Unused Bandwidth Utilized To Meet Neighbors

This is giving a whole new meaning to the word community.

When Tony Guagliardo moved to Manhattan’s East Fourth Street, he didn’t know anyone in the neighborhood. Then one day, while trying to get wireless Internet in his apartment, he noticed an open Wi-Fi network named Neighbornode. He chose it, launched his browser, and a message board popped up welcoming him to the Fourth Street Avenue B Node. The network had been set up by a local resident who wanted to share his Internet connection. Soon, Tony’s neighbors were using it to discuss local restaurants, a community art project and even the block’s homeless guy, Eddie.

iPod Listening Devices

If you want to listen to your iPod music with some friends, this article explains the current options. Personally, I just plug my MP3 player directly into my speakers and crank it up. Of course, this has one disadvantage- it doesn't have an Apple logo, or iPod written anywhere on it. If you put the volume on the MP3 player to the max, and adjust the listening volume on the speakers, it works best. Enjoy the article, some of the solutions are quite expensive.

Today, music listening is much more intimate and way more portable. iPods are the item that every teen must own (and heavens forbid that you have a portable MP3 player that doesn’t say Apple anywhere on it. It’s just not cool.)

Luckily, young adults still like to get together and listen to music -– and dance. Tough to share the experience when all you have is a set of earphones. No problem. There are many companies out there that can’t wait to help you with your iPod sharing problems.

Keychain Computer

This is the future of USB drives and computers. Users who use FireFox Lite off a USB thumb drive are just the beginning. While there may not be a processor or RAM on your keychain, if you can bring your browser with all your settings, and your documents with you, that's just about as good as bringing a computer along- assuming you have something to plug the drive into.

Personal computers could soon fit entirely on a key ring. Researchers at IBM in New York, US, have developed a way to carry a powerful, personalised virtual computer from one PC to the next, without losing the user’s work.

The trick is to store the virtual computer on a USB key, or any portable device with substantial storage space, like an MP3 player.

The virtual computer’s "soul" - as the researchers dub it - can then be uploaded to a new PC simply by plugging the portable device in. This host machine needs no special software or even a network connection to take on an entirely new personality.

New Sound Cards From Creative

Attention all audiophiles!

The Audigy sound card is soon to be replaced. Reportedly, this new X-Fi series can even upmix a 2 channel source to full surround sound. This could have a lot of potential for music listening- and kill DVD Audio sales! At the heart of this is a much more powerful sound processor.

Creative Technology's Sound Blaster line has been the standard in sound cards for quite some time. Now the company is releasing the next generation of that line, the Sound Blaster X-Fi series, available in major retail outlets later this month. Using the 51 million-transistor Creative X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity multi-engine audio processor, these four sound cards provide 24-bit 96-kHz audio in three different modes optimized for particular uses

Creative WebCam Review

This is the latest review I put together for Live Digitally. A real fun product to look at.

I had my first webcam about five years ago. I found the camera difficult to use. The camera had a low frame rate, and I was never centered in the frame. The software was clunky to use, and I couldn’t even easily capture a still picture with the camera. Quite honestly, I never was able to video conference with another user, and lost interest.

However, the allure was still great. I grew up watching “The Jetsons,” and the technology for easy videoconferencing has always been just “a few years away” (just like speech recognition). Has the webcam hardware caught up with today’s powerful computers? Can I harness the transmission power of broadband to finally make my video call? I am ready to give it another try.

Creative makes a variety of computer electronic products centered on audio sound cards, MP3 players, speakers, and webcams. Today, we’ll be looking at the Creative WebCam Live! Ultra for Notebooks. This is a complete solution that is designed for the mobile notebook user looking to video conference, as well as some other applications. Read on to see if video conferencing has arrived, and if this is the right hardware solution.

Technudge was very nice to run a link.

LiteOn 52x32x52 CDRW Review

It's been ages since I saw a good old fashioned CD-RW review. However, not everyone needs the latest DVD burners when a more inexpensive CDRW will suffice.

The Lite-On SOHR-5238S is a very capable drive when it comes to CD-R media, the burn quality is very good indeed. The SOHR-5238S is also a very fast and reliable reader and can also read protected media well. Digital Audio Extraction quality is also a plus point with this drive and consistently impressed us with the DAE speed and quality.

The SOHR-5238S is let down by poor CD-RW write quality, and this is really the only bad point about the drive.

If you are in the market for a fast CD reader, with good CD-R write quality, and don’t wish to spend a great deal of cash on a drive. Then this drive might be just the drive you have been looking for. If however you are looking for a drive that has a high write quality with CD-RW media, then this may not be the drive for you.

The Minis Are Coming

The Minis I'm referring to are the smaller sized memory cards. The small cards actually had some unexpectedly fast read and write speeds.

It won't be long before all kinds of mobile devices sport at least one slot for some kind of memory card. This makes perfect sense, simply because devices that can't accept new data or programming lock users into increasingly obsolete functionality. After all, would you buy a notebook that could only handle 256 MB RAM with no room for expansion?

Various predictions indicate that as soon as 2006, a good third of all mobile telephones in active use will also incorporate memory cards of some kind. This could mean that technologies like MMCmicro or TransFlash/MicroSD will find excellent opportunities for deployment. Their extremely low weight (less than half a gram) and tiny form factors make them good candidates for all kinds of uses, even in consumer goods like wristwatches.

USB Mouse Pad

Sometimes, the simplest ideas are the best. If you have your computer on the flor, or your USB ports are in the rear, this is a useful gadget idea.

I always double over laughing in stores when I see those mouse pads with gel wrist guards, and built in calculators, and paper clip holders, etc. They always seem to wind up on the desk of the laziest slob in the company (ever notice that?). But today I found a mouse pad that actually makes sense: it offers 4 built-in USB ports.

Memorex USB Drive Reviews

CDR Info took a look at two of the latest USB drives. They were both reasonably quick.

Constant backup has made memory sticks the perfect solution for many, everyday chores. As the need for larger data storage keeps growing, so does the need for greater memory stick storage capacities. Among others, Memorex has introduced onto the market a variety of solutions in data storage, in the form of memory sticks. Here, we had the opportunity to check out two of it's latest products, the M-Flyer and the classic TravelDrive storage USB drives, both with 1GB storage capacity.

As we went through the tests, we came to see that the classic TravelDrive was faster in both reading and writing, while the M-Flyer is a more robust solution (longer lifespan). Both performed excellently, with up to 17MB/s for the classic and 13MB/s for the M-Flyer in reading and about 11MB/s in writing fro both, while other current USB memory sticks report only as high as 8-9MB/s. Another plus is the advanced features of the M-Flyer. The option to password protect and to compress or decrypt with the supplied utilities makes the M-Flyer a very versatile device.

My Plextor 740A Review

The Plextor 740A was a real intersting drive to review. It's very fast read performance won't be bested for some time. I'm still not sure why the dual layer write didn't work out.

The Plextor 740A is a mixed bag of high and low points. I was very impressed with its CD, and DVD reading performances that put it up there with the fastest of the dedicated reader drives. While I was also impressed with its fast, high quality writing on both CDR’s and DVD+R’s, it did disappoint on DVD+RW, and DVD+R DL media. The high quality on the DVD-R disc was a high point as well. Assess your needs carefully, and if the tasks this drive excels at are your predominant tasks, then the Plextor 740A is the drive for you. The full Nero burning suite in the latest edition sweetens the affordable deal even further.

It also made CD Freaks news section.

Breaking up is hard to do....

I never really understood why innovative HP was happy to sell an Apple product. I guess they're fighting over the moolah in the end. Anyway, I wonder if HP is going to develop their own player now, like they should have done in the 1st place.

Computer maker Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ - news) will no longer market the Apple iPod. The company had been labeling and distributing the iPod since the middle of last year. Now, however, HP says that the iPod program no longer fits within its digital-entertainment strategy.

Although the company has not released any further details, the program's end is being viewed either as a blow to Apple or as a non-issue, depending on the observer's perspective.

Dual Core Chip Reaches Affordability

AMD's X2 3800+ does very well in the benchmarks. More importantly, it now retails at a price that the mere mortals can actually afford- about $350 currently.

At around $350, AMD's latest dual-core processor does a pretty good job of addressing our only real complaint about the X2 line—its exorbitant price. Over time, this little gem will get cheap enough to fit into those $1,000 PCs with ease. It's still a premium processor, but one you can afford.

It compares favorably with comparably priced Intel processors. It generally loses out in some synthetic tests, but we are less concerned about those as with real-word benchmarks. In those situations, the X2 3800+ usually outpaces the low-cost Pentium D chips, and in some cases, it even outperforms the very expensive, high-end dual-core Extreme Edition CPU. When it comes to gaming, AMD continues to demonstrate its unmatched dominance.

New Creative Photo Zen

It's nice to see something new in the larger hard drive segment of the mp3 market as many of the recent players have been flash based. This one even supports some video formats.

Available first in the United States and Europe and then elsewhere, the 30GB Zen Vision sports a 3.7-inch color screen and can store up to 120 hours of video or carry as many as 15,000 songs, the company said. A little larger in size and heavier than even Apple's 60GB iPod photo, the device comes in black or white and sells for $399.99. It initially will be available online only.

PC Mag already got one to review.

Our overall impression of the Zen Vision is that it will do quite well, though if you want to record video or audio from a line-in source you'll need something more along the lines of the Archos PMA400. The fairly compact Zen Vision is easy to use, and the screen is big and good-looking enough for watching full-length movies comfortably. As with most Creative products, the audio quality is very good, though we don't see the Zen Vision as a replacement for a dedicated music player. It will be available in pearl white or black, and the Creative site is taking preorders now for $399. We'll take another look when the final product is ready later this month.

Plextor 740A Review

A nice review, of a nice drive. My own review of this drive is in progress, and should be up this week.

With the exception of the Platinum brand DVD+/-R media, the PX-740A proved to be a competitor with drives such as NEC's ND-3540A and Pioneer's DVR-109D, and being at the same level as BenQ's DW1640. Even when using mid-quality media, the PX-740A does not disappoint as many of the new generation drives have thus far.

Our test unit ran us about $76.00 excluding shipping costs, which is not bad, but compared to some retailers offering BenQ's DW1640 for about $10 less, the PX-740A does give more bang for the buck. Plextor's firmware team has taken the same hardware BenQ uses to a higher level of quality and speed. On the down side, thePX-740A does not support the PlexTools utility so it's a trade-off between features and performance. But those who don't care too much for the benchmarking characteristics of Plextor's other units, the PX-740A will fit the bill just fine.

Overall, though, Plextor offers a great drive at an affordable price and that's what will attract customers in the end. We recommend the PX-740A to anyone looking for great performance and write quality at a decent price.

New Apple Mouse

I'm not sure this is going to be as hot as the iPod. It looks like they missed on the ergonomics to me. The Mac faithful will think this is the best thing since sliced bread, of course.

Dubbed Mighty Mouse, the new $49 pointer has a 360-degree scroll wheel and can be programmed to recognize a click on either the left or right side. For Apple purists, it can also act as a single-button mouse.

Multibutton mice have been standard on Windows PCs for years and even the Mac OS has long recognized a right click. However, the company has stuck by its single-button design, refining it and adding a Bluetooth wireless version, but maintaining only a single-click option.


David Moody, Apple's vice president of Mac product marketing, said the company waited until it was able to design a mouse that had the scrolling and multiple-button features but was still as simple to use as the one-click original.

PC World already got their hands on one, but were not impressed...

You activate the fourth mouse button by simultaneously clicking the two buttons on either side of the mouse. These side buttons don't press in too deeply (you squeeze them more than push them in), and I found that I had to use a little more pressure than my hand would have preferred, particularly in repetitive situations. All in all, the Mighty Mouse's ergonomics didn't impress me.

This hardly sounds like the simplicity that Apple is known for.