Such as keyboard, mouse, joystick, etc
If you’re finding that your PowerPoint presentations are lacking a little bling and pizzazz, then you might want to consider investing in the gold plated X-pointer to dazzle your audience.
The (frankly hideous) piece of shiny tut functions as a remote control, a wireless mouse, a laser pointer and a portable storage device, and comes coated with an 18k gold finish.
Continue reading X-pointer Bigs Up The Bling Factor
When I travel, I always look for ways to try and reduce the bulk of what I have to carry.
My Apple Mac iBook laptop has a bug where the track pad randomly freezes when it’s plugged into the mains (despite digging I’ve never found an answer as to why, including from Apple), so I’m forced to carry a mouse.
Currently I use a mini optical mouse that I’ve been pretty happy with to date, but that could change having seen the Slim G4 optical mouse that KJ Global is stocking.
Continue reading Slim G4 Optical Mouse – Very Cool
We’re always suckers for gadgets that come with pointless eye candy and needless distractions to help the day go quicker so we’ve quite warmed to this new keyboard from South Korea’s, Luxiium Lighting and Technology company.
It may be nowhere as much fun as the near-vapourware Optimus Keyboard that we looked at last year, but the Luxiium ‘Luxeed’ keyboard shares their love of illuminated keys, with the thing lighting up like a Christmas tree on acid.
You can get the mood just so on your keyboard by personalising each individual key with one of 512 colours, “be it a single hue, a spectrum rainbow or your very own creation,” as they put it on the website.
Colour ‘skins’ can be downloaded from the company’s site, or users can make the keyboard their virtual canvas, assigning colours around like a space-age Rolf Harris.
If the mood takers you, you can also turn your workspace into a mini disco, with music skins that “dance” to the music, as keys are triggered by whatever music you’re playing on your PC (we could imagine it proving a little difficult to operate if you’re playing thrash metal. The lights! The lights!)
Different skins can be assigned to each skin, and the brightness of each skin can also be adjusted, if so desired.
It’s quite a nice looking keyboard too, with a swish looking, slim-line form factor and a full set of hardware controls for controlling Da TuneZ.
In the company’s marketing guff, Luxiium bang on about the keyboard be using to “relieve stress via colour therapy”, but we reckon most people will like it because it’s a bit of a laugh. After all, who wants to be stuck with a boring pile of keys when you can have a mini Pink Flowd lighting rig on your desktop?
Neither pricing nor availability has been announced yet, although you can see some illuminated keys in action on their website:
Rarely have we lusted for a new gizmo more than when we saw the promotional shots of the luscious Optimus keyboard last year.
Although you could argue that keyboards are really much of a muchness – just multiple rows of input keys – us gadget freaks have never had any qualms about dipping into our pockets for gizmos offering extra geekiness.
So when the Microsoft natural keyboard came out in ’94 (you know, the one that looked like it had been torn apart in the middle), we had to have one, even if our peck’n’hunt keyboard ‘skills’ meant it made no difference to our productivity.
And so it went on through the 90s, with the office filling up with various keyboards all offering a bit extra – more buttons, customisable function keys, volume controls, cordless, Bluetooth, wireless, scrolling wheels – the lot.
But just when we thought there was nothing left to improve on our current wireless Logitech mouse/keyboard combo with Lord-knows-how-many keys, buttons and control wheels (most unused), we clapped our eyes on the Optimus keyboard and thought we’d found keyboard heaven.
First appearing on Slashdot in July, 2005, the ultra-thin, backlit keyboard promised greater user interaction – and turbo-boosted bells’n’whistles appeal – by dynamically displaying the current function of the keys on an app by app basis.
Each key was to be a mini-OLED screen (32×32 pixels) with mini-graphic icons lighting up based on the program being used (so in Photoshop, you’d see the appropriate toolbox icon on each keyboard shortcut).
Saliva-inducing computer generated concept images illustrated how the keyboard would look when the user was playing Quake III Arena or fiddling about in Photoshop.
Months went by with no release date being announced and some began to suspect we’d been bedazzled by a (particularly stylish) example of vapourware.
Hopes rose when Lebedev Studio, the Russian team behind the project, released a three key-version in July 2006 (the Optimus Mini Three), and a December 12th ‘pre-order’ date was announced for the full keyboard
As the day grew closer, excitement rose around the office and then promptly deflated on yestyerday’s news that the 103 key keyboard will now only feature boring old monochrome keys rather than the promised full-colour jobbies promised.
The response from their patient and loyal fans was immediate, with a chorus of posts on the Optimus blog screaming, “count me out!” at the news.
Although Optimus have announced that a colour version will eventually see the light of day “at a greater price,” we suspect that the final price may even surpass our generous pointless gadget budget, so it looks like we’ll be sticking with our battered old Logitech for a while longer.
Designed exclusively for idiots with more money than sense, the official Formula 1 carbon and leather mouse mat can now be bought online for just £260 ($489, €380)
Whereas most folks are happy to go along with some wafer thin promotional freebie or a tatty old mouse mat bought for a fiver, the Formula 1 mat is clearly designed for loaded types who go through life struggling to find a connection between common sense and value.
The ‘none-more-black’ mat has been hand-made in England exclusively for Formula 1 by specialist composite technicians who make Formula One monocoques.
I guess we must be a bit thick here because we had to look up what ‘monocoques’ meant. We can now, however, tell fellow ignoramuses that it means, “a type of vehicle design in which the body and chassis are in one piece”. So now you know.
The blurb on the Formula 1 webpage insists that the carbon mouse mat was designed “using state of the art automotive 3D modelling software.”
We’re not entirely sure what 3D car design tools are needed to roll out a piece of flat material, but we can tell you that the mat is made of solid polished carbon fibre with an inlaid leather mouse area.
It looks like it might just be able to take the almighty stress of having an optical or ball-operated mouse rolling over its surface too, with the carbon being “cured to 120º C at 100 psi.” Thank heavens for that.
(There is a rather better looking all-carbon version available for ‘just’ £250, but this won’t work with an optical mouse).
Just in case no-one’s noticed that you’re the owner of an outrageously overpriced mat – backed with the finest Italian black suede we’ll have you know – the thing is embossed in carbon with the F1 Formula 1 logo.
We bet that will impress the ladies. Not.
We must have all suffered this nightmare scenario.
One minute you’re busy working away at your laptop and then disaster strikes…
Someone needs to know the exact current temperature as a matter of urgency and you’ve forgotten to bring your thermometer along. Doh!
And then, even worse, you’re called upon to illuminate some distant object only to find that you left your laser pointer at home.
It’s a catastrophe!
Well, worry no more, because thanks to those clever folks at Brando, you can now own a USB mouse that packs both a thermometer and a laser pointer.
What a genius idea!
The appropriately named USB Mouse with Laser Pointer and Thermometer, frankly, looks like it might have fallen off the ugly tree, but that’s surely a small price to pay for owning such a potent combo.
Whip that puppy out at a corporate meeting and you’ll be the cock o’the walk!
Finished in a shiny black or red paint job, the optical mouse features a cheap and crappy small and simple LCD display for the temperature readout with the laser pointer operating from the mouse’s underside.
Their Website gives no indication as to the power of the pointer, but the illustration seems to suggest it can blast its mighty beam all of, err, a couple of feet, at best.
Coming with support for Windows 95/98/2000/NT/ME/XP, the 50g scroll mouse measures 75x35x20 mm and ships with a separate, retractable cable (8.8cm – 75cm) allowing you to stay tight to your PC or roam wild.
The mouse retails for $18 (~e14.5,~£10) and is available from the Brando website.
Don’t all rush now!
Thanks to innovative manufacturers like Logitech, we’ve had mice (mouses?) with more buttons than a Cinderella reunion, but just when you thought that the humble mouse couldn’t get any more new features, Digital Cowboy have announced the world’s first dual pointer mouse, the DCT-DPM1.
It looks like an ordinary mouse but has an unusual trick up its sleeve – when you activate the button on the left hand side of the mouse a second cursor appears on screen!
Now, this may sound like something developed by the Ministry of Bonkers Ideas on their annual ‘Let’s Take Acid’ day, but there might just be a method to their madness.
The DCT-DPM1 is aimed at people with multiple desktop displays, where users currently have to scroll across hefty distances when they jump from screen to screen.
With the new double cursor mouse, you can ‘park’ the first cursor on a point on the one screen, and then work on the other screen as usual.
Flipping between the two work areas is then simply a case of activating the mouse button to access the ‘parked’ cursor, without any need for a marathon of cross-screen scrolling.
And if you’re constantly having to input text into two different areas, the dual cursor idea could also be a winner, although we’re not sure if our limited brains could cope with two cursors on the go.
We’ve no idea when, or even if, this bi-cursorary device will be making it to the UK, but it is possible we could be witnessing the next evolution of the mouse.
Either that or it’s another really crap idea.
Mouse specs:Product name: DCT-DPM1 (JAN:4543183505031)
Colour: Black
The number of pointers: 2
The number of mouse buttons: 5 (the scroll button is included)
Resolution: 800dpi
Interface: USB & PS/2 (at the time of attachment adapter use)
OS: WindowsXp/2000
Size: Approximately 107×55×29mm
Cable length: 150cm
Accessory:USB -> PS/2 conversion adapter
Driver: CD
You’re thinking of doing your own podcast, I can tell. You were getting all excited about the new generation of digital microphones.
Microphones on laptops really are good quality – a fact which you could be forgiven for not noticing. You probably remember trying to make a voice note on an early notebook PC, and on playback, got something rather like an early 1910 bakelite recording of the sea, with a noise in the background that might (or might not) have been your voice.
Actually, the trick of getting a microphone – even if it’s a MEMS array – on a single chip is good, but what’s better, is the new array microphone technology.
It’s an extension of the idea of the two microphones of stereo, taking it up to eight. If you feed the sound from two points into a recorder, the two ears will be able to use the phase differences to concentrate on one sound stream. For example, you can make notes from what the Chairman said, even though your two neighbours were muttering about a donut right next to you.
Digital array microphones, however, are as good as the data stream they’re poured into. Imagine my delight to find that the default setting for OneNote audio recording is eight kilobits per second, mono. I found this out AFTER recording an Important Person at a press conference. I have no idea what he said; all I have is a recording of people coughing and creaking their chairs. I’m sure fellow-recorders have found the same.
Tomorrow, I’ll do you a NoteCast. It will be created using a digital array microphone on a Motion Computing Tablet LE1600 model. I’ll set the audio to CD quality stereo. Not only will it be clear as a bell, but it will be indexed, and you’ll be able to play back each section of the NoteCast simply by touching the indexed bit with your mouse pointer.
Excited? You are? Oh. Darn. I suppose I’d better do the Notecast, then…
Meanwhile you could amuse yourself by preparing by downloading an eval version of OneNote. It works just fine on any ordinary PC – you don’t have to have a Tablet.
It could be argued that a keyboard’s beauty lies in its simple elegance. No flashing lights, no blinking screens, no whirring eye candy, just several rows of dumb keys obediently awaiting your input.
Simple. Classic.
Boring.
Clear your desks for Logitech’s new Cordless Desktop MX 5000 Laser keyboard – a futuristic, gadget-tastic affair that will makes your current keyboard look more at home in a Stone Age cave.
The Bluetooth keyboard features a built-in LCD which can display a ton of useful (and not-so-useful) information including e-mail and instant message notifications, favourite playlists and Internet radio stations.
Ever found yourself typing an email to your Gran and wondering what the ambient temperature of the room was? No problem – the MX 5000’s got a built in room temperature readout.
For MP3 junkies, there’s one-touch access to music playlists from popular player like iTunes, Windows Media Player and Musicmatch, with keyboard bashers also able to access and launch categories and themes of music through Musicmatch’s Internet radio stations.
The keyboard LCD screen provides instant notification of new e-mail and instant messages and there’s also a humble calculator included, but this one’s got a clever twist, with calculation results automatically being saved to the computer’s clipboard. Neat.
Naturally, if you want indicators, the MX 5000’s got ’em, with the LCD screen keeping users informed about the vital status of the caps lock and F lock keys, volume levels and mute.
The MX5000 reflects the trend which sees dumb-as-a-rock keyboards slowly turning into smartypants devices, capable of both sending and receiving info from the computer and, in this case, even acting as a Bluetooth 2.0 Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) wireless hub.
“Logitech introduced the world’s first mouse-and-keyboard combination in 1998 with the goal of removing cord clutter from the desk,” gushed Denis Pavillard, Logitech vice president of product marketing for desktops.
“We succeeded in delivering on that vision, and we are now addressing a different kind of clutter – cleaning up the mess of notifications and information that are displayed on the computer monitor.”
“The Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5000 Laser desktop pushes that information to a peripheral screen so that people can choose when to glance at their notifications and status information, and can therefore clear their monitors — and their minds,” he added.
The Cordless Desktop MX 5000 package comes with Logitech’s MX1000 Cordless Laser Mouse, a laser powered chappie in a matching blue-slate/black finish.
Of course, the more functionality you squeeze into a keyboard, the greater the power needs, and Logitech have included a smart power-management solution which seems to comprise of a decidedly low tech on/off switch on the keyboard and an integrated battery indicator light.
We could have used one of them for our Logitech MX700 mouse which promptly ran out of juice half way through writing this review and is now pointlessly blinking away in its recharging dock.
The Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5000 Laser will be available in October in the U.S. and Europe with a suggested retail price of £119.99 (€176) in Europe ($149.99 US).
So what’s the deal here?
Creative Technology Ltd, the people with over 250 million Sound Blaster sound cards sold to date, have just announced, what they claim, is a major step upwards in audio fidelity.
They have introduced the Sound Blaster X-Fi line of sound cards. Powered by the Creative X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity audioprocessor, the Sound Blaster X-Fi cards introduce Xtreme Fidelity, an entirely new audio standard for music, movies and games.
As I am currently encoding a radio library (old tapes), I was intrigued by the press-release claim “With Sound Blaster X-Fi’s 24-bit Crystalizer and CMSS-3D technologies, all your MP3 music and CD music can sound even better than the original studio recording”
It goes on: “Sound Blaster X-Fi heralds the beginning of a new epoch in audio, where X-Fi enabled audio products will eventually and completely replace the old hi-fi equipment in the home,
Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro features professional-quality digital-to-analog converters (DACs) with 116dB SNR, plus an I/O module with a comprehensive selection of connectivity for audio creation with easy-to-use control knobs for the X-Fi 24-bit Crystalizer, X-Fi CMSS- 3D (Creative Multi-Speaker Surround), 3DMIDI, and EAX.
The Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro also features 64MB of on-board X-RAM — audio memory dedicated to higher gaming audio quality and performance, in addition to a built-in pre-amp for direct recording, and high-impedance inputs for electric guitars. The “top of the line” Sound Blaster X-Fi solution, the Elite Pro includes all of the standard features, application software, power and performance capabilities of the entire family of Sound Blaster X-Fi cards (described below in product launch-ese), in one solution.
Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS : Yes that is a “1” not an “i”. Designed to meet the performance demands of the world’s best-known professional gamer, Johnathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel, the Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS sound card provides stunning 109dB SNR audio quality, accelerates gaming performance and includes 64MB of on-board X-RAM for high performance gaming. With support for EAX ADVANCED HD 5.0, the latest version of the EAX Environmental Audio standard, the Sound Blaster X-FiFatal1ty FPS card utilizes X-Fi CMSS 3D technology for stunning audio realismover headphones in LAN gaming. The Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS features a convenient front-facing internal drive bay for easy connectivity, plus the X-Fi IR remote to easily access and control all digital entertainment, and to control the X-Fi 24-bit Crystalizer, X-Fi CMSS 3D, 3DMIDI and EAX.
Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum : The ideally versatile sound card to suit all digital entertainment experiences, the Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum sound card includes an internal drive bay with additional, convenient front-facing input/output connectivityfor headphone listening, PC gaming and audio creation. Delivering 109dB SNR audio quality, the Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum includes the X-Fi IR remote, for easy access to the Entertainment Center software console, which enables access to music, movies and picture slide shows through a slick, streamlined interface. The Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum also includes all of the standard features, application software, power and performance capabilities of the Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music.
Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic. The Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic sound card harnesses the full power of the Creative X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity audio processor to upgrade any existing library of MP3 or any music files to the Xtreme Fidelity audio standard. With the X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity 24-bit Crystalizer, MP3 music and movies are converted to Xtreme Fidelity, which deliver an experience beyond the original CD or DVD recordings. With the included Creative MediaSource 3 software suite, users can easily SuperRip all their digital music permanently toXtreme Fidelity. In addition, MediaSource 3 also allows users to further enhance their music content with single-click access to rich features like X-Fi CMSS-3D, Smart Cross-Fade and Smart Volume Management. The Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music sound card plays back audio with rich 109dB SNR quality. Optimized Modes for Peak X-Fi Performance
Pricing and Availability: The Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro, priced at US$399.99, the Sound BlasterX-Fi Fatal1ty FPS, priced at US$279.99, the Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum, priced at US$199.99 and the Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic, priced atUS$129.99, will be available this month in the US (August 22nd shipping), probably in September in Europe.
I hope to test the Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic by the end of the month. Watch this space! Wonder if the card gets hot with all those components on it?
Jonathon Marks is a highly-experienced radio reporter, expert on the next stages of the media, an all-round good egg and friend of Digital-Lifestyles. One of his publications is What Caught My Eye – Broadcast & Podcast Gadgets