Wirleless Bluetooth Headphones Tested

Several companies have announced wireless headphones lately. The one thing holding me back is I really don't need anything else to charge around the house. Otherwise, it sounds like a great product, with long range.

The Logitech Wireless Headphones for MP3 ($129.99 list) join the growing number of Bluetooth-enabled audio headphones on the market. These headphones support the Bluetooth 1.2 profile and come with a wireless receiver, a charger, a short audio cable extender, and extra earpads. They provide good sound quality over a wide coverage area and are a snap to use and operate. They're also comfortably light at 3.2 ounces. We feel the Logitech Wireless Headphones are a very good option for home, office, and portable use.

See some more info here.

WiFi Camera Ships

We haven't seen much innovation lately at Koday, but I hope the prior film giant is reversing the trend.

AFTER a few months of delay, Kodak has finally shipped its first digital camera with Wi-Fi.
Provided you are in Wi-Fi range, you can now email snaps to your computer without having to plug anything in.

Everything wireless lately is quite hot. A WiFi camera means that you could be emailing your pix of your vacation back to friends and family in real time! some additional info is here.

$100 Laptop For Developing Nations

Now, I don't normally get too excited about bargain basement hardware. But it is nice to see innovation in this price range.

Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Labs, has been outlining designs for a sub-$100 PC.
The laptop will be tough and foldable in different ways, with a hand crank for when there is no power supply.

Professor Negroponte came up with the idea for a cheap computer for all after visiting a Cambodian village.

While the hand crank and rubberized case are unique, the notebook is planned to have a 500 MHz processor, WiFi, flash based storage, and USB ports x4. For $100, I might buy one! Actually, they will not be available for purchase by individuals, and you can read more details here.

Not so fast....

I'm sure this will be another flop. Who wants to buy music that only plays a player that uses micro SD cards? This makes CD's look affordable.

Memory chips are supposed to be commodities. Especially the flash memory chips that SanDisk makes for storing digital photos, music files, camcorder videos or other content. But the Sunnyvale company will unveil today a new kind of chip, contained on a storage card, that it hopes will set its brand apart and usher in a new era for enjoying portable entertainment.

The chip design company is introducing TrustedFlash, a memory chip with built-in security that prevents illegal copying. That could help calm the tension between the entertainment industry that wants strict controls on intellectual property and technology companies that want digital content to be freely transferable to cell phones, music players, computers and other gadgets.

Car to come with iPod Nano...

Now, here's a new car option that will sound great!

FM transmitters, cassette adapters: those are so last year. Heck, even buying your DAP separately from your ride is like, totally last week. Thanks to Volkswagen, you can now save yourself a trip to the big box retailers, with the newly-announced iPod/VW Fox combo package. Even better than getting fries with your burger, the iFox package, as it’s being called, comes complete with a VW-branded 2GB iPod nano, a dock to attach it to the Blaupunkt Calgary MP3 radio, and of course that wiley old Fox with an “iPod Inside” logo (hello, Intel legal?). VW is only offering 500 of these bad boys, and since all prices are in Euros, we kinda doubt they’ll send one our way.

Apple Secretly Upgrades Some Minis

I'm expecting more than a few returns as folks go fishing to find the better model...

The company confirmed to CNET News.com that it has started offering machines that in some cases have improved processing powers and other enhancements. However, Apple is not labeling the new machines in any special way, so buyers have no way of knowing if they are getting the more capable models.

"Some Mac Mini systems may contain components that slightly exceed the published specifications," Apple said in a statement. "There are no changes to the published specifications or part numbers."

Apple would not confirm the exact specifications of the enhanced systems, but enthusiast site Think Secret said that some models were shipping with 1.5GHz processors, up from the current 1.42GHz, as well as a faster DVD burner, more video memory and improved Bluetooth wireless abilities.

USB VOIP Hardware

Many users are saving their cell phone minutes and calling cross country with applications like Skype and Google Talk. However, when you're away from your main computer, you're out of touch. Now with a USB device, that's about to change.

The folk at Mplat have released a new VoIP USB flash memory stick with inbuilt mic and speaker which will allow you to make plug and play Internet calls on any PC. Just walk up, plug in and make your MSN, Google Talk, SIP or Skype calls using the on-board software. Comes with Skype voicemail software as standard.

DVD-R DL Media Tested

While there has been attention this week on super drives that support DVD-RAM, the last new standard is still being implemented. DVD-R DL media is just becoming available.

Conrexx Technology B.V. / RITEK Europe (NL) were kind enough to send us some of their latest media – the Traxdata DVD-R DL 4x, before the official European release. And in this article we are going to take a look at this media and test its performance with various DVD-R DL writers and also test the media compatibility with DVD standalone devices and other PC DVD devices.

In CD Freak's testing, only the LiteOn 1693S was able to burn the media at full speed, with a decent quality scan. The Benq 1640 couldn't do anything with the disc, and the Pioneer 110 burned it at 2x, which is half speed. Be warned therefore that there are compatibility issues with this new standard, and it needs some more maturity.

NEC 4550 Review

NEC makes some excellent DVD writers, and now they're coming out with a "super drive." A few days ago, I reported that the new trend was that the DVD drives could write to the DVD-RAM standard. Now, we have another example of this trend.

To sum it all up, this is what we would say: Although the NEC ND-4550A is a very new drive, and no firmware updates are yet available. This drive performs extremely well. Reading performance is excellent and writing performance on the tested media is very good. DVD-RAM support read/write is also a very welcome addition.

While the full report is pending further testing, the early signs are that this drive should be a very strong writer.

DVDRW's Compared

Although they don't test for write quality, this is still a useful look at the current crop of DVD writers. The Plextor 716A is aging gracefully. As one of the 1st 16x writers released, it still leads the pack. With a recent firmware upgrade, it can handle both plus and minus varieties of dual layer media!

Podcasting For Dough

This Podcasting thing is starting to take off in a profitable way. Podcasts are often amateur radio shows, that get downloaded to an MP3 player. They often have a tight focus, and a weekly schedule. well now, they're getting sponsors in this new, niche format.

Consider the vast variety of approaches that have cropped up since Apple's iTunes upgrade this summer started delivering thousands of new listeners to podcasters who once toiled in obscurity.

GrapeRadio podcaster Brian Clark is now gulping down about $1,000 a week from sponsors of his show for wine hobbyists. Grant Baciocco of the fiction serial The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd sells show-themed buttons and T-shirts and offers guest-voice roles for $50.

Josh of Josh in Japan is asking for PayPal donations from fans of his tales of expatriate life, though so far only $14 has rolled in. And Jimmy Diggs uses his Vegas-based Daily Noise as a traffic generator for his internet radio site, LVRocks.com, where sponsors pay for banner ads.

It sounds like its easy to strike it rich with some luck, or just as easily fizzle away in obscurity! If you want, you can go to the source to check out some podcasts.

Nano Screen Woes

The iPod Nano, their newest player, has been impressing folks since its intro about a month ago. Now, the delicate screen is getting it some bad press. Folks are complaining that the screen scratches very easily, ruining the device in a short time.

Some owners of Apple Computer's new "impossibly small" iPod Nano are starting to wonder if the device is also impossibly delicate.

The most widespread complaint about the otherwise highly praised device seems to be that the color display screen gets scratched extremely easily.

Nano owner Brian Cason posted one of 250-some threads in response to a recent post on Apple's discussion board about screen scratching.

Apple was ignoring the whole thing in typical big business fashion, until a website about the problem popped up. Apple seems to be paying attention now. Isn't this what the internet is all about- bringing folks with similar interests together?

This may be the big story on the net this week, and the opening that Sony & Creative have been waiting for!

DVD-RAM Drives Coming

I'm starting to see a trend. For years, DVD-RAM was the forgotten cousin of recordable DVD's. Only LG's DVDRW drives could record to DVD-RAM. Furthermore, the discs were more expensive, and had slower write speeds compared to DVD+RW discs, not to mention write once media.

BenQ Japan today announced the specifications of BenQ's first SuperMulti DVD writer, the DQ60. Besides writing DVD-RAM at 5x speed the DQ60 also supports 16x/8x/8x DVD+R/RW/DL, 16x/6x/8x DVD-R/RW/DL and 40x/24x CD-R/RW.

This announcement by Benq follows LiteOn's announcement to introduce a similar "super drive" next month. There have been some stalwart fans of DVD-RAM throughout the years, touting its ability to error check its write to ensure reliability of data. DVD-RAM may be finally coming into its own; stay tuned.

P2P Lives!

Forget Napster...this Tor thing is wireless networking peer to peer communication! Why do I think your local cable company won't be so hot for this one.

Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people that want to improve their safety and security on the Internet. Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and other applications that use the TCP protocol. Tor also provides a platform on which software developers can build new applications with built-in anonymity, safety, and privacy features.

Done correctly, this could extend a wireless network's range considerably.

"Screw the nano"

Someone should remind him that nobody likes a "sore loser."

"Screw the nano," said Zander. "What the hell does the nano do? Who listens to 1,000 songs? People are going to want devices that do more than just play music, something that can be seen in many other countries with more advanced mobile phone networks and savvy users," he said.