Best New Technology

This new PMP by Teclast, is a pretty nice and comes loaded with many cool features and isn’t really too expensive. It was previously thought that it would measure about 15mm in thickness, which is pretty thick, but now it’s known to measure out at just 7.9mm. It comes with a circular rotation device and a button in the middle, similar to Apple’s iPods and other MP3 players.

Otherwise, it comes in two different colors, black and white, and it comes with PlayFX for sound enhancement. It features a 2.4-inch TFT QVGA LCD screen with a resolution of 320 x 240, and comes in three different models - 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB. The interesting part about the M25 is how many formats it can support, for audio it supports MP3, WMA, APE, FLAC, and AAC. For video, it can support AVI, RM, and RMVB. Furthermore, it supports a few languages including English, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. It even comes with 30 FM customizable stations to boot.

No word, however, on pricing or availability at this time.

Via [PMP Today]

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Angela Yuan built this amazing Etch-A-Sketch Clock. It uses the Arduino computing platform to control the knobs, which twist to sketch the time, every minute. The Etch-A-Sketch rolls to erase the numbers before starting all over again. It’s messy, and it probably took way too much work. We love it.

Project page [Angela Builds via Metafilter]

After what has amassed to literally years of Beatles and iTunes speculation and rumors ranging from everything to having the music added to a Yellow Submarine branded iPod.

Well, and I say this as a huge Beatles fan, I am glad to say its not the Yellow Submarine ipod that has come true, but instead it’s much more exciting news as the complete Beatles catalog will soon be hitting iTunes. Thanks to a reported $400 million deal, signed by Sir Paul McCartney, himself and Ringo Starr as well as the families of both John Lennon and George Harrison will also benefit. We also cannot forget the record labels, EMI, Sony and Michael Jackson who all own at least partial shares of the collection as well.

As a Beatles fan I cannot say that I plan on purchasing all (or even any) of their music from iTunes, I have an almost complete collection from years of LP, cassette tape and CD purchases that have been already added to my iTunes collection. However similar to how I discovered the Beatles at a young age, I hope my daughter (and others in similar situations) will have their children discover them in this new digital format. My discovery came from my parents LP collection, the times (and formats) may have changed but its still about music discovery and for that I think its exciting to have the Beatles soon to be included in iTunes.

Sadly,while they do mention the music will be added in 2008, there was not any specific date announced yet, hopefully it will be soon.

Read [UPI]

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The Sansa Fuze from SanDisk has shown its true availability, and while it may not yet be shipping, the listing on Amazon confirms it will be shortly. Well shortly may be a little generous, as Amazon currently has it listed as shipping “within 1 to 3 months.”

The Sansa Fuze will feature a 1.9-inch display, 4GB of internal storage, a microSDHC card slot for additional storage, FM tuner, built-in microphone and a battery life of 24 hours for audio playback or 5 hours for video playback.

It will, according to Amazon be available in black, pink or red and will retail for $99.99. While it would make sense to see other colors and additional storage sizes available, no details have been leaked or announced just yet.

Products [Amazon] Via [DAP Review]

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When people refer to Facebook fatigue and more generally “social network fatigue,” it can mean two different things, either that (1) you’re bored with social networking and are spending less time with it, or (2) you’re generally exhausted from spending too much time keeping up with online interactions with your friends and updating your information. Web 2.0 Asia suggests that social network fatigue hit Korea and Japan a little earlier, in the same way that certain tech trends hit and then decline in Asia ahead of the U.S. and Europe. Apparently, Cyworld in Korea and and Mixi in Japan, have been losing their appeal with users for whom the novelty of online networking has worn off.

Take our poll and let us know where you stand.

Links to articles about social network fatigue:
‘Facebook vatigue’ kicks in as people tire of social networks, The Register.
Facebook Fatigue, Economist.com.
Facebook Fatigue: There Is Hope, Portfolio.com.

London based company En-Twyn have shown at CeBIT a great new networking device to make sure problems like poor Wi-Fi signal and wire clutter are kept to a minimum.

The idea is simple. You share the broadband connection of one room, and users can pick it up from other rooms. The socket fits on to any regular front, and the 4 LEDs indicate power and internet activity. It allows up to 64 users to take up the circuit, but in my opinion, if you’ve got a house that big, Ethernet is the least of your worries.

The En-Compass is at the stage where it was shown during at CeBIT, but I really hope it will catch on and become available worldwide.

Via [Digital Lifestyles]

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Now this is definitely one of the more useful drinking gadgets that I’ve come across in a long time, especially when I keep myself entertained in front of the PC with some pizza and beer in hand. No longer do I need to take a walk to the kitchen to pick up a bottle opener, as this Trekstor USB flash drive will be able to do that for me. You won’t find me complaining about the 8GB worth of storage space inside, either. No idea on how much it costs though.

Source: Pocket Lint

A couple of years ago (it doesn’t seem that long ago…) I waxed lyrical about the advantages of using a modded Xbox with XBMC as a living room media adapter.

Unfortunately technology moves on and my trusty Xbox just didn’t have the horsepower to play back high definition content. The next gen consoles can do it but they still aren’t as flexible as I’d like (although kudos to Microsoft for finally enabling DivX playback on the 360).

So what do to? The mac mini stepped in to fill the gap nicely; the new core duo models are fairly powerful, it’s tiny and it’s almost silent running. It’s also surprisingly good value for money - I can’t build a PC that ticks all those boxes for the price of a mini.

It seems like the developers of the original XBMC software had the same thought and they’ve been porting the media player software to OSX. Over the past month or so I’ve been watching the OSXBMC project with interest and it looks like it’s finally become solid enough for general use.

XBMC (the Xbox Media Center) is a front end application for playing back video and music. Think Front Row++. Unlike front row it doesn’t force you to have your audio/video files in the iTunes managed folder structure, and it also plays back just about anything you can throw at it including .ISO/VOB and FLAC files.

Front row can do some of this with perian, but XBMC seems more efficient to me. In my testing it plays 720p .MKV files from a LAN share with no dropped frames and can also handle 1080p content, although that’s pushing the mac to the limits of it’s ability. I’ve never been able to do either of these with Frontrow/Perian.

Although I said it’s solid, it still has it’s roots very much in the xbox world. That means that there are some menu items on the main interface that are just not applicable to the mac and others that behave slightly oddly. If you don’t mind a bit of experimentation though it’s well worth a look.

Get the software from here, and the FAQ here

Posted Mar 10th 2008 2:58AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: GPS, Handhelds, Portable Audio, Portable Video

We had the chance to get hands-on with Samsung’s WiBro-lovin’ SWT-W100k back at CES in January. Judging by the arrival of the product waifs, the 4.3-inch, WVGA touchscreen PMP now looks to be getting an official coming-out party in its native S.Korea. €341 takes the little all-purpose device with GPS, 2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, 8GB of internal flash, and DMB mobile television home on a yet to be determined date. VoIP client, personal organizer, and web browser? Sure, that too. No word on the processor choice but it’s definitely not running any flavor of Microsoft OS. With any luck, Samsung will bring a US-speced variant capable of running on Sprint’s XOHM service later this year. Video refresher posted after the break.

Posted Mar 10th 2008 2:15AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Check it — HandStands isn’t just making kit for items not yet conceived. Oh no, SanDisk’s Sansa Fuze is indeed more than a figment of someone’s clever imagination. Judging by a product listing at Amazon, this media player is set to ship “within one to three months” and features a 1.9-inch display, FM tuner, built-in microphone for voice recording, a battery good for 24 hours (audio) / 5 hours (video) and a microSD / microSDHC expansion slot for good measure. As of now, we know that the 4GB unit in red, pink or black will sell for $99.99, but there’s no word on whether more (or less, for that matter) capacious / colorful models will eventually emerge.

[Via DAPreview, thanks Nick]