Hasta La Gadget!

Whoa, Nelly! ThinkFlood won’t like this… not one bit. If you’ll recall, the RedEye universal remote dongle was well received, as a simple 3.5mm adapter added IR beaming to Apple’s slate of iDevices. But now, Mashed Pixel has taken the integration one step further, seamlessly embedding an Infrared emitter into a case. Simply pop the Surc around your iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4, download the (free) accompanying app and start programming. Before long, you’ll be dictating your home entertainment setup sans any external accessories, and heck, you may even improve your phone’s reception all the while. The only downside to this approach compared to ThinkFlood’s is that the iPad is obviously not supported, and once you upgrade to the iPhone 5, your trusty IR case becomes a glorified paperweight. If you’re kosher with that, though, you can get your pre-order in now for $69.95, with initial shipments expected to make their way out in Q1 2011.

Continue reading IR-embedded Surc case converts iPhone into a universal learning remote

IR-embedded Surc case converts iPhone into a universal learning remote originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Dec 2010 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Get Surc  | Email this | Comments

Cooking nerds, I have some fantastic news for you. It’s called iGrill, and it’s the coolest kitchen gadget you have seen this year. IGrill is a combination of two parts. First, there’s a probe thermometer which skewers your meat, cake or other target food. This unit has its own readout, and can be used with one or two probes (it ships with one). It also has Bluetooth, which brings us on to…

The iPhone app. Instead of beaming its info to a dedicated box like most remote thermometers, the iGrill sends it to an iPhone, iPod or iPad (it’s a universal app). The Bluetooth signal will go up to 200-feet, and tells you phone what is happening back in the oven.

And because it runs on a touch-screen computer, there’s more than just a temperature readout. As well as the current temp (along with a scale reminding you not to cook your beef over 140ºF, for example), you get a timer, an estimate of the remaining cooking time, and a handy feature to dial in the food type and required doneness, which spits back the correct target temperature.

There’s also a browser and recipe book, but those are icing. The main meat (if you’ll excuse me for the pun) is the thermometer, meaning that the iPhone has replaced yet another piece of hardware.

The iGrill itself costs $100, and the app is free. An additional probe adds $20 to the price.

iGrill app [iTunes]

iGrill product page [iGrill via Oh Gizmo]

See Also:

• Thermometer Studies, Withstands Great Balls of Fire
• Wireless BBQ Thermometer Talks Back, Enables Multi-Task Cooking …
• Thermometer Cufflinks
• Wireless Meat Thermometer

Ah, those zany Keio University researchers trying to recreate Smell-O-Vision, do you want to know what they’re up to these days? They’re still trying, of course, but now they’ve taken the opportunity to demonstrate their hardware — which uses basic inkjet printer tech to fire off very short bursts of fragrance — to tech lovers in Japan while still tweaking and refining it. Primarily aimed at helping healthcare professionals in assessing a patient’s sense of smell, the Fragrance Jet II has a high degree of control granularity, permitting the varying of both intensity and duration of a scent, which in turn can provide a very accurate measurement of a given person’s olfactory acuity. A mobile prototype has also been trotted out (pictured above), hinting at the possibility of eventually shrinking these modules to fit inside cellphones and thus leading us to an awesome future of customizable “incoming call fragrances.” Awesome indeed. Video after the break.

Continue reading Fragrance Jet II receives video demonstration, still looks like a terrible idea (video)

Fragrance Jet II receives video demonstration, still looks like a terrible idea (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Dec 2010 06:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  DigInfo  | Email this | Comments

This article was written on May 21, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Are you one of those people who like to conserve every square inch of screen space when it’s possible? If so we have a treat for you today! We’re going to demonstrate how you can become the ultimate Firefox minimalist with the help of some extensions and themes. If you implement everything that we have listed below you’ll wonder where half of your browser has gone. You might also go cross-eyed… don’t say we didn’t warn you.

–Themes–

The first major step that a minimalist Firefox user takes is often in changing their theme. By choosing a more compact theme you can eliminate nearly any and all spacing found throughout Firefox, and the end result can save a lot of area in your browser.

The screenshot to the right shows the Classic Compact Firefox theme laid overtop of the classic theme. The double-ended arrows indicate how much space you save by simply applying this theme. There are a few other themes (like miniFox) that are similar, but Classic Compact is really the one that has won the hearts of minimalists around the globe.

–Toolbars & Menus–

There is a lot of “fat” that lies within the toolbars and menus in Firefox. The themes aim to take some pounds off the toolbars, but there are some extensions that can take the minimalist design to a whole new level:

• Searchbar Autosizer [Homepage]
  Keep the browser’s search box small when it’s not being used. This will let you have a really small search box that expands as you type. That means your Address Bar gets even more room!
• Faviconize Tab [Homepage]
  You’ll be able to double-click on a tab and have it collapsed down to only it’s icon. Now you won’t feel like such a pig when you have 40 different tabs open.
  
• Personal Menu [Homepage]
  How often do you really use those menus (File, Edit, etc…) anyway? If it’s not very often you can stuff them into a single icon by using this extension. All of the menus will still be accessible, but they will just take an extra click to get to them.
• Smart Bookmarks Bar [Homepage]
  If you’re not ready to give up your Bookmarks Bar then maybe this extension will help keep things a little more tidy. By default it will only show the icons for the sites located on the Bookmarks Bar, and then when you hover over them it will expand to show the name as well.
  

–Status Bar–

I wouldn’t say that the Status Bar is the hugest space consumer, but hey, we’re trying to scrounge up every pixel that’s possible. Right? So we’ve got a few specialized styles and one extension that can clean up your Status Bar a little bit.

• Mouseover for Clutter [Homepage] Requires Stylish
  This will hide the excessive number of icons that you probably have in the Firefox Status Bar, but they will reappear each time you hover over the bar. That way you’re not really losing any functionality, unless of course one of those icons also serves as some sort of notifier (such as a new mail notifier).
• Autohide Status Bar [Homepage] Requires Stylish
  Get the Status Bar completely out of the way with this style. Once installed it will create an area that is just one pixel in height, and when you hover over that it will show the Status Bar.
• autoHideStatusbar [Homepage]
  This is an extension that’s similar to how the previous style operates, except that it goes one step further. With this extension you can set it so that when you hover over hyperlinks it will show the Status Bar, which means you can still see where the links point to. The Status Bar can also be shown when the page is loading so that you can monitor the progress.
  Note: This extension is currently experimental, and you’ll need to login to your Mozilla account before downloading it.

–Overview–

I think you have a pretty good set of tools to work with so that you can be well on your way to becoming a Firefox minimalist. I’m sure many of you have trimmed down your Firefox in one way or another, and I would love to hear how you’ve managed to conserve space in Firefox! Shoot us a comment below with your thoughts.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

Your Week in Review with Sunday’s SummaryCyberNotes: Top 10 Wikipedia Themes for Stylish UsersTweak Firefox’s Performance Using FireTuneCyberNotes: Your Week In Review With Sunday’s SummaryCyberNotes: Your Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary

Discounts are raining down from the heavens these days as retailers try to offload old stock and do a bit of tidying up before rolling in the fresh batch of 2011 smartphones. Best Buy is keeping with this trend by treating its customers to a nice big saving on the AT&T-attached Dell Streak, offering it up for a mere $100 in upfront costs. The typical two-year commitment will be required from you, but that might just be worth it for this 5-inch Android slate, particularly if you load it up with the latest firmware. Pricing is the same for both the black and white versions, so if you’re keen to swap a small bulge in your wallet for a large protruding tabletphone in your pocket, you know where to look.

[Thanks, Jeremy C.]

Dell Streak slips to $100 on contract at Best Buy originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Dec 2010 05:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Best Buy (Black), (White)  | Email this | Comments