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55 of the Web's hottest gadget girls

Mike Evans — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 01:03:24 +0000

Damn it, why didn’t I think of this?! BuzzNewsRoom have rounded up no less than 55 of the Web’s hottest tech girls and put them all together in one glorious photo gallery.

If you’re feeling a bit overloaded by all the news coming out of CES 2009 at the moment (and we’ve only just started to cover it!), give yourself a little break by checking out yet more pictures of gadgets – except being worn by girls with slightly less clothing than you’d normally expect!

There’s no nudity, but It’s probably NSFW, though there’s only one way to find out

Check out the gallery at BuzznewsRoom.

Nokia and TuneBite inadvertently combine to provide DRM-free music

Mike Evans — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 01:14:44 +0000

In the battle for mobile music downloads, Nokia scored a bit of a hit during the summer with its appallingly-named “Comes with Music” download subscription service. Designed to take on Apple’s iTunes, Nokia’s music store equivalent seemed to have the edge, in that its Comes with Music phones can download tunes directly over the air (something the iPhone can’t do), and you don’t pay for the tunes individually.

Instead, you play a flat rate subscription that gives you unlimited downloads for a year, after which you get to keep the tracks you’ve downloaded, but not download any new tracks unless you take out another subscription.

Seems like a reasonably deal. Unfortunately, as with all things digital music, there’s catch – the tunes you download contain DRM that locks them into the mobile phone or PC you register with the service. In other words, you can keep your tunes for as long as you like, but you can’t transfer them to other devices.

Until now…!

Yes, after just a few months of the service going live, a new application has emerged called TuneBite that extracts all of the DRM from any tunes you’ve downloaded from Nokia’s stores. It works in a similar way to ye olde tape recording of the last century, in which you used something called cassette tapes to record the tunes you or your friends had on vinyl.

TuneBite plays the tune silently in the background (at speeds up to 54x the original) on your PC and re-records the resultant signal to any format you need – without DRM.

So, combining TuneBite with Nokia’s Comes With Music lets you download any tune you want – legally – for a year, and the you can use TuneBite to strip it of its DRM – legally! You’re then free to keep the resultant track forever, and transfer it to any other device you want to listen to it on – legally!

Very nice. The only thing you can’t do, of course, is upload it to a file sharing app, but that goes without saying.

The sooner DRM dies the better, and TuneBite is just one more nail in its coffin!

[Source: TechDigest]

New Dunkable SD cards, what more could you want?

admin — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 16:54:14 +0000

It must have been a strange day in Elecom’s offices when they were brainstorming the next big feature to add to their SDHC cards and someone piped up that the cards should be waterproof, and not only that, they must be able to handle a depth of 1meter… stranger still everyone must have agreed because the new SDHC cards from Elecom are going survive being immersed in H2O for up to 30 minutes.

Coming in 4GB and 8GB versions, with the new Elecom cards you will be able to store your favourite pics and keep them close by even when going for a dip in the pool.

[Source: OhGizmo]

Spotify music streaming review – one go and you're hooked!

Mike Evans — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:38:46 +0000

The blogosphere is currently awash with rave reviews about the new Spotify music streaming service. Spotify is a new take on music downloading in that you don’t download music at all – you stream it onto your PC.

Now I’m usually skeptical about such things, but Spotify is different – it’s bloody brilliant!

There are four key things that make Spotify unique, and which seem to have got the blogosphere so excited.

1. Speed and ease of use

OK, so that’s probably two things, but no matter. One of the best things about Spotify is its speed. You download a tiny client onto your machine, and within seconds you’re listening to the tunes you want to listen to, and in glorious 160kb-encoded Ogg Vorbis sound, too, which although not quite CD quality, it’s equivalent to DAB radio.

It really is ludicrously fast. Although you stream the music from Spotify’s server, there’s no delay whatsoever. Simply type in the name of the artist you want to listen to, click on a track, and bingo, you’re listening to it! Even the search is lightning fast.

It might be different once the service takes off, but at the moment, there’s no delay whatsoever. It’s actually quicker to listen to tunes on Spotify than it is to insert a CD and listen to it on your CD player.

2. Number of tunes

I’ve no idea how many tunes Spotify has, but it’s collection is vast. My tastes are, er, somewhat eclectic, yet it still pulls up tracks from the artists you want. I even typed in “Tiefschwartz”, which an incorrect spelling, and it responded instantly saying “did you mean “Tiefschwarz?” I clicked on yes, and instantly up popped dozens of Tiefschwarz tunes.

Never heard of Tiefscwarz? That’s my point! Obscure niche artists aren’t left out.

Neither are the big names, either. Lily Allen, Sugababes, Girls Aloud, even Radiohead and the Beatles, all are contained within Spotify’s gigantic database. Which leads me onto the third great thing of Spotify…

3. Support from the major record labels

Spotify is legit. Yes, it’s true, this vast record library is available because nearly all of the major record labels are on board. EMI, Universal, Sony BMG and Warner are all on board, giving Spotify access to a huge range of tunes. How does Spotify do this? Simple. It’s business model is what the majors should have looked into delivering years ago, rather than suing the arse off its customers.

Spotify, you’ll recall, is a music streaming service rather than a music download service. The tunes are streamed to your machine, so they don’t actually exist as a file that you can then share to your mates. This makes the record labels very happy.

There are three options you can choose to listen to your tunes.

Free ad-supported subscription – ads are inserted every now and then between your tracks, but they’re not intrusive at all
Per-day rate – pay 99p and you get 24 hour access with no ads
Monthly subscription –

Blu-Ray finally comes of age with the Sony BDP-S350

Mike Evans — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 20:56:00 +0000

This is the Sony BDP-S350, a new Blu-Ray from the people who invented the format. You’d think, given that Blu-Ray is a Sony technology, that the company’s Blu-Ray players would be up there with the best of them – but no, they’ve traditionally been over-priced and under-featured.

The Sony BDP-S350 changes all that, though, as not only is it a great Blu-Ray player, certainly up there with the best, but it’s only

Hands on review of the Pure Digital Flip Camcorder

Mike Evans — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:03:59 +0000

I’ve been sent the Pure Digital Flip to review, and was looking forward to writing many words about this small toy-like camcorder. Upon receiving it, though, I have a feeling this review might be a shorter than I intended! The Flip, you see, is a camcorder, pure and simple.

In fact, simple is the operative word. It’s not only designed to be simple, it’s probably the simplest camcorder on the market today. It’s so simple, even your Granny could use it!

All of which has the potential to make this review the shortest one I’ve ever written! With the Flip, you switch it on, press record, and record some video. Press play and it plays back on its tiny LCD screen. Other than the ability to upload the video to your PC, that’s about it! What else can I write about?

Pure Digital Flip Overview

OK, there are a few more details. The Pure Flip has been designed to be an incredibly simple point and shoot camcorder, and here it succeeds perfectly. You literally just need to switch it on and press record and you’re instantly recording video. No settings to worry about, no fuss – simple.

Playback is just as simple, and although the colour LCD screen is only 1.5″ in size, it’s big enough to get at least some impression of what you’re taking a video of.

More impressive, though, is the simplicity of uploading your videos. The Flip comes with a built-in USB adaptor that flips out of the side like a pen knife. Plug it into your USB socket, and you can browse all your videos via Windows Explorer.

The Flip comes with 2GB of memory on-board, but it isn’t expandable. You can therefore take a maximum of 1 hour’s worth of video before you need to upload what you’ve shot onto your PC. IT also uses standard AA batteries, too, with no power adaptor, so make sure you have a good supply of these if you take the Flip anywhere to record some video (such as a festival).

Intriguingly,although the Flip has no features, it does have a standard tripod adaptor, so you can screw it into a tripod if you’re hands are shaking too much. The tripod will cost more than the Flip does, but that’s another story!

Problems

There are a few downsides though. Although having the USB connector flip out without wires is very convenient, it’s less so if you’re USB ports are in awkward places. Currently my Flip is sticking in my vertical-oriented USB port, where it’s taking up all the room immediately below it. If I had anything else plugged in beneath it, I’d have to remove it before plugging the Flip in.

Just a minor point, I know, but it does mean that if you do have awkwardly positioned USB ports, you can’t actually upload your videos onto your PC!

The second problem is the quality of the video it takes. There’s a reason why camcorders have tricky to use settings – taking acceptable video in different conditions needs different settings. With no anti-shake or any way of altering the settings, the resultant video quality is poor.

Worse, it’s actually less good than on some mobile phones. Which leads me to my final criticism of the Flip: just who exactly is it aimed at?

Twinned MP3 player forces James Blunt on you

Mike Evans — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:52:57 +0000

If your significant other is just as much a gadget freak as you are, then you might want to think about the Twinned MP3 player. As you can see from the pic, the Twinned is actually two MP3 players in one,and can snap apart so that you both get one half of the device. Each half can play tunes, but the twist comes with the playlist – you can only update it when the two halves are snapped together.

This means that once you’ve downloaded the tunes you want, the playlist is locked and you’ll end up listening to what your boyfriend or girlfriend is listening to.

All very nice and twee, you might think, but there’s a good reason boys don’t listen to James Blunt – he’s crap! Try and remove him from the ‘shared’ playlist, though, and I guarantee you’ll get an earful for the rest of eternity!

You’ll therefore be left with a choice: listen to your partner’s playlist until deafness ends your millennial misery, or split up now!

Nice romantic idea, I’m sure, but somehow I think the Twinned Mp3 player will actually break up more couples!

Fortunately, it’s just a concept at the moment. For the sake of humanity (or at least, future couples!), let’s hope it stays that way!

SlashGear]

iPhone powered by the sun

admin — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 08:14:44 +0000

Solar power, coud it be the answer to our power crisis? Well no, it is not efficient enough yet but it will charge your iPhone in less than 3 hours. A solar powered iPhone leather case has gone on sale and hopes to be the answer to the iPhones shocking bad battery life.

The case has a built in battery which can be charged via USB or solar power. You can then use this battery to charge your iPhone or you could charge your iPhone directly from the power of the suns rays. For just $48 the solar powered case is a bargin.

[Source: Redferret]

Unboxing the new Samsung Omnia

admin — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:37:45 +0000

“Unboxing” has been with us for a while and its format is widely known and accepted by tech geeks around the world. It is very exciting to open a new gadget and it is the trend at the moment to share that with the world wide web. So why pick out this one…?

In short I love it, it may be a paid for viral ad but don’t let that put you off. It encapsulates all the excitment of unboxing your new toy and has exploding people; what more could you want?

Ingenious display

admin — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:47:01 +0000

I don