Gadgets Control

SAN DIEGO, CA — smartphone users are likely to be the type to be on the run — and perhaps weight conscious, too. An application announced Monday tells you not just what but where to eat.WebDiet utilizes a phone’s GPS to look up restaurants nearby, and then it recommends a meal based on a number of factors, including what you ate earlier, your favorite foods and your personal health needs. By keeping track of your calorie intake, the application recommends a meal that doesn’t surpass a limit. From there on, you can even look at the price and, in some cases, order the food on your handset. (Read the full post about ‘DEMOfall 2008: Smartphone App Tells You Where and What to Eat’…)

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I recently published The Mobile Traveler Challenge where I detailed my challenge of using just my blackberry to plan a trip, including buying and checking in for my airline tickets and a hotel room using the mobile websites of American Airlines (AA) and Omni Hotels. Well, the trip I planned to Dallas was in order to interview executives at American Airlines about their strategy for addressing the mobile-enabled traveler.

I had a chance to sit down with three executives from American Airlines who are literally reshaping how the largest airline attracts the mobile traveler.

(Read the full post about ‘Feature: American Airlines targeting mobile users’…)

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by Nilay Patel, posted Sep 8th 2008 at 12:36PM Hey, is that the fabled blue flash Zune, all priced up and sitting on a Walmart shelf in Knoxville, Tennessee a whole day before it’s scheduled to launch? Indeed it is — let’s hope those rumored LifeCams are pretty spectacular, because we done just scooped every other product Redmond has on tap for tomorrow. (Read the full post about ‘Blue flash Zune appears in the wild, attacked by Mr. Blurrycam’…)

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Electric bikes/scooters aren’t just for the guilt-ridden gas-guzzlers of North America. As part of a new green initiative for South Africa campaign, the eGo scooter company is releasing the e-Helio Cycle M37, the country’s first zero-emissions electric bike. Like the eGo Cycle 2 SE scooter available in the US, the E-Helio aims to keep carbon emission numbers down to zero by keeping it charged with a battery. What’s interesting about it is that it keeps a similar top speed (25MPH), charging time cycle (6 hours for a full ‘tank’), and range per charge than many of the heavier, more expensive e-motorbike options. (Read the full post about ‘eGo’s e-Helio Scooter Gains Traction in South Africa’…)

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[DEMOFall 08] Today, Invision.tv, a cool application that helps users discover video, is launching at DEMO. I tried quickly Invision.tv against two of its competitors, Truveo and Blinkx. Invision.tv returns results pretty fast and the results are displayed in a better way than the two other sites, Blinkx is really bad in comparison. Regarding relevancy, it depended on the keywords, Invision.tv and Truveo were pretty ok. Invision.tv combines video search and discovery with social networking and personalization, which is quite unique. The technology is patent pending, it leverages computerized, personal and social search algorithms in conjunction with profile and usage information. (Read the full post about ‘Invision.TV: a Sleek Interactive Program Guide to Browse Internet Video’…)

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[DEMOFall 08] Today, Rebus Technology is launching its consumer application Recollect Desktop, that lets users search all documents including unstructured documents such as scanned documents , PDFs, TIFFs, Jpegs and emails, by looking for words and images inside, even if they are misspelled. A lot of people scans their administrative documents such as legal contracts, faxes, receipts, forms, and Recollect Desktop is an amazing tool to retrieve them when it seems impossible to remember where they are stored. On the screen shot you can see the patented feature “fuzzy”, that allows to tune the level of error in the spelling of a word your are looking for. Recollect Desktop is available now starting at $149.95. (Read the full post about ‘Rebus Recollect Desktop: Retrieve Scanned Documents Even with Misspelled Words’…)

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One thing about a netbook or laptop is the fact that you’d best tote around a power adapter wherever you go, since those buggers don’t exactly have sterling performance figures when it comes to battery life. This weight does add up if you’re tote your notebook around on foot most of the time, but this tiny plug adapter might help lighten your burden a wee bit. Retailing for just $3 a pop from Stayonline.com, you hook this up directly to your power brick, hence requiring you to connect the power brick straight into a wall socket while eliminating an extra bit of wire. Of course, that’ll just shave off a few ounces, but at least it won’t look like such a tangled mess any more. (Read the full post about ‘Tiny Plug Adapter Lightens Load’…)

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With MP3s proliferating the marketplace, do you think there is still a market for CD players? Dedicated ones only, I suppose, and CEC is back with their TL1N CD player which features the latest DA converter along with a sophisticated belt-drive technology to faithfully reproduce all the musical information available on the compact disc. The drive mechanism is touted to be extremely quiet, capable of stabilizing the disc rotation precisely while doing away with vibration and resonance. The spindle motor in the TL1N is completely isolated from the disc turntable, where its rubber belt will immediately absrob or shit out any vibration or electromagnetic noise. (Read the full post about ‘CEC TL1N CD Player’…)

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Nokia may be the king of the mobile phone manufacturers, but even the king has some bad quarters. The company announced late last week that it expected a drop in its mobile device market share in the third quarter of this year compared to the second.

Nokia’s original outlook was that its market share would remain relatively stable for the third quarter. Though it now expects a drop in the third quarter, the company still believes that its overall market share will increase for the full year 2008.

(Read the full post about ‘Nokia expects drop in market share for 3Q’…)

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After the recent popularity of the initial news that the ‘Give One Get One’ program would be returning this November with sales being handled through Amazon, the OLPC’s Product Manager Kim Quirk posted a message on wiki.laptop.org further confirming the news, but also added an extra detail that will possibly disappoint some that were a little hopeful. While the program is still set for “late 2008” Quirk has also made it clear that these XO laptops will be the Sugar Linux based versions and not the dual boot models with Windows XP. In addition he also went on to clarify the reasoning behind the sales through Amazon. (Read the full post about ‘Amazon XO laptop sales further confirmed; Its all Sugar, no Windows XP models’…)

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