Hasta La Gadget!

Etymotic, a company we’ve seen here at CES and in the past, has developed a pair of earplugs that protect your hearing against things like loud explosions and gunfire. The EB1 and EB15 Electronic Blast PLG Earplugs, retailing for $449 and $499, respectively, are aimed toward buyers such as hunters, musicians and soldiers — folks who are exposed to loud noises and need protection. The analog earpieces are powered by a 312 hearing-aid battery and will last three weeks. There’s no on/off switch — just a high and low gain control. High gain is used for environments that require an amplification and the opposite applies for low gain. In other words, if a soldier is out on the battlefield and needs to hear an enemy inside a house, he’d switch to high gain to generate a louder sound. The difference between the plugs is simple: the EB1 is for people who are going to be around one-off noises and the EB15 are for those who are going to be exposed to prolonged noises. We got a chance to test out the plugs on the loud show floor and we gotta say, the difference between high- and low-gain modes is easily recognizable and we feel like these earplugs will make superb head-hole protectors. Plenty of complicated graphs and numbers in the gallery below.

Etymotic EB1 and EB15 earplugs hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 05:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on July 11, 2007 by CyberNet.

There are lots of TV listing fetchers out there, but OnTV is certainly different. OnTV is not a stand-alone program. It’s a GNOME applet, which means that you can put it anywhere on your GNOME panels.

When setting up OnTV, you can choose which channels you want to be shown. This little applet supports over 25 countries including the USA, the United Kingdom and most countries in Western Europe.

OnTV also allows you to set up reminders for upcoming programs. Right-click the OnTV icon, click ‘Search Program’, type in the name of the program you want to set a reminder for, right-click it and finally choose ‘Add reminder’. When your program is about to begin, something like this will pop up:

Note that this reminder window even displays a countdown clock (bottom right).

How to install OnTV on Ubuntu systems:
1) Enter sudo apt-get install ontv in a terminal
2) Right-click one of your GNOME panels
3) Click ‘Add to panel’
4) Drag the OnTV applet to one of your panels

If you’re not satisfied with the default logo of a certain channel, you can change it in Preferences. OnTV has the tendency to stretch channel logos if they are not square. You can do away with this little annoyance by opening the logo in an image editor, making it square and finally reloading the channel image. Here’s how you can do this using The GIMP:

1. Locate the logo you want to edit and open it using The GIMP. OnTV’s logo database can be found in /home/username/.gnome2/ontv/logos.
2. Go to Image > Canvas Size.
3. Click the chain (near Width and Height) to unlink it.
4. Have a look at Width and Height. Change the lowest value to the highest one. In my case, the width and height values were 56 and 41, so I had to change the height value to 56.
5. Click the Center button.
6. Press OK and save the image.
7. Right-click the OnTV icon and click Preferences.
8. Go to the second tab.
9. Right-click the TV channel you edited the logo for and select Properties from the menu.
10. Click the logo and re-select the same logo. The logo should be displayed correctly now.

If you prefer full listings instead of the Now/Next-style listings that OnTV offers, you should take a look at gTVlistings. Unfortunately, it cannot be installed from the Ubuntu repositories.

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Google’s headed ever deeper into the clouds this year with a new function for Google Docs: video playback. As of this week, users can upload videos (up to 1GB) in a supported format, and make them available for viewing in Google Docs. As with the previous video sharing set up, you can still download video, including previous versions. Google engineers have warned of excessive processing time, but once videos are up, viewing is as easy as clicking play — and having a Flash player, of course. We’re not entirely sure what the advantage is over Youtube, but we’re on board for anything that lets us share our love of creepy robot workout videos with our coworkers.

Google Docs introduces video player, yet another way to kill time in the office originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 02:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In one of the most insensitive announcements in recent PR history, T-Mobile UK is telling its customers who want to download or stream online video to their mobile devices to “save that stuff for [their] home broadband.” The carrier, one half of the UK’s biggest operator Everything Everywhere, had up until now offered one of the better monthly allowance deals with a 3GB data consumption limit on Android phones. It still is, in fact, since its new changes aren’t coming into effect until February 1st, but come that fateful Tuesday, T-Mo’s understanding of “fair use” will shrink down to 500MB each month — after which point you’ll still get to browse the web and email for free, but any video content will presumably be subject to an extra charge. It’s not clear how “that stuff” will be handled by T-Mobile once you cross the frugal new threshold, nor is it clear whether customers who signed up for big bodacious 3GB of data will be set free once this new lockdown on mobile video is in effect. Godspeed to you all.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: T-Mobile has responded with a clarifying statement we’ve added after the break. There will be no surcharges for use over 500MB per month, but once you cross that line, any downloading activity will be “restricted.” By which the company seems to mean “restricted to whatever WiFi connection you can scrounge up,” because its 3G airwaves will be off-limits.

Continue reading T-Mobile UK cuts ‘fair use’ allowance to 500MB, sends you home to watch online video

T-Mobile UK cuts ‘fair use’ allowance to 500MB, sends you home to watch online video originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 01:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We heard a brief mention of Samsung’s Central Station during its first press event, but it wasn’t until we had a chance to check it out for ourselves on the floor did we really understand how the monitor / wireless docking station worked. Turns out it’s thanks to a USB dongle that connects the laptop in question to the rest of the setup. A clever idea, for sure, but we’d definitely need to put it through the ringer before we’d suggest. The 23-inch and 27-inch models are coming in March with prices as-yet unspoken. Enjoy the pictures below!

Samsung CA750 wireless Central Station eyes-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 00:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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