Or Will New Technology Make Life a Little More Difficult?

iPhone apps like Red Laser have made scanning barcodes with your iPhone infinitely easier. As a result, it is now simpler than ever to order stuff like DVDs and CDs online. Having barcodes stored in your iPhone now makes it possible to make shopping lists, look up nutritional information about the food, and doing a little comparison shopping.

With the anticipated advent of the next generation of iPhone, consumers are desperately wondering how their apps will be affected. Which apps will be available for the new iPhone? What improvements will be made with those applications? And – most importantly – how much are these bad boys going to cost?

Red laser 2.2 currently tops out at under two quid to download, making it extremely affordable. All the same, with sites like ShopSavvy and Android offering free applications, consumers are beginning to wonder when and how Apple will respond to all the freebies floating around. When we upgrade to the new generation of iPhones, it would be nice to know that previously purchased applications will be compatible with the new phone. Or alternatively, to be assured that a free option will be available to either replace or convert our old apps.

It may seem like arguing over small change, but consumers have come to expect the most from companies, waiting for the most trendy, cost-effective, and green products to come out. Currency speaks, and applications that do things like scan barcodes are valuable investments that shouldn?t have to be repurchases with each technological advancement.

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Personal printers are a fantastic commodity. Personal printers have allowed for the practical liberation of information and, together with the many functionalities of internet have turned bits of electricity into knowledge, art and entertainment at our fingertips. Inexpensive printing for business have made much easier to dispense graphic marketing, forward company-wide memos and even send complimentary football tickets to someone that lives on the other side of the world. While personal printers do seem to come from the magical world of fairy tales the truth cuts as a double edged sword: we are using a mighty huge amount of paper and ink with our newly found power to put everything down on an A4 sheet.

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It’s been a few months since Micron became the second to introduce the world’s first SATA 6Gbps hard drive (Seagate was the other), and regardless about who was earliest we now know which is currently the fastest. TweakTown put a Crucial-branded C300 through its paces and came to a rather simple conclusion: “At this point in time there is no other drive, platter or solid state that is in the same league as the Crucial RealSSD C300.” It blitzed through all their tests and at the end, when others would be a smoking ruin of high access times, it still performed as good as new. There was one catch, though: Windows Media Player performance was abnormally low, something that testers believe is a glitch to be addressed in firmware. Other than that, if you want the best this is it. But can you afford it? A 128GB model will set you back $499, and the 256GB one is $799. Yeah, ouch.

Source: TweakTown

Let’s face it — there’s at least an 89.4 percent chance that you’d be utterly embarrassed to let your mother, SO or inner neat-freak inspect your keyboard. Years of wear and tear have cleared the way for minuscule portions of delicacies, follicles and all manners of foreign objects to make their home just beneath the vowels you smash on a daily basis, and considering that cleaning said keyboard or buying a new one is far too difficult, the Quirky community has a better solution. The Space Bar ($42 in a 3-pack) is an aluminum keyboard cover that can slip right over ‘boards that measure 18-inches wide and 1.5-inches deep; aside from covering things up, it also provides six easily accessible USB 2.0 ports.

Too bad there’s no germ-nixing UV light on the underside, but there’s always hope for v2.0.

Multitrack digital recorders might not be front and center of the gadget lover’s mind right now, but slap that “unlimited” modifier in front and all of a sudden interests are piqued and ears prick up. Korg has made official its new Sound On Sound Unlimited Track Recorder, which will do exactly what its name suggests while keeping each overdub separate for future modification or retuning. You’ll be able to fit up to 26 track hours on a 16GB MicroSDHC card and a dedicated guitar input is available alongside mic and line-in ports. Another useful-sounding feature is Sound Stretch, which should allow you to alter speed to between 25 and 150 percent of the original recording without altering pitch. Price is tentatively set at £230 ($375) for a March 2010 release.

Via: music radar

When it comes to storage-based media players that you connect to your TV, it all boils down to performance, compatibility, and capacity. LG’s XF2 player ships in April and, with its 1080p video and 5.1 audio output over HDMI, has the performance side covered. In terms of compatibility it hits all its marks (MPEG 1/2/4, h.264, Xvid, DivX, FLAC, WMA, AC3, etc. etc.), also supporting subtitles and captions in a number of formats. Capacity, well, 500GB is good, but more would have been better, especially given the lack of a network interface — and the price. This one will retail for 270,000 won, or about $240. Yeah, ouch.

 Via LGE

Up until the moment I decided to try an SSD for myself, on a regular basis (namely on my home desktop computer), I didn’t realize just what a boost of performance such a storage solution brings to a normal system, especially as far as boot times and application loading are concerned. However, SSDs tend to be quite expensive, and, for this reason, their adoption rate is still a lot lower than manufacturers might be willing to accept.

And in order to come up with a solution for boosting sales (not to mention performance), Kingston, one of the world’s top SSD manufacturers, has just released the Kingston SSDNow V Series 30GB Boot Drive at this year’s CES, with the clear purpose of making these things more accessible to a wider audience.

As expected, given the low amount of storage space it provides, the solution is designed to be used in conjunction with an existing hard-disk drive (HDD). The drive is also available with a bundle that includes cloning software, 2.5″ to 3.5″ mounting brackets and SATA data and power cable extenders. Moreover, the SSDNow V Series 30GB Boot Drive also offers Windows 7 TRIM support, which helps the SSD maintain high performance through the life of the drive.

And since we’ve mentioned the issue of performance, we’ll also have to add that Kingston’s SSDNow V Series 30GB Boot Drive can attain sustained read speeds of up to 180MB/sec. and sustained write speeds of up to 50MB/sec.

“In our quest to bring SSDs into mainstream use, we’re aiming to deliver a lower price point while boosting performance. The new SSDNow V Series 30GB Boot Drive accomplishes those goals,” said Ariel Perez, SSD business manager, Kingston. “Desktop users can extend the life cycle of their systems with this drive and IT managers in the enterprise space like it as there is less data for them to backup to the network. In addition, we will also release a 30GB SSD twin-pack for prosumers and enthusiasts who want to take performance to the next level.”

And now for the moment most of you have probably been waiting for: pricing. So, according to Kingston, its new SSDNow V Series 30GB Boot Drive solution will be available for under 100 Euro, which might make it popular with those people who haven’t yet opted for an SSD solution on account of the price alone.

Boy, if it’s not car dashboards, it’s thermostats — you just can’t get away from touchscreens these days. The latest 7-inch temperature regulator from Silverpac comes with a bunch of extra goodies to entice the touch control-loving generation into the energy conservation game. With WiFi built in, the Silverstat 7 can pump data out to the internet or your home network, and is equally adept at streaming photos, music and other content back from those connections. A full week’s worth of water temperature instructions can be programmed into the device, which can also inform you of weather conditions and your home’s energy consumption. The latter part is most intriguing, as you’ll be informed of power usage on a per-appliance basis, which can be mighty beneficial when a certain bit of home hardware gorges on electricity without you knowing. June 2010 is set as the release date, but the wallet damage remains unrevealed.

Live the Smart lifestyle with the SilverSTAT 7, a true advanced Smart Energy Thermostat that seeks to replace the standard household thermostat with an advanced home climate control system. SilverSTAT 7 not only provides all the features of an intelligent 7 day programmable thermostat, but also features Smart Energy In-Home Display (IHD) to help monitor utility usage and expenses for green energy management.

The device is elegantly designed with its 7’’ touch screen display that illustrates the distribution of household energy down to individual appliances. With its IEEE 802.15.4 wireless interface, the SilverSTAT 7 will speak to the new smart meters that will have the ability to send information on real-time electricity and gas use in households directly to the utility companies. This process eliminates the inconvenience of meter readings and the inefficiencies of their controversial estimates. Reductions in peak energy demand are encouraged by providing customers with an instantaneous view of their ongoing energy usage and utility pricing on their networked in-home display. Potential savings can be achieved by turning off or rescheduling the use of appliances for a more cost efficient time.

With the built-in 802.11 Wi-Fi interface, the SilverSTAT 7 can successfully communicate with a home network and internet services. It hosts useful smart gadgets to enhance the convenience of daily tasks with attractive features including streaming photos, music and content direct from Live.com and from the PC. Through Windows technology, users can control their digital universe with access to email, stock prices, real-time weather forecasting, billing and price schedules for energy providers and more! SilverSTAT 7 is packed with features to consolidate the tasks of managing energy usage in a home.

Las Vegas—Favi Entertainment announced two LED-based pico projectors, one a bright business projector (the RIOLED-Q), the other a WiFi-enabled consumer model with integrated Web apps (the RIOLED-V) that’s really a hybrid projector/media player. Both include an SM/MMC card reader as well as built-in memory. The company is also introducing a projector that’s larger than a palmtop model yet smaller than a standard portable projector.

The Favi RIOLED-Q has a native 800 by 600 resolution, and joins the Optoma PK301, also announced at CES, as the first pico projectors to boast a rated brightness of 50 lumens. Other features 2 built-in speakers (3W/speaker); digital keystone correction; A/V in, VGA-in, and USB connections; and power via battery or adapter.

Its consumer counterpart, the Favi RIOLED-V, is a WiFi model that the company describes as a hybrid netbook/media player/projector that fits in your pocket. It uses Linux to run a series of Web apps, which include Video (YouTube), Photo (Flickr, Picasa), News (Yahoo News RSS), Weather; E-mail; Internet Radio, and Web Browser. It also has a built-in calendar and alarm clock. Connections include USB, A/V output, and headphone. It operates either via a remote control or by buttons on the unit.

The company has also announced a versatile portable projector, the RIOHD-LED2, for educational, business or home theater use. At 7 by 6 by 3 inches and 2.5 pounds, it falls between a mini projector and a standard portable projector in both size and weight. At a rated 400 lumens, it’s relatively bright for a small portable projector, and its LED lamp should last 20,000 hours. It ships with remote control, power adapter and user guide. Inputs include HDMI, YPbPr, S-Video, Composite A/V, Headphone, and VGA (PC). The RIOHD-LED2 has built-in speakers.

The RIOHD-LED2 is due to ship in early February at a list price of $348. The two pico projectors should ship in late February or early March, at prices yet to be announced.

Source: PC Magazine

We’re not sure why you’d want to spend $1,799 on a 5.1-channel receiver with an integrated Blu-ray deck when you can mix-and-match plenty of terrific 7.1 receivers and BD players separately for far less, but hey — it’s CES and Denon’s introducing the S-5BD in case you do. Sure, it’ll do BD-Live and do two-source, two-zone audio distribution with 3 HDMI inputs and an optional iPod control dock, but you know you’re doing something wrong when you have to buy a separate amp to use the 7.1-channel analog outputs. Denon, you have made us shake our heads in confusion.

Source: Engadget.com