Category: Gadgets

iPod Shuffle Case / Beer Opener

Anyone out there looking to buy me a present well here is cool little item. I have an iPod Shuffle (2nd Generation) like many of you out there and like most of you have found it is kinda annoying having your earphones getting all tanged up. I like you also like drinking beer so this cool combination of an iPod case / beer top opener is a great idea.

Links
Bevy iPod Shuffle Case / Beer Opener

Urban Gnomes - Vitamin

Vitamin produces a range of very different house decoration items. One of my favourites is the common garden gnome for the urban yuppies out there (like me) - see image below. Other cool items are a flower pot that is self watering with a medical IV drip or even a floor lamp that doubles as a floor sweeper.

Links
Vitamin Home Page

Gravitonus

This looks soooooooooo cool. I really like the idea of a really comfortable computer station. As you may have guessed I spend a great deal of my time in the front of a computer. I would so be more happy if I spent that time in one of these chairs. Even the arm rests move with your arms so that you can move between the mouse and the keyboard without having to take your arm off the supporting wrist wrest. I am not sure but I think that the 3 screens if over the top.... like being over the top is an issue for a product like this. You can download a video of someone using the chair in the downloads section of the site.

Links
The Gravitonus

New Wind Turbine

Two of the biggest problems with current solutions to wind powered electricity generators is the noise and size of the wind turbines. This has meant that until now all the wind turbines have been located in remote areas where the noise and size are not an issue. However, a new wind turbine design is claiming to have designed a new wind turbine is smaller and creates less noise through a radically different blade design.

I am for the use of alternative energy creation systems as we can not continue using fossil fuels at the current rate for my longer. Hopefully this is one more step towards a better way of generating energy into the future.

Links
Loopwing Product Page

BumpTop Prototype

There is some really interesting research happening in the area of user interface metaphors. With the advent of really powerful computers and very fast video cards it is becoming easier and easier to use these expensive resources for more basic things like general graphical user interfaces. We are already seeing this with full graphics accelerated desktops as used in Apple's OSX and Microsoft's soon to be release Windows Vista. But these user interfaces are still based primarily on the standard windows metaphor. BumpTop is different as it uses the more physical piles metaphors. This is based on the concept that in people's offices normally piles of documents are created and physical location and orientation become the primary cues for finding things. BumpTop uses these same metaphors in a pen based user interface. What results is a very clean and interesting user interface which makes lots of sense for tablet PCs or some of the newer displays that are either using large touch screens that support multiple user inputs or screens that use cameras to track gestures for inputs.

The best way to understand is to have a look at the video that shows the possibilities of the BumpTop interface.

Links
BumpTop Page

Removing iSight from MacBook Pro

I work for a company that does not allow the use of camera's in mobile phones or laptop computers. Therefore when the Apple MacBook Pro and MacBook were released with in-built cameras I was VERY disappointed. I also use a big mix of both windows and mac applications therefore the intel-based mac laptops would be perfect for my work. I have been trying to chase up through my Australian Apple contacts to find a solution to remove the camera or have a laptop built to order without the camera in the first place. I still have not had a confirming reply to my questions. However today I once again went trawling through the forums and found a tidbit of information from a site called ifixit.com. This site contains a visual manual on how to replace the logic board of a MacBook Pro. One of the steps is to remove the laptop screen and as part of this process you disconnect the built-in iSight camera and there are pictures of this. This means that you can physically disconnect the camera to render it useless. However this does not meet my companies guidelines to the letter because the camera is still present it just does not work, it is a step in the right direction though.

Links
ifixit.com Remove Display Page
Apple Support Forum Thread on Removing Camera

MacTF-EPG Currently Not Working

As I am a Topfield PVR and Mac owner I really like the software produced by Nathan Oates to support both platforms. My favourite program of his is the MacTF-EPG program that allows you to easily download an electronic program guide from the Internet and upload it to the EPG. The program works great (although intel version is buggy) except in the last couple of days it has stopped working. I have contacted Nathan and it seems that there is some problem with the EPG feed that is being downloaded, and hopefully it will be fixed in the next couple of days. Lets all hope because I really miss the complete EPG on my Topfield.

Keep up the great work Nathan.

Links
MacTF-EPG Home

Topfield Australia

Pandora: Customised Music Playlists

Pandora is a great website that utilises the Music Genome Project (MGP) to create customised music playlists based on the music that you like. It starts by first asking you the name of your favourite music artist. I entered “Moby” and it then went away and created a playlist of music that has similar characteristics to the music created by Moby. Some of the artists it came up with was Kosheen, Juno Reactor, Prodigy and Kascade. The best thing is that it streams the music from the web page. This is a great web application to expand your music knowledge and discover other bands that you will like but would never have found without someone else recommending it.

Links
Pandora Home

I love Firefox

Ok so I am a complete convert and am using firefox for everything (home and work) and have also converted both my wife and mum (sort of). Well this is a great little video that summarises the browsers war for me.

Links
Wheee! Video

USB Drive That Physically Displays its status

I am not sure why you would actually want this but it is still pretty cool. The Flashbag USB drive physically displays its storage status by becoming larger as more data is placed on the device. To me it looks like it is actually eating data and is becoming bloated. If I was to have one I know mine would always appear pregnant as I am always trying to stuff more data on it.

Links
flashbag

Matt's Blog

One of my friends from IBM has a great blog and if you are really into anything geeky then this is the place for you. One of the reasons why I have been looking at it lately is due to some of the great links to VOIP (Voice over IP) providers and additional information. If you are interested in using VOIP (like me) and are lost where to start have a look at Matt's blog.

Links
Matt's Blog

Intel Mac Mini Released

I am sure if you are a mac fan you have already read all the rumour sites and the announcements for the new Intel-based mac mini that was released today. If this is news to you then you are in for a treat, because amazingly a new mac mini has been released, YAY. To add to the excitement this new version also supports the Apple Front Row software and comes with the cute little remote making this the perfect addition to any home theatre setup and truly fulfilling Apple's vision of having the Apple computers and iPods as the centre of your home media world. The new computer comes in both a single and dual core and can support up to 2gig of RAM, making this a serious contender for a desktop machine for nearly anyone.

Links
Apple Intel Mac Mini Page

Monitor for Sale

Ok so I am a geek and this is the first time that I am actually selling something on eBay. I just put it down to being slack. Well anyway if there is any of you out there who wants to get a great deal on a 19“ CRT monitor, which is in perfect condition then end on over to my eBay listing. The listing is nothing flash and really I just want the monitor out of my house as it does not look good around all my other LCDs and shiny gadgets :). I am not doing postage on this item because it is too big and heavy so local pickup only in Adelaide (Australia), sorry to all the interstate and international readers. Heck you might even see me start selling some of my other gadgets that I no longer require or have upgraded.

Links
eBay Monitor Listing

Optimus Mini Three Keyboard

A while ago I blogged about a keyboard design that contains mini OLED displays in the keys of the keyboard. This allowed for the keys to be remapped or even display the full colour icons the key's function. However at the time the keyboard was not available and was only a mock up. Well now it has all changed, no the full keyboard is still not available but it does have a delivery timeframe of late 2006. What is available (in the next month, may) is the optimus mini three keyboard (pictured on the right). Rather than a full keyboard the mini three is just that, three buttons with OLED displays. Have a look at the website as it shows examples of the types of uses, although the real power will be the plugins that others will write for the keyboard. I would really love to see one of these in real life.

Links
Optimus Mini Three Keyboard site

New iSight

I was given a nice new Apple iSight for christmas and was wondering how I could use this to chat with people who are not on macs. Well it seems like this is possible and for an in-depth discussion on this have a read of this article. While browsing on the net I also found an interesting piece of software called iGlasses that manipulates the image the iSight camera grabs and enhances it so that less light is required to get a good picture. From the same company that creates iGlasses are the following programs to do with your isight:

PowerBoost: Allows any mac to host multi-party conferences (even if not powerful enough according to Apple specs)
Conference Recorder: Records your iChat video conferences into a quicktime file.
iChatUSBCam: Allows any USB camera to work with iChat so you do not need to have an iSight.

Links
Video Conferencing with Windows users from Apple iChat
iGlasses
ecamm Programs

MMMMmmmm Coffee

If you have wondering where I have been, well I have been traveling around Australia (Melbourne and Tasmania). There were two purposes of this trip, first to go to my friends wedding, and second to walk to overland trail in Tasmania. I will post lots more information about the overland trail in the next few days. However, while I was in Hobart we visited a great little coffee place that roasts their own beans. The coffee is absolutely brilliant, they even have their own website. But when I was in Melbourne visiting family friends one of them is absolutely crazy about coffee machines and showed me the website for the E-61 Rocket. This has got to be one of the nicest looking home coffee (semi-pro) machines that I have seen around. A few months ago I went to a Coffee Barista course to learn how to make the best coffee, since then I have become a complete coffee snob and only want coffee from the best places. The worst part is that I now know it is just not possible to make a really good coffee using one of the cheap coffee machines, not even the $600AUD machines (which is what I have). Do not get me wrong you can make a pretty good coffee on one of these cheaper machines but if you really want to make seriously good coffee then you are going to need a machine like the E-61.

Links
Oomph Coffee
E-61 Rocket Website

USB Powered Mini Rockets

This are pretty cool. They are controlled via USB from your Mac and PC and can be fired at anything or anyone that goes past your cube. Powered by Air and made out of soft foam they will permanently maim anyone but still would be cool. For other cube armaments see the ThinkGeek Cube Warfare page.

Links
ThinkGeek Cube Warfare
USB Powered Air Darts

Huge Arse Sub

So you like subwoofer speakers? Are you tired of having that bloody big box in the corner of your room? Or are you wanting a bigger sub? Well this is your product, it is called the Eminent Tech TRW 17 and yes it does look like a big fan. Apparently this uses the air of the room that it is in to actually create the bass, unlike normal subs that compress the air in the large box. According to the specs it actually turns your whole room into a subwoofer so you actually need to install this sub into your attic, basement or your “Sub Room” (for those who have too much money). Now you may be asking if it actually sounds any good well according to the reviews it is absolutely brilliant with a FLAT response right down to 1Hz. Have a look at the link below as there are also pictures of different installations and test setups.

Links
Eminent Tech TRW 17 Review

VisionStation

I soooo need to get one of these for work :) It is called a VisionStation from a company called elumens. It would go nicely alongside my 2x 19“, 1x 23” and 15“ laptop LCD screens. We have a much larger version called FOCAL at work that uses 6 polarised projectors on a large 4m concave screen that looks pretty good but these VisionStations look much more practical to have around the place as FOCAL requires special hardware and a whole room. Imagine using these as video conference facilities or attached to a robot on the other end, the possibilities are endless.

Links:
VisionStation Product Page

Completely flat Cables

This is a great idea, flat cables. These cables are completely flat so that you can stick them to surfaces and they do not get in the way or place them under carpet without having a bump in the way. One of my friends would have loved this as instead of spending days and days cutting channels into his brick walls to lay cable conduits he could have just run this cable around the place and then simply paint over the top.

Links
DeCorp FlatWire Products

Apple have finally released a 2 button mouse

Apple have finally released a mouse that has more than one button. But they could not just create any normal two button mouse, no that would just be easy. What they have created is the Mighty Mouse that takes the standard one button mouse and adds a few interesting things. This includes a pointer on top that allows you to scroll in all directions like the trackpoints you find in the middle of laptop keyboards. The side holders that have been present on the earlier one button mice is now squeezable and acts as a button. But you ask where are the two buttons, well they inferred based on the pressure applied to two sensors at the front of the mouse. So think of the one button mouse that uses pressure to determine which button is being pressed. Pretty funky idea, next is to go to my nearest mac store and try one.

Links
Apple Mighty Mouse

The Goldfish Hearing Aid

This is not quite as good as the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy's fictional bablefish that converts speech from one language to any other by just sticking a babelfish in your ear. The Goldfish is based on the concept that real goldfish have a short term memory, the gadget therefore allows you to replay the last 10 seconds of conversation so that you can never miss anything. This is great for the times when you thought you heard something or did not quite understand what someone else said so you replay the conversation.

Links
The Goldfish Hearing Aid

Egg Time

This is a great idea, however, that is all that it is. It is called the egg and is a physical extension to a collaboration project that uses a community calendar. The egg glows and as it gets closer to an appointment the light slowly diminishes. If you turn the egg upside down it resets the glow and notifies other meeting attendees that you are going to be late. This is a great idea if you have lots of meetings with fellow researchers, in my case, who are notorious for being late to meetings. If they are going to be late then you automatically know this and therefore you can spend a little more time working rather than sitting around waiting for your colleague. The only problem that I can see is that this may breed a bad habit of always being late to meetings, which will become very annoying for all around you; therefore, this should be coupled with a penalty system of some kind.

Links
Jennifer Bove's Egg

Video Display for your Glasses/Sunnies

I love these little screens that mount on glasses. I have seen a few over the last 4 years and none of them have really looked like they could actually work. This one looks like it will be coming to the commercial market soon and it small enough to not be cumbersome, however still looks a little on the heavy side. As I am one of those typical geeks that wears glasses I would love to be able to augment my current glasses with video capabilities. What I am really interested is a display that is less obtrusive but still can display a reasonable high resolution in colour. If possible I would also be interested to have the ability to turn it on and off or even an intermediary mode that allows me to see through it so that I can see the real world at the same time as the screen itself. I do not ask for much :) Maybe another few more years as the technology is getting smaller, which means it is lighter and pack more and more in. This product is aimed at the the Japanese commuter market that have powerful mobile phones that can store and play small Mpeg4 video files or display SMS messages without dragging out their mobile phones.

Links
Teleglass by Scalar

Furgles CD Holder

These guys have to be the cutest CD cases I have seen for a while.

Links
Furgles CD Cases

Video Keyboard

Ok this has to be one of the coolest keyboards (and also very expensive) as it sports multiple OLED colour displays. Where do you ask? Well in the keys silly. Every key on this keyboard has a small full colour OLED screen allowing each of the buttons to display an image. This allows for different applications to actually display a small image on the button. Click on the link below and have a look for yourself. Unfortunately only prototype design.

Links
Optimus Keyboard

Samsung to Create 100Mb Solid State HDD

In a quick article at AppleInsider there is mention that Apple may in the future use Samsung developed solid state (flash memory) hard drives in their laptops. The benefit of using flash based storage devices is that they are lighter, consume less power, less prone to damage from vibration or shocks and are faster to access data. Samsung currently can create 16Gb versions of these drives but hope to have 100Gb drives in the near future.

Links
AppleInsider Article

O'Neill's H2 solar backpack

This has got to be the coolest looking Solar Powered / iPod integrated backpack I have seen. Developed by O'Neill the same snowbording company that integrated iPod controls into the sleeve of a snow board jacket. I wonder how much it costs?

Links
O'Neill's H2 solar backpack

HD DVD DRM Article

One of my friends has put together this article that discusses the problems behind HD DVD, the new standard for High Definition DVD video discs. The article is reasonably long but does provide a good overview of the issues and links to relevant articles. As I am a developer and wish to sell the products that I create I can understand why DRM exists but from the sounds of it the new DRM on HD DVD will make HD DVD less accessible, which is less than favourable. If HD DVD will not be available on computers, as suggested in the article, it will severely hamper the distribution of HD DVD and a majority of content producers and users will stick with the original DVD format. The other big problem that I can see if DRM gets in the way of using the product flexibly (ie on a large variety of devices that currently exist or are developed in the future) then users will start to turn more to other means (ie illegal downloads) and therefore resulting in the incorrect effect of forcing users towards illegal means.

Links
HD DVD DRM Article

Innovative Laptop Cases

Radtech has released a new laptop case called tekmod. What makes these cases different to most others is their ability to allow you to use your laptop while staying inside the case. But that is not all, there is a built-in riser to allow air to flow around the laptop to keep it cool and you also still have access to all your ports at the back of the laptop. Not wanting to use the laptop in the bag, well you can also access like normal top loading bags. Have a look through the photos at the site as it comes in a variety of colours. Would love something like this for my 17“ powerbook hint hint :)

On the same site they also make a aluminium case for mac laptops, which provide the most protection I have seen in any laptop designed case. This sturdy case is called the MacTruck and would also look wonderful wrapped around my 17” Apple Powerbook.

Links
Tekmod Case
MacTruck Case

e-Ink Watch

Seiko has a new prototype watch being showed around the traps. What makes this really interesting is that it is using e-Ink's electronic paper technology, which allows for the display to wrap around the band and have a high resolution. Overall it creates one impressive looking watch.

Links
Engadget Article

Wireless USB

The next wireless technology may just be this, wireless USB. Unlike a wireless USB dongle that you can purchase nowadays that uses the 802.11 B or G standards this wireless adapter supports any USB device and can transfer data at full 480Mb/s USB data speeds. Now if these devices are really possible you can see bluetooth and other wireless devices disappearing; however, this depends on both the range and power consumption required to drive such an adapted.

Links
Wireless USB

Hitachi Microdrive Technology Explained

Hitachi have tried to explain how they are able to get the extremely large hard drive sizes on their new microdrives. However, there is a twist, they have done the explanation as a flash animation and a song. Funny to watch while still slightly informative.

Links
Hitachi Storage Animation

Multiple Computers – Single Keyboard and Mouse

At work and at home I have the annoying problem of multiple computers and little desk space for multiple keyboards and mice, well no longer. Introducing Synergy. Synergy allows you to run a service on one machine and clients on all other machines. With a little configuration it is then possible to move the mouse from one monitor to another like using multiple displays on a single machine. The software works seamlessly and it also shares your clipboard, all you need is multiple computers and a TCP/IP network connecting them together. But wait there is more, Synergy supports Mac OSX, Windows and Linux. Yes that is right you can seamlessly use one keyboard and mouse between all machine types. The OSX client and server is not as advanced as the windows version but still works very well. All that it is missing are some of the “nice to have” features. This software is up there with usefulness of QuickSilver, one of my other all time favorite programs. Download it now if you are using multiple computers, you will love it.

Links
Synergy Home Page
QuickSilver Home Page

The Ultimate Office Chair

I have used a few different office chairs over my career including kneel chairs but this has got to be the ultimate.

Links
Ambience Dore Office Chair

Top 100 Gadgets of All Time

Here is a great article with a whole list of gadgets that have been created over the past 100 or so years. Includes such items as the Sony Walkman and the Swiss Army Knife. Each item has a short blurb with the history of the item. It is a great trip down memory lane.

Links
Top 100 Gadgets of All Time

iPod Mini Time Zone for Eastern Australian States

Short Version: For Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra use the Magadan time zone.

Long Version: I recently have acquired a new iPod Mini. I have already have an ageing iPod 1st generation and I have really noticed how apple have updated the software from the 1st generation to the current 4th generation. There are lots of little things that make the latest iPods really work, items like not having to reboot when disconnecting from the computer or even the ability to show the current time in the title area. It is these little upgrades that have really impressed me with the iPod Mini. The only thing that I do not like about the iPod Mini is its support for Time Zones. Apple has made the iPods contain time zone settings so that when calendar information is transferred to the iPod from iCal all the time zone information is understood and enforced. However, to set the Time Zone you need to know all the other cities in your time zone as it does not use the time difference from UTC but rather the name of cities in the time zone. This works well if you know all the cities but for me, who lives on the east coast of Australia (+10 UTC), none of the Australian cities are listed. After searching on the Internet I finally could confirm that the russian city Magadan has the same time zone as Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra. So if you live in an eastern Australian City (except Brisbane that uses different time zone information and is contained in the iPod time zone list) use Magadan as your time zone.

Mac Frenzy

Ok there has been a complete frenzy to release new macs and mac-related items. Here is a quick roundup.

iPod Shuffle - Flash based MP3 Player

Mac Mini - Very small Mac with no monitor

iLife'05 - iPhoto 5, iMovie HD, iDVD 5, Garageband 2, iTunes 4.7

iWork'05 - Pages, Keynote 2

And then from Griffin Technology ...

Firewave - Surround Sound for the Mac

BlueTrip - Bluetooth audio for iPod

AirClick - Remote Control for Mac, PC, iPod and iPod Mini

XpressStand - Desktop stand for Apple Airport Express

SmartDeck - Intelligent Cassette Adapter for iPod

UPDATE - More Mac Goodness from Griffin Technology

Label Mic - Multipurpose Microphone

Dock800 - Firewire 800 Cable for iPod

TuneJuice - Battery Backup for iPod and iPod mini

RocketFM - USB TFM Transmitted for Mac and PC

SD and USB Memory Card In One

SanDisk is showing off a new SD/USB memory card at the CES 2005 electronics and gadgets show. The Register has an article about the card.

Links
The Register Article

AKG K240 Headphones

One of the best presents was given to me for christmas by my family, new AKG K240 Stereo Headphones. The sound quality of these headphones is absolutely brilliant with crisp reproduction of high a low sounds. Bass response is superb the best I have head from a pair of headphones. These are semi open headphones which means that people around you can hear your music but it creates for a more complete and rich sound.

AKG is a Harman company from the more well known Harman Kardon brand name. AKG headphones, microphones and other audio gear are some of the best pro equipment on the market. After hearing the quality of these headphones I started to have a look around the AKG website and found these HEARO 999 Audiosphere II headphones. Maybe these will be the next headphones that I will purchase myself!

Links
AKG K240 Page
AKG Web Site

External Firewire RAID drive

I use external firewire and USB hard drive solutions all the time to more data around or backup data on my systems. Here is a new Firewire enclosure that provides RAID solution in a very G5 Mac looking case with excellent cooling capabilities. The drive uses Firewire 800 to provide the high speed data access to the drive. The drive is being marketed for video and audio professionals but is also perfect for any geeks out there who want the best hardware money can buy, you know who you are!

Links
G-Raid Site

iPod Photo

Well amazingly enough the rumours about an iPod with a colour screen were actually true. Apple has today released the new iPod Photo that contains a colour screen and can display photos. To help get the photos onto the new iPod Apple has also released version 4.7 of iTunes that understands the iPod photo so that you can transfer your photos from iPhoto to you iPod Photo. A new Dock is included and contains cables to connect it up to your TV so that you can display your photos on your TV. When playing music it will display the album art as stored in iTunes. And now you can play the built-in solitaire card game in colour. All this with an amazing 12 hour battery life, way to go Apple.

Links
iPod Photo Page
iTunes 4.7 Page

Fighting for the TV Remote?

Fighting for the TV remote in your home? Well get one up on the rest of the other idiot box watches and just turn the TV off on them. With Mitch Altman of San Francisco's invention you can turn off pretty much any TV using the keyring sized gadget. I can just imagine all sorts of ways to annoy people with this gadget including all those TVs in public places like airports, shops and bars. It is also small enough to hide that it was you who turned the TV off :)

Links
ABC News Article

Power Charging Pad

Splashpower is a new device not on the market yet (hopefully 2005) which allows you to charge your mobile devices by simply placing them onto a mouse mat sized pad. It works by using induction to transfer power between the mat and the thin Splashmodule that is attached to the mobile device. This means that you will need to have a Splashmodule for each of your mobile devices, which I believe could be quite expensive. The other question that I have is how are the manufactures going to support all the different types of connectors mobile devices use nowadays. Splashpower will also allow you to charge multiple devices at the same time. This type of device would seriously clean up my desk space as i would no longer need hundreds of different power cords for each of the different devices.

Links
Splashpower Website

Minature Jet Engines to Power Future Mobile Devices

New Scientist has an interesting article about a mob at Georgia Institute of Technology who have created a mini jet engine that works within silicon wafers. These guys have successfully created a small engine that produces enough electricity to power small mobile devices and this is using the research demonstration version. The key benefit of these microengines is that they take up less space than current fuel cell technology that is starting to appear in commercial applications. I am always for devices that can extend the life of my gadgets but what are the environmental issues of these microengines when compared with conventional batteries even though current batteries also contain highly toxic materials.

Links
New Scientist article on Miniature jet engines

Colour iPod Rumors Grow

I have seen a rumor growing that Apple is to release a new iPod with a 60gig hard drive and a brand spanking new colour screen. The rumors also identify that it can link up with iPhoto so that it can display photos on its colour screen. As to whether this is true of not is still to be seen, but it will be an interesting item to see. I normally do not blog these types of rumors and leave it up to the rumor sites but I have seen this rumor on too many different sites and RSS feeds to not take notice.

Links
Google Search on “color ipod”
MacRumour Site

BluePhoneElite: OSX Bluetooth Phone App

I have used a number of different bluetooth applications that can connect to my Ericsson T39 mobile phone but BluePhoneElite is one of the best for connecting with a mobile phone. BluePhoneElite will automatically connect to you mobile phone and unlike other similar programs can actually display your phone signal strength and battery levels. It also contains a very good SMS management interface that can display the actual contents of your phone (both the phone and SIM card). This SMS management interface allows you to manipulate the SMS messages saved on the phone. This is great for me as the Ericsson's T39 phone interface is very slow and cumbersome so using this software I can quickly view or delete messages stored in the phone. If you want to see screenshots of the application running then continue reading.

BluePhoneElite Menu

BluePhoneElite SMS Manager

BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - General

BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - Phones

BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - Calls

BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - SMS

BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - Proximity

BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - Customise

Links
BluePhoneElite Website
VersionTracker Site for BluePhoneElite

Treo and Microsoft Exchange Unite

Great news according to engadget article palmOne has signed a deal with the Microsoft Exchange group to improve the support between the treo devices and Microsoft Exchange servers. Why this is so great is that most work environments are dominated by Microsoft and use Microsoft Exchange for their email servers (like my work).

One point that I am worried about is that palm will make this as one method to slowly move over to the Microsoft mobile environment, which I really hope does not happen. PalmOS is much cleaner and more elegant (read better designed and faster) operating system for mobile devices and it would be great big disappointment to see the better software die.

Links
Engadget Article

iPod Rumors: Flash based capability and built-in radio

A couple of rumors have just been placed onto the Internet about Apple's very popular iPod. The first is about the potential that a new version of the iPod line using Solid State flash memory version could be released by December. If they did have a solid state iPod it would allow the Apple designers to create a player that was much smaller in physical size and have a longer battery life but a smaller music storage capacity.

The second rumor is that a future iPod version may contain a radio. This second rumor is based on a recent job advert from the Apple iPod division for a RF Engineer. As the source of this rumor is a little more sketch I would say that this could also mean that a wireless remote or WIFI support could also be inferred by this job advert.

It will be interesting to see where apple goes with the iPod in the future.

Links
Flash-based iPod Rumor
iPod Radio Rumor

Team OSAKA - Little Robot Movies

Team OSAKA has been around for a while now but they have now posted some videos of their robots going through various actions. These autonomous robots can be bought in Kit form and are programmable. They can even play soccer (seems like it is the favorite past time of juvenile robots). The best part of this site are the videos towards the bottom of the page. I am quite amazed at how flexible this little robot and it paints a brilliant picture of what humanoid robots will be able to do in the future.

Links
Team OSAKA Website

Logitech MX900 on Mac

I just bought myself one of the Logitech MX900 bluetooth mice that are being sold for around $150AUD. Officially Logitech is not supporting OSX although as Apple supports the bluetooth profile for using mice it is a piece of cake to use with OSX and the built-in bluetooth capability. When testing I also tried the mouse with the bluetooth dongle that I have from D-Link and found the mouse extremely jerky and unusable. However using the built-in bluetooth in my Powerbook G4 it worked perfectly without a problem. One reason it might not work with my bluetooth dongle is that it is quite old as I bought it when apple was first supporting bluetooth so the newer bluetooth dongles may work just fine. Also you can use the provided cradle that contains a bluetooth receiver that also works with the mac. The provided cradle will charge the mouse when not in use so that your mouse will be fully charged whenever you need it.

To set up the mouse is a very simple process when using the Apple Bluetooth capability:

1. Load System Preferences and click on the bluetooth link to display the bluetooth preference pane.
2. Click on the “Setup New Device” button which will displays this screen:
3. 
4. Select the mouse radio button and then click next to display this screen:
5. 
6. This screen will start searching for bluetooth devices. At this point in time you need to push the “connect” button on the bottom of the mouse. After clicking the connect button on the mouse the computer fill find the mouse and get its name. Click the “Continue” button.
7. 
8. The computer will then pair itself with the mouse.
9. 
10. Finally it will display the end screen:
11. 
    Your MX900 Bluetooth mouse is now setup and installed.

If you want to install the mouse using the cradle instead of the Apple internal bluetooth capability all you need to do is plug the USB cable of the cradle into the mac and click the connect button on the cradle followed by the connect button on the mouse. Pressing the two connect buttons will pair the two devices together and will appear to OSX as a standard USB mouse.

Once your mouse is installed you can then set each of the buttons to different expose actions. If you are not sure which button is which I have created an image that identifies the button numbers (see image at the start of this article). As Logitech does not support OSX it means that there is no software provided by logitech to map all the buttons on the mouse to different functionality. Although it is possible to use Game Pad Companion to provide this mapping capability.

I really like the whole Logitech MX series of mice (both cordless and wired) and this mouse continues my high regard for these mice. They are the most comfortable and smooth mice available on the market. They are more expensive than other mice but you will not get a more precise and well designed mouse than the Logitech MX series mice.

New iPod Case

Unlike many of the other iPod cases that I have seen on the Internet this one stands out for me because of the amount of thought that has been put into its design. The Prie Podwallet contains a number of really cool features like:
- storing credit cards
- storing notes and coins
- room for headphones
- special holder to wrap cables around and also acts as a strengthener to to the wallet's spine
- holder for an additional battery that can power the iPod for extended periods
- oh and room to store your iPod safely with a window so that the iPod controls can be accessed externally.

There is a nice gallery of the features on the website.

Stylish Tea Jug

The MocoLoco site has a great new tea pot on review with a few fancy features.
- Strains the tea leaves automatically
- Lid automatically opens when you pour the tea
- Two methods of brewing the tea (with or without tanin)
- Can use as either a strainer or plunger type infusion
- Looks damned sexy.

Have a read of the page, which also has some large close up photos of the tea jug.

SyncML

Many of the mobile phones that you can purchase have support for this little known standard called SyncML that allows for mobile devices to sync with your different PIM (Personal Information Management) applications. Up until now not many people have actually made much use of SyncML but with the J2EE application Sync4J you can easily host your own SyncML server.

Links
SyncML Technical Standards - Open Mobile Alliance Website
Sync4J - SyncML Server

Virtual Reality Environment That Allows You To Walk

University of Tsukuba has developed a prototype system that allows a person to physically walk through a virtual environment. Most traditional virtual reality require the user to stand completely still and then use with hand gestures or control nobs to navigate through the virtual environment. Because there is no physical feeling of movement it makes these virtual environments feel a little fake. University of Tsukuba has created a new gadget called the CirculaFloor that consists of a number of moveable platforms. The moveable platforms are able to move independently across a flat floor so that there is always a platforms where you place you foot. By constantly moving these platforms it is possible to walk over these platforms but staying in the same physical location. Each platforms is able to move in any direction so that the user can also change direction and walk in any direction.

I believe that this is quite an impressive invention and will allow for much greater immersion when using virtual environments. There is a quick video (22Mb) that shows the CirculaFloor in action. For viewing the video it seems that the first prototype version is a little slow, forcing the user to only take small steps, but I am sure this will be fixed in production versions.

Links
CirculaFloor Website
Video (22Mb)

When is a sink not a sink?

I did not quite understand what I was seeing when I first saw the pictures of the HF01 sink by Thoms & Nilsson. The HF01 uses a solid stone slab as the sinks basin, but instead of being concave it is completely flat allowing the water to flow straight over the edges to the drain at the base of the bases stand on the floor. The first thought that came to mind was why would you do this, the Thoms & Nilsson website answers this question. According to the makers with the advent of mixing taps it is no longer necessary to have a basin to mix the water to a comfortable temperature allowing for the unusual design of the HF01.

Links
Thoms & Nilsson Website

Toy Rollercoaster

Have you ever wanted to design your own fun park including a roller coaster? CoasterDynamix have delivered your dreams with a toy roller coaster kit, lego style. They even have a video of it in action!

Links
CoasterDynamix Website
Download Video

Identification via your skin

The EE Times is running an article on a technology that allows for data to be transferred via your skin. This can allow devices to send information between each other as long as they are both touching your skin. This could allow for you data on your identity be easily transmitted to a car lock, or secure door or ship details between to an external device. According to the article they have been able to transfer data at 9600 baud which is faster enough to send enough data to move identity information. They are comparing this technology with RFID or bluetooth although I believe that these technologies are to be used in different applications so can not be compared directly although it does open up some interesting doors.

Links
EE TImes Article

Motorola and Apple join to bring iTunes to a mobile phone near you

Apple and Motorola are working together to develop a new generation of Motorola phones that will support the transfer of music between iTunes on both mac and PC and you phone via USB and Bluetooth. This partnership completes the monopoly that apple has in the music device arena with their Internet music store, iTunes music software, iPod portal player and now with ubiquitous mobile phones. Apple has been likened to Microsoft with their windows operating system to Apple in the music industry, although unlike Microsoft the apple implementation work and work well.

The new Motorola phones are not to be delivered until early 2005 but will provide a new level of capability and connection for the complete Apple platform. One thing I do hope to happen from this partnership is that Motorola learns to develop easier and more elegant user interface designs, an area that Motorola has been notoriously poor in the past.

Links
Apple Press Release
Motorola Press Release

Apple Releases 4th Generation iPod

Apple has released its 4th Generation iPod which has gone back to the style of the 2nd generation user interface with the wheel design and a physical center button, all design changes that I am glad to see. The new iPod is sporting the larger capacity drives (up to 40gig) and has dropped in price. Also available are the on the fly playlist creation and a larger battery life. For a good review of the iPod have a read of the Time.com article or go to the apple ipod page.

Links
Time.com Article on iPod
Apple iPod page

New: Rug ..... with a hump

I did not get it when I first read the text of this blog but then I loaded the full page and saw the picture and realised the possibilities. I am not sure about other people but I do enjoy laying around surfing on the Internet, chatting with friends and generally working on my laptop. I have WiFi throughout my house so anywhere anytime I can have Internet access. It looks great, anyone out there want to buy one for me :)

Links
Rug Blog
Home Page of the Rug Maker

New Apple software and hardware

Once again Apple has released information about their new operating system and hardware. The new operating system codenamed Tiger is planned to be released in the middle of 2005. The new features in the operating system are:

• Operating System level searching functionality called Spotlight - more information
• New version of iChat AV - more information
• RSS syndication feed reader in Safari Internet Browser - more information
• New widget capability called Dashboard, this is a clone of the Konfabulator application - more information
• Automator, a new program to do batch processing of files - more infromation
• Enhanced ability to use voice and audio to control and interact with your mac called VoiceOver - more information
• New Sync capabilities, includes developer support to use the new sync services - more information
• Enhance UNIX capabilities - more information
• New version of XCode Development IDE - more information

Apple has also released a new set of LCD displays but instead of using the standard Apple ADC connectors these new monitors now using the standard DVI connector. In addition Apple is now offering the absolutely huge 30“ cinema display, please take note that this new display also requires a specific card to drive the monitor because of the high resolution it natively runs at. To top it all off the new displays are clad in aluminum like the G5 desktops.

Impressive Case Modification

I normally do not take much notice of computer case mods but this particular modification I am very impressed with. The creator has gone to some extreme lengths to create a very complete and spectacular case modification. The best way to understand is to just look at the photos on the site (go to site) as the photo thumbnail does not do it justice, although if you click on it you can see a larger version.

Toshiba to release laptop using Fuel Cel

Bloomberg is reporting that Toshiba will be delivering a new laptop that will be powered by Methanol allowing the laptop to run for 10 hours. I heard about these “Fuel Cells” for electronic devices about a year ago and have been hanging out for devices to start shipping using these cells. The fuel cells replace the use of batteries allowing mobile devices to run for longer. The only problem is that at the moment fuel cells are not allowed on airplanes restricting the use of such technologies.

iPod Case

Now this is what you call an iPod Case. Designer Karl Lagerfeld has designed this case based on what he uses to store the 40 iPods that he uses to store all his CDs. But wait there is more, the price tag is $1500 USD.

Simple Tech

One of my hobby horses that I keep spouting to people around work and in the software community is that software should be simple, easy and pleasant to use. No software program should be overly complex, look ugly or unintuitive. I have found an article on Mac Daily News with comments from Dr. John Maeda from M.I.T. Media lab about his opinions of software and hardware development. He is also of the opinion that more software and hardware products should be easier. A perfect example of an easy to use interface is the older stlyle iPod or the new mini iPod, both have a highly intuitive user interface and layout. The new iPod is not as good on the location of the buttons but is still light years ahead of many other MP3 players on the market today.

User interface and product design go beyond just hardware and software for your PC, similar guidelines must also be applied to web sites, information kiosks or even paper print products. If you look around the web all the best commercial sites are simple, easy to use, visually appealing and provide the required functionality with little fuss or confusion.

Sony releases VERY small laptop

The register has an article about a very small palmtop computer based on the Intel Centrino processor with no keyboard. The screen of the small computer is very small and does not have a great native resolution, but these types of features are not as important when purchasing such a small computing device.

Goto article
Here is another article (Found by Mof)

PQI Intelligent Stick

Nowadays everyone has one of those USB thumb drives that allow files to be stored on a little solid state memory stick with a USB connector on the end. Most of these drives are very small but not that small. One of the biggest problems when using these thumbdrives is that they do not esily fit in the USB port next to other devices that are also plugged in, especially when using a laptop where the USB ports are very close together. This is where the PQI Intelligent Stick is great because of its tiny tiny tiny size.

When I first saw the Intelligent stick on the Internet I thought that it was small. THen I purchased one and had it in my hot little hands and was even more amazed at exact how small it was, it is extremely small. It will fit by itself in most USB ports without any problems but it also comes with an adapter that makes the stick have the same connector as normal USB devices. The reason for the adapter is that the stick is actually only half the thickness of normal USB connectors! Along with the adapter the stick also comes with a credit card sized holder that can hold two Intelligent sticks.

The sticks are available in mutliple sizes arranging from 128Mb all the way to 1Gb and come in USB 1.0 and USB 2.0 versions. I bought the 256Mb USB 2.0 version. There is also a very small light not normally visible that lights up when the stick is in use. I have no gripes with this product other than the credit card type holder does not hold the sticks very tight and I would be worried that it will fall out of the holder. I also would recommend that the manufacturers actually alter the holder to add a hole to the holder so that it could be attached to a neck chain or other cord.

Rating: 10/10

Touchstream LP Keyboard Review

When I first saw the Touchstream LP keyboard in my daily Internet trawling my interest was peeked. I have always been interested in different methods of user input. Although the Touchstream is still a keyboard what seperates it from the rest are its gesture abilities.

My first impressions of the keyboard included comments like, wow, amazing, sweeeeet, huh, damn and crap. The mixed reaction was because the Touchstream is very different from other keyboards. Unlike other keyboards the Touchstream provides zero tactile feedback due to the use of two very large touchpads for the keyboard (like the ones found on laptops). This means that you have no feedback so if you slightly miss a key on the keyboard there is no tactile feedback to correct yourself. Therefore when I first started to use the keyboard I kept on typing the wrong letters, which was very frustrating. The keyboard itself tries to help by using a built-in dictionary and guesses what you are typing and tries to correct. Overall this works fairly well but you will still need to relearn how to use keyboard. As I can already touchtype the learning process for the keyboard did not take too long but was still a painful process.

What makes the re-learning process all worth it are the gestures that the keyboard provides. The two large touchpads are capable of registering multiple touch points to allow for quite complex gestures. Depending on how many figures and the motions used on these touch pads and arrary of different gestures can be performed. For a complete list of gestures possible visit the Touchstream website. Using gestures you are able to open applications, cut, copy, paste, switch applications. If you do not like the standard gestures the keyboard comes with a java utility to remap the gestures to whatever you would like.

Another great feature are the multiple modes that the keyboard can be set to. The most interesting mode is the gaming mode that changes the keyboards operation to allow its use in games. You can also customise the gestures so that they can be used within the game. Have you ever wanted to reload by just expanding your fingers well the Touchstream allows for this and many other customisable gestures.

If you are like me and use both mac and pc then you will be happy to hear that the Touchstream works on both systems the same. As some settings are actually stored in the keyboard there are a few problems when moving the keyboard back and forth between the mac and pc systems but I did not find this to be much of a problem. I actually found that the support for the mac was more integrated than PC.

Overall the Touchstream is a great piece of kit although most users will find the lack of feedback and need to learn how to use it annoying. I would only recommend the Touchstream to users who use computers all the time and will therefore spend the time to learn how to use the keyboard.

Rating: 8/10

BenQ FP591 LCD Monitor Review

I recently bought a BenQ FP591 monitor (visit site) for the display of my multiple digital photos. The LCD monitor has two optional accessories, a card reader and TV tuner. I only bought the card reader so this review will only talk about this component.

Overall the monitor looks great with a very stilish surround. It is only a 15“ display but for my purposes that was fine. The maximum resolution is 1024x768 which is perfect for displaying photos or basic computer operation. If you are to use this as your main computer monitor I would recommend getting a different monitor that can do at least 1280x1024 as this is a much better resolution for using your computer.

Basic computer operation was not the reason why I bought this monitor, its ability to display a slideshow of photos stored on cards stuck into the optional card reader was what attracted me. The card reader comes as a seperate module that is slid into a hidden compartment at the top of the monitor. Installation of the module was easy and problem free. The problems started when I started to put photos onto an SD card and stick it into the appropriate slot. The monitor did not easily recognise the card and it took a number of times turning off the power and back on again to recognise the photo. The next problem is that the monitor displays the photo at full screen and will stretch the photo to fit. This stretching distorted many of the photos I had. I therefore had to go through all my photos and scale them to 1024x768 resolution and then pad them with black so that they took up the complete screen.

Another feature of the monitor is that it can be connected up to your computer via the supplied USB cable so the cards inserted into the monitor can be read in your computer. The same problem with recognising the cards still existed when using the card reader in this mode. An added benefit is that by using the card reader module it is possible to conduct a firmware patch on the monitor. I am hoping that future firmware patches will fix these problems with the monitor.

One of the card slots on the monitor is a compact flash slot, I therefore enquired with the BenQ representative if this could read the Microdrives that are available is sizes >1gig. This would therefore allow me to store a large number of photos on the Microdrive and then just let the monitor scroll through the photos. When I tried to insert the Microdrive I discovered that it physically did not fit through the facia. After removing the facia by taking the card reader module apart and cutting a larger opening the Microdrive fit through and did actually work in the reader.

Overall the monitor looks great. Once it actually reads the cards inserted the monitor works quite well. With its firmware update feature hopefully many of these problems will be rectified.

Rating: 5/10

Gizmodo Website

Ok this has got to be one of the best web sites that I have seen for a while. Int contains reviews on many different gadgets that are available. This site is a must for any fellow gadget freaks or you just want to see some of the new items available.

Go to Gizmodo