Who would have thought that a HD camera could be so small these days? First the Flip does it and now many other competitors are lining up trying to take a stake in that market; and Sony is no exception with its Bloggie camera line – the model we got is the MHS-PM5K, and we did a piece on it during our CES 2010 coverage.
Now it has landed in Australia, and TECHGEEK.com.au has a review (I think the first of the year – wow, has it been that long?)
Since Skype has announced that it will support HD video during conversations, we thought it would take a year until we see a camera that would allow you to use this feature. Turns out, it wasn’t that long. FaceVision has announced a brand new HD camera called the TouchCam N1 camera. Simply connect the camera with the USB cable and there you go, 720p HD resolution video. No more pixelation when we see your face, though for some of our readers, we suggest you don’t get this – unless you want people to see your face, or take the time to put makeup on to cover those blemishes on your face.
We all know that typing on the iPhone is a big hassle, especially when your message is going to be very long – that, or you just felt like writing an essay on your iPhone via email. Now, there’s a new keyboard without jailbreaking or hacking it. Called the iType, it’s basically a QWERTY keyboard and has a dock station for your iPhone so it can connect to it. It also won’t drain the iPhone’s battery as it has its own.
LG is bringing out the Rumour Touch (or, the Rumor Touch if you’re an American) to the US carrier Sprint, but you can also see this coming to other countries. The phone boasts a 3-inch touchscreen, 2 megapixel camera with video recording, a microSD card slot, 3.5mm standard headphone jack and a QWERTY keyboard, making it easy to type out emails or SMS messages with ease. It also has a continuous talk time of up to 7 hours.
Move over LCD, LED is starting to pick up. LG has announced that it will release the E50 Monitor series, which will become LG’s flagship monitor series for LEDs. Coming in 20-inch, 21.5-inch and 23-inch sizes, it features a new technology called “Dual Screen” that automatically divide the screen to view two programs at once – though you could do the same thing by the “Show Windows Stacked” function.
Dr. Dre has added Sean “Diddy” Combs to his headphone line, joining Lady Gaga, as Monster announced that they will be introducing the Diddy Beats pair of earphones. Sporting what they claim a “high-tech aluminium and leather-wrapped housing and high polished enamel” in a silver chrome and black finish, they will set you back US$179.95.
Looks like tablets are really getting popular at the start of the decade – mainly because of the Apple rumours. Now, another company we have never heard of has decided to launch their own tablet. Called the Vega by ICD, it is a 15-inch touchscreen table that will have a T-Mobile UK SIM card inside so you can connect to their 3G network. It will also have Wi-Fi connectivity.
eBook reader announcements are rolling in, especially when CES’s actual start day happened. DMC Worldwide, a company we basically never heard of (in Australia, that we know of), has announced that it will be releasing a eBook reader lineup known as the COPIA, and it will have two models – the OCEAN and the TIDAL (and yes, we also thought they were pretty lame names).
The (PRODUCT)RED line has the support of Dell, Microsoft, GAP and Apple; and now it will have the support of Dr. Dre and Lady Gaga as Monster able has announced that there will be a special edition of the Beats by Dr. Dre headphones. Anyway, the (PRODUCT)RED Special Edition Beats Solo Headphones is a standard headphone with an integrated sound-isolation.
Straight from CES, Intel have announced the WiDi HD. Working over wireless, you can stream your HD media to your television set via a HDMI connection. Your PC will need a Core i3, i5 or i7 processor together with the receiver box which will set you back $100. Intel demonstrated netflix from a laptop with Windows 7 streaming over to a TV.
Remember the Arc Mouse, that really cool and portable mouse that can be folded up for portability? Well, Microsoft has finally paired it up with the Arc Keyboard, released today at CES. It’s thin and like its brother, it is wireless and has a range of up to 15 feet. It also has a on/off button so you can preserve the battery, and a four-way directional pad, so the four buttons of the left, right, up and down effectively fit on this button.
Featuring a 5-inch screen and will be Android powered, Dell has released images of its new tablet concept. And that’s about it, virtually no details have been released other the first two – and that’s usual from all Dell product teasers. Why use a 5-inch display? We don’t really have an answer for that yet. But apparently it will ship later this year – according to the Direct2Dell blog. Gallery is below.
We all knew it would be making the product announcement. Plastic Logic has finally revealed the QUE proReader, an eBook reader – though they claim it is so much more – that is super slim and is suitable to read newspapers thanks to its large crisp display. With 8.5 x 11-inch dimensions, it has signed up a number of newspapers, including the LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Fast Company – all which join other announced titles like USA Today and IDG publications like MacWorld and PC World.
… because that is so possible. Well, now it is. This is the Alienware M11X. Alienware is known for their gaming laptops, and this is no different. According to them, it will demonstrate the power of a 15-inch laptop but it is not a 15-inch laptop. This is a 11-inch laptop and is a sub-US$1000 notebook. We don’t really know what is inside but all we know is that it has 6 1/2 hours of battery life; a NVIDIA GPU which is you can switch to it without restarting or logging out; have a DisplayPort, HDMI and VGA and it looks thin.
Remember the Palm Pre and how we got excited over the phone – then that hype died down? Well, Palm has another announcement today; it will be bringing the Palm Pre Plus (above) and Palm Pixi Plus to Verizon. The Pre Plus still looks the same and comes with the Touchstone recharger and a 3-megapixel camera, but it will have 16GB of on board storage. The Pixi Plus also looks the same with no other changes. Both phones, however, will support CDMA, unlike the Sprint models – they support CDMA2000.