Free gadget giveaway: WD 1TB USB portable external hard drive

Its the first free gadget giveaway of 2010! We’re giving away a free Western Digital My Passport Essential SE USB 2.0 portable external hard drive with a massive capacity of 1TB (approx. 1,024GB)! If you were given a new laptop or desktop computer during Christmas but it doesn’t quite have the internal memory capacity you might have liked then this might be exactly what you need!

Retailing normally at $250, the WD 1TB USB portable external hard drive is a book like ultra portable device (dimensions of 8 x 12.6 x 1.5 cm and weighs only 182g) which means what whatever you store in it, music, videos, photos, you’ll be able to bring it with you wherever you go.
Here are some of its features…
You can pack up your office files and take them home with you thanks to the My Passport Essential SE from Western Digital! This glossy black hard drive has a huge capacityof 1 TB, yet it’s so compact and lightweight that you can pop iteasily into your pocket. You don’t need to use the mains to power upthe My Passport Essential SE just plug it into your computer’s USB port and you’re ready to transfer photos, videos and music files. The My Passport Essential SE is compatible with PC and Mac.
Automatic, continuous backup
New updates for SmartWare Software available from Western Digital
Password protection and 256-bit encryption, securing private or sensitive data
Retrieving lost data effortlessly
Adding extra storage space for photos, videos and music

Latest Gadgets: GlobalSat BU-353 WaterProof USB GPS Receiver

Latest Gadgets: GlobalSat BU-353 WaterProof USB GPS Receiver

Introducing a latest gadget, The new GlobalSat BU-353 Water-Proof USB Mouse GPS Receiver , is power-driven by SiRF Star III chipset is a new-generation GPS chipset that has enormously high sensitivity, low power usage and more speedy time-to-fix. Its working ability is the best in low visibility location or frail signal tracking such as travelling in big city that are surrounded by tall buildings. The size of this latest gadget is very small, and it is waterproof! This latest device can be applied to marine environments, aviation, and commercial use such as fire truck, cars, utility vehicles and buses.

Latest Gadgets: Leica X1 Digital Camera

Leica M9 has now released its latest version the new Leica X1. This new rangefinder camera is packed with excellent design and put on view characteristics which make this latest gadget unique from other digital cameras. It is designed by considering the ease and usefulness of the users.

Kensington Wall Ultra Compact Notebook Power Adapter

Another latest technology has been released, introducing the new Kensington Wall Ultra Compact Notebook Power Adapter. This power adapter has some neat features, one of its techie features is that it supports most types of notebooks, and it has additional adapters for mini and micro USB. Really cool isn’t? One more thing which is good with this gadget is that it is very compact in the sense that it only weighs 7.1 ounces with a dimensions of 4.5 x 2.2 x 0.8 inches.There are two models available, the $99 K38066US and the $119 K38067US, which also includes an adapter for use in suitably equipped airline seats.

CES: LG's N+ Multi Computing solution

CES: LG's N+ Multi Computing solution

LG has 31 flavors of users on noe system

(Credit: Eric Franklin/CNET)

LAS VEGAS-Ever had the desire to put 31 users on one PC? No? Not even a little? OK, well, I guess I'll just be leaving then...Oh, now you're interested once I start walking away? Typical human.

LG's N+ monitor technology supports up to 31 desktop LCD monitors on a single computer. The targeted applications being schools, offices, and call centers.

According to LG. these N+ monitors (model N224WA) can be installed in just a few minutes and can reduce the amount of maintenance and IT support needed for a typical office. Problem is, if that one PC dies, everyone loses work. So, everyone has kind of a symbiotic relationship with their colleagues using this set up.

The N224WA also offers USB ports for a keyboard and mouse and includes a 5ms response rate. Additionally, LG says "this system offers consumers straightforward management including easy software and hardware set up, and central control support."

CES: Samung's OLED photo frame

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My photo of a random gray wall never looked so good.

(Credit: Samsung)

LAS VEGAS-This week at CES, Samsung unveiled what they're calling the slimmest digital photo frame yet for for displaying "high quality' images, the Samsung 700Z Digital Photo Frame.

The frame has a foldable "L" stand design and an active matrix (AM) OLED panel. The device uses DLNA licensed technology to sync with other home and/or mobile photo and video devices.

Samsung claims the the 9x6x4.6-inch Samsung 700Z can also be used as a secondary home or office monitor by connecting it to a PC through a USB cable, up to a resolution of 1024x600. According to Samsung the frame can be viewed from a wide 180 degree angle as well.

Bluetooth allows users to share multimedia content across devices wirelessly, including uploading mobile photos and sharing pictures across multiple 700Z frames.

The Samsung 700Z has a suggested retail price of $300 and will be available in stores March 2010.

CES: Lenovo attempts multi touch tablet netbook-Ideapad S10-3t

CES: Lenovo attempts multi touch tablet netbook-Ideapad S10-3t

Dubbed the S10-3t, this latest tablet style netbook by Lenovo boasts capacitive touchscreen technology which the company claims is the first of its kind. What then makes the S10-3t special is that it would be able to recognise multitouch without the use of a stylus, in other words, the S10-3t will be equipped to do multitouch using just our fingers.

VoIP major IPEVO has come up with their latest product called as Tubular bluetooth speakers. Tubular receives its name from a special design of interlocking of its speakers. Both speakers can be locked together to form a tube shape. When you need to performe a live action, simply unlock them with a gentle twist. Relocking them takes a second. Line up the joining symbols together and give a gentle twist. This unique feature keeps both of the speakes together so you are not worried of searching one or the other.

Official: Google Phone – Nexus One spec and pricing announced

Official: Google Phone – Nexus One spec and pricing announced

Its official, Google has unveiled at their event today their first mobile phone, the Nexus One. Together with this, Android has now officially launched its latest version 2.1.

While many of Google’s employees had already received their new company flagship beast for free for sometime, the specs were not officially confirmed until today. So here they are and not too different from what was rumored Read the rest of this entry »

Latest technology: Touchless mobile interface invented by Tokyo University

The clever Japanese geeks (Professor Masatoshi Ishikawa and Dr. Takashi Komuro) over at Tokyo University have come up with a new interface for mobile phones. This isn’t an application which you would be able to install onto your iPhone or Android phone though. Its a completely new thing. The so far named “vision-based Input Interface” new technology enables users of the mobile phone to control the device without actually touching it, kind of like an “in air” mechanism.

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News: Samsung NX10 DSLR camera now official

The much rumored Samsung NX10 DSLR Camera is now official. The camera carries similar features if not exactly the same, as it was sought to boast in its unofficial sneak peeks.

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More leaked specs on the Apple iSlate tablet computer

Is this for real or just another fake document? Difficult to say but an anonymous tipster has sent this to Phonearena giving the follow details of the rumored Apple iSlate iTablet computer. The piece of paper suggests that the rumored device will have a 7.1 inch multitouch screen covered in a finger print resistant coating and that it will run at 2.26GHz, have 2GB of memory expandable to 8GB, a 120GB hard drive, external optical drive. Additionally, it will sport an iSight camera along with a projector and connectivities such as 3G, WiFi and bluetooth. Check out the image below…

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How to control any Android phone from Windows / Mac OS X / Linux via USB

Controlling your Android phone using your PC is actually easier than one would think. This simple tutorial will involve you installing onto your computer (Windows or Linux or Mac OS X) a free software known as Android Screencast. Once you undertake the necessary steps below, you’ll be able to control your Android phone use your mouse and keyboard.

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Gallery: Shots of Honda’s eco-friendly CR-Z hybrid hatch leaked

The eco-friendly sportshatch known as the Honda CR-Z Hybrid was slated for 2010 when we featured it around two months ago, Honda certain hasn’t disappointed us as live shots of the car have leaked from Japan.

For those not familiar with this concept vehicle, it does look abit like the Insight but underhood will be a 1.5-liter four-cylinder engine mated to Honda’s proprietary Integrated Motor Assist technology. Also there will be a six-speed manual gearbox which will be much more entertaining for driving enthusiasts.

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Star Trek uniform like wetsuits for geeky athletes

An extremely geeky way to show your passion for Star Trek? I may not be a Star Trek dieheart fan, but this wetsuit would be a one of a kind costume for Halloween. The wetsuit is meant to make you look like as if you were wearing a Star Trek uniform, and they come in a range of colors which include red, yellow and blue. However, it is a wetsuit, and not cheap too. So for those of you who are geeky athletes out there, whatever it is that you do, swim or surf, you might as well make use of it as it will either make your colleagues laugh or extremely jealous.

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Video: Engadget gets hands on with Google Nexus One

Check it out! The folks at Engadget have received their Google Nexus One, which we all now know for certain that its date of release will be on the 5th next week. The first hands on video by Engadget below demonstrates some very neat features which the Nexus One will have, much of which largely made possible by Android. Its got that new live touchable wallpaper feature, new widgets, a new shortcut for lazy people that allows them to jump to a specific screen. And as you will see through the entire video, the Nexus One’s leaked specs haven’t disappointed us, it is a pretty fast phone, as evidenced by the demonstration of Google Maps.

Nuclear battery for new technology gadgets

Nuclear battery for new technology gadgets

Are you tired of your short laptop battery life with only a few hours? Would you like the charge of your mobile phone to last a couple of months? Well, the answer to your “prayers” might be the nuclear batteries, which are been developed at the University of Missouri. They are designed especially for providing a lasting source of energy. And some people think these batteries could replace the current ones, including those used by the electrical cars. According to the creators, a nuclear battery has a very enormous capacity to generate electricity when compared to a regular one.

The batteries have always been the Achilles’ heel of the mobile devices. Usually, the designers of electronic devices for mass consumption (like laptops or media players) use small displays or screens that are not very bright in order to save the scarce energy resources that are provided from the regular batteries. But the new nuclear battery would bring a solution based on a liquid semiconductor (rather than a solid semiconductor) that will produce a much longer lifetime for the battery. The reason is the solid semiconductors are attacked constantly by some radioactive elements used by other types of batteries, while the liquid semiconductor is quite resistant to these attacks. Although the term “nuclear” can be a little perturbing, the fact is that these batteries are not very different from those batteries used in, for example, medical pacemakers.

The new radioisotope battery has the size of a penny and provides much more power than the traditional ones because, according to the researches, its capacity is very superior. Jae Kwon, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Missouri, said that the radioisotope battery “can provide power density that is six orders of magnitude higher than chemical batteries”. That is to say, it provides no less than a million times more charge than any “normal” battery.

Kwon and his research team have spent enough time working to solve many problems that they have encountered when developing this type of battery. One important thing is the batteries need to be small and thin in order to be practical and useful; this way, they could be used to power watches and small electronic devices. As mentioned before, the prototype (which you can see in the picture below) has the size and thickness of a penny, but the researchers think they can achieve a thinner battery. In order to do this, Kwon has required the collaboration of another professor: J. David Robertson (chemistry professor and associate director of the MU Research Reactor). Together, they hope to maximize the power of the nuclear batteries as well as reduce the size and test other materials to make additional improvements. Kwon thinks that the final battery, which would be used in commercial gadgets, could be thinner than a human hair. For the moment, the research team have required a provisional patent in order to protect the exclusive right to use this invention.

Feature Breaking News That's right, humans -- Engadget has its very own Nexus One. You've seen leake

Feature Breaking News That's right, humans -- Engadget has its very own Nexus One. You've seen leake

That's right, humans -- Engadget has its very own Nexus One. You've seen leaked pics and videos from all over, but we're the first publication to get our very own unit, and we plan on giving you guys the full story on every nook and cranny of this device. In case you've been living under a rock, here's the breakdown of the phone. The HTC-built and (soon to be) Google-sold device runs Android 2.1 atop a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, a 3.7-inch, 480 x 800 display, has 512MB of ROM, 512MB of RAM, and a 4GB microSD card (expandable to 32GB). The phone is a T-Mobile device (meaning no 3G if you want to take it to AT&T), and includes the standard modern additions of a light sensor, proximity sensor, and accelerometer. The Nexus One has a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, and we have to say so far the pictures it snaps look pretty decent (and the camera software is much faster than the same component on the Droid). The phone is incredibly thin and sleek -- a little thinner than the iPhone -- but it has pretty familiar HTC-style industrial design. It's very handsome, but not blow-you-away good looking. It's a very slim, very pocketable phone, and feels pretty good in your hand. Thought you'd have to wait for that Google event for more on the Nexus One? Hell no -- so read on for an in-depth look. C'mon, you know you want to.

Google Nexus One unboxing and hands-on

Internet Explorer losing users as other browsers set share records

In the last quarter, Chrome, Safari and Opera all set new personal bests for browser market share with 4.63, 4.46 and 2.4 percent respectively. This period marks the first time Chrome has beaten Safari to third spot, while their collective prosperity comes at the expense of IE, which continues to hemorrhage users at a rate of 0.92 percentage points a month. Microsoft's 62.7 percent slice might still look mighty, but projections from Net Applications suggest it could shrink to below 50 percent by May of this year. Unless something magical happens. You'll probably also want to know that Net Applications monitors incoming traffic to over 40,000 websites and generates a sample size of about 160 million unique visitors each month -- making the veracity of its claims pretty robust. One hidden sign of our collective laziness: 21 percent of all users last quarter were still fulfilling their browsing needs with IE 6. For shame.

Computer World Net Applications

Sony Vaio Y11, S11 and F11 leaked ahead of launch, Z and CW series refreshed

Breaking News

It appears that the Vaio T's return is only the tip of a giant iceberg of refreshes coming out from Sony HQ this month. Greek e-tailer Compuland has a trio of new models listed -- seemingly prematurely -- for sale: the Vaio Y11 (pictured) is a relatively standard 1.3GHz Core 2 Duo SU7300 machine with 4GB of DDR3 memory and 320GB of storage, and its nomenclature seems to fit given that its specs land somewhere between the underpowered X and fully-equipped Z series. Speaking of the latter, Sony is adding a Core i5-520M to its refreshed Z line, as well as to the new 16-inch F11 model which adds a half terabyte storage drive just for kicks. The lesser Core i3-330M Arrandale chip finds a home in the new 13-inch S11 laptop, which may or may not be replacing the SR series we know and love, as well as a freshened up CW number. Hit the read links for early pricing and more details, and if you hope really hard maybe we'll get proper announcements from the official channels some time soon.

[Thanks, SpaceCowboy1973 and Al]

Read - Compuland (VPCY11S1E)
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Read - Compuland (VPCS11X9E)
Read - Laptopshop.nl (VPCZ11X9E)
Read - Laptopshop.nl ( VPCCW2S1E)

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Motorola Calgary / Droid Devour spotted in silver, Bluring it up

There's another Motorola "Calgary" device (also known as the Droid Devour) making the rounds, and this time it's showing a silver paint job and an obvious Motorola Blur home screen. Word is that the trackpad to the upper right of the keyboard is great, and the keyboard supposedly bests the Droid -- not a challenging feat, to be sure. Obviously it's headed for Verizon, and Boy Genius confirms that WiFi and GPS are onboard, but it's still a little unclear what the low-end differentiators between it and the Droid might be, outside the three megapixel camera and what appears to be a smaller, lower resolution screen.

Boy Genius Report

New standard could pave way for higher capacity Blu-ray discs

Already feeling the pinch of a mere 25GB per layer on a Blu-ray disc? Neither are we, but it looks like Sony and Panasonic have been busily working on ways to boost capacity nonetheless, and they've now devised a new method that seems to be on the fast track to becoming a standard. The best news is that it doesn't involve a change in Blu-ray optics, but rather something called the Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation evaluation index (or i-MLSE -- the "i' is just for kicks, it seems), which is a new means of estimating the read error rate of discs on the fly that has apparently be made possible thanks to "recent hardware advancements." According to Sony and Panasonic, that should now allow discs to hold up to 33.4 GB per layer, but it's not exactly clear what that means for existing Blu-ray players (a little firmware assistance seems to at least be a conceivable option, though). There's also no timeline for a rollout just yet, but Sony is reportedly now set to propose widespread adoption of i-MLSE to the Blu-ray Disc Association, of which it just so happens to be the leading member.

Tech-On!

Researchers develop tiny, autonomous piezoelectric energy harvester

Folks have long been using piezoelectric devices to harvest energy in everything from dance floors to parking lots, but a group of European researchers have now shown off some novel uses for the technology at the recent International Electron Devices Meeting that could see even more of the self-sufficient devices put to use. Their big breakthrough is that they've managed to shrink a piezoelectric device down to "micromachine" size, which was apparently possible in part as a result of using aluminum nitride instead of lead zirconate titanate as the piezoelectric material, thereby making the devices easier to manufacture. Their first such device is a wireless temperature sensor, which is not only extremely tiny, but is able to function autonomously by harvesting energy from vibrations and transmit temperature information to a base station at 15 second intervals. Of course, the researchers say that is just the beginning, and they see similar devices eventually being used in everything from tire-pressure monitoring systems to predictive maintenance of any moving or rotating machine parts.

Liquid Image outs Summit Series Snow Camera goggles ahead of CES

Liquid Image has just announced new camera-equipped ski masks, swimming goggles and scuba masks, just in time for them to be unveiled at CES 2010. The Summit Series Snow Camera Goggle 335 boasts a 5MP still camera capable of shooting D1 720 x 480 resolution video at 30 frames per second with audio. It's got 16MB of built-in flash memory, expandable to 16GB via its microSD / SDHC slot. Other features include large buttons on the side of the goggles which are easy to press while wearing gloves and and a light inside the goggles which indicates when recording. The goggles are estimated to get about 2,200 still images or over 2 hours of video per charge on their lithium ion battery. Liquid Image expects to ship the Summit Series goggles in the summer of 2010, with a price of $149. Full press release is after the break

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Plethora of new HP laptops, desktops leak ahead of CES

Holy smokes! A ton of unannounced HP laptops and desktops just came across our desk, in addition to those Envy models we saw just a few days back. Ahead of what we presume will be their formal announcement next week right around CES, we've got some details on 14 new models -- some more interesting than others. Now, before you get too excited, we don't have full specs on any of these, but we do have pricing information, and here are some highlights: the 14-inch HP Pavilion dv4i, a Windows 7 laptop with a flush display and fingerprint reader that should run about $785. Up next is the 10-inch Mini 210 HD Edition, which will come in red, black, silver and blue, boast Intel's brand new Pine Trail platform (a 1.66GHz N450 CPU), plus GMA 3150 graphics. Another goodie here is that this one is expected to ship with Broadcom's Crystal HD video playback chip. The Mini 210 HD is expected to cost around $330. Logic Buy (the point of origin for all this info) is reporting that these models should ship on or around January 7th, though keep in mind that all of this information is extremely unofficial, so don't blame us if it all changes. If you simply can't get enough, hit the gallery for a look at a few of the systems, and check the rest of the story after the break.

HP CES 2010 leak

Read - HP Pavilion dv4i
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