Hasta La Gadget!

Remember that Eee Keyboard that was announced during CES? ASUS did itself proud by bringing a few to CeBIT this year, and we were able to swing by and take a look. The 5-inch, 800 x 480 touchpad was looking mighty fine, and the Atom N270 within seemed plenty powerful. It’s a touch hard to believe that ASUS was able to shove a 16GB SSD, 1GB of RAM, WiFi and Bluetooth modules, VGA / HDMI ouputs and a few USB 2.0 ports within a slim, elegant keyboard, but somehow or another it did. Oh, and the actual typing experience wasn’t bad from the few moments we spent practicing this here post.

Filed under: Peripherals

Hands-on with ASUS’ Eee Keyboard originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Mar 2009 04:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looking for the perfect geek-friendly fashion accessory to wear to your next LAN party? Something to complement your Heart Meter Shirt, on-trend laptop sleeve, and USB Engagement Ring? Consider the Keybag.

Created by Portuguese designers Joao Sabino and Mario Belem, each Keybag is clad in 393 randomly arranged old keyboard keys. The high-tech handbags come in four different colors and seem particularly apt for for toting your portable gadgets around.

Keybags are available in black or white for approximately $165 each and red or pink for approximately $185 each.

Ariel Waldman contributes Movie Gadget Friday, where she highlights the lovable and lame gadgets from the world of cinema.

We last left off Movie Gadget Friday on board the Icarus II in the near-futuristic film of Sunshine. This week we transition from space travel to a totalitarian, 20th century, terrorist-ridden society in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. A hybrid between the sexy saxophone solos and gender role reversals of the 1980’s with the “Keep Calm and Carry On” culture of the 1940’s and 50’s, this film dabbles between reality and a dream-like state.

Cyborg Typewriter

This “handhold” device clamps around your hand and five fingers for allowing typing speeds upwards of 150 wpm. Wired between stereo headphones and a flat touch-sensor keyboard, the brace around the hand augments the user’s typing accuracy and pace. The exposed wires act as inputs from any user-received audio and mechanically command via electric impulses exact transcripts to be typed out. The system is spoken-language friendly and can determine onomatopoeias, thus eliminating Google-like “did you mean…?” behavior. While it may make a secretary job more efficient, we have to wonder if the inevitable constant hand cramps are worth it. More after the break.

Continue reading Movie Gadget Friday: Brazil

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Movie Gadget Friday: Brazil originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Our Panda-like obsession with bamboo is really paying off of late, what with the hundreds of bamboo ASUS laptops scattered around the Engadget HQ, the few dozen cubicles we’ve built out of Dell Studio Hybrid sleeves, and now this complete line of bamboo peripherals from Micro Innovations. Sure, they’re ugly and a little low on tech — the speakers, card reader, webcam, USB hub, keyboard and mouse couldn’t be any more generic in specifications — and as far as we can tell there’s nothing particularly “green” about the typical-seeming internals, but apparently the (undisclosed) pricing is right. Most of this stuff should be available through your electronics retailer of choice in April or May.

Filed under: Peripherals

Micro Innovations’s bamboo lineup might just save the world… from generic computer peripherals originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Feb 2009 22:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We could just hug LG for this one. The LBA-C300, which just ran by the FCC, is the texting equivalent of a Bluetooth headset — a Bluetooth device that allows you to operate your phone without actually pulling out your phone, except this time it’s for hitting your peeps with rapidly a rapidly composed “LOL” or “LOL, U R.” The generous keyboard looks incredibly typable, and while the entire unit borders on the size of some phones on the market, it means you can leave that bulky numeric keypad dumbphone or hard-to-use touchscreen smartphone in your pocket or bag and get some real communication done with the QWERTY Card. You can also view and store contact info, peep a clock, set an alarm and work you calendar from the device — the Bluetooth pairing means you can even remotely control your phone’s camera, though obviously much of this functionality depends on what phone you pair it with, LG phones are likely to get much better treatment. No word on release date or price, but we’ll probably know more once LG actually announces the device officially.

[Via Unwired View]

Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals

LG’s LBA-C300 Bluetooth ‘QWERTY Card’ is the best calculator look-alike you’ve seen all week originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Feb 2009 11:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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