Hands on with the new Olive Palm Centro |
A common gift people will give themselves for the holiday season is a new phone. With broadband networks getting faster by the minute, a phone that is smart enough to handle surfing the internet, getting email, supporting IM’s and taking pictures becomes more and more attractive. This holiday season we had the opportunity to take a look at a couple of Palm’s smartphones, and in particular we spent some time with the new Olive-colored Palm Centro.
If you’re in the market for your first smartphone or you’re just looking for something that’s slick and easy to use with broadband access you will be well-served to take a look at the Palm Centro. Palm has been getting some mixed reviews lately when placed against some of the latest in smartphone technology such as RIM’s Blackberry or Apple’s iPhone, but we found the Centro to be a refreshing and fun device, and at just the right price.


The X-Touch Mixer faucet does away with antiquated analog knobs or levers and replaces them with buttons so you can regulate exactly what temperature the water is. It even has a digital readout to show you exactly what temp it is. I don’t know about you, but when I wash my hands or take a shower, I don’t put that much thought into it. You know when it feels warm enough after all. Do we really need to be so anal about water temp? Apparently so.
Sierra Wireless has just introd two new ExpressCard modems for HSUPA wireless users. They feature download speeds up to 7.2Mbps and upload speeds up to 5.76Mbps. The AirCard 501 supports 850 / 1900 / 2100 MHz bands, while the AirCard 502 covers 900 / 1900 / 2100 MHz.
iLuv
John Maushammer enjoyed some minor fame in geek circles with his
Imagine how many times great musicians have lost masterpieces just because they didn’t have a way to document it. That’s where the iDea guitar from Ovation comes in. It’s the first guitar to feature a built-in MP3 player for just such occasions. There isn’t much info on specs, but it probably has a decent amount of flash storage so you can record anything on a whim. It features a control panel on the side with an LCD display, mic input and a USB connection. It also has an easy to use 4-way controller for menu navigation. If that’s not enough, you get a set of basic EQ sliders for the bass, mid and treb.
These LightSpeed binoculars were designed mainly for military use and they’re capable of transmitting “untappable” voice and video signals to another set of binoculars using infrared. The LightSpeed system exploits free-space optics, which is the ability to pass data between two points using an optical beam. The method usually involves lasers, but this system uses eye-safe infrared LEDs, similar to those found in TV remotes.
I guess you could say that it’s the end of an era. Apple just issued a press release saying that this next MacWorld in January will be the last, and sadly Steve Jobs won’t be there. Instead, Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will be heading it up. It marks an end to the daily conference that has launched some of the most important pieces of consumer tech in recent years.
It looks like that mystery Korean handset
Jamo has announced the A 804 wall-mounted speaker. The A 804 will help you out by not having to buy separate home theater audio components when one model will do it all for you, with good performance in a slim speaker.
This is the funniest thing I’ve seen all day. We’ve seen tons of tons pics of the aftermath of what an LCD TV looks like after it’s had a Wiimote encounter of the nerd kind, but I’m thinking this may be the first actual recorded instance of the phenomenon. It’s captivating.
A good way to sell drives is to repackage them with preloaded special edition movies or music content. That’s what Sony is doing with their Microvault USB flash drives. The company has unveiled a number of movie titles that will be available in their MicroVault USB drives, as well as some music.
Anyone in the market for a small MP3 player should definitely take a hard look at the Sansa Clip from Sandisk before making a purchase. Comparable in size to the iPod Shuffle, the Sansa Clip packs in more features and now more storage giving some significant bang for your buck.
Mamoru is a small elder-care robot created by the University of Tokyo that sort of resembles an old granny, complete with little plastic bun. It’s designed to help the elderly or disabled remember where they left their remote control or their slippers, and even offers polite reminders when it’s time to take their medicine. Mamoru recognizes objects by using a wide-angle camera to study the room. Image recognition software tells it what each object is, so it knows where everything is.







