Gadgets Control

by Paul Miller, posted Aug 6th 2008 at 2:01PM If you’re the type of person looking to drop $600 to $800 on a photo viewer, you’ve probably got some pretty specialized needs for the thing, and Epson aims to please. A followup to its P-3000 and P-5000 photo viewers, the new P-6000 and P-7000 from Epson sport 640 x 480 4-inch LCDs, which have been newly enhanced with “Photo Fine Premia” tech to handle 94% of the Adobe RGB color space. The 6000 and 7000 models sport 80GB and 160GB of storage, respectively, and download shots up to 35% faster than before. The interface naturally allows you to browse through, sort and zoom in on your beautimous photography, supporting both JPEG and RAW files, and there’s even a bit of PMP functionality for when you’re bored of all that. (Read the full post about ‘Epson’s P-7000 and P-6000 photo viewers include speed and screen improvements’…)

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Logitech has not forgotten about Mac users as the Swiss peripheral company has just released its diNovo Edge for Macs, although this comes nearly a couple of years after the PC version of the diNovo Edge was unveiled. It will sex up your workspace by virtue of being there, featuring a piano-black finish and a TouchDisc touch pad for easy navigation. Measuring a mere 11.05mm thin, the diNovo Edge is encased in a high-gloss, fingerprint attracting Plexiglas frame with soft orange backlighting for that added touch of elegance. The aluminum palm rest with anodized-silver finish will complement just about any Mac computer. Being a Mac edition naturally means Logitech has thrown in Mac keys for one-touch access to various programs such as Mail, Safari and iTunes. (Read the full post about ‘Logitech diNovo Edge for Mac Users’…)

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Turns out free isn’t the best price for software anymore. Edison, a freeware application released today by Verdiem, promises to actually save you money by assuming control of your PC’s energy use. While new laptop users might only save a twenty-spot, the company claims that installing the app on that old desktop in your basement that you always forget to turn off could save you $60 a year. That’s a tenth of a tax-stimulus check and just enough to pre-order Madden 09. The screenshot was taken with the application installed on my old Sony Vaio laptop (VGN-FS640). At California’s high electricity prices, it looks like the ten minutes I took to install the app should save me $32.25 over the coming year. (Read the full post about ‘Energy-Saving Freeware App Saves You Money’…)

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At the moment there are two big differences between standard digital cameras and the higher-quality digital SLR cameras, those are price and size. For many people, size is an important factor as they want a camera to just slip in their pocket while on holiday. Matsushita and Olympus have developed a new system that may remove the size obstacle for consumers wanting to spend a bit more and get a digital SLR camera. The breakthrough is a new format called Micro Four Thirds System (MFTS). Four Thirds System (FTS) is the format used in today’s SLR cameras. The format is required to make sure the lenses sold by different companies will fit and acts as a standard. (Read the full post about ‘Small SLR cameras a reality with Micro Four Thirds System’…)

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Waking up can be quite a chore for some of us, but sometimes the right tunes can get us out of bed much faster compared to the traditional ringing of an alarm clock, and Memorex has stepped up to fill this need with the Mi4019 and iWakeUp) alarm clocks that feature buzzer, iPod and radio options to make rolling out of bed a much more pleasant experience. Memorex Mi4019 Alarm Clock When everything serves a double purpose, the Memorex Mi4019 alarm clock’s compact design not only leaves space on a nightstand or dinner table, but also charges and plays all the user’s favorite songs from his or her ipod. A flip door discretely hides buttons and iPod connectors when not in use. (Read the full post about ‘Memorex unveils new iPod alarm clocks’…)

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In The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, science fiction great Robert Heinlein wrote: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Today, the network is the computer as Sun’s old slogan used to tell us. And, in the world of today there ain’t no such thing as a free desktop. IBM has partnered with Canonical (Ubuntu Linux), Novell (Suse Linux), and Red Hat (Red Hat Enterprise Linux as well as Fedora) to distribute PCs pre-loaded with Linux and IBM’s Open Collaboration Client Solution (OCCS) which consists of Lotus Notes, Lotus Symphony, and Lotus Sametime.

Lotus Symphony is a repackaged proprietary fork of the old OpenOffice.org 1.1 release.

(Read the full post about ‘IBM partners with Canonical, Novell, and Red Hat to fight Microsoft’…)

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HP has plans to roll out a notebook with touchscreen capability within the next 18 months that will further improve upon the current tx series, aiming for a more natural interface that does not require on a stylus to work within a conventional model. According to HP, the sense of touch is almost the preferred method for non-technical savvy users - just how intuitive this will be remains to be seen. Will it go one up on the iphone’s multitouch interface? I don’t know, but this custom interface won’t wait for Microsoft Windows 7. What do you think? (Read the full post about ‘HP Wants Touchscreen Notebook’…)

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One of the world’s largest airlines, Delta Air Lines has announced that they will be outfitting all 330 plus of it’s US domestic airplanes with Wi-Fi access.  The plan is to have all planes outfitted by the summer of 2009, which should be plenty of time, especially considering the technology can be installed into a plane overnight. The service will be known as GoGo, and will allow for internet and text messaging services inflight.  Of course, GoGo won’t be free.  For flights less than three hours long, it will cost $9.95.  Flights longer than three hours will cost $12.95 for Wi-Fi access during the entire flight. (Read the full post about ‘Delta to add Wi-Fi to all domestic flights’…)

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by Darren Murph, posted Aug 6th 2008 at 8:54AM For the longest time, Luxeed’s eye-tingling keyboards were only available on the other side of the planet. Now, however, the Dynamic Pixel LED Keyboard is finally for sale on US soil. We’ll spare you the completely irrelevant Optimus Maximus links — after all, this thing only allows you to tweak the colors of each individual key — but those obsessed with lighting up their gaming area without using those boring incandescents will certainly find plenty to love. (Read the full post about ‘Luxeed’s Dynamic Pixel LED Keyboard fills a void for under two bills’…)

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If you’re tired of using an old fashion input device like a mouse and keyboard then you may want to take a test drive of some new speech recognition software which is now available for download.

(Read the full post about ‘Browse the Internet with the power of your voice’…)

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