Posted by admin

Lately, I’ve been reading a ton about going “green.” We’ve recycled for years at my house, but most recently I started doing it the correct way, with the plastic and paper truly separated and left out for the recycle company to take away.

Of course, when it comes to electronics, that’s where I still need help. I have backup power supplies, laptops, desktops, printers, lights, and just about anything you can think of that’s electronic constantly running in my house. I guess that’s still going to be a work in progress.

As for my car, I drive a Toyota Camry, pre-hybrid days; and an SUV is my other car, so no chance of going “green” there.

In the spirit of going “green,” I jumped at the chance to give ANYCOM’s Bluetooth Solar Car-Kit a go. The package itself came with a sticker that said “GO GREEN!” on it, so that alone was a reason to take a second look. My favorite part, even before giving it a go, was the claim that it could charge itself using the embedded solar panel–no need to wrestle with more wires in my car.

The ANYCOM Bluetooth Solar Car-Kit is pretty straightforward in its implementation. It comes with a windshield mount, suction cups, and 3M tape (you can decide which method you want to use for mounting it), a car charger with USB cable (for those moments when you’re not charged up or there’s no sun), and a user manual written in 7 different languages.

For my test, I figured I’d mount it to the windshield using the provided suction cups, since the manual actually shows a picture for the “Recommended Installation Position.” I then took the Solar Car-Kit and placed it into the mount. Next, I turned the kit on by pressing the multi-function button / phone icon for 2 seconds. I was greeted with a booting tone and a flashing status LED. I then paired it with my iPhone, which required that I shut the Solar Car-Kit off again.

The mount is pretty straightforward

This is the preferred mounting spot. I tried it in other places, and the callers said that the voice quality did not change

The pairing process worked exactly as I had hoped with me shutting the Car-Kit off, then pressing and holding the multi-function button for 5 seconds. I heard two short beeps after the boot up tone, previously mentioned, and then searched for available devices through the Bluetooth interface on the iPhone. The iphone found the kit right away, and when I selected it, I entered in 0000 for the passkey. I then heard a beep letting me know that it was paired, and the iPhone interface also indicated that pairing was successful.

Next, I dialed a number. Seconds later I heard a confirmation tone right before the audible dialing and then moments later heard the person on the other end through the Car-Kit. The speaker quality was excellent, and the volume adjusted higher than I needed it, which is a huge plus for any car kit.

Notice that it was perfectly recognized by the iPhone

Features
The ANYCOM Bluetooth Solar Car-Kit has a bunch of cool features built-in. Most notably is the solar panel, which keeps the Car-Kit constantly charging as long as there is sun available. According to the manual, 3 hours of sunlight buys you 30 minutes of talk time, and the Car-Kit will continue to charge while you talk, too. If there’s no sun or you are paranoid, you can use the included USB cable and car charger and charge away from your cigarette lighter–a full charge takes 2 hours.

close-up of the solar panel, which is on the opposite side of the multi-function button

As for other features, it includes the usual feature set of a wireless car kit, but the execution of them is flawless. For example, you can redial the person you just dialed by just clicking the multi-function button. This is a great feature except that the button is so large that I found myself accidentally hitting it when raising the volume level at times. There’s also volume up and down buttons.

That’s it, button-wise, but those buttons do a lot. For example, to check the battery status hold the volume up and down buttons simultaneously and then release them. The battery status is indicated by the number of red flashes and a beeping sound. For example, out of the box, my unit beeped 3 times, indicating more than 5 hours of use was available. You can also check your Solar Power Charging Status by pressing the volume down button for 5 seconds when you turn the unit on. If it’s receiving enough sunlight, the battery status LED will glow red.

In addition to the above, you can mute your call (press the volume down button for 1 second), reject a call (press the multi-function button for one second when a call is coming in), answer call waiting (press the multi-function button for one second while on a call), voice dial, and more.

The only complaint I have about the Car-Kit is that while I was using it while driving on the highway, some callers complained of hearing noise. I moved the Car-Kit closer to my mouth, but it didn’t seem to alleviate the problem. Since they could still hear me, just with some background noise, I’m not going to fault the company, though some better noise cancellation (this one uses Echo-Cancellation and Noise Reduction) in a future version couldn’t hurt.

Overall, the fact that I really don’t have to think about charging the car kit and just have to remember to enable Bluetooth on my phone, is a HUGE plus. Also, because of its unique design, it can just as easily work as a hands-free kit outside of the car in conference rooms or for impromptu conference calls.

For that reason, as well as others, it has now become my preferred car kit, supplanting the Parrot MINIKIT and has also been awarded a Geek.com Pick.

You can read more about the ANYCOM Bluetooth Solar Car-Kit at Anycom.com.

<!– cobrand_id = ‘400′; jskeyword = ‘ANYCOM Bluetooth Solar Car-Kit’; show_link_price2 = 1; cb_width = ‘440′; head_title_type = ‘1′; show_picture = ‘1′; document.write(”); //–>

Posted by admin

Have you ever seen that Element that some people have been driving? I always thought those rectangular cars were odd, like giant shoeboxes. It appears that Toyota has rolled out an environmentally friendly box-shaped car.

The Toyota Hi-Ct concept car was first shown at the Bangkok International Motor Show, but not at the more famous New York Auto Show. This hybrid vehicle can charge from an external electric source, such as a AC100V accessory socket.

Information is pretty limited other than that, for now. Judging by the picture, it appears there is only room enough for two. So much for room for the whole family. I suppose they could hang out on that back flap of the trunk.

I swear, every time I see one of these concept cars, it feels like it’s driving out of a science fiction movie. This one feels like one of Steven Spielberg’s. The cars in A.I. sort of looked like this, and if you look close in a certain scene from Minority Report, there is a car that really resembles this one.

I suppose the green era that we will hopefully be living in will produce more cars like this. Hopefully, they have a little more curves on them.

Source

Posted by admin

Over at security conference CanSecWest, hacker Charlie Miller has successful broken into a macbook air, winning him both the slimline notebook and $10,000 in the PWN 2 OWN contest. The exploit, will remain a secret until the show’s organizers are have passed the information on to, we presume, Apple. What we do know is the Miller managed to hack the Mac in just two minutes by browsing to a website containing malicious code.

Two other notebooks remain to be won, if they too can be cracked. The Mac might have fallen first because it was less secure. More likely is that contestants ignored the Linux and Windows boxes in favor of trying to win Apple’s svelte and desirable notebook.

Gone in 2 minutes: Mac gets hacked first in contest [MacWorld]

Conference page [CanSecWest]

Posted by admin

iRiver of Japan has just announced the availability of its Mickey Mouse-shaped mp3 player known as Mplayer Camouflage. This new range will come with a wide variety of patterns adorning Mickey’s head, so you will be spoilt for choice if you’re trying to pick one up for that significant other in your life. They won’t come cheap though, as each 1GB black, pink and blue Mplayer Camouflage will retail for approximately $135 after conversion.

Source: AVing

Posted by admin

Solid State Drives (SSD) not only continue to get bigger storage, but they are also getting smaller in size. Super Talent is offering a 256GB SSD, which is the world’s smallest 256GB SATA drive, according to the company’s website. It is also 40% thinner than other 256GB SATA drives available. The dimension of the 256GB SSD drive is 100.2mm x 69.9 mm x 12.5mm.

They are many advantages to having an SSD drive. The drives are especially useful in portable electronics and devices. That is because they consume up to 85% less power than a typical spinning drive. They also generate less heat and allow for extended battery life.

As SSD drive capacities increase while prices decrease, we will surely see more SSD drives in laptops and mobile devices. There are just too many advantages to using them over typical hard drive technology. One of the biggest barriers in mass adoption of the drives is price. That should take care of itself over time.

Read more from the Super Talent website.

Posted by admin

Samsung has launched NV24HD, a new HD digital camera loaded with a 10.2-megapixel resolution and AM OLED display. AM OLED is an innovative display that emits light which prevents distortion of the screen when viewing angle varies from one shot to another. The AM OLED display also response 2,000 faster than most TFT LCD.

Being an HD digital camera, the Samsung NV24HD is equipped with upgraded HD technology that produces high quality, clear full HD images. And with full HD capabilities, the Samsung NV24HD features enhanced video viewing by employing the next generation H.264 video standard. It supports a video resolution of 1280X720 at a fast 30fps. This speed enables the camera to record HD quality videos with HD quality stereo sound.

Aside from its good video camera feature, the NV24HD is after all a digital camera, and a powerful one at that. The NV24HD is equipped with a 24mm wide-angle 3.6X optical zoom Schneider lens, blink detection and smile shot features, optical image stabilization as well as Samsung’s very own digital image stabilization technology. Combined together, these two technologies would allow users to take clean, shake-free images in low-light and indoors environment.

And to enable users to view the photos and videos they have taken or recorded immediately, Samsung has included the AM OLED display in the NV24HD. The display is capable of displaying photos or videos at the highest quality possible and even recreates their color naturally.

Via [AVING]

Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! - Subscribe to our feed →

Posted by admin

Word-a-day calendars might improve your vocabulary, but unless they’re electronic, they’re not exactly great for the environment. Here’s a more creative and lasting alternative that you don’t have to wait for a new year to try out: the key calendar from Takumi.

I’m not sure exactly how it works, but it seems that you move the key every day to keep track of the date. It would be very cool if turning the keys revealed some kind of secret compartment (you could set it to deliver a love note on your anniversary or something) but I don’t think that’s an option yet.

Apartment Therapy says the calendar “plays upon both the metaphorical and also the innate physical desire to manipulate the mechanical as an effective way to keep track of the days of a month.”

I just think it’s pretty.

Posted by admin

As someone who has uploaded a few videos in YouTube myself, I sometimes long for the ability to see more detailed information about my uploaded video’s viewers. I’d like to know where visitors came from, how much time they spent going from one of my videos to another, is there a specific time of day when they stay longer than usual watching my videos, etc. And just recently YouTube has revealed that it now lets users do exactly that, providing a Google Analytics-like service with Youtube Insight.

With YouTube Insight, uploaders can now “see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time.” It’s really just as simple as applying the principles of regular web site tracking programs for YouTube page views. The resulting statistics from YouTube Insight can then be used by uploaders to optimize their content, presentation, and overall delivery in order to get the most out of their uploaded videos.

As of now, YouTube hints that the service is still not going to be delivered in its entirety—they’re probably tweaking the systems up a bit to make sure no bugs or errors ever occur for users. But you can get a taste of the upcoming full YouTube Insight service by going to My account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage my Videos and then click on “About this video” for any uploaded video. From there you’ll be able to see a graph representing your video’s number of page views as well as a geographical map detailing where in the world your visitors are all coming from. It’s actually pretty neat by itself right now that if YouTube hadn’t posted about it in their blog, I would never have known that this service was not yet complete. So I’m really excited for them to release the full version. I’m sure they’re going to do just that very very soon.

Read [The YouTube Blog]

Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! - Subscribe to our feed →

Posted by admin

Colour Changing Weather Clock
Now, in the search for mind-bending convenience, they’ve created the weather forecaster-cum alarm clock you don’t need to move the duvet to see. And best of all, it even works while you’re awake!

See price

Posted by admin

Television is coming to AT&T customers in just over a month, courtesy of the LG Vu (essentially an un-badged LG Prada) and MediaFLO. AT&T announced its intention to use the Qualcomm-owned service last year, but has apparently been waiting for both the network to support streaming TV and for a handset to watch it on. “[It’s] a brand new service on a brand new network, and two brand new devices.” said AT&T’s Mark Siegel

We wonder, though, if AT&T should bother. The kind of people comfortable viewing video on a handheld device are likely to be those already ignoring television in droves. There is plenty of online content, from video podcasts to YouTube, and it’s free. Bringing TV to mobiles seems to be a little backward: TV networks should be thinking about putting internet content onto the big screen in your living room.

AT&T plans MediaFlo mobile TV service for May [Reuters]
AT&T Selects Qualcomm’s MediaFLO USA [Qualcomm]
Photo: Phonescoop