Another day, another iPod speaker system, it seems. This one is from Danish hi-fi specialist Jamo and incorporates three white speakers: a large 150Watt powered sub-woofer plus two much smaller magnetically shielded satellite speakers. Provided with the package is a control dock/charger for housing your iPod and an auxiliary input for hooking up a computer, portable DVD player, games console etc (non-dockable 1st/2nd generation also have to be hooked up via the aux input). A further audio input is also provided on the sub-woofer.
The SPVs have always been popular around the Tech Digest office as they are among the most compact smartphones to use Windows Mobile and actually make for surprisingly manageable web browsing. The latest, the SPV C600, is a very similar candy-bar style to its predecessors now with a 320 x 240 colour screen, as well as a 1.3 megapixel camera and 64mb internal memory. Not following the C550, it has opted away form music playback button and returns to a style more similar to the C500 but this time imbued with the latest Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system. This means that applications load up a lot quicker and has a generally more handset friendly interface. Also improved over the C500 is the new joystick control system that has proved itself to be a much needed addition.
More smartphones
HP's hw6500 PDA/smartphone
MS Peabody smartphone
Ultra-portables: mobile computing made practical or the laptop version of a Mazda MX5? This would probably make a decent, if not particularly romantic, present for a girlfriend or wife because Averatec has ensured that a lot of the design emphasis lies in style over computing muscle. But, even if you won't win any 'who's got the biggest notebook' contests, you have to admit that the 1.6kg, 26.6 x 20.2 x 2.9cm (small enough to fit in a handbag) device will allow you and your shredded masculine ego to quickly escape the other commuters, weighed down by their vast media centre monstrosities. Admittedly we've mentioned the Averatec 1050 before but it deserves an extra mention for bothering to come up with some festive pics of its product. The 1050 costs a reasonable £999 but I don't think that includes the model Santa.
More ultra-portables
First megapixel laptop
Is this the world's smallest laptop
In a great breakthrough for portable LCD technology Samsung has released details of the largest Transmissive TFT LCD screen ever created. In layman's terms transmissive TFT can be considered as 'bendy' and thus far more suited to more physically demanding operation than has been possible before. The 7" flexible display is capable of 640 x 480 resolution and substitutes glass for transparent plastic substrate that is thinner lighter and flexible than it's fragile alternative. Samsung's scientists have managed to ensure that, when flexed, the screen maintains the exact same level of thickness and that the image is not warped at the bends. It will probably be a good long while before this technology makes it to anything on the shelves but it could mean major changes to mobile applications such as phones and notebook PCs in the future.
More LCD breakthroughs
The race is on for e-paper
Even though Jabra has been striving to turn Bluetooth headsets into fashion accessories for some time now, I can't say I particularly agree with its description as "the ultimate in headset design and beauty". But whether you think it's possible for any earpiece to even be truly stylish or not, you have to give the JX10 credit for being very compact and discreet. It is only 4cm long and won't be much of a burden on your ear, weighing in at 10g. Audio quality is enhanced by using Digital Signal Processing (DSP) and the battery life is an impressive 6 hours talk time or 200 hours standby. Needless to say that kind of combination of quality features is going to cost you; the JX10 costs a weight £99 and is now available in the UK.
More headsets
Motorola's Skype headset
Jabra's latest Bluetooth headset
Pioneer of digital radio and abuser of capital letters, PURE, has launched its latest creation just in time for Xmas. This time the company has set its sights beyond the kitchen and the CHRONOS takes the form of a stylish bedside clock-radio. Inside PURE's signature polished aluminium case, you've obviously got the advanced DAB receiver giving you access to up to 55 stations in much better quality than FM can achieve, but to match this PURE has put some efforts into making sure the alarm clock side is similarly sophisticated. You can set four different alarms and there are also multiple snooze settings, you can set the brightness of the LCD display and choose between alarm types. It looks pretty swish, as you would expect from an £80 clock-radio, but I wonder if all the effort to improve the alarm clock functionality might make general operation a bit complicated.
Of the
current generation of consoles (current for the next 3 days anyway) the
question of which has the best control pad is a subject of regular debate
especially around the Games Digest
office. Personally I think that, in spite of the copyright infringements, the PS2's
Dual Shock 2 is the champion but others favour the quirkier GameCube controller,
especially the groundbreaking wireless Wavebird. Personally I don't know of anyone,
although I'm open to persuasion, who really goes for the arthritis inducing
Xbox Controller S and thankfully it seems Microsoft has thought a bit harder
about the design for the 360. Whatever your taste you can now take each
pad for a spin on your favourite PC game using the brilliantly titled 3-in-1 Magic Joy Box. It's basically a USB
adaptor for anything compatible with PS2, GameCube or Xbox
controller ports, which means dance mats work fine too. Apparently all button
and vibration functions are retained too. Not bad for $30 (around £20).
Link via The Red Ferret
More controller adaptors
Xbox Keyboard and mouse adaptor
Nokia has announced that it is planning to withdraw from the
mobile gaming scene for a couple of years and that the N-Gage itself will be
receiving no new incarnations. I'm left with mixed feelings about this
development; though nothing brought more joy to my day than being able to fire
a few vengeful insults at the hybrid device, its passing leaves me with little
to vent my spleen on. It was high time that Nokia gave up on the mobile gaming
charade as sales of the N-Gage and its successor, the N-Gage QD, only reached a
third of the sales forecasts which must have been quite a shock to Nokia after
it managed an admirable feat of marketing and hype building prior to the phone's
2003 launch. This failure was largely due to phone's laughable design flaws and
though they were mostly corrected in the QD version, by then it was too little
too late. If you still have an unnatural desire to own one Nokia is still
planning to keep on producing the N-Gage in limited numbers for foreign markets.
via Gizmodo
Sky has added the first of its so-called 'third party channels' to its HD line up. The network has confirmed that National Geographic HD will be available to HD viewers from early next year. It joins six other Sky channels. More here.
Incidentally this is the first time Sky has used the phrase 'early 2006,' up until now it has always said 2006.
• 1.5 million page impressions
• 1 million unique visitors
• Second Telewest Shiny Awards
Shiny Media celebrates its first anniversary today with the news that November is on target to be our biggest and best month so far. Across our network of 14 blogs we look set to record 1.5 million page impressions in 30 days, over 1 million of them unique visitors.
But that's not all. In the latest Google page rankings - a measure by which higher quality sites receive a higher score, our sites have all performed exceptionally well. Shiny Shiny - the world's leading girls' gadget blog - is the only UK consumer electronics website to have a ranking of 7/10 for its home page. That's higher than T3, Crave (CNet), Pocket-Lint and Stuff.
This Thursday also sees the return of the Telewest Shiny Awards in which readers and top industry journalists decide on the best and worst gadgets on the market. Thanks for all your support in making this last 12 months so exciting. And look out for new launches from the rapidly expanding Shiny Media network over the next few months.
Nice to see that companies are continuing to milk as much power from those USB ports as possible: this week brings the Trust USB speaker set (SP-2930p). Not really the most thrilling
conception we've ever seen but probably one will be useful to some; it is a compact
speaker set, thoughtfully designed with a clamping mechanism so that it can be attached
to a notebook screen and save even more valuable desk space. Trust claims these will
immediately enrich the sound produced by those integrated laptop speakers but just how
much so is the £16.99 question. These will be hitting the shelves at the start
of next year.
More USB toys
USB powered fan
USB massager now available
ITV has signed a deal with UK phone company 3 that will let you watch Corrie on your mobile phone handset. Highlights from Coronation Street and Emmerdale are both promised for next year as are one-off specials. 3G handset owners can already watch I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here highlights on their mobile before they are shown on terrestrial TV.
More Corrie stuff at our newest blog here.
What's happening at some of our other top blogs this weekend?
Bayraider (eBay Blog): RIP Bestie, Race for Xbox 360, NSFW: Kate Moss Nudey Calendar
HDTV: Budget HDTVs on their way in the new year, Sky's push video-on-demand service, HDTV - what Sky said today
Propellerhead (Computer Help): Top tip - Mouse Radar, Clear out the clutter, Top tip - Firefox themes
Corrie Blog : Watch Corrie on your mobile, Christmas Corrie goes with a bang, eBay gum!
I'm sure
this was supposed to be called the GPANG way back when we first caught wind of
it. Anyway, given the success of the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, mobile phone
companies are beginning to realise that portable gaming ought to be on a bit
more of their turf. That said, Nokia already tried the idea once with the
N-Gage and that proved exactly what handheld gaming was not about. Mercifully
Samsung has thought up its own take on a mobile/console and come up with the
SPH-G1000, which really isn't as cool as 'GPANG' sounded. It has sensibly tackled the problem of being a phone first and worked on the console aspect
second. The quality of games remains to be seen, but it is noted that Samsung's
offering isn't trying to step on the big boys toes. At the moment its main
competitor is the LG SV360 (pic on the turn), which seems to have to taken the
N-Gage path. Oops. The Samsung SPH-G1000 is only available in Korea at the
moment but if we root for it enough, it may eventually make it to these shores.
I think they can keep the LG though.
via MobileMag
More gaming phones
Gaming Phone that may even work
Nokia's N-Gage price cuts
Neuros are better known for making flash based digital recorders; now it has wisely set its sights on the PSP market and have tweaked the NMR (Neuros MPEG 4 Recorder) to record to a PSP style Memory Stick Duo storage. On top of that the NMR will record from any digital source such as DVD, VCR, digital set top box and so on into 368 x 208 resoultion to fit the PSP's screen size. And, if a video recorder for specifically designed for Sony's handheld wasn't lure enough, you can also use it reasonably easily for other mediums as it has the option to record in 640 x 480 resolution and in a number of different qualities. PDA and fifth generation iPod (video) owners should take note too as it comes with a package of open source media players and supports AAC-LC stereo sound.
via The Register
Monitor Audio has produced two new inserts so digital music lovers can play music from their Nanos and fifth generation 'video' iPods on its i-Deck product.
The What Hi-Fi award-winning unit, which turns your iPod into a standalone hi-fi, is available to buy directly from the i-Deck site for £249. If you buy one before Christmas you also get a free pair of Philips noise reduction headphones worth £29.99 apparently.
i-Deck
Rumours that
the brand new Xbox 360 is crashing
are flying thick and fast. Microsoft has quickly assured the community that it
is only a small number of isolated incidents which is definitely not growing to
grow into a globe spanning plague of defunct next-gen consoles. Even so there
are quite a few convincing complaints and our sister-blog, Games Digest,
reckons it has found the source of the problem. It seems that the beloved 360
needs a little space for ventilation otherwise it overheats and dies. Fortunately,
I don't reckon that overheating will be much of an issue with the weather forecasts I've heard for this winter, but let's hope that, if there is a
problem, Microsoft gets it fixed before summer...
Among the long list of phones that are or will be compatible with Vodafone's push email service is one handset that's a complete mystery to us and our friends at Google search. Apparently coming soon is the Vodafone V1240. We know it runs Windows Mobile 5.0 and is almost certainly manufactured by HTC in Taiwan, but beyond that we know nowt. Perhaps it means that after taking all HTC's PDA style devices it is now taking a Windows based smartphone. Maybe it is the Voda equivalent of the Orange SPV 600. We'll find out more lately today.
In what is very likely to be the start of a trend Vodafone has become the first phone network to offers its customers a push email solution. Starting from next month small business subscribers to its network, along with smartphone crazed consumers, will be pushed those all important messages in real time courtesy of a system from Visto.
Interestingly the service offers push email on a wide range of handset including both Symbian as well as Windows Mobile handsets. The full list includes the Sony Ericsson P900i, Nokia 9300, Nokia 6680, Vodafone V1620, Vodafone VPA Compact, HP hw 6510 and Motorola MPx 220. Vodafone is making it fairly cheap for consumers too with the tariff running at £12.77 per month for the service or less if a user spends more than £34 per month on voice calls. Voda is also souping up its BlackBerry option to enables its users to access BlackBerry2 facilities which include attachment viewing and secure encryption on a broader range of handsets. The network also has a Windows Mobile based push email service which debuts in 2006.
Here's a really odd one. Olympus has unveiled a new range of xD picture cards - the storage cards it uses is in its cameras - which apparently now enable snappers to create images with 3D effects. Basically users slip in the new cards into the PC and then activate an application in the 'Olympus Master 1.4' software to can then create images that leap out of the photo or the PC screen. Users will need special glasses to fully appreciate the 3D imagery. The same software also enables uses to tweak their images to turn them into cartoon style art or even water colour. The 512mb and 1GB High Speed xD-Picture Cards are available from mid to late December.
From: The 101 best iPhone apps in the world today