Category Archives: General

As my fellow geeks know, please don’t be offended with the geek reference, we all are in some capacity, that E3 is currently being held in sunny southern California. And with that gaming extraveganza of games, games, more games, hot models, and games, they show the latest and greatest of the upcoming.

The big 3, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have officially announced their next generation consoles. Sony’s Playstation 3, Microsoft’s Xbox 360, and Nintendo’s Revolution promise to make this upcomming generation truly digital.

All three are reported to have backwards compatibility and online access. Nintendo went a bit further to announce that “the evolution’s built-in wireless Internet will provide downloadable access to the thousands of games in company’s 20-year-old library, going back to the original Nintendo Entertainment System” WOWZERS..dorks drooling.

I haven’t been a big Nintendo fan in recent years, although I am guilty of owning all three of the current generation systems, its always exciting to see whats coming next for console gaming.

More indepth coverage to come when it’s announced, I don’t want to bore you with exact specs when the prices haven’t been announced yet. 😉

Connections Conference attendee NetCentrex Inc was nice enough to set me down and show me exactly what’s going on behind their curtains. There weren’t actual curtains there but they did have squishy chairs for a for a full demonstration run through.

What is Triple Play was my first question, I’ve played my TV, radio, and computer all at the same time, does that count? No, was her answer. Then she asked me for my phone number! That’s right kiddo, right in the middle of us ordering The Lord of the Rings movie as a VoD (Video on Demand) she asked me for my phone number. My striking resemblance to Aragorn Mortensen was more apparent than I thought. Then she started to dial my number on the TV remote control. A phone sitting next to the TV started to ring a funny ring, she picked it up and didn’t say anything. As soon as she put the receiver to her ear, my phone started to ring. It was her calling me!

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Thanks to the Connections Conference I now must have minimum $10,000.00 in new up to date home networking equipment. I have no idea how I lived without these great new inventions, and once I get them will never want to be without them. SmartVue agrees, and provides a solution to keeping your new home networking things in your home.

Camera surveillance is nothing new, even wireless cameras aren’t a new technology. SmartVue has introduced a new spin on old technology. Wireless cameras for the home surveillance, connected to the net, and available anywhere (even your mobile phone).

The spec breakdown for those who like numbers: Continue reading →

I’m not old, but I sure do remember back in the good ol’ days when candy bars were a nickel, movies cost $0.50, email accounts had 2MB limits, and attachments were measured in Kilobytes. My friends and I dreamed of the days when cars flew, videophones lined the streets, and we could email 2GB attachments to each other with the easy of simply pushing ‘send’.

Thank you Streamload, and no they don’t make flying cars. My latter fantasy however has been fulfilled thanks to this San Diego based company. I ran across these guys at the Connections Conference, they have more storage than you can imagine and allow you free unlimited uploads. Movies, music, videos, files, photos, and anything else you can imagine.

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The files are basically FTP’d Continue reading →

On April 1st Mobile PC Magazine had me pretty good with an elaborate post about nuclear powered batteries. It was an April Fools joke. Picking up my ego from the ground when I realized I had been fooled, I got ta thinking “Man, a nuclear powered battery — that would be cool as long as it didn’t make me grow a third testical.”

Well here it is. A tritium based battery will last for 12-20 years. This means two things.

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If you’re like me (then I feel sympathy for you) you probably have more than one computer in your household. Each computer holds its own library of media: music, movies, and photos. Setting up a network then sharing files is a huge chore thanks to our buddies at Microsoft. Let’s face it: I want more than just a normal, boring, computer network these days.

My digital appetite may be satisfied with something I came across during the Connections Conference, the Dedicated Devices Inc. (DDI) Digital Home System. Mediabolic has teamed up with DDI to bring a new type of home network. Considering you paid $12,000.00 for that 62” plasma screen, and $5,000.00 for your 5.1 Dolby surround sound stereo, why the heck are you still listening to mp3’s and viewing photos on your 15” computer monitor!?

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Wires aren’t feeling so well these days. Wireless this, wireless that, everyone wants to get rid of their wires. You’d think this to not be good news for our friends at Belden, global wire manufacturers. But as much as we’d like to free ourselves from wires, the need for quality wires will not go away just that easy. I visited the Belden booth at the Connections Conference unsure what I would find from a company that makes such a simple product.

Was I wrong. I approached the booth and said “So you guys just make wires eh? Which one is your favorite?” The Belden woman pointed directly to a bundle and called it the banana bundle. She grabbed a 12” section which had two Cat5, two Coax, and one fiber wire all bundled together.
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The Connections Conference was full of new ways, and ideas for connecting existing components of your digital lifestyle. New ways to network your TV, computers, phones, stereos and anything else you may have lying around the house. Intellon, a company I had never heard of, held a boot at the conference. I figured that I’ll pass them up and go onto a company which I was more familiar with until pretty flashing LEDs drew me in. Intellon was giving out flashing LED pendants that I could not live without. So I moseyed on over to see if I could score one.

After making myself a walking flashing “HomePlug Powerline Alliance” advertisement I noticed some Netgear products that I had not seen before. Further inquiry and I found Linksys, BellSouth, Belkin and others just to name a few.
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When I think pepper the first thing that comes to mind is salt. I asked Jon Melamut, VP of sales & business development for Pepper where they got their name from as my first question. “Peppers are hotter than apples”, he replied with a joking smile. Jon admitted immediately that he was an Apple lover, but couldn’t resist when I set him up so good. “Pepper is just an easy name to remember, it sticks” he then told me with a bit more sincerity. Pepper’s aim is to make something that’s easy, simple, and fun, their name definitely reflects that.


What is the Pepper Pad? In this gadget geek’s opinion, it’s somewhere in that middle haze between laptops and PDA’s. The Pad is designed for recreational use only, this is not a work related device! AIM, email, internet browsing, and digital media are the focuses that Pepper put into it’s Pad. Linux runs this bad boy, which keeps viruses and spyware to a minimum yet stability at a maximum. The browser is powered by the Gecko engine, which not coincidentally powers our favorite friend Mozilla’s Firefox. POP3, IMAP4, and AOL mail can be accessed on these 2 lbs of fun. The screen is a touch screen and the icons are very self explanatory. Tabs are incorporated into each app making it easy to switch between areas of a program. Bluetooth, WiFi, USB 1.1, and SD/MMC expansion card slots are built in to Pepper. It can act as a remote control for pretty much everything but the kitchen sink (unless you have a IR port on your sink, which I would actually like to see for kicks).
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Macrocomm has what looks like the biggest and best fax machine ever. This is not just a fax machine, scratch that, it’s not a fax machine. This prototype model will be released in Europe come this July 2005. I was lucky enough to sit next to Dave, the Managing Director, for lunch and inquired what it was he had to bring to the Connections Conference. Before I knew it, during a 30 min break and he pulled a box from his hotel room and met us a the terrace. His prototype do-it-all machine wasn’t at a booth for this conference, yet I managed to grab an exclusive look at this baby.

Touch screen, VoIP, IPTV, HDTV, dual boot Linux and Windows, DVD player, 5.1 Dolby Sound, USB 2.0, and starting at $850.00. This device is destined to end up in hotels, hospitals, conference rooms, dormitories, airports, and consumer homes. Combine it all and here you have it: the all-in-one for the budget consumer. Still, I say it looks a bit like a big screen fax machine.

Mitsubishi Electric has given us the gift of green. A new fridge will actually enhance the nutrients in your vegetables the longer they stay in.

The box gives off orange light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that promote photosynthesis in the greens. Typically vegetables lose vitamins and other such goodies the longer they stay in the fridge, but now that process will actually be reversed. Truth be told, however, I tend to only eat vegetables when they come topped on pizza. So really this does me no good.

Also related is a refrigerator that actually keeps things cool by using sound. Researchers at Penn state actually designed a refrigerator which makes such loud sounds that the gases inside the box constrict and cool down. I hope they figure out a way to turn off the sound when you open the fridge, like that annoying light I always try to catch off.