Category Archives: Product Announcements

Australian-based electronics manufacturer Zensonic just announced its new Z500 network media player. They’ve taken a CD/DVD player and gone nuts with the feature set:

•HDMI for connecting high-def displays
•Support for external hard drives via USB 2.0
•Built-in 802.11g wireless
•100Mbps ethernet
•Access to internet weather and streaming radio

The list of supported media formats:

•Windows Media 9 video and audio (plus the DRM version)
•DivX
•MPEG4
•Audio codecs FLAC, OGG, AAC and MP3.

The company is including the Mac/Linux/Windows-compatible media server application Twonkyvision, in addition to Microsoft’s Windows Media Connect and Ahead Software’s Nero Media software. Zensonic says the Z500 will be available down under this November for AU$549, and ultimately stateside for $379 (when they find a US distributor). Europeans can get one for €329 Euros.

David Pogue of the New York Times wrote a nice review of SanDisk’s Ultra II SD plus memory card last week, which I read and promptly forgot about until this morning. It’s definitely worth mentioning, because until now nobody seemed to have thought about producing a memory card able to circumvent that nearly ubiquitous element of digital photography and memory cards: the memory card reader.

Tiny built-in hinges let the card fold in half, exposing a USB plug devoid of the usual metal shield. Simply insert it into your computer and it behaves like a flash drive. Admittedly, the thing is darn tiny, and Pogue justifiably expresses concern over the possibility of those hinges breaking – he mentions a SanDisk rep’s promise that the cards are designed (and guaranteed) to endure some 5,000 open/close cycles.

Also sweet news: not paying a price premium for the little buggers. Nice work, SanDisk. Here’s a Froogle link for all y’all interested in buying one.

Just when I thought the number of types of iPod iGear could not get any greater, someone’s found a way to let the little bugger help its devotees get closer to…God. Find a bare spot in that belt and cut one more notch, ok?

CNET.com’s Apple blog mentioned last week’s release of Laridian’s iPocketBible. Not content to include simply the complete text, these guys have put together a product with more than 73 hours of narration, courtesy of Christian radio personality Mike Kellogg. It’s available for $49.99 through the company’s web site.

Let the iWorship begin.

It was obviously only a matter of time before this happened. Building on the previous post, I wanted to briefly include something about MSN Filter, given its recent launch. With posts in five categories (lifestyle, music, tv, sports and technology), it’s a bit unclear what the immediate goal behind Filter may be, but the technology section seems to be on par with other blogs in the genre (as if I’m any authority). At least they’ve put up some information about those behind the posts – when I first saw filter the posts might as well have come from the sky. According to this InformationWeek article, Microsoft is building content with the help of hired bloggers, “experts in different areas…[with] free reign to write about those topics.”

Features offered by the service include RSS, MSN alerts to new content and comments (.NET passport required).

Talk amongst yourselves…and do what you will.

A few VOIP tidbits this morning:

Quite a bit of speculation is floating around about Skype being snapped up. The Register lists potential suitors as Yahoo!, Google or News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch, while The Independent claims that $3 billion might be Murdoch’s magic number. Meanwhile, Skype says it isn’t for sale. Ultimately, it’s impossible to predict the service’s long-term growth; venture capitalist Tim Draper compares Skype’s purchase to Microsoft’s of Hotmail in 1998 for $450 million – the service now has nearly 200 million users. I suppose Skpe could ultimately go belly-up if people lose all interest in VOIP, but that seems unlikely. The tech big boys wouldn’t be so interested if they believed this to be the case.

Meanwhile, the guys at Engadget posted this morning about VoipBuster, who, appropriately, is busting Skype when it comes to calling rates. According to Skype Journal, the service allows users to make free calls to most of the SkypeOut countries after opening account and paying a single Euro (~$1.27) worth of credit. That’s it! Free calls to most of the world for just over a dollar. VoipBuster shows its limitations, however, in a complete lack of a feature set – no chat, no conference calls, no online presence information, and no PC-to-PC calling. But for PC-to-phone, for now it doesn’t get any cheaper.

pssst: make a Mac version!

Podcasting blew up overnight, and somehow keeps blowing upward. Timeshifting Television shows blew up a bit slower than time-and-place shifting radio shows. Apple’s iTunes 4.9 had a big part to do with that. What does this mean for you and I? have you listened to any podcasts out there? My experience is that 90% of them completely SUCK! College radio is better than most of the podcasts I’ve ventured out to listen to, but we are in the early stages of podcasting, right?

Yamaha thinks so, that’s why they’ve developed the *AW1600 and *AW2400 Workstations. Basically these suckers are portable studios. Multiple tracks, CDRW, motorized EQ’s, USB 2.0 for fast file transfer [Podcaster friendly], a gang of other features that I don’t understand, and of course the super cool fact that you’ve got a recording studio under your arm at any given time. It’s a dedicated computer recorder, complete with a 40GB harddrive! Maybe they’ll have a plugin so I could use it as a

Hopefully with products like these, the current podcasters who use Microsoft’s .wav recording utility will produce some listenable podcasts for able listeners like me.

*Should be out this fall

Hello Readers. I wanted to re-introduce myself. I have previously written reviews of Tiger, the Mac Mini, and the iPod Shuffle but I’ve been MIA lately. Well, I am back with my thoughts on Apple’s latest offering.

First of all, a confession. I have a condition called Appleitis. Apple announces something and I immediately do two things. First, go to apple.com and drool for a bit. If I have the money, I’ll call the Apple store in SoHo to see if they have it in stock, if they don’t (as was the case with the Mighty Mouse) I’ll go online and check what the estimated shipping costs will be.

I Got the new Apple Mighty Mouse yesterday in the mail. Continue reading →

So I figure I’d better get this in before everyone besides the Himalayan sherpas blog about it: today Apple finally introduced a multi-button mouse, aptly (and admittedly a bit corny) named Mighty Mouse. Potential copyright infringement aside, the device promises, in typical Apple PR language, to be the mouse that reinvented the wheel. Seriously, though; it looks pretty cool. With a form factor nearly identical to the previous generation pro mouse, mighty mouse apparently has touch-sensitive sensors under the front of the shell that detect where you are clicking, allowing two-button functionality, plus side buttons that are squeezable (and programmable). Perhaps the most intruiging element of the entire thing is a tiny ball positioned on the front. It apparently lets you scroll in 360 degrees, making me think of the red trackpoints on IBM Lenovo Thinkpads.

UPDATE: Jacqui Cheng of Ars Technica has a good review of the mouse; if I ever get my mitts on one, I promise I’ll give all y’all MY impressions.

I had such a crazy dream! In my dream I woke up, walked to my sofa and sat down. In front of the coffee table was a shiny new LCD screen where my 19” Phillips used to be. I powered on the TV, rubbed my eyes in disbelief, and started browsing my PC’s library of mp3’s. After jamming to a few favorite tunes, I watched a picture slideshow of my last trip to Las Vegas. I skipped watching video files and moved on to watching some live TV. Premium content (the stuff you pay for) was also available, but being a cheap guy I didn’t purchase that Bikini Carwash 7 movie, from the internet.

Then I woke up and realized that I wasn’t sleeping, I was just daydreaming. This LCD screen of home network goodness does really exist, just not in my home. BenQ and Mediabolic have joined together to form LCD monitors with home network integration. BenQ is a renowned LCD screen manufacturer, and Mediabolic’s DMA (digital media adapter) technology was just asking to be married. A remote control allows the user to navigate this puppy in a means that is form fit for TV viewing. I can’t wait to take a step back from my computer and play on my TV with something like this.

I’m not a fan of the PPA Metal Gear Box USB 2.0 Hard Drive enclosure. I purchased one, lost thousands of songs due to corrupted data, and now have been hard drive enclosure less for over a week. I sent it back to PPA with hopes of fixing the problem which they seemed far too familiar with when I explained what happened me and a friend of mine who also got screwed by a Metal Gear Box. Why have I been subjected to such torment? Because Netgear hadn’t released this product until now.
Continue reading →

Women are beautiful, a piece of true art. They come in different shapes and sizes, each of their curves appear to have been perfectly formed by a master craftsman. There’s a certain elegance that one experiences when a woman walks into the room.

iPods are beautiful, a piece of true art. They come in different shapes and sizes, each of their curves appear to have been perfectly formed by a master craftsman. There’s a certain elegance that one experiences when an iPod walks into the room (or is pulled out of a pocket).

iPods, like women, cannot just waltz around the city naked. The thought of exposing such fragile artistry in today’s hazardous environment would be insane. Slappa knows this, and has produced a spiffy yet solid protective shield for iPod Mini’s everywhere.

At first look the Shockshell case looks like a colorful piece of rubber wrapped around the iPod Mini. There’s much more to it than that! There are three layers to the Shockshell case. Inside is a smooth, soft cushion for your iPod to snuggle up against. In the middle is a tough aluminum core that provides a rigid form and ultimate protection. The outermost layer is a rubberized hypergrip that not only functions for protection but aesthetics as well.

I like my women and iPods art to be naked exhibited as much as any other man. Without proper protection however, neither would be able to leave the house. The Slappa Shockshell will solve any issues you have with the iPod Mini. As for women… Slappa does not make any cases that house actual women.

This is a “Contest Post“, so leave a comment!