Most of us have an easy time typing our names on standard keyboards. But what if your name were Walter Olùwolè? I just had to type Walter's name in Word, insert two special characters, and paste it into this post--all because I don't have a Konyin multilingual keyboard.
Walter (I'll just call him that from now on) is one of the founders of Lancor Technologies and is also from Nigeria. He and his partner recognized the limitations of a traditional QWERTY keyboard when it came to his native language, and created a dual-shift layout that lets you directly type letters with tonal marks, without going through what I just did. The keyboards range from $37.99 to $98.99, depending on how many languages they can accomodate, whether they're wireless, etc. Cool idea.
Dolce & Gabbana had the Midas touch when they partnered with Motorola to design the Dolce & Gabbana Motorola RAZR V3i. It features an engraved Dolce & Gabbana logo, a gold & silver finish, 1.2-megapixel camera, Motorola's digital audio music player with mini-USB stereo headset, and a removable memory card.
Plus, it comes pre-loaded with Dolce & Gabbana-customized ringtones, screen savers, wallpapers and mp3s. (Whatever that means!)
You'll also find a refresh of more than 500 hours of current programming with ten new episodes each from: Lois and Clark, Welcome Back Kotter, Growing Pains, Wanda at Large, The George Carlin Show, and ElimiDate.
Plus, fans of Welcome Back Kotter can now play the KOTTERIZER. Just upload a photo and drag Kotter's frizzy hair, mustache or sideburns onto the photograph. Then e-mail your creation to friends! (Sounds like the twenty-first century version of Wooly Willy, doesn't it?)
Thanks to intern Errol Pierre-Louis for this review!
The Franklin USB Dictionary & Thesaurus is Merriam-Webster's Dictionary and Franklin Thesaurus, along with an English buying guide, squeezed into a 256MB portable storage device. You just plug it into a USB port and let it do its thing.
The drive is billed as a portable reference guide, and it works fine in that capacity. It has a Quick Search function for definitions and synonyms, a spellchecker, and a grammer guide. But for me, the dictionary and thesaurus aren't even the most interesting features on this device.
What I really liked were the eBookstore and eNewsstand features. The eBookstore feature works much like iTune's music store. You load it up from the control panel and it list books by category, or you search for the one you want: Click on a title, read a summary, find the price, and even download a sample chapter. Then you can buy the book online, download it, and store it on your USB device.
The eNewsstands feature has a ton of online news sources that you can subscribe to for free. So if you missed the morning paper, just pop in the USB drive and scroll through today's headlines. If you live somewhere that's not so exotic, then you can check if the LA Times or Bangkok Post have anything exciting to report. Then check out album reviews from Slate Magazine, catch up on Anime news and new game reviews, and peruse the lastest from SciFi Wire. Every time you open your eNews library, your subscriptions automatically download updated content to your USB device, so you won't have to re-subscribe. And of course, you can still use any room left over to store documents and images, as with most USB drives.
Wouldn't this indoor compact rotisserie oven look great next to your Ball Park Hot Dog Grill?
Design: Measures 17 by 15 by 13.5 inches (no wider than a toaster oven), so it's perfect for your kitchen countertop. You can roast two chickens, a 15-pound turkey, a leg of lamb, a rack of ribs, or six kabobs. Available in black or white.
Features: Dual-heating tray with lid. Dishwasher-safe nonstick parts. Rotisserie & BBQ video, booklet, and recipes. Drip pan. Food ties. Spit holder and easy loading base. Complimentary BBQ gloves. $250 coupon book.
How It Works: Set the 3-hour automatic timer so you can complete other tasks while waiting. [From Amazon.com]: "Place the spit through the wire food basket that accompanies the rotisserie and it will rotate chicken wings, salmon steaks, or other foods through the roasting cycle. Meanwhile, place the enameled-steel steaming tray atop the rotisserie, cover with its plastic lid, and the rotisserie will steam vegetables or shrimp." Operates on 1,250 watts.
And if you haven't already, check out Gearlog's Summer Gadgets category! You'll find things like the Motorized Pool Lounger, the Rechargeable Wine Cooler, and the Handheld Weather Forecaster.
Chrysler raises the bar on in-car technology with the MyGiG: a 20GB hard drive embedded in the dashboard for ripping CDs and for storing navigation data. Included is a Gracenote lookup engine to provide artist, track, and title information; this is the first use of Gracenote in a new-car audio system in North America. (By the way, the Wall Street Journal reported that Gracenote may finally be legally allowed add lyrics to its other track information. It's about time!)
Chrysler showed off the MyGiG in the restyled 2007 Chrysler Sebring Thursday at a press conference in New York City, along with a reworked Chrysler Pacifica crossover vehicle (a tall station wagon) and Chrysler's first SUV, the Hemi-powered Aspen, a cousin to the Dodge Durango. Take a look at our slideshow for tech highlights of all three cars.
There's no question that the biggest highlight for Chrysler is the MyGig head unit (car talk for the radio), a single module. Here's what's included.
An AM/FM radio.
A CD/DVD player. It plays DVDs on the back seat's optional display or on the front-seat LCD when the car is parked.
Embedded Sirius satellite radio. It's a single chip in the radio, instead of a separate module, with real-time traffic reporting and the ability to route you around a traffic tie-up.
A 20GB hard drive. The drive is ruggedized for automotive use.
A USB jack. You use it for transferring music from memory keys. Also, a line-in jack for playing music off portable players. Unlike Fiat's Blue&Me LINK and several replacement radios, this is for flash-based keys only, not music players. There's no dedicated iPod controller option, though.
Two audio outputs. One goes to the car's speakers, the second to the rear-seat headphones if buyers opt for the console-mounted rear-seat LCD display.
Bluetooth hands-free calling. It's called U-Connect by Chrysler.
A 6.5-inch LCD panel. It also has a touchscreen and voice control.
The MyGiG hard disk holds navigation data, system software (about 1GB), up to 1,600 MP3 or WMA files (allocated a bit less than half the hard disk), and the Gracenote lookup engine. When you rip a CD, Gracenote music ID software provides the artist, title, and track information for the most popular of its 4 million CDs on file. You can also upload photos for a slide show and select one to be used as a screensaver.
Chrysler spokesman Cole Quinnell enthused, "You might expect this in a $40,000 Lexus, but a $25,000 Chrysler?" Pricing on the MyGig module hasn't been set, but most navigation systems are in the $1,500 to $2,000 range. Although the hard drive adds cost, Chrysler saves part of the cost by eliminating the single-purpose optical drive for navigation data.
The MyGig will be available initially in fall 2006 in one car from each of Chrysler's three brands: the Chrysler Sebring, Dodge Nitro, and Jeep Wrangler. There's also a 20GB hard drive in the console of the $85,000 Mercedes-Benz S-Class LINK, and while they're both sourced through the Harman Group, a Chrysler spokesman says they're different, particularly since the Mercedes uses its drive for navigation data only.
The i-rocks Superman Returns optical mouse ($19.99) is equipped with Avago's 800dpi high-speed optical engine sensor, and five buttons including Page Frontward/Backward and fast-scrolling. It weighs 3.5 ounces, works with both PCs and Macs, and comes in silver/black, blue/red, and blue/black.
The i-rocks Superman Returns media slim keyboard ($24.99) weighs 1.6 pounds with low-profile keys for faster typing, hotkeys for instant access, and Internet/Multimedia keys. It comes in blue, black, or silver and operates on Windows 98/ME/2000/XP.
This week, we talk to PC Magazine's Desktop PC expert Joel Santo Domingo, the man who benchmarked Intel's new Core 2 Duo, A.K.A. Conroe -- the fastest processor on the market. Download now:
Switching from PC to Mac: Why I did it, and if you should, too.
Dell's Exploding Laptop: What happened?!
Intel's Core 2 Duo, A.K.A. Conroe: Meet the man who benchmarked the faster retail processor on the planet. And find out if it's worth the hype! Editor's note: During this segment, Joel meant to say that the power consumption of Pentium 4 CPUs is "95-100 watts" rather than the "195 watts."
Mechanical Tree: This thing scares the daylights out of me.
Back in the Saddle Again: Jen can't believe that the "JOBA Horse-Riding Fitness Equipment" mechanical saddle actually exists. You'll have to see it to believe it.
As anticipated, today Intel released their new Core 2 Duo processor. What wasn't expected was that Intel released it early, in advance of the anticipated July 27th date at their IDF conference. What does this mean? It means that you may be able to order one today, but likely won't receive it until late July/early August. All the major (and many of the smaller) system manufacturers including Dell, Gateway, HP, Falcon Northwest, and Velocity Micro will have them in time for the fall buying season. Core 2 will replace Pentium as Intel's line of desktop processors.
Core 2 Duo will have a lot of enhancements that leverage esoteric technologies like 64-bit processing and virtualization, but Core 2 Duo also runs under less strenuous power limits, so systems with Core 2 Duo are likely to run cooler and therefore quieter. Oh yeah, and it's FAST! See my piece on pcmag.com for more on Conroe.
I got to review an uber-class Falcon Northwest Mach V system with Core 2 Extreme, as well as a more mainstream sub-$1,000 Velocity Micro Vector GX Campus Edition with Core 2 Duo. Both now lead their respective categories as PCmag Editors' Choices.
Check in with pcmag.com and gearlog.com for more Core 2 system reviews as time goes by.
PCMag.com reported yesterday that Dell is significantly reducing its rebates program. Sad as that may sound, though, Dell insists that customers drove this decision; they want to pay the actual price when they buy their merchandise without having to jump through rebate hoops.
Ro Parra, Dell senior vice president and general manager of the home and small business group, said: "What we're really doing is making it simpler for customers to understand the ultimate price they will pay for computers. What we're basically saying is that rather than trying to promote mail-in rebates, over time, we will lower a list price and the rate of promotion will be reduced. Ultimately the customer will get the same value."
The not-so-widely-anticipated Nike + iPod Sport Kit, announced last May, hit the virtual shelves on Apple.com today, listing at $29. Apple's message swept across the marketing channels today ... or, at the very least, it spammed my personal Gmail Inbox.
How it works: First you place the wireless sensor, included in the kit, in your Nike+ shoe ($100), which sports a built-in sensor pocket "specially engineered" in the insole. When you attach the receiver, also in the kit, to your iPod nano (sold separately), you can track your running time, distance, pace, and calories burned. There's a Web 2.0 aspect too, as you can upload your data to Nikeplus.com to measure your performance over time, and virtually race other users.
Note that you'll need to calibrate the sensor prior to running. It looks fairly simple, but in my experience, pedometers are very lacking when it comes to accuracy. They oversimply running, generally assuming that every step moves you forward the exact same distance. This one kit is no different, so keep that in mind.
Plus, Apple says, you can "listen to voice feedback as you run." And oh man, that's all I need. Now my nano will nag me about exercising, too.
UPDATE:
Mike Kobrin, PC Magazine's audio expert and frequent Gearlog Radio guest, disagrees with my assessment. He's also a runner, and has personally tested the gadget himself. He said it's accurate and fun to use. (Check out his review for all the details: Nike + iPod Sport Kit Review.)
So, let's tally up the debate:
I'm a runner and Kobrin's a runner. Tie.
I own a nano, he owns a nano. Tie.
I say potato, he says tomato. Tie.
He's tested the gadget personally, I'm just speculating. Hmm... Tie?
Alright, maybe he won. But, with or without his fancy Nikes, I could beat him in a foot race any day...
Boomwave Products sent us two new devil-like iPod cases all the way from Malaysia as part of the company's PodStar Diablo Series. Each casing is manufactured in limited editions and have background stories (gee, reminds me of the Mimoco USB key stories).
The first is "Big Top" for the 30GB/60GBiPod with video, described as a circus performer who moonlights as a secret agent to fight against the forces of evil. It dislikes PETA and fires. (Although if you're devil, don't you kinda have to put up with fire?) Big Top comes with a sterling silver earring on the back (I guess that's to show its tough side), a hook, detachable screen protector, and a dog tag.
Other cases available are SplatterFest, Garou and Crimsomniek in red, and Sideshow, Reaper, NightStalker, and DarkSide in black.
The other casing we received is the "Crimson Avenger" for iPod nano. It is a warrior, avenger, crimefighter, and upholder of dark justice. It likes Batman but dislikes politicians. (Don't we all!) It comes with a red neck strap, dog tag, and a screen protector (although my package didn't come with one).
Other iPod nano cases available are Legion, Red Rumble and BloodBath in red, and The Abyss, Dark Lord, BlackOut and Vigilante in black.
The coolest part about these iPod casings is the back: look at the tail! They're very easy to get on and of course are a bit difficult to slip off since they're made of silicone, but it's no biggie at all.
The weirdest part about the iPod casings? The packaging they came in, doned with the words, "Prepare to be Seduced"!! When Lance Ulanoff received the box in the mail, he wasn't sure what to think (and what his wife would say at home). I don't know about you, but it takes a lot for a package to seduce me.
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