The Gadgets Guide: August 2005

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Google Talk - Wait, What? Who Now?

Google has what now? Google Talk? Yep, that's right. Someone deep with in Google Headquarters high on Mount Kilimanjaro is planning world domination by cornering the IM and VoIP market, stealing that potentially lucrative corner of the Internet away from, oh, I don't know... Skype? Microsoft? So let's see here: voice chat, IM, email, search, all done 100% better than any rival. That GoogleOS is coming sooner than we even expected.

# posted by GWHSE : 1:23 PM 1 Comments

EBGames Starts XBox 360 Pre-order

Alright, ladies and gentlemen, start your engines: EBGames USA has started taking pre-orders for the XBox 360. But before you go clicking on that link, take note that EBGames is apparently only selling the XBox 360 in "bundle" packs; there's the Core Bundle, and then there's the Ultimate Bundle.

# posted by GWHSE : 12:32 PM 0 Comments

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

FCC Approves Nokia N70

The last time we mentioned the Nokia 70 was in April of this year at the Nokia launch in Amsterdam, and now it's finally got the FCC stamp of approval for stateside release. Brief review of specs: It's tri-band, has a 2.0-megapixel camera, 262k color display, Bluetooth, a VGA unit for video calling, and an RS-MMC card slot. It's also apparently some personal multimedia computer thing, though we're not too sure on that yet.

Related
Live from Amsterdam: Nokia N70 First Pictures

Nokia N70 Receives FCC Approval [MobileBurn]

Related...

[Gizmodo]

# posted by GWHSE : 2:36 PM 0 Comments

Monday, August 22, 2005

Bluetooth Wireless Module for iPod

FM transmitters, step aside. Bluetooth audio transmitters are the wave of the future. Not too many of them out there, but Scosche has just released a Bluetooth wireless interface for iPod and other MP3 players that will enable streaming audio from your portable player to your car or home receiver. It connects directly to the headphone jack, and transmits to a receiver connected to either a car's head unit or home audio system.

# posted by GWHSE : 4:37 PM 0 Comments

Logitech Cordless S 510 Media Remote

Logitech is pumping out a new keyboard/mouse combo every minute, it seems. By far the most mind boggling feature about this peripheral combo is the fact it has a remote—it's like a peripheral for peripherals. This combo, named the S 510 Media Remote, has some nice advanced media features: image rotation, zooming and even some nice music controls.

# posted by GWHSE : 4:36 PM 0 Comments

Panasonic X800 Reviewed

MobileBurn has written up a pretty in-depth review of the Panasonic X800, which is Panasonic's latest foray into the realm of Symbian OS Smartphones. While they liked its fashion-forward appearance and the connectivity (Bluetooth, GPRS, etc) seemed okay, most of the other features seemed fairly lackluster.

# posted by GWHSE : 3:42 PM 0 Comments

Euro Revolution Begins 15 June 2006?

Amazon.com France has slipped a page with the European release date and price for Nintendo’s monolithic new game console, the Revolution. The release date is listed as June 15, 2006. The total, after conversion, would be about $365.

# posted by GWHSE : 3:33 PM 0 Comments

Ceramic White Sony PSP Pre-Order Deals

The ceramic white Sony PSP (PSP-1000 KCW) will start shipping on September 15th in Japan and of course several Asian gaming and electronics exporters are already offering pre-orders for the white version of the Sony PSP for international customers.

# posted by GWHSE : 3:32 PM 0 Comments

Friday, August 19, 2005

Buy Pizza, Get a BlackBerry 7100G

You know a cell phone isn't selling well when they give it away with a pizza, some wings, and a couple liters of soda. Papa Johns and Cingular have teamed up to flog the weird-keypad-a-rific 7100G to stoned pizza eaters across the country. The deal is simple: order online, wait, eat pizza, get cellphone, then pay $74US a month in data and voice charges for your new free phone.

# posted by GWHSE : 1:26 PM 0 Comments

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Logitech MX 5000 LCD Keyboard

First we got the G15 Gaming Keyboard and now Logitech has an LCD keyboard for the rest of us.This keyboard has a heap of interesting features including an external temperature sensor (!!??), a "dashboard" displaying the time and current user, along with media and email notifications. There's even a feature that turns the keyboard itself into a calculator, using the keypad, and then pastes the results into the clipboard. Plus it's cordless. Sweet.

# posted by GWHSE : 1:24 PM 0 Comments

XBox 360 Price Leaked

The XBox 360 will cost about $477US—it will probably be a bit more in Australia, but we're seeing the general pricing structure here. The source of this information? Some sort of internal Swiss Microsoft page.

xbox360 price.gif

# posted by GWHSE : 1:21 PM 0 Comments

PSP Windshield Mount

Okay, this looks like an accident waiting to happen. The Arkon VG242 windshield mount attaches to your windshield via a strong suction cup, and the neck is flexible to about 360 degrees. Then you clasp your PSP on, and your passengers can attempt to beat your high score in Wipeout Pure.

# posted by GWHSE : 1:16 PM 0 Comments

New Grand Wega

Sony has just announced two new WEGA televisions, a 50- and 60-inch model for $4,000US and $5,000US, respectively. These micro-display monsters—LCoS, really, but Sony has their own language that they use—offer real 1080p resolution as well as all of Sony's patented interpolation and sharpening firmware to make things all crystal clear and pretty.

# posted by GWHSE : 1:14 PM 0 Comments

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Logitech Drops Two New Portable Speakers

Logitech has launched two new portable speakers; the mm80, which is yet another iPod speaker dock, and the mm28, a super-thin flat panel model made for any portable music player. Like most other iPod speaker docks, the mm80 also charges your iPod at the same time it's docked in. It packs a rechargable battery with about 10 hours of playback time. The mm28, on the other hand, is playable with anything that has a headphone jack output.

# posted by GWHSE : 5:50 PM 0 Comments

Is This The Palm Treo 700?

News of the Treo 670 has barely heated up, and already there's a rumor about the Treo 700. Cool Tech Times shows a really convincing photograph of what it purports to be the Treo 700. Apparently it'll have a 1.3 megapixel camera with 8x digital zoom.

# posted by GWHSE : 5:48 PM 0 Comments

Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard

The new Logitech G15 has some nice features that actually tailor to gamers. The most acknowledged feature is probably the LCD screen on the keyboard. Keyboard macros can be setup on the physical keyboard while in game. Also while not gaming the LCD screen can read media information, display CPU information, email alerts and the keyboard even comes with a software development kit so the coding gamers can write their own programs to display information on the LCD.

# posted by GWHSE : 5:37 PM 0 Comments

Zen Photo Micro - Coming Soon

PC Mag is talking about the Zen Photo Micro. It will have an RRP of $349 and feature an FM tuner and longer battery life. More as we get it.

# posted by GWHSE : 5:29 PM 0 Comments

VMB's Media Center to run SageTV's Linux

There is big news out for the media centering Linux ninjas. It has been announced that VMB’s MediaREADY 5000 media center will run SageTV’s media center software. SageTV’s software is powered by Linux. So some new pricing competition will be in affect because the MediaREADY 5000 is just as powerful as any other media center, but cheaper thanks to no Windows licensing fees.

MediaReady 500.JPG

# posted by GWHSE : 5:27 PM 0 Comments

DirectTV Dumps TiVo, I Invite TiVo Out for Lunch to Commiserate

DirecTV and TiVo split up. You knew it was going to happen. They were so quiet at dinner last week and DirecTV kept taking TiVo out to the porch to talk and TiVo would come back crying. But whatever. I'm moving in on TiVo next week. She's hot.Anyway, DirecTV already has a new girlfriend, the NDS Group.

# posted by GWHSE : 5:01 PM 0 Comments

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Dios Fridge - LG Needs a Talking-To

No Dios Fridge for you, poor boy. This fridge has diamonds in the handle and the logo. It comes in a very limited edition of 200 units and you're not going to see one unless—nope, sorry, nobody will see these. There's no way. I know it hurts, but we have to stay strong. Sorry, LG, but you just alienated us all. We don't like you anymore.

# posted by GWHSE : 10:34 AM 0 Comments

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Alienware Mobile Phone Gamepad

I know there are hardcore gamers out there, that will do and spend anything to increase their gaming edge. I really have doubts that there are hardcore enough mobile phone gamers that actually need a gamepad to play Brick Attack, but who knows. For those diehard mobile gamers I guess Alienware heard your calling and has a new gamepad dock.

# posted by GWHSE : 1:44 PM 0 Comments

Sony Ericsson W550.

Sony Ericsson announces a new model in its Walkman mobile phone line - Sony Ericsson W550.
The new Sony Ericsson W550 features stereo sound, a 1.3 megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom, 1.8 inch TFT screen, USB, Internet browsing capability and games console, all in a swivel phone design.The Walkman phone W550 also just has 256MB storage for music.

# posted by GWHSE : 9:30 AM 0 Comments

Monday, August 08, 2005

The Treo 670 is real and does run Windows Mobile

So what to make of this? Palm is of course since the split between Hardware and Software units independent from Palm Source which develops the Palm OS.For Palm this can definitely open new markets. There are tons of users out their that are sworn in on Microsoft Windows. The Treo hardware is very decent, which will make Palm a great contender.

# posted by GWHSE : 12:10 PM 0 Comments

Xbox 360, PSP Connectivity Demonstrated

The Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system, which is now being promoted by Microsoft as "an integrated music, picture, games, and movie center", is equipped with USB 2.0 ports that allows it to connect with portable music players, digital cameras and any other device with a USB interface such as the PSP.

# posted by GWHSE : 11:50 AM 0 Comments

Friday, August 05, 2005

Nokia 8800 Reviewed

In the pursuit of shiny things, you're not likely to find anything much shinier than the Nokia 8800. Sadly, it doesn't sound like it's got much going for it apart from that, according to a review from infoSync World: a fairly boring set of features, including a mediocre camera and music player, and fairly dismal battery life.

# posted by GWHSE : 4:09 PM 0 Comments

NEC N930 - Boy, It's Tiny

NEC originally came out with a credit-card sized phone a few years ago and that was cool. This one, however, is much cooler.The NEC N930 has Bluetooth, GPRS, a color touchscreen, and weighs less than a fat hummingbird.

# posted by GWHSE : 4:03 PM 0 Comments

Thursday, August 04, 2005

X-OOM Movies on PSP Available Soon

The new software removes conversion, compression and formatting challenges, and makes playing recorded DVDs , DivX, WMV, AVI, MPEG and many other digital video formats on the Sony PSP extremely easy. A high-speed encoder integrated in X-OOM Movies on PSP automatically re-sizes video files to fit the Sony PSP format.

# posted by GWHSE : 3:25 PM 0 Comments

Sony may delay PS3 until 2007

Analysts at Wedbush Morgan Securities believe that Sony may delay the release of the PS3 until 2007 if the Xbox 360 launch is less than stellar. The analysis is based on Sony dropping the current slimline PS2 to $99 as the Xbox 360 launches. This would still let Sony make a profit on each one sold, building up cash and sufficient stock of PS3s for a launch in spring 2007.

# posted by GWHSE : 11:42 AM 0 Comments

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

XBOX Live Credit Card

Microsoft markets a prepaid credit card to German teenagers (14 years and older) to be able to sign-up for the Xbox Live gaming service.

# posted by GWHSE : 1:16 PM 0 Comments

Monday, August 01, 2005

Zen Vision Is Here

After more than a month of hype and pre-release teasing, Creative's brand new portable media player, the Zen Vision, is finally out for public consumption.

# posted by GWHSE : 1:17 PM 0 Comments

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