Hasta La Gadget!

Last weekend Jeremy Hart — Wired.com contributor and a global traveller with 120 countries under his belt — left Los Angeles for a 60 day, 21 country, 15,000 mile drive around the world — in a Ford Fiesta.

Jeremy will be filing occasional updates here and on our sister blog Autopia. Here, he’ll be reporting on how well his various gadgets work in some of earth’s most amazing locations.

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If you were the fisherman hanging over the edge of Santa Monica pier, the hobo foraging through a garbage bin or the glamour model squeezing into a dress (as shiny and pink as one of our two Ford Fiestas)  for a dawn photo shoot last weekend, then you would have witnessed this international escapade leaving the eastern edge of the Pacific. For us, it was the start of the Fiesta World Tour 2010.

In gadget terms the Fiesta is an iPod more than iPad. It’s funky, basic and functional. And it comes in a range of bright colours. It has built-in iPod connectivity, USB and aux jacks, and Sirius radio. All in all, it’s a good platform to bolt, strap, and load more gadgets onto — and that’s exactly what we’ll be doing.

Here’s a look at a few of the gizmos we’re taking on the start of the trip. (We’ve got plans to test more — many more — so this is just a beginning.)

Pocket video camera. I have a TV cameraman (using Sony’s EX1 HD broadcast camera) and a photographer (Canon 5D) with me, so the need for extra filmmaking and photography kit is not crucial. But I now refuse to go anywhere without a Flip Ultra HD. Broadcast-quality and idiot-proof, it fits both my criteria. I have two of them on the trip – just in case.

I will be video blogging with them for easy editing and instant uploading. Take a peek at the one I did at a gun club in Scottsdale, Arizona.

We use Motorola walkie-talkies for car-to-car communications on the road.

Apple iPad. Against my better judgement, I have decided to get an iPad for the trip. It’s the Wi-Fi-only, 64 GB version. Roaming with 3G is so expensive, so I opted against that model. And I say that against my better judgement because I have, and am currently writing on, my MacBook Pro. I’ll be interested to see how the iPad fits into our trip — and maybe even improves it — or if I wind up shipping it back to London for my kids to enjoy.

GPS tracker. I have a Spot Tracker so you can follow our travels. It allows you to see exactly where we are (and please, come and see us if you are pretty, have freshly baked goods, or want to give us gadgets you’d like us to take round the world).

I’ll have it set up for the next entry here, and I’ll give you the link to follow us then.

The Virgin MiFi (in the foreground) is the key to making a trip like this work. Wi-Fi for all my friends!

Portable hotspot. But my favourite piece of kit, as I write this from the middle of Arizona, is Virgin Mobile’s MiFi. Just 100 bucks for the unit and around 60 bucks for 6GB of upload/download data. It is the godsend of the trip so far.

It works off Sprint’s network, turning the cell network into a mobile hub through which 5 users can surf. A colleague in our second Fiesta surfed from the adjoining lane on I-40 at one point. I was on the edge of the Grand Canyon yesterday, uploading video and copy faster than I had in my hotel room the night before.

Talking of hotel rooms, we stayed at the fantastic Westin Kierland Resort and Spa in Scottsdale. But, as with many 5 star places, the internet service is 5 star prices. Not with my little Virgin buddy it wasn’t.

And being an Englishman in your wonderful country, it means I can use my iPhone 4 as it should be used, without  having to pay huge roaming charges ($3,000 a month last year when traveling in Canada, US and Australia).

Virgin might be a British company, but I am not going to apologize for my nationalize when I pledge my undying love to Sir Richard Branson and his MiFi. I’m motivated purely by the bandwidth, I assure you. I just fear it won’t be there when I need it in the remote Arabian desert next month or the Malaysian jungle a few weeks later.

Right — I gotta go now. I’ll have more gadgets to report on next week.

Looking for some innovation to go with your porridge this morning? How about this fan-made flip phone concept that pivots vertically and horizontally? You can use it as a standard old clamshell, with the lower of the two displays acting as your number pad, or you can rotate it down to pair the screens into one snazzy widescreen panel. That’s all there really is to it, but it seems like such an ingenious idea to us — maintaining the slimline dimensions that some think are crucial to phones, while offering the generous screen size that we all want. Hit the source link to see more of this “Sony Ericsson” FH concept.

Continue reading Sony Ericsson concept phone is as clever as it is unreal

Sony Ericsson concept phone is as clever as it is unreal originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Aug 2010 05:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We knew the original Droid’s replacement was coming, but we were never able to nail down the market name with confidence — until now, it seems. The Droid 2 makes a prominent appearance in an official catalog of Verizon devices leaked to BGR, talking up its 5 megapixel cam, 8GB of onboard storage, and 1GHz processor, positioning it just ever so slightly below the mighty Droid X. Also finding their way into the catalog are the recently-launched Pantech Jest, the self-branded Verizon Salute, and the Intensity II and Gusto both from Samsung, all dumbphones that just add more evidence to the theory that all the good names for mobile devices have already been taken. No date’s given for the Droid 2, but we imagine it can’t be long now that they’re openly talking about it, right?

Verizon catalog reveals Motorola Droid 2, new dumbphones originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Jul 2010 18:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Don’t look for any crazy Android hardware here, but these three dumbphones are more notable than you might think: they mark the first time LG has hooked up with T-Mobile USA, believe it or not. The Sentio (pictured left) is the most interesting of the trio, featuring a 3-inch touchscreen, 3 megapixel cam with video capture, and support for visual voicemail. The dLite flip (middle) offers a nifty concealed LED array upfront — a feature you see occasionally on Japanese and domestic Korean handsets, but rarely on American models — along with a 2.8-inch display and a pair of color choices (“bubblegum” and “electric blue”). Both the Sentio and dLite also feature T-Mobile’s Social Buzz app for aggregating social network status updates, a helpful feature that’s quickly becoming the norm in this class of device. Finally, you’ve got the GS170 flip — a phone so basic that LG apparently didn’t deem it worthy of a proper name — offering a VGA cam, Bluetooth 2.1, and “large visible keys.” All three phones will be available this Summer for yet-to-be-disclosed prices. Follow the break for LG’s press release.

Continue reading LG kicks off T-Mobile relationship with Sentio, dLite, and GS170

LG kicks off T-Mobile relationship with Sentio, dLite, and GS170 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Jun 2010 07:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s pretty wild that neither Palm nor AT&T have fessed up to a release date for the GSM-ified versions of the Pre Plus or Pixi Plus yet — especially considering that there are already unboxings going on — but we’ve now got confirmation that dummy units (of the Pre Plus, anyhow) are filtering into retail stores, so it definitely shouldn’t be much longer now. Dummies of an updated version of the ultra-simple Pantech Breeze (uncreatively named Breeze 2) is also coming in, so between these two, you should pretty much be able to outfit every member of the family from grandpa to the newborn. Seriously though, AT&T — wait much longer on this release, and this sucker’s going to be obsolete.

[Thanks, Kal]

Palm Pre Plus, Pantech Breeze 2 dummies showing up in AT&T stores originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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