For times when you really need a flashlight in the car, you should have a small, powerful LED flashlight with long-lasting lithium batteries. Example: The Duracell Daylite CR123 LED Flashlight, $27 street (above left in photo), puts out a tremendous amount of light, runs for a long time, and it’s just six inches long. You’ll trade in your car before the batteries die from old age (10-15 years). A similar Duracell Daylite flashlight using two AA cells will be a couple dollars cheaper.
Speeding tickets are about revenue, not safety. (That was probably among the Wikileaks the government considers confidential.) You can protect yourself, some, with most any radar detector. The gold standard among radar detectors has long been the Valentine One. Valentine Research does the best job of sniffing out radar and provides the most intelligent warnings. The Valentine One uses front-side-rear warning arrows to show the location of the signals
You can pay your dealer as much as $100 to tell you what the Check Engine light means each time it comes on, or you can buy a handheld diagnostics tool such as CarMD for about the same price ($120 direct) that plugs into your car for a quick good-not good indication, then into your computer for a detailed rundown of what’s wrong, time after time. CarMD works on up to three cars, does more emissions and safety checks than earlier models, handles hybrids, and the site provides more how-to-maintain-your-car info to keep you involved in between plug-in diagnoses.
Good news for Sony Dash owners–the alarm clock turned personal Internet viewer just got access to Hulu Plus content. If you have a Dash and subscribe to Hulu Plus, you can get that content delivered to the device. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, anyone?
Says Sony SVP Brennan Mullin,
The addition of Hulu Plus serves as an ideal example of how Dash continues to evolve and improve over timeWith Hulu on board, the Dash platform has the ability to deliver a huge variety of online entertainment instantly to consumers’ homes on top of glanceable, real-time tidbits of information.
Hulu Plus support was also added to Sony’s PlayStation 3 two days ago, letting users without a PlayStation Plus subscription stream the content. The premium TV and movie streaming service will run you $9.99 a month. It’s also streamable through the iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and Samsung TVs.
Hulu.com still offers a free version of the service via PCs with a more limited content selection.
Don’t put too much stock in this rumor–the news that comes from these third-party parts manufacturers is spotty at best. That said, we have seen some of these come to fruition in the past, and let’s face it, if there’s one thing we do seemingly no for sure, it’s that Steve Jobs is going to show off a new iPad next year.
And if Apple goes according to its prior scheduling for the device (the company is often a creature of habit when it comes to updating products), we’re going to see that iPad 2 early next year, seeing as how the first model was unveiled in January of this year.
Apple supplier Foxconn Electronics has reportedly been told to ship 400,000-600,000 iPad 2 units in the next 100 days, according to Digitimes‘ “sources from Taiwan-based component makers.”
Here’s what those sources had to say,
[T]he iPad 2 will ship as soon as the end of February in 2011. Apple originally planned to start mass production in January, but because the device’s firmware is currently still in testing, Apple has been postponing the schedule. Since Foxconn’s new plants in Chengdu are still in pilot production, iPad 2 will be mainly supplied by its Shenzhen plants, while the company’s upstream component partners have all been notified of the shipments schedule.
Foxconn naturally declined DigiTimes’ request for comment. My guess is that the site didn’t even attempt to contact Apple…
What’s one more swipe of the credit card, right? In this digital age, when hardly anyone uses cash anymore, it’s harder to recognize the consequences of each purchase. You don’t feel and see your wallet emptying out. You don’t actually have to count out the bills and hand over your hard-earned cash. Just swipe and your done. The folks over at the MIT Media Lab have created a solution to help you more conscious of the effects of your purchases: the Proverbial Wallet.
Google’s mobile platform VP Andy Rubin hit the stage yesterday at the The Wall Street Journal’s D: Get Into Mobile Conference in San Francisco with a shiny new 10-inch Motorola tablet in tow. It wasn’t the hardware that was the focal point of the device, however–it was the debut of a brand new version of the Android open mobile OS.
Rubin didn’t really field much in the way of questions about the device, joking that it would run $10,000 (and you thought the Samsung Galaxy Tab was overpriced). He shed a little bit of light on innards, stating that the device was packing a NVidia dual core CPU.
The real star of the show was Honeycomb, the new tablet-centric version of Android. PCMag’s Lance Ulanoff, who was present at the event, described Honeycomb as “very clean” and “almost iPad-like.”
Honeycomb is set to release at some point next year. According Google, most of the major OEMs are looking to get on board with the OS.
http://www.tenonedesign.com/sketch.php
Looking for a low priced gift for the tech enthusiast in your life who has everything? Well, if said person owns an iPhone or iPad, consider one of these ultra cheap accessories. Steve Jobs would likely consider the Pogo Stylus Sketch a crime against nature. For those who use their devices to create art and handwritten notes, it may just be a godsend.
This $15 accessory features a soft tip that gives the user the writing freedom of a stylus (you remember those, right?). The Pogo Stylus is also a terrific option in these winter months, when gloves make it impossible to use the device’s touchscreen.
The Pogo also works with the Zune HD, Android handsets, and most other touchscreen devices. You can pick one up at the Ten One Design page.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab is selling better than expected. The company set a year-end goal of one million units for itself. Samsung hit that number with a full month left (which, just happens to be the one that Christmas falls in), and is pushing its prediction for 2010 up to 1.5 million.
It’s a big jump over Samsung’s previously announced numbers. Last week, the company announced that it had sold 600,000 units, worldwide. Part of that is, no doubt, due to the fact that the tablet was released in more countries–it’s now available in 64 countries, for a total of 120 carriers. The device has sold 100,000 units in tits first 60 days in the US.
How does all of this compare to the iPad? That device managed to sell more than two million units in its first two months. The Next Web points out that Apple’s tablet didn’t really have much competition when it was launch–though that was no doubt something of a mixed bag for the company which had the difficult job of convincing consumers and reporters that the world needed another screen.
All of that said, Samsung is not doubt quite happy with these numbers, having outpaced its own expectations and established the Galaxy as the number two device in what is sure to become a very, very crowded field in the near future.
Every new parent needs a baby monitor, but many offer static-y images or distance limitations. WiFi Baby 3G has come along, however, promising to solve all that. You can use this monitor to stream interference-free video and audio to a Windows or Mac PC, an iPhone, or an iPad. The device is both a camera and computer: it creates a password-protected wireless Internet connection to any compatible device on the home network.
WiFi Baby promises a simple setup. With a few adjustments it will also allow for viewing outside of the user’s home network. This means is can also be used as a nanny cam or security cam. There are no monthly fees for remote access. The cam offers night vision, motion detection, and an on-screen clock to assure parents that they’re watching a current video stream. It sells for $279 from the company site.
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