ror, 3 Ztamps and a pair of Nan:ztag programmable micro-rabbits.

I think this is another one for my crimbo list

Nip over to Violet’s website!

Hello faithful readers!

Last week was a killer as most of my music projects have got into their heads the universal mindset of “It must be finished before Christmas!”.

So, after 7 days of rushing between and betwixt studios, rehearsals and general music-based getting-togethers it is time for this ol’ bassist to take a well earned break (even though I do say so myself) and away to the Czech Republic - more accurately, Prague.

It promises to be quite wintry and there are the Christmas markets, a number of alternative drinking establishments and to be honest I’m am looking forward to being pampered in Art Deco luxury! - Therefore I will probably not be updating this til my return on Saturday.

Until then Gadgety-friends!

Much love

J

Roaming around this great city I decided to check my Gadgety News site for comments via my iPhone.

After deleting some spam and accepting some comments I noticed that my last post actually marked my 1,000th article here! It went by without fanfare, a children’s chorus or even a Marilyn Monroe look-alike bursting out of a cake.

So, until I get home and find a suitable picture, this is it  : the marking of post 1,000!

Additional: Hope that this pic at least manages to get a couple of “awwwwwwwwwwwwwww”s

J

Imagination Technologies are being a little coy at the moment and will only own up to saying that it’s signed a licensing deal with a “major international consumer electronics company”.

EETimes.com, however, has spilled the beans by reporting that the company in question is, in fact, Sony, and that the deal concerns Imagination’s PowerVR architecture being used in the successor to the PSP!

According to EETimes sources, the PSP 2 will use Imagination’s SGX55x core - something else that IT hasn’t officially announced yet.

As EETimes says, if this is all on the level it’s going to be pretty cool for Imagination - especially when you throw in the fact that their PowerVR MBX technology has already found its way into the iPhone, among other devices.

EETimes.com - Thanks to Laura for the heads-up

More Brit based gadgety news that goes further to prove how addicted to the bleeding-edge of technology the UK is.

Neilsen Online suggests that mobile web usage has increased by 25% between July and September of this year and that 7.3 million (up from 5.8 million) of Britons are now logging on through their mobiles.

It is largely ‘The Young’ (37’s still young, right?) who are causing this upsurge with 51% of mobile web users under the sprightly age of 35 (darn it!) and a quarter between the ages of 14 and 24.

Praps, unsurprisingly only 12% of users logging-on are over 55.  They’ve just sorted out texting so web-browsing should be next……..just think of all those Bingo sites getting hit up via the olds mobiles.

This increase is being put down to a number of factors: Technology to access the mobile interweb is starting to be more readily available and so more people are giving it a blast. Most new phones come with high-speed internet connections and many even feature Wi-Fi giving us internet access at the sort of speeds we’re used to at home (and sometimes for free ). 

I guess this is a good point to mention my favourite at the moment - the iPhone 3G.

Before you lot poo-poo the impact of the 3Gesus Phone; don’t you think it’s too much of a coincidence that the explosion in mobile web usage started in the same month that the iPhone 3G launched?  Yeah - how’s thems apples?

BBC news, Google Search and, of course Facebook, head up the leader-board of most viewed sites but it is maybe more interesting to see that, proportionally, a greater percentage of people view the BBC weather (how British?), Sky Sports and Gmail websites through their phones than they do on their home PCs. 

Kent Ferguson, Senior Analyst at Nielson suggests “this highlights the advantage of mobile when it comes to immediacy; people often need fast, instant access to weather or sports news and mobile can obviously satisfy this, wherever they are.”

With T-Mobile’s G1 and the Blackberry Storm (amongst many others) bursting onto the market the future of mobile web looks busy and bright.

The Telegraph

I’ve got kinda used to flicking past ‘Black Friday Sale’ notices on my feeds and emails but, fortuntely, I hit reverse when I saw this and now have decided to share.

Apple is bringing a Black Friday sale from the US and delivering it to us folks in the UK. Thanks Apple - Thapple!

Log onto the Apple Store’s website this Friday and you’re promised bargains in excelcis.

We’re being spoilt here - first it was Darling’s VAT cut and now this!  Lumme!

Apple’s being coy as to which products will see a price drop - iPods, MacBooks and Mac desktops? I just don’t know.

What I do know is that Apple mentions the iPhone specifically

I think a date with Apple for cheaper Crimbo gifts is called for

At the start of Spring (I think it was) this was a mere concept.

Now the rain-stopping thuggery better known as the Umbuster is official - things are looking nasty for bad weather!

It is now available as a bespoke item so you can slip your fingers through that metal ‘handle’ and give those other pedestrians that look that means “please remove yourself from my path. I do believe I have the right of way old chap” with a certain glint in your eye.

This level of inclement weather smugness will cost you around £190 and be sure to check weather (arf!) you’re legally permitted to own one.

Apparently it is classed as a Class 5 weapon in parts of Australia-a-a-a-a-a! (just for those Rhianna fans that were waiting for a pun )

Srulirecht

Blackberries.  They’re a bit…..business like generally aren’t they?

Well, that was my impression until I read about this hardware and software thingy from Canada.

This clever stuff will magically change your BlackBerry into a universal remote control for a typical AV set up, your lights, your garage door or anything else that you have remotely controlled! 

Unify4Life supplies an AV hub box that talks to the AV equipment through an infrared connection, but then communicates with a BlackBerry over Bluetooth.

The software also knows which commands can be used with which situation, so if you’re watching a movie, the BlackBerry’s screen will display only those buttons required to, for example, fast forward a DVD and change the volume for the AV system.  This is to stop you fastforwarding the lights and turning up the volume on the garage door I assume.

There’s a full review of this cool little bit of kit on the CrackBerry website.

Unify4Life

I try to do my bit for the environment.  All my watches (13 of them) are vintage (1950s-1970s) and my last car was a ‘71 Karmann Ghia - so, I’m at least recycling.

But, like most of you here, I have a stack of things that require recharging.

We all know that the main ways in which to generate electricity are not the cleanest of processes - unless you use the power of that rare orange globe that hangs in the sky (generally for a week in August in the UK).

Solar power is the way forward!

Thanks to the award winning high-tech Solio solar powered charger you can pretty much go wherever you want and feel smug in an eco-friendly kinda way.

One of the neatest things that the Magnesium Edition has over the basic Classic is the “energy gauge” LED light.  This indicates approximately how much juice you have left by the number of times the gauge button flashes, (four flashes indicates a full charge; three flashes, about 75 percent; two flashes, 50 percent; and one flash, 25 percent).

There are a number of other features that are worthy a mention but you’ll have to check out that full review.

All-in-all the Magnesium Edition costs $149.00 in comparison to the Solio Classic whose price tag is $99.95, it’s a bit of a jump but the review on Modern Eco Homes concludes it’s worth it.

Have a gander yourself and you’ll probably be putting in an order

Solio Magnesium Edition Solar Charger Review

Hmmmmm………Uh-oh!…something else to taunt the battery of the lovely iPhone!

Apple has apparently patented a new display technology that will allow their iBlowers to have always-on displays with almost no battery cost whatsoever.

OOoooo, tell me more

Only part of the display would be activated using a secondary backlight located under the main one.

According to Apple, the objective is to give feedback to the user at all times, even when the main display is turned off:

The primary backlight system may block light from the secondary backlight system except for those one or more regions. Thus, the size and shape of the status indicator may be set by sizing and shaping the transparent or semitransparent regions of the primary backlight system. In addition to setting the size and shape of the icon, the color of the icon may also be set by adjusting the color of the light provided by the secondary backlight system.

For example, each indicator may have a particular color, blinking speed, or light intensity. These properties may be programmed into the electronic device by the user, or may be hard-coded or hard-wired into the system. Thus, when the secondary backlight is turned on, the properties of the light provided by the secondary backlight system may depend on the status of the device. Also, if the status of the electronic device changes while the secondary backlight is on, the properties of the light provided by the secondary backlight system may change to reflect the new status.

To avoid sucking the battery dry the backlight system will be low-power and looking at the diagrams they may not even be actual pixel-based icons but will be ‘cut-outs’ illuminated by individual LED lights shining through the main display.

Apple Insider

Yeah, yeah - I know that this phone was officially anounced last month but LG has just launched a standalone microsite for their Prada II.

You are probably already aware that it packs HSDPA, WiFi, 5-megapixel camera, 3-inch 400 x 240 pixel capacitive multi-touch display and quad-band GSM connectivity.

But did you know about the matching Prada Link Bluetooth watch?

The fashionable timepiece syncs with your Prada II and shows your incoming calls and texts as well as probably telling the time.

Still no news regarding release or price - I reckon you’ll be looking around £500.

 UnwiredView

An AMD-commissioned YouGov research into British notebook usage has shown that most Brits would rather be hooked up to the interweb than own their own ride!

The study reveals that 90% of 18-24 year olds own a notebook with 73% saying that they “couldn’t live without” it.

I fear for Halfords - I really do!!

Britons apparently consider access to the internet (67%) as more important than access to a car (54%) or a washing machine (58%).

AMD suggests that the ”constantly-connected” Brits are shunning face-to-face get-togethers in favour of social networking sites and catching up with TV online.

The report states that almost half (41%) of men enjoy watching BBC iPlayer on their notebooks.

Men are the ones most likely to download music (71% men v 62% women) and the ladies are more interested in chatting with their friends and family on Instant Messenger (75% v 72% of men).

Now - I must get back to Twitter, check my email, see who’s online on MSN, AOL, ICQ….

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

There’s a new Watchmen trailer (check it out at the bottom of this very post!) but there’s something missing.

Ol’ blurry blue nads now has some rather fetching briefs in order to cover his modesty.

That’s right, Dr. Manhattan’s manhood has been edited out by the censors - surly a move that will annoy the very strong following the graphic masterpiece has (the novel not Manhattans…..errr…yeah).

Apart from that the rest of the trailer contains explosions, ass kicking, Billy and the Pumpkins jamming away still and proof that the Silk Spectre can do more than just strut around and kiss people.

Watch it below and treat your eyes