Gadgets Mobile

You know what they say about huge projectors with big price tags, right? Enormous ambition.

The new Viper projector from Planar is all about largeness alright, but if it the company wants to catch up to the other projector companies, it has to distinguish itself as something more than a middling business projector company. Thus, the Viper.

What’s so special about it? Start with the three-chip DLP, 10-bit independent dual image processing, a 10,000:1 contrast ratio (at 2,000 lumens of brightness), and 1280 X 720p resolution for a 110-inch screen. You could probably start your own theater with this thing.

Developed with Texas Instruments, the projector also promises to bring out the best black level reproduction for a front projector anywhere. Since we haven’t seen this with our own eyes yet, we’ll wait on this verdict. (They’re likely to show it at next week’s CEDIA event, which yours truly will be covering).

But it comes with a huge catch. Actually, it’s more like a heavy, dirty load: it costs $15,500. I saw a used Prius on Craigslist going for that much the other day. Then again, it’s less than the 150" screen we saw from Panasonic earlier this year, so it’s all relative (if you’re rich).

Even though we live in an age of blogging, some of us still prefer putting our thoughts down so only we can see them. For those who reject the traditional locked notebook model of a diary, you will be pleased to know that the Secret Diary is completely digital.

The Secret Diary looks like a USB Flash Drive, but that’s just its cover. It lives up to its name as the designated user must enter in a 4 digit Pin number on the built-in numeric keypad in order to get in. The data is stored via 256-bit AES cypto.

Unfortunately, there is another security feature that will hopefully never get used. You see, if someone tries to hack into someone else’s Secret Diary, it will implement a self-destruct procedure that will erase all the sensitive information. Yeah, that would be too bad if that happened. Maybe the user should buy another Secret Diary for a backup.

As for the software to make daily entries, it comes with many fun interactive features including My Stars, Dream Catcher, Thinking Deep, and Mood Art. It even has some type of emotion sensor that somehow analyzes the text you are writing and can display a swirl in the heading to match the “mood” of the writing.

As you can tell from the aforementioned features, this might be a good product for the females. Unfortunately, I do not have a release date or price for this.

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If you’re tired of having the same old boring controllers to go with your favorite games, you’ll like this new design.  It features chrome and not just shiny plastic that looks like chrome.  Granted that means that you’re stuck making fingerprints all over it every single time you pick it up.  However, having a shiny controller like this might be worth the extra trouble it would cause.

The device is coming from China’s Dream Cheeky, which in the past have offered all kinds of USB gadgets.  Right now there isn’t even the slightest hint as to where one might get one of these and when it would become available.  However, it is listed on the Dream Cheeky website, which shows all of the details on the game pad.  Well, besides the details we want most, which is where to get one.  According to the site it is compatible with both the PC and Mac.  It also features an 8-way directional game pad and is powered by USB with 6ft cables.

Source: Technabob

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Olympus teases the mass market yet again with another entry level digital camera in the form of the Stylus 1040. This is the slimmest camera from Olympus to date, and will come in either black or white colors along with a sliding lens cover that is reminiscent of Sony’s Cybershot range. Features include the following :-

• 16.5mm thickness
• Intelligent Auto Mode
• Face detection
• In-camera panorama
• Digital image stabilization
• Shadow Adjustment Technology
• Perfect Shot Preview
• In-camera editing
• 2.7″ HyperCrystal LCD

It will cost you $199 to bring the Stylus 1040 home.

The Cowon S9 will certainly grab your attention with its curved back, and looks all set on paper to take on the ipod touch. Just check out the following specifications and draw your own conclusion :-

• 3.3″ 272 x 480 resolution AMOLED touch screen display
• Bluetooth connectivity
• DMB-T tuner
• Integrated FM radio
• TV Out
• Auto-rotating display

No idea on pricing, but I would love to see the display size increase in future versions, along with the inclusion of Wi-Fi connectivity.

Although we were excited about its launch, we’re not exclusively about the iphone 3G here at Popgadget. We are just (okay,almost) as excited about the sexy new BlackBerry Bold, with its large screen, WiFi, GPS and, um, John Mayer endorsement.

So when I saw these fabulous hand-made blackberry earrings on Etsy, I thought they would be the perfect way to declare brand loyalty until the Bold is available next month. But they’re sold out.
However, there’s nothing to stop you from buying up some Fimo and making something similar yourself (using the phone or your choice as your inspiration).

Nothing but the limits of your craft skills, that is…

Via Shiny Shiny.

Though genuine photography enthusiasts would not touch the Yang Ying digital camera with a barge pole, it presents a design of considerable interest to gadget-buffs like me who are on the eternal look-out for unusual designs.

The Yang Ying camera conceptualized by Polish designer Kubasek Krzysztof, is shaped like - well, the hugely popular Yin and Yang symbols from Chinese philosophy. As far as the looks are concerned, we have to slot this device in the eye-catcher category as it has no take-away from a traditional camera. The camera is separable into two “tear-drops”, one of which holds the LCD preview screen and the other holds the flash memory which can directly be connected to your PC’s USB port. And that’s just how much we know about the camera specs at the moment as it appears to be in the concept phase yet.

Let your imagination tell you how difficult it would be to use this device as a real camera. But what if happened to be, say, the Yang Ying portable DVD player instead ? Sounds interesting to me…

Via DVICE.

Back in March of this year, researchers from the University of Washington were able to wirelessly hack into a pacemaker, raising some vary scary possibilities for the millions of people who have the medical implant. Researchers were able to either send shocks through the pacemaker and worse still, were able to turn the lifesaving device completely off. Seems, however, another scientists at the same university has created a device to keep this from happening.

Dr. Tamara Denning, a computer scientist at the University of Washington created a cloaking device to help patients protect their pacemakers from unauthorized wireless instructions. Although the device is currently untested, it is imagined that the device could be worn like a wristwatch to prevent hackers from gaining access to pacemakers.

As unlikely and malicious an attack on someone’s pacemaker sounds, Dr. Denning referred to an attack this year on the website for the Epilepsy Foundation, where hackers placed flashing images. The obvious aim of the attack was to induce seizures in person afflicted with epilepsy who visited the site. Doctor Denning commented, “We wanted to draw attention not to a prevalent threat, but to a possible future one.”

Read more at Switched via Engadget.

These days you can do a lot with your mobile phone. You can text, surf the internet, download your favorite music, and of course send and receive e-mail. Because the mobile phone is so powerful, I wondered if I could go on a trip and use just my mobile phone for things like researching and booking the trip, checking in, and more. Read below to see how the mobile performed in tasks that are traditionally the domain of the laptop.

Challenge
Fly to Dallas by booking my airline ticket, checking in for my flight, reserving my hotel room, and checking-in for my hotel room using only my blackberry 8330 Curve by Verizon Wireless

Participants
Volunteering themselves as guinea pigs were American Airlines and Omni Hotels. Thanks to Brian Conway for helping to set this up.

Task 1: Find and book an American Airlines Flight using BlackBerry
Time: Under 5 minutes

I went to AA.com and was happy to see the website was actually setup to be used for a mobile device. I especially liked how options were split into sections including Day of Travel and Reservations. It made it really easy to find what I needed.

I searched for flights by clicking on Change Flights under the Reservations section. After inputting my departure airport, destination and travel dates, it quickly brought up my options. One nice feature was that I could even view the seats that were available on each flight. If the flight was nose-to-nose with passengers I then had the option to choose another flight.

After finding my flight I inputted my credit card information and soon received a confirmation via email confirming my flight was booked. Overall, performance of the website was very good. The only sense of information overload I had on the small BlackBerry screen was when I was browsing flights, but there is only so much the American Airlines folks can do.

Task 2: Reserve A Room With Omni Hotels
Time: Under 5 minutes

Much like the American Airlines website, I was happy to see that the Omni Hotels mobile website didn’t have a lot of fluff and got right to the options the typical traveler would need to quickly find a hotel, get a room, and get it reserved. After clicking on Make A Reservation I was able to find a local hotel and saw that luckily there was a room available.

I was able to quickly reserve the room and also later got an email confirming the reservation. I wanted to keep this email confirmation handy for when I did my check-in online as well.

Task 3: Check-In For American Airlines Flight
Time: Under 3 minutes

24 hours before my flight I just about went to my PC to get my boarding pass when I remembered that for this trip I was performing all tasks on the Blackberry. So I grabbed it and quickly got on the AA.com website to check-in for my flight. I looked at moving seats, but unfortunately it was a full flight.

Reluctantly, I went ahead and completed my check-in. Naturally, I was a little concerned that I didn’t have a piece of paper in front of me confirming my check-in, but when I went to the airport I simply printed out my passes at the American Airlines kiosk in less than a minute.

By checking-in online I saved a lot of time in front of the kiosk even if I ended up having to print my boarding pass. Hopefully one day I’ll just be able to show the electronic boarding pass on my phone.

Before completing the booking process I was also able to sign-up for a mobile alert which would send me flight status and gate information two hours before my flight’s departure. There’s nothing better than being on your way to the airport, knowing what gate your flight is at and appreciating the fact that it is still on time.

Task 4: Check-In For Omni Hotels Room
Time: Under 3 minutes

So what’s the advantage of checking in for your hotel through your mobile phone? Well, the beautiful thing is that you won’t have to worry about your room being given to someone else. Also, when you get to the hotel the key will be waiting for you since you’ve already given the hotel all of your personal information.

When you have been on a plane for over two hours, trust me when I say that the sooner you get to your room the better. Sure enough, when I got to the hotel the room keys were waiting for me.

Summary
It’s amazing to think we have reached the point at which we no longer need to sit in front of a computer to make travel arrangements. That’s got to be some pretty sobering news for travel agents since it empowers people to book an itinerary on their own. Naturally I don’t expect Ma or Pa who travels once a year to use their mobile phone to book reservations, but you can bet the business traveler will appreciate it and that’s exactly why American Airlines and Omni Hotels have made the investment to support the mobile traveler.

The iPod Nano is definitely the iPod of choice for the fitness crowd. Like the Shuffle it is small, light, and has no moving parts. Unlike the Shuffle, it has a display.

But, without the clip, how do you carry it? Armbands are the new fanny-packs, so we’ll skip past those and on to the iStik, a case which uses dangerous, hard drive and pacemaker-killing neodymium magnets to stick your ipod to your t-shirt.

The case comes in three parts: two to enclose the Nano itself, and one more to slide inside your “thin, fitted layer of clothing”. The magnets snap the parts together and sandwich your shirt in between. Available for second and third generation Nanos from $25. And the pacemakers? We weren’t kidding. The site carries this message:

Warning: Magnets are a Nano’s best friend, but not a pacemaker’s. Do not use if you wear a pacemaker or an ICD. Keep at least six inches from computer. Magnets may damage hard drive.

Product page [Go iStik. Thanks Sarah!]