Fellow podcaster Matt Miller handles a lot of gadgets over time, if you want to know how many he’s seen this year check out his look back at the gadgets he’s played with this year. Talk about geek overload! He’s written up his favorite devices and he’s given some gadget awards so don’t miss his look back.
Tired of someone else giving you directions when driving? Why not substitute your own voice for the one on your GPS? YourPND is a service that records your voice speaking the many standard navigational words found in GPS devices. The phrases are then saved to file that’s currently compatible with many of the TomTom branded units, but the company plans to offer support for Garmin, MyRide, Mio and other units in the future.The company’s current site is in Dutch, but they’re also working on an English version; you can sign up here to be notified when it goes live. To use the service and have a download of your recorded navigation terms costs just under 7 Euros. To gift your voice to a friend or family member via a USB stick, expect to pay around 20 Euros. If neither option sounds attractive, I can sit in your backseat with Google Maps on my iPhone for a buck a mile. 
(via OhGizmo!)
I have been hearing from readers for a few days that some CompUSA stores that are going out of business have the HTC Advantage in stock for cheap prices. Reader Rob let me know just now that his local Tampa store had the Advantage for $629 which is a very good price. If you’re in the market for an Advantage it might be worth a trip to your local CompUSA before they close for good. One reader reported that there were no Advantages displayed and that she had to specifically drive the sales rep to look in the back where a number of them were found.
I can’t just bash Vista and ignore Mac problems when they arise and today for the first time one did on my MacBook Pro running Leopard. I booted into Vista Ultimate using Boot Camp and played Call of Duty 4 for a while. I am totally impressed with how well Vista runs on the MBP under both VMWare Fusion and natively with Boot Camp.
After I finished playing COD4 I restarted the MacBook Pro and booted into Leopard and was I surprised to find that not only was Bluetooth not working but the system didn’t realize there was a Bluetooth module installed. I had a brief moment of panic thinking the hardware module must have been fried but I went online and in just a minute found a fix. I shut down the MacBook and when it was time to start it up I held the Power Button down until I heard a loud beep from the system. This signaled that a hard restart was coming up and sure enough the Bluetooth was running again when the system booted up. Apparently from what I could tell the holding of the power button forces the power management system to reset which is the likely culprit. Since I use the Bluetooth Apple keyboard and Mighty Mouse getting it working again was pretty important and I am thrilled that the fix was so simple. So there you go, Macs can exhibit problems all of a sudden just like Vista, it just seems that the fix is much simpler.
Although I have yet to personally see either model handheld, Nokia N77 and N82 owners might be interested to know that Mail for Exchange now supports their device. The latest version of the application is v2.2, but the only changes from the prior release is the support for these two models. If you’re running version 2.0 of Mail for Exchange and don’t have the N77 or N82, there’s no need to upgrade based on my perusing the release notes (PDF).This is actually a good reminder for me to cancel my own hosted Exchange account. I haven’t used it for over a month, so that tells me my current setup is working for me. More to follow on some cloud computing…(via Eseries)
Ever since I left my I.T. career to write full time earlier this year, I’ve been paying much closer attention to my budget. I’m losing the budget battle, but I’ve gained a different perspective in terms of device pricing for the feature set. Case in point: the WiBrain UMPC I have on loan from Dynamism. I haven’t had much play-time with it yet since we have a new playmate in the house (no, not THAT kind of “playmate”, although that would have made for an interesting holiday gift!). I have noticed something interesting about the WiBrain however: it has an amazingly similar set of features when compared the low-end OQO Model 02, but it doesn’t have a similar price!
Continue reading »
I realize that the 4G wireless data networks are yet to be chosen by all of the U.S. carriers, but perhaps the latest real world trial results will favor LTE. Long Term Evolution was recently chosen by Verizon Wireless and if the recent tests are any indication of future performance, I think VZW is making a good choice for their EV-DO replacement.Nokia Siemens executed the test in an urban area by placing a base station atop a building and then had several cars equipped with LTE devices drive up to one kilometer away to measure coverage strength and throughput. Initial tests show throughput over 100 Mbps at a range of several hundred meters, however, no results were provided for throughput at the fully tested range. Still, LTE sounds promising for fast mobile data access, so we’ll be watching to see how the technology develops.(via Phone Scoop)
Well here we are at the end of the year and my work set up in my home office has been honed to work like a fine machine. The way I work in my office is I have the MacBook Pro on the desk to the left. It is hooked up to an external monitor for two screen goodness and everything works flawlessly. On the desk to the right (in an L shape) is the HP 2710p sitting in its expansion bay, screen open to allow me to switch back and forth between the Mac and the HP as needed. This system has worked flawlessly for me until three days ago.
If you’re already tethering your Windows Mobile device for use as a 3G modem and you want to share that connection even further, look at WMWifiRouter. This free / donation-ware application allows your WinMo 6 handheld to behave like a fast, cellular router. Of course, the more you share your one signal over WiFi with other clients, the slower all of you will be since the wireless pipe is only so big, but this could be useful in a pinch. (As in: CES!)Obviously, you’ll want a truly unlimited data plan and I wouldn’t recommend doing this on a daily basis or you carrier might be peeved. Checking your terms of service is another good idea, but I’m not sure if any of the carriers address this particular usage. If you want to follow the full life-cycle of the application, there’s a dedicated thread over at XDA Developers.If you got lost at the word “tethering”, we’ve got you covered there too. Here’s a quick video on how to Bluetooth tether a Windows Mobile 6 devices to a Windows PC and here’s the technique for doing the same thing with Mac OS X.(via UNEASYsilence)
The end of 2007 is nigh and we geeks are casting our eyes to the future to figure out what mobile goodness might be coming our way in 2008. You should take these with a grain of salt as we can never be certain about such things but here are my mobile tech predictions for 2008. Read on if you want to get my take on what next year might bring with phones, MP3 players, notebooks, UMPCs, and Tablet PCs.
UPDATE: I should have mentioned the Google Android under the smartphone predictions so I’ve added it now.
© 2009 The GigaOM Network. Marketing consulting by ACS.
