Its Electronica

Sharp has presented a lightweight (132g) handset for the Asian market, it is full of good features but sadly it can only be purchased in that part of the world.

The 922SH has two options for wireless connections - bluetooth to transfer files from one device to the other, and HDSPA so you can get connected to the internet. The 1-Seg service is good enough to receive audio and video signals, which means that you can either listen to radio or watch TV.

Since the Sharp 922SH can receive plenty of video content, it must have a good screen, and that is when the 3.5-inch display (with 480 x 854 resolution) joins the party.

It comes with four different colors including pearl white, metallic black, bronze gold and pearl pink.

PS - a QWERTY keyboard is also part of the handset that is suppose to be launched on March.

Via AVING

Posted Jan 31st 2008 12:12AM by Ryan Block
Filed under: Cellphones

Believe it or not Lenovo makes cellphones, too — they just happen to be crappy ones you probably didn’t pay much attention to since they were mostly targeted at the Chinese market. Like many before it, the company is getting out of the absurdly competitive handset market by selling its cellphone group to private equity firm Hony Capital (that’s Hony, not Sony) for a cool $100m. [Warning: subscription required for read link]

Yup, if you guessed this was a UFO, crazy new portable grill or drug paraphernalia, you are wrong.  This funky looking Gizmo is called the Swiss Hot Steam Humidifier.

This compact humidifier boils water eliminating waterborne bacteria and viruses before pouring hot steam into the air improving air moisture in warm but very dry winter homes. The unit fits just about anywhere and is a conversation piece but actually works and can produce steam in as little as three minutes. You can adjust the output from one to two gallons per day and adjust the power consumption from 150- to 300-watts at the touch of a button. An LED illuminates when the humidifier requires additional water and the reservoir removes for ease of filling under a faucet.

Gimmie!

Suggested Price: $99.95

Gateway has offered up two new computers, the GM5664 and GT5662. Both models are powered by an AMD Phenom processor with an NVIDIA GeForce 6150 SE chipset and ATI Radeon HD 2400XT for graphics.

The GM5664 comes with the Hybrid-SuperMulti drive that will allow for playback of both Blu-ray and HD DVD movies along with an analog/digital TV tuner. It features 3GB RAM, 1TB of storage via two 500GB drives, 400 watt power supply, six USB ports, a 15-in-1 card reader and is running Windows Vista Home Premium. The GT5662 includes 3GB RAM, a 500GB hard drive and a 18x SuperMulti drive. Similar to the GM5664 it also has six USB ports, a 15-in-1 card reader and runs Windows Vista Home Premium. The GM5664 and GT5662 both include a Windows Elite multimedia keyboard and Windows USB optical 2-button wheel mouse, neither ship with a display.

The GM5664 will retail for $1149.99 and the GT5662 will retail for $749.99, both are currently available.

Read [Gateway]

Posted Jan 30th 2008 3:01PM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Transportation

It’s been awhile since we heard anything about the HumanCar, but it looks like the Flintstones-inspired vehicle is now rapidly becoming a reality, with it finally getting a price, release date and a even slightly sleeker new look. Apparently now more specifically known as the Imagine LMV, the vehicle will appropriately be available this coming Earth Day (April 22nd), when it’ll set you back a hefty $15,000 for the “base” model. For that price you’ll apparently get a top speed of 30 mph from the vehicle’s dual electric motors and, most importantly, “variable human power input,” which should soon make you the most popular member of your car pool group. If that’s not enough luxury for you, you’ll also apparently be add various navigation and internet options, iPod connectivity, and various biometric devices to see just how much of a workout you’re getting.

If you want to listen to music but still be able to hear your surroundings then this is a cool solution, the Vibe Body Sound Headphones, listen to music through your bones.

The Vibe Body Sound headphones clip on to your outer ear and conduct vibrations through your skin and cartilage. Those vibrations rumble through your skull directly to your inner ear where you hear them clear as a bell. All the while, your ear canal remains uncovered, allowing the sounds from the environment access as well. Carry on conversations and never skip a beat.

They have 3 effective volume (vibration) levels, low, medium, and tectonic! Which sounds somewhat skull rattling.You can buy the Vibe cunduction headphones from Think Geek for $99.99.

Liquidus
Liquidus provides low-cost commercial advertising video production, distribution and placement to local businesses, on digital cable video on demand (VOD), online, standard TV, eTV/IPTV and eventually mobile devices, via an easy to use web interface business owners can customize the advertising video.

TubeMogul
Monetization is the greatest challenge that web video creators are facing today. Tubemogul helps video producers upload their content on multiple video websites from a single web page. In addition, it provides a set of analytics tools to track when, where, who and how often the video was watched. Users can monitor accurately how popular their videos are and share the data with their colleagues.

Visible Measures
Visble Measures tracks users behavior with online video, their tools are capable of monitoring the audience of a video clip second by second. For the demo, the CEO showed us how an advertising was ineffective as the majority of the audience stopped watching before the product was shown. Other functions include a location based audience tracking tool. Read more in my previous article

It is reported that Wireless Mobile Group (WMG) will integrate Slaspower’s wireless charging technology in the batteries of its smartphones. We can only hope that other vendors will adopt this or some thing similar that would make wireless charging more popular. Right now, it is unfortunately a small niche.

If you haven’t heard of SlashPower before, their wireless charging works by magnetic induction. It requires a module or preferably a complete integration in the device itself.

Though it would be strange for many of us to have our mobile phone talk to us, for those with disabilities, such as the visually impaired or those who are dyslexic, it would be a blessing. A company called K-NFB Reading Technology has created a new technology that allows for a Nokia N82 mobile phone to become the smallest text-to-speech reading device in history. The technology was developed in partnership with the National Federation of the Blind and Kurzweil Technologies.

The Nokia N82’s high resolution camera makes it the perfect choice to support the new technology. That’s because the technology works by having the user snap a picture of something he or she would like read. The software built into the phone then uses character-recognition to read the text back to the user. If a user is able to see the mobile phone’s screen, then the user also has the option to enlarge, read, track, and highlight the text.

What a fantastic use of technology! Best of all, the technology has been put into something many of us carry with us every day; a mobile phone. So, there is no special gadget someone who has a disability would have to buy or carry. He or she can simply pull out a mobile phone to make an area of life a little easier.

Read more from the K-NFB Reading Technology press release (pdf).

<!– cobrand_id = ‘400′; jskeyword = ‘Nokia N82 mobile phone’; show_link_price2 = 1; cb_width = ‘440′; head_title_type = ‘1′; show_picture = ‘1′; document.write(”); //–>

Posted Jan 30th 2008 9:58AM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Desktops

eMachines, long known for dropping mediocre, middle of the road, inoffensive desktops, has once again busted out of the gate with two new defiantly tame PCs that will make you say “Hello.” The latest entries — confusingly named the T5246 and T3642 — share similar guts, including NVIDIA GeForce 6100 GPUs, DVD DVD±R / RW SuperMulti drives, and 6-channel 5.1 audio. The differences are more apparent where it counts, with the T5246 utilizing a 2.2GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ dual core CPU, 2GB of RAM, and a 400GB hard drive, while the T3642 uses a 2.6GHz Athlon 64 4000+ CPU, carries 1GB of RAM, and downsizes the hard drive to 250GB. Both systems are available now, with the T5246 clocking in at $429.99, and the T3642 listed at $349.99.