With summer just around the corner now might be a good time to start thinking about how to keep cool.
Elecom put some design effort into their latest USB fan collection. Along with design efforts, they must have gotten a new photographer – these are probably the most sexed-up USB fan pictures you’ll ever see.
Xion Audio is now available for the U3 flash drives. This portable application is for the music enthusiast and is advanced enough for those wanting to fully customize their player.
Xion is setting a new standard in skin players. Their approach is to read directly from a Photoshop .PSD file to be used as the skin. The support is advanced enough to tag different layers within your .PSD file and properly display graphics on your player.
What is especially nice about this player is that skin files (which can get very large) can be zipped and Xion will extract on-the-fly to create your skin. This approach decreases the amount of memory needed to run the mini-application.
Continue Reading
IOGear is like a rising tide when it comes to cranking out USB products for Geek consumption. It just never stops coming.
From the long list of new IOGear products, here are the four most needed geek items you must have.
1) The IOGear wireless laser mouse with germaphobe coating. I mention this because not only having a wireless mouse is a must-have, but raising the geekness level to the antibacterial state is definitely cool.
2) Show me one Geek who wouldn’t like to have another monitor. And since a primary intrinsic value of geekness is saving space, working from a laptop is very standard, thus limiting the options for endless monitor configurations. The IOGear USB VGA video card adaptor is definitely a must-have for the monitor lacking.
Continue Reading
Wireless technology is everywhere. Whether it’s buzz about something new or a product currently available, I cannot go through a day without reading or bumping into something related to wireless technology.There are seven built in wireless technologies that make the world go round. When I say “built in” I’m talking about products which have wireless technology inside the device. Most familiar to most people are Wireless USB, Bluetooth and RFID. However, there are four more technologies you should at least know about. So here are all seven technologies: WUSB, Bluetooth, RFID, WiMedia, UWB, NFC and ZigBee.
WiMedia – WiMedia refers to the Ultra Wide Band radio platform which enables high data transfer rates. The goal of WiMedia is to standardize the protocols or code used in wireless devices. For example, WiMedia standards are used in Ultra Wide Band (UWB), Bluetooth and WUSB technology products. The end result for a consumer is that WiMedia guarantees
Continue Reading
The Coca Cola USB can doesn’t look as refreshing as the real thing, but will definitely last longer. The USB stick is available in 64MB-2GB sizes, high speed USB and available in silver, blue or red.
The USB Coke Can 2.0 drive has a new, faster version coming out which also stores more data…it comes in a RockStar can.
Last week Apple sent out an email (screenshot courtesy of TechCrunch.com) to video podcasters asking them to increase the quality of their productions and start formatting their videos for the big screen. Since the launch of the Apple TV (full review here) in March, Apple TVs have been selling like hotcakes and video podcast subscription numbers have skyrocketed.
Apple TV owners, who don’t necessarily want to spend lots of money in the iTunes Store, are gobbling up video podcasts like never before. Even though there currently isn’t any HD quality videos for sale in the iTunes Store, the Apple TV is capable of HD video playback. So several popular video podcasters, including The Washington Post, TWIT (MacBreak), Revision3 (Diggnation) and Vintage Tooncast, have decided to fill the void of HD content by distributing their podcasts in HD or hi res quality.
Why hasn’t everyone started distributing their video podcasts in HD? Money. Not only does producing an HD podcasts require extra hard drive space (roughly 4 times more), special cameras and editing software, but just hosting these giant video files on the Internet can be enough to bankrupt your entire production. For example, the iPod Video version of MacBreak episode 63 is 21 MBs. The HD version is 93 MBs. To help alleviate increased HD production costs, many podcasters have reached out to HD television manufacturers like Samsung and Panasonic to get them to sponsor their new HD podcasts.
For video podcasters who are still producing content at 320×240 but want to do something to increase quality, there is an intermediary step before going HD. Podcasters can start by migrating their productions to 640×480, or even 640×360 (letterbox). This way their video files will still be compatible with portable media players like the Zune and iPod, but will also work on the Apple TV. If the material is carefully encoded, it will look as good or better than typical TV.
Read the rest of this entry »Continue Reading
So the makers who brought you Drops just released another fun and adictive game called ZACK.
Simple. Place the colored squares in the grid without getting stuck. The color of your stone must match the color to the left, right, top or bottom. You do have gray stones as jokers whereby you can place them anywhere there is a free slot. When you fill a complete row or column it’s removed from the grid.
I guess one guy got so into this game, he emailed in and said:
I lost my wife because of this game. Thank you Derbrill
Digital Lifestyle Outfitters created a unique fashionable cover for the iPod Nano. The design uses a twist hinge at the top to easily flip the cover from a durable leather to soft plaid fabric.
~~~
The Twister design allows you to easily adapt to your fashion needs. A clear window guards your iPod’s screen, and full access to the click-wheel lets you easily control your tunes without removing your Nano from its protective case.
I like the design not only for the twist cover feature but the ability you can reverse the fabrics for two very different looks.
At just $25 the Twister Nano Case is a great, fun way to add some protection.
Continue Reading
Just the other day, Martin of Digital Reviews Network sent me a product review of the MoGo Bluetooth mouse from Newton Peripherals.
I report on the Mogo Mouse earlier and commented on the slim design and handy storage area, in the PCMCIA slot. Martin’s review proves this point and a whole lot more.
The primary goal of the review was to find out if the MoGo mouse really performed as a functional device, despite the small size and slim design.
However, Digital Reviews was very surprised to find it’s an elegant design which is very useful.
“one quick flick and the (hind) legs spring out from underneath making the MoGo mouse poised and more comfortable to use! With that “kickstand†it is eminently “holdable and usable” but not as comfortable of course as a normally proportioned rodent.”
The pathetic man’s disco laptop light from Brando is now available. Not much to this $10 USB laptop light other than a blinking light every second which toggles between green, red, blue, purple and yellow colors.
I guess you could home-brew a disco light show with a handful of these and a USB hub. Might be a good mood-setter for the traveling sales man and his recent “friend” from the hotel lounge. Thus; pathetic.
Continue Reading
SanDisk recently took the most kid familiar shape, a sippy-cup, and turned that into an MP3 player. The Sansa Shaker is a 512MB MP3 player with SD expansion slot to introduce your child into the world of music.
What’s fun about this product is the twist navigation features at top and bottom. A lot like LeapFrog products one might already be familiar with (if you have kids). In addition SanDisk built in a shake feature to aid in the little guy finding the beat (probably bead sound like maracas but no specifics given).
Continue Reading
So here is a simple project to groom your child into the geek parent you are. Over at Hacked Gadgets Alan pointed out a “how-to” on creating your own USB charger from Lego’s.
The charger uses a Lego motor to generate current which passes through a voltage regulator and off to the USB port. If you don’t already have the Lego motor you can pick them up at target and the voltage regulator at Radio Shack.
When all done, rather then sending your kid to time-out, have them hand-crank and recharge your favorite MP3 player.
Here is a picture of the hand crank with electronics already installed.
Continue Reading
Apple TV owners, who don’t necessarily want to spend lots of money in the iTunes Store, are gobbling up video podcasts like never before. Even though there currently isn’t any HD quality videos for sale in the iTunes Store, the Apple TV is capable of HD video playback. So several popular video podcasters, including The Washington Post, TWIT (MacBreak), Revision3 (Diggnation) and Vintage Tooncast, have decided to fill the void of HD content by distributing their podcasts in HD or hi res quality.
Why hasn’t everyone started distributing their video podcasts in HD? Money. Not only does producing an HD podcasts require extra hard drive space (roughly 4 times more), special cameras and editing software, but just hosting these giant video files on the Internet can be enough to bankrupt your entire production. For example, the iPod Video version of MacBreak episode 63 is 21 MBs. The HD version is 93 MBs. To help alleviate increased HD production costs, many podcasters have reached out to HD television manufacturers like Samsung and Panasonic to get them to sponsor their new HD podcasts.
