Electronic Toy World

Posted Jan 18th 2008 3:23AM by Ryan Block
Filed under: Transportation, Wearables, Wireless
In the past, if you used a Scala motorcycle headset, it was to dial someone with your phone via Bluetooth. Now, if you and your riding buddies have the updated Q2, you can still tell your dirty biker jokes over the air, but now with full duplex push to talk voice chat with up to three clients and a 500 meter range. Tack on an FM receiver (and Bluetooth 2.0, of course) and built-in GPS, and you’ve got yourself a $220 communications tool sure to relieve the crushing loneliness of wide open road — that is, until a couple of rednecks take you down somewhere outside of New Orleans in a psyched out haze.

[Via Motorbiker]

Posted Jan 18th 2008 7:22AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Handhelds
C’mon, we’ve all done it. Standing vigilantly in front of the DVD section, our mind races to remember whether or not we already own Land Before Time 11: Invasion of the Tinysauruses, and in a fit of frustration, we make the purchase anyway only to come home and find it sitting peacefully in one of the thirteen movie racks. If that hits home, you should definitely take a peek at Groqit — a handheld barcode scanner that prefers to be called a “personal inventory management system.” Owners simply scan in every book, CD and DVD they own, take it along for any future shopping sprees and use it to tell whether or not they’ve already purchased a given title. It should be noted, however, that it doesn’t play nice with jewel cases, but apparently, the manufacturer thinks the $95 price tag more than compensates. Honestly, is the return process that much of a hassle?

This showerhead is like no other showerhead we have featured before!

This luxurious and maximum-flow showerhead happens to be environmentally friendly! Instead of conserving water while you’re taking a shower, Evolve’s ShowerStart™ technology saves the hot water that’s wasted before you actually get in. The result - save time, hot water, energy and money without giving up a single thing. Taking your shower never felt so good and now you don’t have to worry about that pesky shrinkage problem.

Evolve’s integrated ShowerStart technology has something called Trickle Mode that prevents expensive hot water from unnecessarily running down the drain before you actually get in the shower. It does this by automatically entering trickle mode once the water reaches bathing temperature, approximately 95°F (35° C) and stays there until you pull the chain to resume normal water flow. If the water flowing to the showerhead has reached this temperature, your Evolve showerhead goes into trickle mode the moment you turn it on. This typically happens when users are taking showers within a few minutes of one another. It could also happen if your bathroom became exceptionally hot - above 95° F (35° C). In either event, pulling the chain will resume your showerhead’s normal flow if it is in trickle mode when the water is turned on.

Have you tried Rain Showerhead’s before only to find they have no pressure? Someone at Smarthome actually spent hands-on time researching and testing this product and had this to say:

My hair takes forever to rinse, so the low water pressure in most water-saver (low-flow) showerheads doesn’t work for me. In fact, most rain showerheads are too low pressure for me. This gentle rain showerhead actually rinses my hair as well as a water-wasting high-pressure showerhead, and I can feel good about using it.

This sounds like a perfect Valentine’s gift to this Geek! Eco-friendly meets luxury for a nice warm shower from the start.

Gimmie!

Suggested Price: $69.99

Posted Jan 18th 2008 6:51AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: HDTV
Guess what? It’s yet another rock bottom sale day for Toshiba’s HD-A3 HD DVD player. This time it’s Amazon serving up the HD-A3 with 7 HD DVD titles and free shipping for just $129. The deal combines the extended 5 HD DVD “perfect offer” with Warner Bros’ 300 and Universal’s The Bourne Identity HD DVD titles thrown in for kicks. That’s two extra discs and $21 less than the official $150 dealio. Crazy, we know.

[Thanks, Andrew]

Posted Jan 17th 2008 10:36PM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Portable Audio It looks like DJs (robot or otherwise) will soon have a couple of new pieces of gear to consider, as both Stanton and Pioneer took advantage of the currently-happening NAMM expo to announce some new and decidedly non-amateur rigs. First up is Stanton’s SC System (pictured above), which will be available either as a set for $2,499, or as a separate “virtual turntable” and “virtual mixer” for $1,499 and $999, respectively. As Crave reports, the former of those’ll give you a 10-inch, high-torque motorized platter covered in real vinyl, while the latter packs four channel strips with EQ control among other standard controls and, most importantly, a Firewire interface that’ll handle a 96KHz sample rate. Look for it to be available in May. For its part, Pioneer’s announced two new additions to its line of DJ CD players, including the MEP-7000 Professional Multi-Entertainment Player and the SEP-C1 Professional Software Entertainment Controller. Both of those pack 4.3-inch LCDs and make use of Pioneer’s DJS software suite for control from a PC, with the $2,300 MEP-7000 adding dual players (that’ll handle DVD-ROMs in addition to CDs) and a slew of other features not found on the $1,200 SEP-C1. As with the Stanton, however, you won’t be able to get your hands on those just yet, with each of ‘em only slated to roll out in June.

Read - Crave, “Stanton unveils SC digital DJ rig”
Read - Press Release, ” Pioneer Livens DJ Performances with Two New DJ Machines”

Posted Jan 18th 2008 2:10AM by Ryan Block
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Transportation
Take one part supercapacitor, one part lead acid battery — the old school kind — and you’ve got an energy cell technology development that at least one power research geek is calling “a leap forward for low emission transport and uptake of [hybrid cars].” Speciously dubbed the UltraBattery by its developers at Australia’s CSIRO, this new cell type features a life cycle increase of 4x and power increase of 2x over current batteries, yet is supposedly 70% less expensive than the ancient Ni-MH cells often used in hybrids today. It’s even passed “the 100,000 mile mark,” implying the UltraBattery is robust enough to roll out to consumer vehicles without fear of drain on capacity. Screw the hybrids though, bring on the plug-in all-electrics, UltraBattery or otherwise.

[Thanks, Dickey]

Posted Jan 17th 2008 11:40PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Handhelds
Oh Canada, it’s your lucky day, because a kind, cool wind is blowing down on you from your friends in Finland — Nokia. That brisk breeze is carrying a new partner for the long and lonely Canuck winter nights: the N810 internet tablet, the all-singing, all-dancing sliver wonder. The handheld — which your friends (namely, us) have been flaunting for months — is finally making its way into the hands of Canadian consumers for the thrifty price of $485 (a downright bargain). The WiFi-and-GPS-equipped gadget should be just the thing to accompany you on a trip to Tim Hortons, a Maple Leafs game, or some other stereotypical regional activity.

[Via MobileInCanada]

Two companies got together to create a Linux based PC for a small price - is $200 (with mail-in rebate) cheap enough for you?

If so, head over to the Sears website to make your purchase. The computer is named Mirus Linux PC, and is made by Linspire and Mirus Innovations. Inside the small beast you’ll find a basic computer - Intel Celeron processor, 1GB of RAM memory, 80GB hard-drive, along with keyboard, mouse and speakers.

For $200, you’ll also get an optical drive, a 15-in-memory card reader, and Freespire 2.0 as the operative system. In case you don’t opt for the mail-in rebate, the price goes up to $285.

Product Page

Via Crave

If you’re a fan of the Transcend brand, and need a memory card with lots of capacity, check out their latest product that has 32GB.

The memory card in question is on the CompactFlash category, and goes straight for the Transcend 133x line. It can be used for digital cameras, and if you’re a hardcore photo person, a couple of 32GB card will make you feel safe for sure. The write/read speeds are considerable good – 45MB/16MB.

Other features:

- Fully complies with the new CF 4.1 standard
- Hardware ECC (Error Correction Code)
- ATA interface

Sadly, there is no information about the price or release date.

Via SlashGear

Great news for Blu-ray fans, Samsung have announced their new blu-ray player for release this May. The Samsung BD-P1500 blu-ray player looks great and very sleek with a black gloss finish, and the internals are just as good, with the BD-P1500 conforming to blu-ray profile 1.1.

The Samsung BD-P1500 is now Samsung’s fourth generation Blu-ray player, and supports full HD 1080p output of Blu-ray discs and up-conversion of standard DVDs to 1080p also. The BD-P1500 has a built in Ethernet port for interactive features and future firmware upgrades.

24p / 1080p is fully supported along with a whole bunch of audio options avaliable via HDMI 1.3 output. Dobly Digital / Plus, 7.1 PCM, Dolby TrueHD, Master Audio, DTS-HD and Bitstream audio output are all supported.