Yesterday Google released its video chat for Gmail. I spent part of my day today playing around with “Gmail Video” with a bunch of friends. Firstly I found that the video and sound quality are actually pretty good, there was no loss in sound and the video didn’t drag although I do have a T1 web connection. If you don’t actually have a newish PC your computer will start to slow down considerably as Gmail Video does eat up CPU resources. You will have to install a small proprietary plug-in to actually get Gmail Video and Voice working, but after that its pretty easy to get started.  

If you would like to know more you can check out the review here.

The popular Nintendo Wii has just evolved and expanded to cater to the entertainment needs of the whole family – Nintendo welcomes the brand-spanking new ‘Wii Music Game.’ It’s not a pure game console now; it’s an entirely new genre. With the rising popularity of ‘The Guitar Hero,’ Wii Music now serves a far more extensive range of audiences.

The Wii game console has been quite famous for the use of its motion controller, thus expanding the number of instrumental games from the ‘Guitar Hero’ to ‘Rock Band’, playing each and every instrument you could imagine. With Wii Music you can play the famous Sitar of India, Trombone, Saxophone and a wide spectrum of musical instruments from genres like classical to modern and progressive rock.

Music lovers and enthusiasts will definitely love the all-new technology brought about by Nintendo Music Wii. Nintendo emulates the feel of a real studio by allowing you to share, remix and collaborate with other players on new musical tracks through its online Wii Connect feature. In this way, you can explore new musical ideas as well as getting the same type of feedback that you would get from a true musical composition. If you fancy gaming consoles with a twist, then Nintendo Wii Music is definitely a must-have purchase to make.

Gigabyte is the leading company that produces high-end UMPC’s/tablet PC’s.

Being a leader in the industry, they have perfected UMPC technology to bring about all the features and the functionality of a regular desktop pc in one small and powerful device called the Gigabyte M704.

What is the Gigabyte M704?

It’s a portable tablet pc which is small enough to be placed inside a purse, yet powerful enough to cater to your browsing, emailing and data processing needs. It has a 7″ touchscreen monitor with 1024×600 full page resolution. It comes with an integrated 1.3 megapixel web camera, 4 hour battery life and its operating system is Microsoft Windows XP.

It also doubles as a miniature entertainment system with its built-in Media Card Slot (SD/SD-IO/MMC) ,2 USB, Audio Jack (Mic-in and Headphone out) , VGA, DC-in, Docking Connector which allows you to play hours of music and videos. Talk about a total portable entertainment system in one small package.

Because we deeply value unforgettable moments of triumph, rejoicing and family bonding we strive hard to keep these special memories. We always use our top of the line digital cameras to click at happy events. And so, for this purpose we’ll also need a cutting-edge photo printer to deliver the kind of results we want.

Take a good look at the Canon Pixma iP2600 Photo Printer. This portable yet powerful photo printer delivers quality pictures and amazing results. The patented print head technology allows you to produce beautiful, quality, and long-lasting photos with seamless edges, from business card sizes, up to the largest dimension for photographs, and with resolution up to 4800 x 1200 color dpi.

Canon Pixma iP2600 Photo Printers works at quadruple the speed of other photo printers around. The amazing 4”x6” borderless print takes barely 50 seconds. Now, that’s simply amazing!

Ever wonder if a day will come when everything will go wireless?

The dream is soon becoming a reality. With the advent of modern technology, everything is possible. Apple has just released to the market, the cable-free yet, ultra thin  Apple Wireless Keyboard.

This nifty tool runs on a:

• Mac PC with ‘Bluetooth’ technology.
• A Mac OS X v10.4.10 or later version.
• An existing keyboard and mouse for first set up.
• An updated keyboard software.
• All three AA batteries are included in the package.

As opposed to it’s wired counterpart, the wireless keyboard is running on complete wireless ‘Bluetooth’ technology which allows comfort and full functionality with style. The sleek wireless device is made of anodized aluminum frame, thus assuring durability and compatibility with your Mac. Not only does this small wonder afford you total freedom of movement, it also has an Intelligent power management which practically conserves battery life by automatically shutting down the keyboard’s power supply when you’re not using it and turns automatically on the moment you start typing.

Wired or wireless? You choose.

The typical handheld mobile device is fast evolving into an all around entertainment console. Check out the latest from Nokia, the Nokia 5300 Express Music Edition.

Nokia 5300 was soon dubbed as the ‘Music Phone.’ With the influx of MP3 players and similar media gizmos around, the idea that you can play hours and hours of videos and music in one device is very much appealing to both young and techie consumers around the world. No wonder Nokia 5300 Express Music Edition cell phone is just a hit.

Nokia 5300 is exactly 92.4 mm in length and 48.2mm in width. It has a 1.3 megapixel digital camera with 8x digital zoom and a built-in video recorder and video player with landscape mode. The Nokia 5300 Xpress Music phone has a music player supporting MP3, Midi, AAC and WMA audio formats and also has FM stereo radio. This cool and funky device can actually store up to 1500 songs provided it has a 2GB memory card on. The free internal memory is up to 5MB. It utilizes a Nokia battery BL-5B which is capable of up to 3.2 hours of chatter time and a standby time of up to 223 hours. Nokia 5300 can play music for up to approximately 12 hours. This is the ultimate treat for music-lovers out there.

Though the prices for flat screen monitors aren’t exactly cheap these days, good news came our way. Dell has just announced that their SP2309W widescreen flat panel monitor is going to sell for $379. The specs aren’t the greatest but expect to get a 2048 x 1152 resolution, 300 nits of eye-searing brightness, a 80,000:1 contrast ratio, plus one DVI, one HDMI and one VGA port. Sounds like a bargain to me, so you’d better go check up on these guys and see what’s with the deal. Looks incredible good, don’t you think? [via Dell]

The SuperSpeed USB 3.0 is literally living up to its brand name. The new USB 3.0 has a lightning speed of up to 4 Gbps data transfer capabilities. It has practically surpassed the speed of a typical 2.0 USB by ten folds.

Apparently, Symwave is still polishing their SuperSpeed USB 3.0 product and getting it all prepped for release by 2010. It is custom made to cater to the growing need for faster USB’s, having in mind the achievement of a faster synchronization of devices, as mobile phones and related media players.

This peripheral device is expected to be more power-efficient than its predecessor. The first line of products to use this advance technology will include external hard drives, flash drives, digital cameras and personal media players.

 The group of companies that made this innovation possible were Microsoft, Intel, HP, and NEC, with Intel spearheading the entire experiment. The future of data transfer is SuperSpeed USB 3.0, watch it out by 2010.

Almost everyone seems to own a Blackberry these days. The technology and convenience brought about by this very powerful device is what lures people to buy and make good use of it. Now, Blackberry comes with yet another magnificent creation, the Blackberry 8830 World Edition smartphone. It’s the first of its kind that has global roaming capabilities via GSM/GPRS networks. It means, of all the CDMA Blackberry phones, Blackberry 8830 allows you to travel the whole world with full mobile voice and data coverage without having to switch lines for you to access your phone contacts and their respective email addresses.

Not just that, the Blackberry 8830 World Edition gives you full leverage on communication as it’s capable of emailing, organizing, web browsing and instant messaging wherever you are in the world. You can even use its high-end GPS technology to locate people and places. It has a built-in media player with expandable memory so you can get more room for your videos, photos and music files. People are just going gaga over the new Blackberry 8830.

The best hand-held mobile device is now available in the market. Mobile phone enthusiasts, make way for the new Nokia E62 phone.

Nokia E62 Look
It has a fat slab look that resembles the exterior look of a Blackberry smartphone. The 2.8-inch screen is just perfect with a 320 x 240 resolution. Just below the screen are four soft keys, menu and email buttons that are very user-friendly plus a joystick for easy navigation.

The Symbian Difference
The new Nokia E62 runs the latest version of the Symbian operating system. It utilizes a powerful Series 60 version 3 interface. If you have used a Symbian hand-held device before, you’ll know its top of the line. The Symbian difference shows itself in E62’s excellent web browsing capabilities, fast emailing and flawless document reading ability. Nokia E62’s browser is very much desktop-like compared to any mobile device web browsers out there. If I were to grade it, I’d give Nokia E62 an ‘A.’

Dell has come up with yet another brilliant product, Dell Inspiron 1420.

This thin and light 4-6 lbs. of a wonder has an Intel Core 2 Duo T5850 / 2.16 GHz processor, with data bus speed of 667 MHz and RAM of 2 GB / 4 GB (max) and a hard drive of 160 GB - Serial ATA-150 - 5400.

This Newly redesigned Dell Inspiron 1420 adds Centrino Duo CPUs and a wide variety of color choices; a more configurable laptop with plenty of networking options; a discrete graphics option; and a very efficient battery life.

Dell’s innovation on the Inspiron model paved a way to the new 14-inch Inspiron 1420 laptop, which benefits from an internal and external makeover. The wide array of configuration choices spells literally that an average consumer can always find a right tool for them within their budget. At $724 this is definitely a good buy.

A Blu-ray DVD player selling for $139.99 is obviously cheap, but would you buy one? The Black Friday deals are starting to pop out and on Woot, Memorex MVBD-2510 is selling for $139.99 + $5 for shipping. It doesn’t sport BD-live support but it comes packed with some 1080p quality  so, I don’t know about you, but for that money, even if Blu-ray dies in the next couple of years, it sounds like a good deal. Order it today, otherwise the deal goes off and you may be sorry. - Woot via Engadget

As a follow up to the Sharp HDTV I thought that I would also investigate tv wall brackets and LCD TV stands. The benefits of having an lcd tv bracket is that it can gives you a ton more space for those extra pieces of furniture in your office or home. For those that don’t know before you begin mounting the bracket to the wall, you’ll want to attach the mounting rails to the back of your display. Another piece of advice would be to mount the bracket to a solid wall.

I decided to include the model “Swingout TV Arm for 26-40″ Screens – SOAD” that sells for about $60 from the guys at AVNOW to give you an idea of typical features.

• Suits LCD/Plasma screens 26-40″
• Maximum load: 36kg.
• The Fixings to mount the TV onto the bracket are included.
• Wall Fixing for Brick and Wooden stuf are included
• Colour: Silver
• Tilts +-15 degrees
• Turns at the wall 180 degrees
• 360 degree screen rotation
• Extends up to 450mm from the wall
• Protrudes 80mm when pushed back against the wall.

These guys do offer good prices on all models from what I can see. So we would recommend you check them out.

Over Christmas something that is high on my wish list is a new HDTV. For the last number of months I have seen large discounts on a number of models. Sharp are known for brilliant picture and sound and their latest model (AQUOS) thought to be one of the best on the market. The AQUOS is currently selling for $4,999.99 and if you have a spare few dollars you should invest in one.

The highlights of this model are:

1. 3 HDMI Inputs
2. Maximum Resolution 1920 x 1080
3. Screen Size 65″
4. Contrast Ratio 10,000:1 (dynamic)

You can see more of the spec here.

With specs starting from 2GB of RAM and 250GB of space and Intel Dual Core processors and with designs like the tribally inspired New World model by Joseph Amedokpo, the Shine Within model by Siobhan Gunning, the abstract Healing Patterns by Bruce Mau or the Seaweed model by Mike Ming, these would be great fashion additions. Prices start at $649 for the 15-incher and $799 for the 17-incher, and for each unit sold Dell will donate $20 to the Global Fund for AIDS that will help save lives in Africa. [via Dell]

Aequitas iGala is a wireless 8-inch frame that sports an 800 x 600 resolution, packs some 1GB of internal memory, WiFi and Gmail integration so that you can download or send pictures directly to your friends. Though these aren’t really common stuff, is not rocket science either, but the fact that this little thing comes in with touchscreen capability is really interesting. Other than that, the Aequitas iGala can also connect to Flickr and works with Microsoft’s FrameIt service to give you up-to-date traffic, weather, and news info. Doesn’t sound bad at all, don’t you think? - via Engadget

Time for another camera review guys. The new Canon PowerShot is sure to be on a number of peoples shopping list this year. It’s retailing in the US for about $350 and I believe that it’s well worth the money. What primarily sells a Canon is its brilliant lenses, you can take some superb pictures with a Canon. A nice feature of this camera is the large LCD screen as well this it takes a nice wide picture. The camera takes 8.1-megapixel pictures; the camera itself is easy to use. For a list of features you can look here.

Overall:

Solid camera that will take some great pictures for years to come.

While browsing the web tonight I decided to drop in on our friends over at YankoDesign. They have designed a Rubik Cube that also plays MP3’s! By solving the puzzle each layer at a time enables the player’s functionality e.g. play, pause, forward, back. The coolest thing about this gadget is that you can only turn it off by completing the puzzle.

More information can be found here.

I recently got contacted by techlasers to do a review on their new laser the Infiniti II 95mW. These lasers are typically used for pointing at objects at distance. The Infiniti costs $299.99 and comes with a pair of protective glasses to protect your eyes. The laser beam is very strong and can litterly be seen for miles. The Infiniti also comes  with 2 lids to control the beam. The Infiniti’s beam’s strenght can apparently pop a balloon and is intense enough to burn plastic!

Have fun guys playing with this toy. Please be aware that this laser can do damage to your eyes.

Today I decided to review one of my all time favorite cameras. I had the older version of this camera for about 18 months; it got stolen while on holidays about 4 weeks ago. This camera is great for those of us that like to drop our cameras, take under water pictures. The camera is said to be able to take a tanks weight without breaking. If you aren’t interested in a water proof camera or the shock proof then you should probably stay clear of this camera.

The only real drawback to this camera is the LCD screen, it’s very small and I would have liked to have seen a larger screen in the new model.

In the last few years we’ve seen hard drive space grow to levels I never thought was possible. Today I came across a nice post from the guys over at mydigitiallife. The world’s largest desktop hard drive is now a staggering 1.5TB and what’s even scarier is that Seagate is talking about delivering 2.5TB by the end of 2009.

I’m just wondering does anyone actually use or need a hard drive larger than 500GB? I know that I struggle to go over 100GB.

Ok guys time to review some printers. Last week I received the latest Artisan from Epson, I decided to put this on our company network here in the office and put it through some tests.

Feature Overview:

• 4 in 1 with WiFi: Print / Copy / Scan / Ultra Hi-Def Photo
  
• Up to 38 ppm, photos in as fast as 10 sec1
  
• Professional quality CD/DVD printing
  
• Wi-Fi and Ethernet networking
  
• Two-sided printing saves paper
  

Tests:

Test 1: Wi-Fi connection.

I connected the printer 3 rooms away from my office (50 feet) and connected to the printer through Wi-Fi.

Result: Worked great, better than the Dell I used to have J

Test 2: Printing.

I decided to do some High – Def prints to test out those colors and the speed of the print outs

Result: Perfect colors and pretty fast at printing took about 10 seconds to print our pictures that I had taken with a 7.1 Megapixel Camera.

Test 3: CD Printing, Scanning.

    CD Printing is quick and easy and I didn’t find anything wrong here.

    Result: Very easy and fast.

Overall:

Great printer and well worth the money for small office use and home use. You can check out more of the features here.

Ok so Black Friday is nearly upon us and it’s the time of year all us gadget freaks get up at 5am to stand in line at our local Best Buy or Circuit City (Maybe not J ). For those of you who don’t know what Black Friday is have a look here.

We believe that Blu-ray Disc players will be all the rage this year; we feel that given the current climate $150USD should be able to pick up a nice branded player. MP3 players we should see fall even more so don’t be surprised if you see a 1GB player go for about $20USD. Digital cameras we should also see flying off the shelves with good price reductions. Personally myself I am looking out for some good deals on Flat Screen monitors.

Some cool sites to have a look at for coupons and further deals can be found here and here.

Please let all our readers know if you find any deals/insights by posting a comment below.

So what HDMI cables types are there?

1. Type A. Using a 13.9mm-wide plug with 19 pins and designed for HDTV, EDTV, and SDTV devices it can also be used as a HDMI adapter for single-link DVI-D.
2. Type B. These contain 29 pins and obviously are a bit wider (21.2mm), which help in “carrying” much more information (audio and video). Designed to work with resolutions up to 3840 x 2400 pixels, they can’t be used on CE devices but they do work as a HDMI to DVI adapter.
3. Type C. Even though it has 19 pins just like Type A, this one is much smaller, just 10.42mm.

So why is everyone using the HDMI cable?

That’s a question I’ve been asked numerous times. Why do we need HDMI cables. The answer is simple. Because just one of these things is enough to “replace” three video and six audio cables. Other than the cable-zen in your office or apartment, they support most PC video and TV formats from standard to HD and offers more efficient transfers because there’s no need to convert from digital to analog and then back.

HDMI is a good option if you need my honest opinion. Do you use it?

That’s the reason why Abhisam Software has decided to come up with a cheap rfid training course that will offer you more info for a reasonable price: $69. What you get for that money? It’s a full featured training course that you’re able to download, and it includes graphics, Flash based animations and photos that make learning easier.

The technology is growing, advancing and will soon become even better, so if you plan on staying up to date then you’ll surely find this e-course very interesting. Let us know if you liked it or not.

Therefore I really find it useful to get all the information in one place. That’s what happens on Broadband-expert.co.uk where you’ll get all the possible solutions, all possible prices, if there’s a download limit and how are the other users rating that certain service you’ve got your eyes on.

The benefits of mobile broadband are simple to discover. First thing is the coverage (large), then it’s the fac that it’s easy to install, is compatible with all the PCs, MACs and laptops out there and doesn’t require a phone line. What’s even more interesting, is that some providers are even throwing in mobile broadband with free laptop, as part of a bigger deal.

Sounds about right so are you up for it? Is mobile broadband what you need?

1. Confront with your employees. If the guys that work for you, don’t know that such a system has been implemented then they’ll probably make willing mistakes like driving places they weren’t supposed to. With a fleet tracking GPS you’ll know exactly where your employees are, and you’ll get alerts when something that shouldn’t happen, happens.

2. Saves you money. Well if you can ditch those employees who’re not as productive as your company needs, you have a chance to save some money.

3. Safe from criminals. No matter if a thief steals your vehicle you’ll have better chance to find it if you use that technology. And other than knowing the exact location, you can also disable the car with a simple computer button push.

So what do you think? Would you opt-in for that technology at your company? Would it be a good idea?

First rumors, mentioned it at BlackBerry Thunder, but it’s now settled, the name is Storm. However rumors are now over, because the guys at Phones4U in the UK are the only allowed retailer in the UK who can sell it.

“The BlackBerry Storm is revolutionary and the perfect choice in a touch-screen smartphone for both consumers and business users who are looking to make a statement. Phones 4u is thrilled to be able to offer its customers a mobile solution for style, hassle free living and unbelievable quality entertainment,” said Brendan Sweeney, Phones 4u managing director.

Just a few of the specs you’ll be getting in the new BlackBerry Storm, include:

• 3G network support
• built-in GPS
• unique and innovative SurePress™ touch-screen
• 3.2 megapixel camera with variable zoom, auto focus and a powerful flash that also provides continuous lighting when recording video.
• 3.25-inch display and 480 x 360 pixel resolution
• portrait or landscape mode depending on your preference
• up to 16GB of expandable memory
• exceptional video and image viewing and a sharp, crystal clear Internet browsing experience.

For more info about the BlackBerry Storm, check out Phones4U.

Why I thought that’s a good business idea? Well you can consider those ID Card Printers these days and you’ll see that not many of them proud themselves with a low initial investment. Other than that the design is pretty sleek and very intuitive 16-digit LCD and casing, which would most likely reduce your other costs, as you won’t be needing an training sessions with almost anyone being able to operate it.

It may not be fastest (30s / card with full color) but I’d sure love to try it out and build myself a few.