Category: gadgets and technology

GPS and navigation company Garmin has finally taken the wraps off of their long-awaited GPS-enabled handheld, and it does appear that good things come to those who wait. The Garmin iQue 3600 comes with quite an impressive array of features.

[infoSync]

You can add Bluetooth through the SD slot… 32MB Ram, jog wheel, beautiful screen…

The $99 Home Media Option will be downloadable to Series2 recorders from TiVo in the spring.

The new service will allow subscribers to remotely schedule the recording of shows over the Internet. Subscribers will be able to play music and videos as well as view photos from devices connected to the network. The new service also lets subscribers with more than one recorder share content on both recorders. For example, a show seen on a recorder in the living room can also be played on a recorder in a bedroom.

In related TiVo news, the company said that it has developed a DVR reference design that supports recording in high-definition television formats. In addition, the company has teamed with DirecTV to develop an HDTV DVR with TiVo service. HDTV offers higher quality video and audio playback over standard analog broadcasts.

Other manufacturers at CES also announced DVR products. TiVo licensee Toshiba said Thursday that it would begin shipping a combination DVD and DVR product in the second half of the year.

Consumer electronics maker Pioneer said earlier in the week that it would release two DVD recorders, including one with a hard drive. The $999 DVR-002H will come with an 80GB hard drive. The DVR-002H and the $625 DVR-001 will be able to rewrite to DVD-RW and record to DVD-R discs. Both will be available in the summer of 2003.

Source: News.com

The Danger Hiptop, offered only through T-Mobile at this point is now only $49 with rebates at Amazon.

I am planning a business trip to Amsterdam next week and immediately thought this would be a great new toy to take with me and be able to connected while on the go. The problem though is that the Sidekick is single-band 1900 GSM only and will only work in the US.

What the price cut leads me to believe is that the next generation sidekick is not far behind. You can count on at least a CDMA version, but I believe that a color, multi-band aka world capable device is coming. It is CES week and Danger has a booth, but no announcements just yet.

(The Sidekick needs to learn to sync to make it much more ideal as well, but that can always come as a software patch.)

Sony amazes me again with their new device…integrated Bluetooth, a 2 MegaPixel Camera and the addition of a removeable battery are a few of the niceties…WiFi is still CF from Sony only and also still $150. The main and only issue with this unit is the price – $800! Ouch.

[infoSync]

Bill Gates doing his song and dance routine at CES. I have to admit that this does sound interesting. Though I doubt any time soon that we will see any Mac compatibility.

While initial presentations on SPOT have stayed on the theoretical side, Gates on Wednesday demonstrated the first devices that will use the technology. Watchmakers Fossil, Citizen and Suunto all plan to have SPOT-enabled models available by the end of the year.

The watches will connect to PCs to calibrate themselves, download software and connect wirelessly to streaming data beamed over FM radio signals to grab the latest sports scores or stock prices.

Gates hailed the watches as the first fruition of Microsoft’s effort to seamlessly blend digital data into everyday life. “This is something we’ve been working on for a number of years, and it’s really exciting to see it coming to reality,” he said. “We see these devices continuing to get smarter and get better at knowing what messages you might be interested in at a particular time.”

He also noted that the forthcoming watches have faster processors and four times as much memory as the first IBM PCs.

More theoretical SPOT items included refrigerator magnets that wirelessly retrieve information on local traffic or specials at area restaurants.

Motorola pulled a surprise today, announcing quite a few new phones for 2003. They look great, but since most are due in the second half of 2003 we won’t see these for real for quite a while.

Russ has the Nokia 7650… sounds very good including iSync compatibility, but still the P800 might be the one based on screen and my usage if I could become a one-piece guy.

There was a problem with the GPRS – but it wasn’t the phone, Telefonica is having computer problems this morning so it’s not set up yet. The phone store is across the street from my office, so I went back over to see what the problem was. While waiting for my salesperson to finish up with another customer, I whipped out the Nokia and started playing some games. Full color arcade games in my hand! WOW! The experience was the same as if I pulled out my Gameboy. Seriously. I was so absorbed I didn’t notice that the guy was done and the customer behind me had to point out that it was my turn. DOH! This mobile game stuff is going TO ROCK THE EARTH.

I forget what a freak I am sometimes. The guy who sold me the phone had the same exact phone and was eager to show it off to me – including a T-Mobile video app he got from somewhere (I didn’t realize that the 7650 could do video!). I was all excited and started talking about Symbian and programming, etc. He looked at me like I had three heads. Okay. Next subject.

The only other .sis Symbian program that was on the CD was an iSync upgrade. So I installed that and now it looks like I can sync to the internet!!! Yeah, baby! I’ll have to explore that some more. I’d love to be able to use my server as a central repository for to-dos, calendar etc.

I want a dock. I want this thing to sit up. I guess that’s what the more PDA-like P800 is all about.

-Russ [Russell Beattie Notebook]

The new high-definition audio discs (DVD-Audio, Super Audio CD) coming soon are being engineered to be as useless as possible. Specifically designed never to be integrated into a PC, sporting proprietary digital connectors that will not talk to any general-purpose, open device, though these haven’t been developed yet so early adopters will have to make do with analog-only outputs.

Yet both kinds of discs, despite being developed in the ‘Net-head late ’90s, are odd throwbacks to the pre-PC era. Most obviously, they’re the same size as the original CD. Can you name any other digital device that hasn’t shrunk in 20 years? The players for them are bulky, closer in size to Sony’s first CD decks than to Apple’s iPod, which holds 400 albums rather than just one.

Flip one of the players over, and you’ll find another retro sight: analog output jacks. To prevent buyers from running off bit-for-bit copies of the new discs, gear-makers have agreed not to put digital ports on either DVD-A or SACD players. Yet old-fashioned analog connections erode pristine digital sound and are prone to interference from televisions, lights, and computers—the objects they’ll be placed next to in modern homes.

The real deal-breaker is that a stand-alone player is the only kind available. By manufacturers’ consensus, there won’t be any network ports on the players, nor will there be any DVD-A or SACD drives available for computers. Some makers are promising a digital link from the player to a home-theater console, but it’ll be deliberately incompatible with any of the jacks on a computer. In bringing the CD up to date with the PC, the music industry is also trying to split the two technologies asunder again.

It’s no wonder that gearheads who buy the latest, greatest everything have ignored DVD-A and SACD in favor of MP3 players and CD burners. Computer-friendly music formats let you archive hundreds of albums on a laptop, create custom playlists that draw from your entire collection, and download them to portable players smaller than a single CD jewel box. Today’s fans want their music in a form that fits the pocket-sized, personalized, interconnected world of their computers, cameras, phones, and PDAs. Asking digital consumers to give that power back in exchange for a better-sounding disc is like offering them a phonograph needle.

LinkDiscuss [Boing Boing]

Sounds good to me…

As cable companies continue to increase the cost of broadband service, and as telcom monopolies are strengthened by changes in FCC policy, it is now absolutely clear what the broadband endgame will be in the US: wireless. Think of a city where every single street light is a node in a mesh (for an example, see meshnetworks), and thus where the cloud of the internet sits on the street like the fog in San Francisco. For almost nothing, cities could provide IP light, as cities provide street lights. Neutral, end-to-end, fast, and cheap. (Apologies for this uncharacteristically optimistic post. Just a preview of the moot.)

[Lessig Blog]

Just the kind of debate that we like to see….

Swappers aren’t absolved of standard copyright abuse, either. Copying entire seasons of “The Sopranos” for Net distribution is still a no-go. “It’s one thing to have hacked it,” Zittrain says. “‘Distribution of works’ is another violation altogether. It’s apples and oranges,” and the oranges could still land you in jail. But an attorney with DMCA experience under his belt says precedents set in the VCR-related suits of the early ’80s mean network TV is still up for grabs if the commercials are included in the video. It looks as if lawyers will have a lot to say, actually, before all of this is settled.

Source: Fortune.com

The Intel / SONICblue Personal Video Player, or PVP, is just one of (hopefully) many new cool devices being shown this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. I can’t honestly say I want one of these unless it serves other purposes as well. My briefcase (and back) can only take so much…

WOW! I will have to definitely look more into this one…

Wi-Fi by land to the sea: A company has quietly installed $5 million worth of Wi-Fi gear pointing outwards from major coastal areas to serve private boating and the cruise ship industry. This is remarkably clever, as physics tells us that a tower not very high up on the coast can have a direct line of sight to a huge swath of sea within its range. The company, Wheat Wireless Services’s TeleSea division, says that they cover the coast from Baltimore to the Florida Keys, Puget Sound, San Francisco Bay, Long Island Sound, Southern California, and Hawaii. Their source of financing isn’t mentioned. How did they submarine this deployment, no joke intended? [via TechDirt]

[802.11b Networking News]

I noticed on Friday that our Cable lineup has changed pretty substantially. When we first got our HDTV converter box, we could choose between HBO, Showtime, NBC, ABC, FOX, CBS and PBS. The networks did not broadcast fulltime HD, but the movie stations and PBS delivered 100%. We also have Movies on Demand and an Adult Movies on Demand channel.

With the new lineup, we now have HBO, The Movie Channel, Showtime, Cinemax all On Demand for a monthly fee in addition to a whole host of regular and extended cable channels which appear to gearing up for HDTV.

The way this works, for those of you on older cable systems or non-digital cable, is that we have additional channel numbers for each channel that offers HD. Things are looking better and better…Hopefully soon our new channels will activate and we will have most channels in their glorious new clarity.

It’s not a “secret” anymore, but it’s not quite for sale yet… looks like a killer.

Smartphone vs. smartphone: “Things are going to get confusing. There’s Smartphone, Microsoft’s new operating system for cellphones. And then there’s smartphone, which is a generic term that seems to encompass just about any cellphone that can can surf the Web and check email. That said, Kyocera’s new Palm-powered smartphone (with a lowercase “S”) has just hit. The 7135 has a clamshell design with the Graffiti area on the lower half of the phone, and the touchscreen display on the upper part. Also has 16MB of RAM, GPS, a slot for a Secure Digital memory card, and a 65,000 color screen. Read…” Source: Gizmodo

Year in review: Gadgets, go home – Tech News – CNET.com

Gadget makers spent the year trying to get into your house.

While consumers kept a tight hold on their wallets, device creators devoted much of the year to the future of the digital home, where gadget lovers will be able to access all their digital content as well as the Web.

HDTV Gets Clearer: “HDTV Gets Clearer: “Cable operators and TV manufacturers agree to a single standard for digital television receivers.”” Source: Archipelago