Computer Gadgets New

by Nilay Patel, posted Aug 5th 2008 at 11:31AM

Seriously, we’ve been hearing about the EOS 7D for well over a year now, with the chatter predictably heating up before every major trade show — and with just over a month before Photokina, it’s happening all over again. Hopefully Canon actually has this semi-legendary $1,899 full-frame DSLR to show us this time — the 5D is getting pretty ancient.

P.S.- We have no way of knowing if this image is real or not, so don’t get too excited out there.

[Thanks, David]

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Filed under: Digital Cameras

Last week there was the combination webcam that featured four other gadgets built-in.  Well this has just as many gadgets built-in, but has a slightly more streamlined look.  Instead of having multiple arms with different devices on the end, this one merely puts all the gadgets into one piece.  Within this little guy is a webcam, speaker, light and microphone.  The light itself features 8-LED lights to make sure your work space stays illuminated.

One down side with it being all one piece is that wherever the webcam is pointed is directly where the light will be pointed as well.  Which means you lose your task lighting when you’re broadcasting.  On the plus side, you will always have a perfectly angled spotlight.  I still am not entirely sold on the combination desktop products.  I tend to prefer a combined gadget to several different ones, however, ones like this have too many drawbacks.  Having them all-in-one piece just makes things more complicated than necessary.  It is being sold for £29.99 or about $59.

Source: everythingusb

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The Japanese have it good - Softbank has decided to reduce the monthly fees for the iphone 3G so that they will be able to expand the current customer base, picking up new people who are more conscious of where their precious yen goes to each month. This means the monthly fee will be approximately $27 after conversion, a startling reduction compared to the original $67 price point. I’m pretty sure that with such a price cut, you can expect to see many more folks in Japan pick up this user-friendly phone. Hopefully the factories pumping out this magical handset will be able to have enough elves and pixies working round the clock to meet the worldwide demand.

Now I know that this Karlsson vibrating alarm clock might get sniggers and strange look from certain people, as they think you’d rather be aroused each morning instead of being rudely awakened by a deafening ring. Still, if you’re willing to look at it maturely, this is one gentle alarm clock that gets you out of bed. Place it under your pillow and let the $59 wonder get to work at the designated wake up time. During the day, you can keep its batteries juiced up by docking it in the charging dock, ready for the next morning’s work. If snooze buttons are your favorite friends, then hitting snooze enough times will cause it to resort to an audible alarm instead.

OSD Displays has just developed a new 3.5″ transmissive QVGA TFT LCD display that feature LED backlight and a built-in resistive touch screen. It would be interesting to see which hardware manufacturers will adopt this panel for their devices in the near future - it would be cool to have something of this size in most cell phones, although battery life has to be taken into consideration. OSD Displays managed to squeeze in a brightness level of 240cd/m2 and a contrast ratio of 350:1 while displaying 16.7 million colors in your face.

If you think all your USB flash drive can do is to transport precious data everywhere you go, think again. The Freecom MediaPlayer XS enables you to play audio and video from a USB flash drive, redirecting such media to a stereo or TV instead. This means there is no need for a media center PC anymore (if you aren’t into anything more than just watching or listening off the respective media files from your USB flash drive, of course). The MediaPlayer XS is compatible with virtually any USB external hard drive or flash drive, regardless of whether they have been formatted as FAT32 or NTFS formats. File compatibility includes MP3, WMA, WAV, MPEG-1, 2 or 4, JPG, M-JPG, BMP and GIF. Each $109 purchase comes with a remote control.

Motorola has finally been able to snag some talent to head up the company’s mobile device division which Motorola plans on spinning off next year. Dr. Sanjay Jha will leave his post as COO of Qualcomm to assume the new position. As part of the new position, Dr. Jha will also become co-CEO of Motorola Inc., the current holding company of Motorola Mobile Devices.

Greg Brown, who has been the sole CEO of Motorola before Dr. Jha’s addition, was also announced CEO of Motorola’s Broadband Mobility Solutions business on Monday. Clearly, that announcement, in addition to Dr. Jha’s addition sets up the ability for Motorola to cleanly separate into two separate entities next year. Qualcomm also took the opportunity to name Len Lauer as its new COO. Lauer formerly held the title of executive vice-president of Qualcomm and group president.

The naming of the new CEO of Motorola’s mobile device business is huge when it comes to regaining investor confidence in the company. Investors don’t like uncertainty and the stock price clearly pays the price when that happens. Motorola shares already rose on the news of the announcement on Monday. You can expect that trend to continue until Motorola finally splits as some investors look to cash in on basement prices of the company before it splits.

Read more from the Motorola and Qualcomm press releases.

by Ryan Block, posted Aug 5th 2008 at 3:00AM

It’s been a while since Sonos last had a significant hardware announcement, so welcome into the world their new ZP120 ($500) and Z90 ($350), as well as the $1,000 BU150 bundle (which includes both the new devices and the same original controller). The main difference, which we’d already heard: they now both support SonosNet 2.0, which uses MIMO to double the wireless distance between nodes. Also clear to those paying close attention, the amp-enabled aluminum-clad flagship model (ZP120) has undergone an intense weight loss treatment, leaving it significantly smaller than its predecessor (but still capable of driving 55W of sound).

Sonos is also launching the 2.6 version of its desktop software, which indexes more music than before (65k tracks total) and, surprisingly enough, gives new AND existing users $200 in free music from sites like eMusic and Livedownloads. Of course, the one piece of Sonos gear we’ve been most longing to see updated — the $400 controller — has gone totally untouched, and won’t even be getting SonosNet 2.0. Maybe they’ll throw us a bone and hook us up with an ipod touch / iphone controller app in the mean time, but we’re not holding our breath. Photos and unboxing / hands-on shots below.

Gallery: Sonos gets official on ZP120 and ZP90, but no new controller

Gallery: Sonos ZP120 and ZP90 hands-on

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Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Audio

Strange to see Motorola’s VE240 candybar handset make an appearance on the company’s site despite not being accompanied by a formal announcement. That means we have to play the guessing game where specifications and hardware configuration is concerned. I’m placing my money on the VE240 to at least support Bluetooth connectivity, and it could go either way where CDMA or GSM network support is concerned. Design-wise, this is definitely a budget handset and with the inclusion of music playback keys on the outside, you can be sure that MP3 playback is supported to help make your mundane trips to the office more interesting.

When surveyed as to whether customers would prefer a stand alone Blu-ray player over a Sony PS3 with same player, the majority preferred to pay less for the player and have a hi-def video game console tossed in for good measure. The study, conducted by ABI Research shows that more than half of consumers aren’t thrilled with the obscene price point of a stand alone alone player, preferring to add value to their purpose by going with the Playstation 3 instead. The study goes on to say that, although 23 percent of consumers are planning a Blu-ray purchase, even those aren’t in a hurry to get one, choosing to wait until at least 2009 before they take the Blu-ray leap.

In addition, the study also found that a whopping 87% of Playstation 3 users do watch Blu-ray movies on their PS3 player. The study’s findings are great news for SONY who is enjoying brisk sales of the Blu-ray version of the playstation 3 game console. So, when one considers that Blu-ray sales are staggering at the current price of between $350 and 500, it isn’t surprising at all that consumers would rather have a great gaming platform tossed in for good measure.

Kudos to Sony for being so forward thinking in tossing in the Blu-ray player from the outset.

Hat Tip – Crave

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