Gadgets Control

Picture this: A mugger points a gun at a lady and gives her the “your money or your life” line. The lady opens her purse, and takes out her lipstick, presumably to get to her billfold. She then gives the mugger a real shock as her lipstick delivers him a charge of 350,000 volts! Welcome to the age of the Lipstick Stun Gun. Not only can this 3-inch device deliver all that aforementioned voltage, but it comes in many shades and colors. Now a lady can feel safe and fashion-conscious at the same time. Perhaps the latest fad amongst females will be Lipstick Stun Gun parties instead of Taser Parties. The kit comes with some accessories, including a safety pin, lanyard, and a charger. (Read the full post about ‘Lipstick Stun Gun’…)

Share This

I want to talk briefly about bluetooth cellphone headsets, as California’s new cell phone ban is due to take effect in a few months, and I might need to buy one for myself. The decision I face reminds of the plight of Stanley, the iconoclast everyman of absurdist playwright Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, played by Gene Wilder in the 1974 film adaptation. In the story, Stanley and his friends are shocked (not surprisingly) when people suddenly begin turning into rhinoceroses. Ionesco takes the allegory for conformity in society to the extreme as more and more people turn into rhinoceroses–what was shocking at first, soon becomes avant garde. (Read the full post about ‘Bluetooth Headsets and Rhinoceroses’…)

Share This

Every corporation is trying to do its own “green” thing these days and Nokia is no exception. In an effort to aid mobile phone users in their quest to recycle, Nokia has setup a recycling hotline and a dedicated website. The website features an interactive tool that will print out a postage paid mailing label when you type in your contact information and the manufacturer of the mobile phone you are recycling. You supply the envelope, but otherwise Nokia pays the cost to recycle. As of this writing, calls placed to the hotline, 1-US-RECYCLES (1-877-329-2537), were greeted with a friendly welcome but then hold music. I applaud Nokia for this move and also for taking in other manufacturer’s mobile devices. (Read the full post about ‘Nokia recycles your mobile phone for free’…)

Share This

Imagine being stuck in a downpour, your destination still miles away - and you have nothing other than an umbrella to protect yourself. You resign to a dull, wet journey, right? Not if the umbrella happens to be the Pileus WiFi Camera umbrella. The Pileus umbrella seems like it came straight out of a sci-fi movie – it has a built-in camera that you can use to shoot pictures in the rain, plus other add-ons too. That includes a GPS system (wow) and in the future, a video camera as well. Though I choose to be skeptical about the picture quality you’l get out of the camera under such weather conditions, I have to concede that the concept is definitely unique. The Pileus also has integration with Flickr! (Read the full post about ‘WiFi Camera Umbrella’…)

Share This

Finedrive recently released a new portable DMB navigation device in Korea known as the CUVi. This DMB gizmo comes with rounded edges and is covered in a black gloss which is a surefire candidate when it comes to attracting fingerprints. Tipping the scales at a mere 152 grams, the CUVi features a 3.5″ display, multimedia playback and a removable battery. Non-stop playback time currently stands at two hours before its battery runs out, but you can always opt for a large size battery by coughing up a little bit more. The 2GB CUVi will retail for approximately $300 after conversion. (Read the full post about ‘Finedrive introduces CUVi DMB in Korea’…)

Share This

Compal computers, a contract manufacturer for Dell said that it has received an order of 200k to 300k units of a “low-cost” notebook to be sold sometimes this year. This confirms that the demand for cheap sub-notebooks is at an all-time high (well, yes, who doesn’t want a cool and cheap sub-notebook?)

Our recent favorite has been the HP 2133 (read first impressions), but who knows what will come up next?

There’s one thing that we know fore sure: the average selling price (ASP) of the sub-notebook is going to plunge. And that’s why many people are afraid the Asus EEE (or the idea of it).

(Read the full post about ‘Dell to Join the Eee Wanabees’…)

Share This

Someone has looked into the new iPhone SDK and noticed that it contains an string mentioning a SGOLD3 chipset from Infineon (they also built the 2.5G chipset for the current iphone). Anyhow, this is not like hardcore hacking or something, but it provides a hint to what iPhone 2 will be capable of: 7.2Mbps HSDPA (3.5G) Up to 5 Megapixel photo processing Mpeg4/H.264 decoder All signs point to a June release, just as I predicted back in Oct 2007. (Read the full post about ‘New SDK Hints to Obvious: the 3G iPhone is Coming’…)

Share This

To add another chapter to the “Samsung Instinct = iphone P0ZER” book, Sprint has licensed the visual voicemail feature for the Instinct from none other than Klausner Technologies. If you remember back just a little bit, Klausner sued AT&T and Apple after they unveiled they were going to use visual voicemail because their version, allegedly, infringed on their technology. The Instinct already has the full touchscreen going for them (except for three buttons near the bottom) along with a full web browser, and the big touch-icons on the screen. With more and more phones picking up some of the features the iPhone has, like visual voicemail, this should keep pushing Apple to innovate even more which in turn, gives us more features to look forward to in the next generation of phones. (Read the full post about ‘Sprint adds Klausner Visual Voicemail to the Samsung Instinct’…)

Share This

Finally, the long awaited Facebook chat is rolling out. First reported by the Inside Facebook blog, and a few hours later, the Official Facebook blog announced that new Chat facility is indeed being gradually rolled out in some Facebook networks. The Facebook blog did not specify any exact date as to when the Chat feature will be implemented across all Facebook networks. But users don’t need to do anything to install the Chat facility, as it will just pop out at the bottom part of the users browsers. When the Facebook Chat bar appears, users can view the list of online friends and even start a conversation with any or all of them. (Read the full post about ‘Facebook gradually rolls out real-time Chat feature’…)

Share This

Anyone with a jailbroken iPhone will know that there are some talented programmers making some innovative software, from camera enhancements to guitar simulators. So it comes as no surprise that some of those developers are switching over tho the official channels and developing legitimate applications for the upcoming iPhone 2.0.

Below is a clip of PhotoBoard 2.0 in action. PhotoBoard is currently available as an unofficial app for the iPhone and ipod Touch, but the new version has been ported to Apple’s iPhone SDK. To call it just a photo browser would be unfair. (Read the full post about ‘Underground iPhone Developers Going Legit’…)

Share This