Gadgets Review

Android 2.1 mobile phones

Gadget_Geek — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:09:00 GMT

With the recent announcement that the Samsung Galaxy Spica will now get the official Android 2.1 update, there are now plenty of Android 2.1 mobile phones to choose from. There's the currently popular Google Nexus One, the coming soon HTC Legend, HTC Desire and Xperia X10.

The Motorola Droid or Milestone is still running the Android 2.0 OS but in the United States, Verizon is slowly rolling out 2.1 updates for their Droid. In Europe, they have yet to get official word on when their Motorola Milestones will get the Android Eclair. So many Android handsets to choose from, which will you choose? Here's a nice comparison between the HTC Legend, Desire, Nexus One, and Xperia X10 to help you get started on your decision.

The previous Android star of 2009, the HTC Hero has yet to get the official Android 2.1 update. HTC better release that soon as the Hero would soon be overshadowed by the newest Android 2.1 stars of 2010.

Nokia N900 and Motorola Milestone available in the UK

Gadget_Geek — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:50:00 GMT

I've been envious about our brothers in Europe for a long time now because they always get the good mobile phones first. Well, thankfully, we got the Droid first and it was only Germany who got it second (they're calling it the Motorola Milestone in Europe). In the UK, the Milestone is already available but only through one channel: Expansys. You have to pay around £420 to get the Milestone though and if you want to get it subsidized, Expansys is only making the Milestone available under T-Mobile.

As for the Nokia N900, here in the US, Amazon will have it in today (Dec. 18) but in the UK, You can get the Nokia N900 for pre-order at mobiles.co.uk. I think the Nokia N900 was available for a while in Europe but Nokia delayed full retail selling until this December.

Windows 7 now has multitouch virtual keyboard

Gadget_Geek — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:43:00 GMT

There has been a lot of good reviews about Windows 7 lately that I'm really thinking hard about getting an upgrade. And as if those high res wallpapers are not enough to entice me, here's another reason why I so badly want to move to Windows 7: Virtual Multitouch keyboard. The software: Hot Virtual Keyboard isn't actually part of Windows 7 but more of a third party software as you have to shell out $29.95 to get it on your PC.

Anyways, the Hot Virtual Keyboard lets you use the shift key simultaneously with the alphanumeric keys--just like a real keyboard. Hmm, now if only I can find the best tablet which is cheap and can run Windows 7...

Source

Samsung Corby Available in the UK

Gadget_Geek — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:14:00 GMT

After the success of the Samsung Star,Samsung is hoping to the budget touchscreen market by storm again with their latest cheap handset: the Samsung S3650 Corby. So what's Samsung's marketing strategy for the Corby? Well, they put in different colors and hope that teeners would prefer this handset over the Samsung Star. In the UK, the Samsung Corby is known as the Samsung Genio and I think it's already available in the UK this month.

So will the Corby be as successful as the Samsung Star or the LG Cookie? We'll know in a few months. Meanwhile, if you're looking for a Corby-like mobile phone in the States, the Samsung T749 Highlight may fit the bill.

Samsung Omnia II vs. Diamond2

Gadget_Geek — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:15:00 GMT

Cellphone-reviews just compared the Samsung Omnia II and HTC Diamond2, two of the most popular windows mobile phone in the market today. Now I'm leaning more towards the Diamond2 because of it's really a nice looking phone and based on videos I've seen, it also has a really nice UI.

The author also posted some comparison pictures of the Samsung i908 and the Diamond2. The Samsung i908 seems to trump the Diamond2 in low light pictures but I think I feel like the Diamond2 does a better job in daylight conditions although the author still put it in favor of the i908. Check the link above for the full comparison.

Nissan Leaf

Gadget_Geek — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:38:00 GMT

The Nissan Leaf is Nissan's latest eco-friendly car. With no tailpipe, the Nissan Leaf boasts of zero carbon emission and only takes 30 minutes to recharge (80% of full capacity with quick charger), using an ordinary 200 volt outlet would take around 8 hours to recharge.

Of course, being eco-friendly has its price. The Nissan Leaf isn't exactly the fastest car out there as it's only capable of going 100 miles on a single charge.

The Nissan Leaf is expected to be available around 2010. Hopefully, because of the tax cuts and incentives for being a green car, we can get this on the cheap.

The Mimo 710-S

Gadget_Geek — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 18:14:00 GMT

Here's a good companion for your netbooks: the Mimo 710-S USB Monitor. Most netbooks nowadays have a screen size that range from 7-10 inches but for power users who are used to 20-22 inches monitor, it's hard adapting to these netbooks especially when you need to have lots of space on your desktop.

The most common solution would be to bring a monitor but monitors are bulky so the next best thing? USB Monitors. USB monitors doesn't have a power outlet and just takes it power from the USB Connection from your laptop plus most USB monitors are compact and desiged to complement netbooks. The Mimo 710-S is a good choice because it has a pretty design and you can swivel the sreen.

NMCNNIC

Free Facebook on Vodafone

Gadget_Geek — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 06:23:00 GMT

Now here's something that US Carriers should emulate. Starting July 24th and lasting for a whole week. Vodafone UK will be offering its customers free Facebook access on their mobile phones using Voda's mobile broadband service. Users with a mobile phone or those using their broadband dongle will enjoy this promo.

The free Facebook access is in line with Vodafone's Free Fridays special. As some of you can remember, they offered DRM free music back in June. Those who access any website aside from Facebook will be charged Vodafone's Flat rate of 50p per day.

Via:CellPhone-Reviews

Citroen GT spotted on the streets of London

Gadget_Geek — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 04:34:00 GMT

I wonder if I would ever see the Citroen GT Concept car in my local Utah valley auto shop? For avid Grand Turismo gamers, yes, this is the same Citroen GT you've seen in Gran Turismo 5. The Citroen GT is a concept car designed by Polyphony Digital for the latest Gran Turismo game and produced by Citroen. It was first introduced in the 2008 Paris Auto Show.

Since the Citroen GT is a concept car, there's not much specification except for the awesome design. However, according to Wikipedia, it is powered by fuel cells that delivers 780bhp. The Citroen GT recently turned heads at London. You can check out the video below and join me in drooling over this baby.

Emulators on Nintendo DS?

Gadget_Geek — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:47:00 GMT

I'm thinking of getting into the Nintendo DS homebrew scene since I recently purchased a DS Lite. I was going for the DSi but given the poor reviews and few additional features, I really don't think the DSi was for me, plus, the Lite was just more cheaper. Anyways, because the DS Lite has no onboard SD Memory card slot, you have to purchase an r4 revolution for DS. This is a cartridge that has a microSD slot.

So why would you need a microSD slot for your DS? Well, if you've seen a PSP, you know why. The PSP can play music, videos, and browse the web without the need to purchase a separate cartridge. In order to play music, videos and browse the web on your DS Lite, you the the R4 revolution card and then install homebrew applications on your DS. There are hundreds of homebrew applications for the DS and I was wondering if there were any emulators for the Nintendo DS? I guess it's wishful thinking to hope that the DS will have a PS1 emulator since the device can't really handle graphics that well. There is an SNES emulator which I think I'm going to try though I have to research first if SNES emulators are legal. I think they are but you have to have a copy of the original game? At lest, that's what I've read.

Anyways, although there are not a lot of emulators for the DS, the homebrew games seems nice enough. I'm excited to download a Paint application and put to use my artistic side.

2009 Mini Cooper Convertible Gets Reviewed

Gadget_Geek — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:41:00 GMT

Okay so the Mini isn't really a fast car deserving to have a convertible line-up but it is still cute and like it or not, it has a following amongst car enthusiasts. Cnet.com has posted their review of the 2009 Mini Cooper Convertible, of course, it's not exactly all praises for the Mini Cooper. The reviewer commented as bad, the 1.6 liter engine, hey, what can you expect? This is a Mini, not a Ferrari.

Of course, the Mini is still a fun car to have and would definitely turn heads. It's also a very economical car. I really like the interior of the car. Look at those auto mats and cool gauges. Anyways, if you're interested, head on over to Cnet.com to read the full review.

Voice of London Underground as a ringtone

Gadget_Geek — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:45:00 GMT

Have you ever wanted a ringtone that would separate you from everyone else? Nowadays, phone customization is the way to go. You can personalize your phone with your own wallpapers, themes and screen savers but the best way to personalize your phone which everyone will notice is through your ringtones. Think about it, have you ever been in a public place and and then someone's phone rings or has received a message and their mobile ringtones actually made you stop and notice them?

Well, how about having the voice of the london underground as ringtone? No, I'm not talking about the regular "mind the gap" phrase but the london underground's voice saying something witty like "We would like to remind our American tourist friends that you are almost certainly talking too loudly." Now that would certainly turn heads, right?

You can download the ringtone by visiting the link.

Epson Stylus SX405 product review

Gadget_Geek — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 16:06:00 GMT

Epson have always been good at offering all-in-one printers at great prices and the new Stylus SX405 is no exception. This newest addition to the Epson range offers photo printing, high resolution scanning and stand –alone photo coping for under £70.

The cost of the printer ink seams to be quite reasonable compare to that of Epson printer from the past as well. A set of Epson inks can be picked up for less than £30 and even better, compatible Epson SX405 inks cost half as much again. The SX405 offers a very impressive max print resolution of 5760 x 1440 dpi which is plenty to produce sharp professional looking photographs. The built in PictBridge and card reader enables printing of photos directly from your camera or memory card and there is no need for the printer to be connected to a PC.

This is also the case for the stand alone photo copier which can produce high quality black or colour copies quickly and easily. The SX405 can print of a wide range of media including various finishes and sizes of photo paper, envelopes, card and inkjet transparencies.

FruitfulTime Review

Gadget_Geek — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:18:00 GMT

In every organization or business there's always a team leader, the one who makes the team come together and distributes assignments to team members. However, if you're a newbie leader and you don't know how to handle or assign tasks, you would probably end up doing all the workload yourself. If that happens, now's probably the time to get a task software/task manager.

I tried out a task software that offers a full trial version: FruitlfulTime. The full version costs $29.99, a lot cheaper than buying Outlook for its ToDo list. FruitfulTime offers a lot more functionality like archiving your tasks instead of deleting it so you can view it later in case you need it. It also lets you add subtasks in case of complex projects that needs breaking down. You can set reminders for priority tasks and then assign tasks to your members. You can even add contacts information for quick communication. Plus, for sensitive information that you only want to share with your most trusted team members, you can password protect certain tasks so that they're the only ones who can view it.

Now to the problems. Since I was a first time user, I tried deleting a subtask but when I did, it turned out that I was deleting the main task. That was acutally annoying since I don't know how to get that back and this may serve as a warning for those first time users too. It may just be better to just archive tasks rather than deleting them coz you might inadvertently delete an important task. You can go on deleting tasks maybe after a week in the archives.

All in all, FruitFulTime is a very functional task software. You can actually get a lot of things done with this software in your hands.

$10 Million for a Real Money Trading Site

Gadget_Geek — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:43:00 GMT

I know this is old news but I never knew that Real Money Trading (RMT) sites are so profitable. I'm not much of a gamer so I don't really know much about Online Games so it kinda surprised me that the RMT site, MyMMOshop.com actually changed owners for $10 mil. It made me think that maybe putting up an RMT site could be profitable, however, although RMT sites are not illegal under any country laws, buying from these websites results in violation of the terms of service of most subscription based games which could lead to your account being banned.

Most newbie gamers especially those into World of Warcraft, buy Wow Gold in exchange for real currency from these RMT sites so that they can get ahead of the game without so much of an effort on their part. Blizzard bans buying gold because according to them, it ruins the in-game experience of players.

Of course, from the point of view of a businessman, since putting up an RMT site is legal, then I wouldn't care if Blizzard or some other developers ban these types of transactions since if there's a gamer who's willing to buy gold for cash, then you have a market. Of course, you have to be in the #3 position as an RMT site in terms of overall sales in order to get an asking price of $10 mil from any interested buyers like in MyMMOshop's case.

Cold Fusion vs. HTML

Gadget_Geek — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:24:00 GMT

In my search or in my quest to be a better webmaster (just in case I try building my own website from scrap), I've come upon terms such as Cold Fusion, ASP, PHP, CGI, etc. I thought, what the heck are all these codes for? I thought all websites uses HTML?! Well, yeah, during the age wherein the Internet was only used by the government.

So what is the difference between Cold Fusion and HTML? Cold Fusion is a server side code that integrates databases and webpages. HTML on the other hand is more on the client side code. HTML is a very basic web language and while it easily does the job, you won't get dynamic webpages with HTML. Cold Fusion makes use of its own markup language and commonly has the file extension CFM. Although the file extension CFM can also be used by the Corel Font Master, CFM files most often than not, are associated with Cold Fusion.

CFM files can contain databases, forms, and flash objects which can make your website more vibrant whereas ordinary HTML files can only contain text and a few graphics.

K7 Antivirus

Gadget_Geek — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:17:00 GMT

There are a lot of antivirus in the market and the trend today is for Internet Security Suites which offers anti-spyware, firewall, antivirus, all in one. However, the price for internet security suites are quite high so some users just purchase antivirus software and then rely on Windows own firewall.

What's great about the K7 Antivirus is that even though it's not an Internet Security Suite, it offers Anti-Spyware and email scanning as well. When you purchase the K7 Antivrus software, you get a license for up to 3 PCs for only $26.96.

The K7 antivirus features frequent updates, real-time scanning, enhanced scan engines, and a very fast antivirus scanner. It's also very light on your system resources and doesn't require a lot of high system requirements so this would be a good antivirus if you still have an aging PC with Windows 98 and Windows ME.

New Roaming Charges in Europe

Gadget_Geek — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:06:00 GMT

Darn, here's another reason why I want to move to Europe. Aside from them having the latest in mobile phones and having better mobile phone deals, apparently, EU has cut roaming charges for their member countries.

Starting July 1 this year, wireless carriers of EU's member countries will cut outgoing roaming calls to .43 euro and incoming roaming calls to .19 euro. International SMS roaming charges will also go down to .11 euro.

Also, the EU Parliament plans more reductions this coming July 2010 and outgoing roaming calls will be down to .39 euro and incoming roaming calls to .15 euro and by July 2011, outgoing roaming calls will become .35 euro and incoming roaming calls will be .11 euro.

Now only if our wireless carriers will also do the same.

Creating Maps for Google Maps and sharing them on your website

Gadget_Geek — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:50:00 GMT

We all love Google Maps but let's face it, if you don't live in one of the major cities in the world, your city will just appear as a satellite image or if you're very unlucky, your place would probably show up as "no available image". The good news is that Google makes their codes available to the public so you can create your own maps. These maps will have the file extension KML. The documentation can be found on Google.

Once you've made your own map, you can share this map on your server or website using an server side language, even the ones with the file extension aspx. Check this tutorial on CodeProject. The key is of course using Javascript so that it can work with any server side language.

Gadget Repellants

Gadget_Geek — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 03:26:00 GMT

It's spring time and what comes with spring are a multitude of animals in your backyard. There are gophers, squirrels, and other small rodents but if you live near forests, there's a chance that some deer may make their way on your backyard too. If you prefer to do things the modern way, there are a variety of electronic repellants that you can use.

Ultrasonic Pest Repeller

Ultrasonic Pest repellers use high frequency sound waves to repel rodents and certain insects. You just plug this miniscule gadget on any household outlet and it would do its job.

Mole Chaser Mole Repeller

Like the Ultrasonic Pest repeller, this mole repeller also makes use of sonic noise to drive away pesky moles that's ruining your garden.

Electronic Deer Repellants

Like the first two repellants, deer repellants also make use of sonic sounds. It can also be used on rodents but some of these electronic deer repellants also has an effect on your pets so use carefully.

Old School Repellants

Of course, if you're an animal lover, even if these animals are considered pests, you might think twice about using ultrasonic repellers on your garden. There are pet friendly repellants which can be found on Havahart.com. They have squirrel repellants, Deer repellants, and other pest repellants that are good on the environment and on animals.