3G data dongles are all over the place these days.
Virgin’s is manufactured by Huawei (who seem to be the vendor of choice for 3G dongles), it’s actually a Huawei E160, (background on Huawei) for those that care.
It’s a USB stick which plugs into any spare USB port. When plugged in, as well as being a 3G dongle, it appears to the operating system as as CD as well which contains the software to drive the dongle.
If you’re looking for a way to get Internet around your house using ethernet, this can provide a very workable solution.
The Netgear XAVB101 Powerline kit comes with two powerline adapters and two Ethernet cables.
The units look a bit like a phone or camera power supply except they have a few flashing lights and an Ethernet socket on the side.
Ever had the problem of random cats appearing in your house, stealing food or worse marking their territory? Well SureFlap have the answer for tech fans, an RFID catflap.
The catflap has an RFID sensor mounted in the housing and as your cat goes into the “tube” part of the unit, the sensor reads the microchip implanted in your cat and opens the latch. Other cats trying to gain access will be rejected.
Touchatag (formerly Tikitags) are small (about 1 inch square) RFID tags. The Touchatag starter kit comes with a USB Touchatag reader and 10 Touchatags. The reader will read the tags from about 1 inch.
Steve takes a look at Shure’s latest incarnation of in-ear phones made for the iPod generation. Ed
As in-ear phones you’ll either think the Shure SE310 In-Ear Phones are the best thing since sliced bread or hate the very essence of them
They come with a variety of flanges to suit different sized ear canals. The rubber ones tend to seal best, but the foam ones are most comfortable.
The Blackberry Bold has been around for a while (having been released during summer last year) and it’s already been superseded by the Storm (which is probably in a tea-cup) though they are designed for different markets.
The Bold is a business phone, it has a nice screen and a keyboard that is usable – as usable as the earlier Curve and better than the dual key bodge of the Pearl.
The Storm is RIM’s attempt at a consumer phone to compete with the iPhone and public opinion says it pretty well fails at all counts, especially the software which is buggy.
It’s possible that some people reading this won’t have heard of Sun. They’re a big computer company that has gone through many iterations (during the dotcom boon their moto was “The computer is the network”).
We’ve covered a background below to get you up to speed on Sun, but before that, we’ve got an overview on the Sun Startup Essentials, which is aimed at start-ups.
If you’re like me, you won’t have heard of Arduino. Outside this sphere of ignorance there’s a whole lot of artists who not only love Arduino, but are passionate about it too.
If you’re in the “What the hell is Arduino?”, this book gives you a good guide to what it it and what can be done with it.
Arduino comes from an educational background and is a combination of open source hardware running open source software, enabling the control of ‘things.’ These ”things’ can be assembled allowing quite complex circuits to be constructed.
Last night a party was held at Waxy O’Connors of London’s Leicester Square, celebrating the release of the popular Linux variant, Ubuntu 8.10 aka Intrepid Ibex.
Ubuntu is a Linux distribution that is based on the principals of “free” as in beer and speech. It was set-up in Oct 2004 by Mark Shuttleworth so last night was also a 4 year birthday party and he was there to celebrate.
Mark Shuttleworth used to run secure certificate company, Thawte, in South Africa and solid the company to Verisign in the peak of the dotcom boom for around $0.5bn. He moved to London in 2001 and then went on to fly as a cosmonaut to the International Space Station in 2002 (well, you have to spend your cash somehow).
FOM (Future of Mobile) is an event run by Carsonified who also run