Hasta La Gadget!

Parents everywhere are turning to their iPad to assist in educating and entertaining children. Thousands of quality learning apps exist to help everything from speaking to writing. Games help little ones kill time – and improve skills in some cases. And of course the iPad mobility with movies and TV shows becomes a life saver in some situations…a babysitter as some would say. But one parental duty floating under the radar has plenty of apps (22 on the US app store) to assist. Is it reading? Nope. Math? Nope. POTTY TRAINING! Yes, apps give parents help in the quest to get “pee-pee in the potty.” And now a creative piece of ‘hardware’ looks to help complete the learning process.

Meet the iPotty, $40 children’s potty with built in iPad stand. This colorful contraption provides the perfect size potty for those being trained. Take off the top, insert the front ‘shield’ if needed, pop in your iPad – which remains out of the range of fire and has a plastic cover to ensure dryness.  Hopefully the kid will stay on the iPotty long enough to get engaged in the app you choose and take care of business. Easily remove the stand if you choose to train without the pad. The iPotty, on display at CES, comes to us from CTA Digital, makers of a variety of gaming and multimedia accessories for tablets, phones and the like. And they are familiar with what kids use as they offer plenty of gadgets to help children enjoy technology. So why not! Let the iPad help with one other task in the quest to raise children.

Thanks: Daily Mail
[ iPotty…the Name Says It All copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

CES is a hotbed for technological innovations being announced, and LG has decided to grab the bull by its horns with the latest announcement of its OLED TV, coming in the form of the LG EA9800. The big question is this, just what makes the LG EA9800 so special from all of the other OLED TVs that are in the market? How about this answer for starters – it comes in a curved manner, boasting proprietary WRGB technology in an incredibly thin form factor so that your eyes will be treated to vivid picture quality which has been said to be practically indiscernible from colors which you find in nature.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, or so the adage goes, so how does the LG EA9800 OLED TV stack up when viewed? Since it carries the industry’s very first curved screen ergonomic design with full CINEMA 3D support, we do not really have any other benchmarks to fall back upon. Still, with a gentle inward flex, the entire screen surface is said to be equidistant from the viewer’s eyes, which in layman’s terms, would mean doing away with the issue of screen-edge visual distortion and detail loss.

Needless to say, something of this size and magnitude where technological advancements are concerned have yet to be priced, nor do we know whether LG intends to make it available to the consumer market this year or not. After all, many hardware manufacturers do take the opportunity at CES to gauge the temperature of consumers’ pockets before agreeing to a sticker price that everyone would be happy with.

Havis Kwon, President and CEO of LG’s Home Entertainment Company, said, “LG is the first to launch the 55-inch OLED TV. We believe our new OLED TVs offer the ultimate viewing experience, surpassing anything seen before. The new curved model complements our core OLED TV family with a unique design that capitalizes on the thinness of the screen and the aesthetic beauty of OLED TV.”

Press Release
[ LG goes curvy with new OLED TV copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Hauppauge has announced a pair of new HD video recorders during CES 2013. The company makes a number of different products including TV tuners and more and its two new HD video recorders are aimed at different types of users. One of the new video recorders is for home users and the other is aimed at gamers.

The HD video recorder for home media users is called the HD PVR 2 model 1512. This video recorder is designed to allow users to create a library of their favorite cable TV or satellite TV programs in HD resolution. The HD PVR 2 features an integrated high-definition video recorder along with an IR blaster to control channel changes on a set top box. The video recorder comes with component video cables and other cables required to connect to a computer.

The device uses the computer hard drive to store the recordings it makes and is supplied with the WinTV v7.2 software application. The video recorder can be programmed to change the channel on the set top box using the IR blaster at a designated time. The device is also compatible with Windows Media Center from Windows 7 and Windows 8. The second HD video recorder is called the HD PVR 2 GE Plus.

This version adds SPDIF and supports full surround sound audio to video game recordings. The video recorder is designed to be used with the Xbox 360, PS3, or computer game systems. The system is designed to record surround sound audio along with video of the game play in HD resolution. This video recorder also includes StreamEez allowing live video streaming via Justin TV or U-Stream. Pricing is unknown at this time but both new HD video recorders will be available on February 1 in North America and Europe.

Hauppauge unveils HD video recorders for gamers and media fans is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Panasonic has announced a pair of new tablet computers at CES 2013 that fall into to the company’s ruggedized Toughpad line. The tablets include the new 10-inch FZ-G1 Windows 8 Pro tablet and the JT-B1 Android tablet. Panasonic says that both of these tablets followed the original 10-inch Android-powered Toughpad FZ-A1 that launched last year.

The FZ-G1 tablet has a 10.1-inch sunlight viewable touchscreen with an active digitizer sporting a resolution of 1920 x 1200. The tablet runs Windows 8 Pro for the operating system and can be had with 128 GB to 256 GB of storage. The tablet also be fitted with 4-8 GB of RAM and an optional microSDXC card slot.

The tablet uses a third-generation Intel Core i5-3437U vPro processor working at up to 2.9 GHz. The battery promises eight hours of runtime per charge and the tablet has integrated Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and optional 4G or 3G mobile broadband. The JT-B1 tablet has a seven-inch daylight viewable screen with a resolution of 1024 x 600.

The tablet runs Android 4.0 and uses a TI OMAP4460 1.5 GHz dual core processor. The tablet has 16 GB of storage, 1 GB of RAM, and a microSDHC card for storage expansion. The tablet also has a 1.3 megapixel fixed focus front camera and a 13-megapixel rear camera with autofocus and an LED light. The tablet also features integrated Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and has optional 4G and 3G connectivity. Both of these tablets are ruggedized to military standards to survive extreme temperatures and drops. The FZ-G1 tablet starts at $2899 and will ship in March. The JT-B1 tablet will ship in February starting at $1199.

Panasonic expands Toughpad tablet line with FZ-G1 and JT-B1 is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Not content with showing off its handy aPen Touch8 for those Windows 8 laptops which lack touch capabilities, eFun also let us play around a bit with two of its newest Nextbook tablets here at CES 2013. For starters, the 7GP, as its moniker would indicate, is a 7-inch (1024 x 600) slate that’s sporting Android 4.1, a 1.5GHz dual-core CPU alongside 1GB of RAM and 8GB of built-in storage. The 8GP, on the other hand, is a tad bit larger than its sibling with an 8-inch, 1024 X 768 IPS display but boasts pretty identical internals, so essentially you’d be spending 40 more bucks for a little more screen real estate. Speaking of which, while one of the tablets biggest features could be their relatively small price tag, eFun kept emphasizing to us how it believes the fact that they are Google-certified is perhaps the most important thing — and yes, the ability to have Mountain View’s Play store is definitely worth mentioning.

Much to our disappointment, however, we weren’t able to download any applications from Google Play or, for that matter, even browse the web, though that’s not the company’s fault, since having thousands of souls packed in a room makes for some very unreliable WiFi connectivity. Internet issues aside, both the 7GP and 8GP were rather smooth and quick when doing every-day tasks such as opening up apps and swiping between pages — which is likely due to the pair feeding off of Google’s Project Butter. Furthermore, were quite happy to find how thin-and-light the tablets are, with both Nextbooks being slightly thinner than something like, say, the Nexus 7 or the 7-inch Kindle Fire. All in all, eFun’s 7GP and 8GP aren’t too bad a choice for those looking to keep spending to a minimum, but at $130 and $170, respectively, there’s no doubt that shelling out some extra cash can still get you much, much more bang for your buck elsewhere.

Filed under: Tablets

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Source: eFun