Category: Platforms

Oakley Release MP3 sunglasses

Oakley Thump MP3 sunglassesOakley sunglasses wearers may soon be able to see music as digital music eyewear is launched. Back in July rumours were circulating that Oakley would produce the new glasses but it wasn’t until September that details emerged online. 

The Oakley Thump is the world’s first digital music eyewear. The wireless device has optics forged with an integrated, state-of-the-art digital audio engine. The new addition in technology means that people are able to listen to music virtually anywhere. A High Speed USB connection allows music to be transferred quickly and easily. The integrated speakers sit by the ears of the person wearing the glasses and they can be adjusted in three directions to balance music with outside noise.

The company are selling glasses in seven colours with polarized tinted lenses. The new digital music eyewear delivers over 60 tracks or about 4 hours of music directly without cables or wires and looks set to be a popular trend. The official specs: USB 2.0, 128MB/256MB of storage. The glasses are lighter than an empty CD case and weigh only 50 grams.

The glasses vary in price with the 128 MB model costing  $395 (£276, €324) and the 256 MB range with polarized lenses cost $495  (£276, €406).

Oakley Thump

Vodafone Launch BlackBerry 7100v – With New Form

Vodafone BlackBerry 7100vVodafone have today announced a new form of BlackBerry, the 7100v. It has been designed with the BlackBerries creator, RIM (Research In Motion) and will be the first release of a new form factor.

I’d seen BlackBerries around but had dismissed them as a suits tool, and frankly had looked down on them a little. I saw them as used by people who didn’t know better, just getting them out to show off.

While I was in Amsterdam for IBC, there were a couple of occasions where a BlackBerry saved the day. In one, a speaker arrived in Amsterdam without knowing where his hotel was, fortunately I had sent him an email as he landed at the airport – he picked it up on his BlackBerry and we were able to sort things out quickly.

Now having studied them in detail, I can see they are about the most efficient use of space a text input device could have – a thumb-able keyboard and compact screen.

The new model from Vodafone differs from the ‘normal’ BlackBerry approach of full QWERTY keyboard and large screen. Vodafone’s new 7100v takes its design cue from a mobile phone handset. It has a slightly expanded numeric keyboard, taking it from three keys across to five.

To maintain the ease of input of text, the 7100v uses the RIM-developed SureType. It appears to be very similar in function to T9, but it has only two possible characters on each key, rather than up to four with T9. Paul Stonadge, Data Solutions Executive at Vodafone UK, told us the best way to get acclimatised to it is to “get into the mind set that it is a QWERTY keyboard”

It has a built in library of 35,000 words that can be user-expanded. Another smart feature is the automatic reading in of the contact address book, leading to all your contact names being included in the typing dictionary – very smart.

Vodafone have also taken the opportunity of heavily branding both the handset and the interface – it will be clear to the user that they’re using a Vodafone.

Vodafone previously released BlackBerries, the 7230 and slightly larger screened 7730 were aimed at medium to large enterprises. They are aiming this at the SME and SoHo market – a smart move considering how often small business people are away from their desk and how vital it is form them to stay in touch.

One of the winning features of the BlackBerries has been that email was pushed to the handset rather than the normal method of repeatedly asking the mail server if it had anything new. To use the push feature, the BlackBerries originally needed to run in conjunction with MS Exchange and Lotus Domino servers – the Enterprise solution, as they labelled it. This changed a while back to allow mail to be picked up for the widely spread POP servers.

It is due for release on 1 Oct in the UK and will vary in cost depending on the call plan, ranging from free on the higher call plans to £82 (~$146.56, ~€120.60) on the Anytime 100. The email charge will be on top, varying from £8.51 (~$15.21, ~€12.51) for a heavy voice plan to £15.74 (~$28.13, ~€23.15) if it is only used for email.

We’ll be testing in October, so stand by for a review.

BlackBerry 7100

CLIE PEG-VZ90 marks Sony’s start of Mass Production of Full Colour Organic LED’s

Sony has announced that they will start the mass production of full-colour Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) displays. They see the OLED displays as a possible replacement for LCD screens, but with the added advantages of not needing a back-light, giving quicker screen response times and providing wider viewing angles. Response times will drop from 16mil sec on current Sony LED’s to a stunning 0.01mil sec and viewing angles will improve from around 130 degrees on LCD to 180 degrees in both horizontal and vertical planes.

By adding their own magic ingredient to OLED’s, called Super Top Emission technology, Sony claims they will get significant improved brightness (1000:1 vs 100:1 LCD) and a great range of colours (gamut) (~100% vs ~40% LCD). They claim it will rival the performance of Cathode Ray Tubes (CRT).

Since their introduction, one of the big problems for LCD-equipped portable media players has been the impossibility of seeing their displays outdoors when the sun is strong. It sounds like Sony’s approach could not only save the batteries of portable devices, but also fix the sunlight problem.

The CLIE ‘PEG-VZ90’ will be the first Sony device to benefit from the production run.

Sony

Amino shows tiny IPtv PVR STB

Amino AmiNET500Amino, the broadcast electronics company based in Cambridge, UK, have unveiled the AmiNET500, a tiny, low-cost, Internet Protocol Television (IPtv) set top box with built in PVR. The diminutive 184mm x 240 x 56 box can hold up to 40 hours of programming on its 80Gb drive. It runs on a Linux platform and uses a Java-based PVR application

Amino have taken a flexible approach to delivering content to the box. The AmiNET500 will monitor the speed of the broadband connection and will enable the uploading of content for later replay if, bandwidth is insufficient for live delivery.

Amino plan to support leading DRM and conditional access systems and, if protection is used, the programming will be stored encrypted on the hard drive. Delivery of content around the home, to different STB’s is also possible with this machine. Presumably the disparate STB’s will need to be able to decode the encrypted material.

The first vision of the box, destined for US release is available form October and the European version in early 2005.

Amino Communications

Pace launch PVR2GO – 1st Mobile PVR for payTV

Page PVR2GOPace, UK-based supplier for TV-focused technology, announced what they claim is the world’s first mobile personal video recorder of payTV.

The 40Gb device, which enables the downloading of protected TV content, has an interesting and innovative approach to the display. The device will feature two screens, a large high quality and resolution screen to display the content, with a secondary, smaller strip of screen underneath it that is used for navigating the content. The normal approach to this would be to use a large high quality screen, but in discussion with their Director of Technology, David Gillies explained that Pace would get significant financial saving using this approach.

The upper high-resolution screen will be a new range, supplied by Samsung, using one quarter of the power a currently available equivalent. Using ‘clever new battery’ technology and other power saving features, the battery life of the device will be at least 3 hours – more than long enough to watch a feature film.

Unsurprisingly it will also have the ability to play audio files and view photos. One unexpected feature is the ability to play games, the make up of which we assume will be dependant on which OS is installed.

On the OS question, we were told it would be soft, depending on who the operator customer is. If some purchasing operator has a Set Top Box (STB) with a defined look and feel or EPG, this can also be ported, extending the payTV operators brand to their viewers hand.

Although a fully working demonstrator was not available, they were showing a version, using the older screen, displaying video content. Given an order, Neil Gaydon, Worldwide Sales and Marketing Director told Digital Lifestyles that they could have it in the market “within six months”.

Pace Micro

Sony Invent Esper

Good news for all of you who’ve ever wanted to sit in front of a murky screen, in a darkened apartment, zooming in on a photograph of a stripper’s bedroom – Sony have developed a chip that lets viewers pan, zoom and enhance TV images.

Demonstrated in Tokyo yesterday, the Digital Reality Creation Multifunction v2 technology (DRC-MFv2)– modest name there – keeps the picture sharp by using image enhancement processes, rather than just stretching the scan lines, so there’s no loss of detail that might result in you retiring a human by mistake. With DRC, one pixel can become 36.

There’s no word when TV’s featuring the technology will appear, but you can bet it’ll be around the time that the first HD pornography hits the market. Voice-operated will be extra.

The DRC-MFv2

The Nokia 9300 – the New Communicator, Only Smaller

No doubt you’ll remember the Nokia Communicator – you’ve probably sat opposite some bloke in a meeting who had one, and I bet he had an air of desperation tinged with coolness about him. Cool, because he thought he had a nifty gadget, desperation because it was enormous and the battery was about to go any moment.

The Communicator, apart from the Trekker name, was a good idea and the various updates and iterations since the first model have improved many of its features and attributes. However (there’s always a however, isn’t there?), other more useful (and certainly smaller) smartphones have appeared, and people failed to see the point of the Communicator after a while.

Nokia are back with another attempt though, and a valiant effort it is too. The new 9300 is 50 grams lighter and several centimetres smaller around the waist – Nokia are touting it as “a new high-end smartphone with both beauty and brains.” The company is hoping to see it in a lot more shirt pockets, and tellingly, handbags.

The tri-band 9300 retains the original hinged format, opening up to reveal a full keyboard and a 65,536 colour screen. Navigation has been improved with a joystick for getting around menus, and eight function keys. Users can expand the 80mb built-in memory to up to 2 gig with an optional MMC card.

The new phone runs the Series 80 OS, and includes software for connecting to various email servers, browsing the internet and a built in office suite, including a PDF reader.

“The Nokia 9300 will appeal to a wide range of professionals who want powerful functionality from a data-enabled device without compromising the look, comfort, simplicity and usability of a standard mobile phone,” said Niklas Savander, senior vice president of Nokia’s business device unit. “We believe the Nokia 9300 strikes that balance in one stylish smartphone, without sacrificing the combined functionality that many people require but until now could only get from carrying multiple products.”

Where’s the camera then?

The 9300 will be available in the first quarter of 2005, though no pricing details have yet been publicised.

The 9300

Samsung’s Hard Drive Phone

Samsung have launched their SPH V5400 mobile phone, a US$800 (€661) handset with a 1.5 gig hard drive in it. Manufacturers have been adding more and more features to handsets for years now, but they have been hampered by the relatively tiny amount of memory available to them.

The recent commercial breakthrough of micro-sized hard disk drives now means that phones can finally start to live up to all those convergence promises by taking advantage of a decent amount of storage. Most mobile phones have under 16 meg of memory – and that doesn’t go very far when you start throwing photographs, Java games, MP3s, ringtones and your address book at it.

The V5400 certainly needs a 1.5 gig drive in it – the phone features a megapixel camera and MP3 player, so users will be able to store about 350 tracks or a few hundred photographs.

Why a hard drive rather than a slightly more drop-friendly Flash memory? Disk drive capacities increase exponentially compared to their cost as the technology matures, the increases enjoyed by Flash memories are much more modest.

The new phone also has two screens – the main screen is an 320 x 240 OLED, and the secondary screen is a 128 x 128 TFT.

A built in FM transmitter will even send music to a near-by radio, just like the Belkin iTrip (unless legislation changes, this feature will not be legal in the UK) – and if you want to view video or photographs on your TV, well there’s an output for that too.

The phone will be available in Korea by the end of September, with no schedule yet for other markets.

Samsung

Alienware’s 4GHz Pentium

I love overclockers – I don’t know if it’s the nerves of steel needed to run components so far beyond their factory specifications that they need to be refrigerated, or the glowing water cooling pipes they use, or it might even be the UV lamps and dodgy stickers. And this is coming from someone who underclocks his graphics card – OpenOffice doesn’t really need much acceleration.

Overclocking basically involves running a processor at speeds beyond factory specification, and is generally performed by home enthusiasts who then have to solve the puzzle of extracting all that extra heat out of their PC case in colourful and complex ways. Some manufacturers have noticed this fashion and have taken to selling systems that have already been overclocked, and the professional build and cooling systems make them more reliable and less messy.

So, for those of you who want power at any expense, Alienware have released a pre-overclocked gaming system, featuring a Pentium 4 that runs at a (probably literally) red hot 4Ghz.

The Area-51 ALX is based around a Extreme Edition Pentium 4, with 1 gig of Corsair RAM, and a 6800 Ultra for a graphics card. Keeping this lot cool requires gold plated, pure copper coolers, and a specially formulated liquid solution to conduct heat away from components. Oh, and two pumps and a few fans. A custom power control board monitors liquid temperature and features an emergency alarm and automatic shut-down features, just in case things get too frantic during those FPS death matches.

At a wallet-alarming US$5,458 (€4,525) for a typical set up, it’s for devoted, power hungry gamers only – but I certainly can’t think of a better way to Half-Life 2’s launch.

Alienware ALX Series

Windows Media 10

Windows Media 10 is always going to invite comparisons with iTunes, but there are many features built into WM10 that Apple’s music client won’t have for a while, if ever. This latest release of is part of Microsoft’s latest strategy to get into the living rooms (and pockets) of media-savvy households by providing useful tools and an easy to use interface for accessing music, video and more.

The first thing I noticed after Windows Media 10 installed, was that it’s much faster and responsive than the iTunes client. iTunes has a habit of pausing and sitting there unresponsively after some tasks. WM10 will then scan your hard drive for all compatible media types, from MP3s to recorded TV shows. High Definition video is supported, with tools and advice for optimising the experience.

The Media Library view is, for me, the most useful and shows off WM10’s Media Centre capabilities best. Recorded programmes can be sorted by series or actor, for example, and even includes a separate category for programmes that have not been watched yet.

One of the most interesting features of the player is the way that it integrates with online stores, including MSN Music. The execution is simple – the player just acts as a web browser – but works beautifully and demonstrates that Microsoft really only needs a web-based store and not a software client like iTunes. Support is included for a broad range of stores and media types – users can even buy and view content direct from CinemaNow without leaving the player.

As promised, synchronisation with more than 70 hardware players has been extended and simplified and will automatically update your portable media centre with new music or video when attached.

Definitely the best media player out there – and it’s difficult to see Real or iTunes catching up on functionality or ease of use any time soon.

Windows Media 10