Best Gadgets World

The US has been having tough times lately on Wall Street.  Meanwhile, it’s rumored that the “tech giants” may not be following suit (that’s a good thing).  Google, Microsoft, and IBM are expected to report their second quarter (Q2) 2008 earnings later today.  How do you think they’ll do?

Times and Webcast Information:

Google
4:30PM Eastern
Google Webcast

IBM
4:30PM Eastern
IBM Webcast

Microsoft
5:30PM Eastern

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Almost all I’ve heard and read about since the launch of a certain new, improved iphone last week is applications - the popularity of the new apps store, the best free apps… it’s been, quite frankly, apps up to my ass. But I’m not easily impressed. There’s only so long I can be enthralled by Tetris or Scrabble on my phone (and that’s quite a long time, but we all get bored eventually).

What I’m really interested in knowing about are honest-to-goodness useful applications that could actually make my life easier (my imaginary life, where I own an iPhone 3G, that is).

And Jott is one of the few apps to actually get me interested.

by Thomas Ricker, posted Jul 17th 2008 at 6:28AM
We’ve been waiting for this day ever since Opera first announced its Opera Mobile 9.5 web browser back in February. Today, it’s out for a beta 1 launch. In other words, it’ll be buggy but likely far more useful than the browser already installed on your touchscreen-based (PocketPC) WinMo professional phone. The initial release includes support for double-tap zoom, landscape flip, off-line page save, tab-like browsing, auto-URL complete, and a Google-search bar to name just a few of the 9.5 features. More functionaliry will be added later including Google Gears and support for Flash video on WinMo and Symbian devices. CNET already has the hands-on review with video up for your pickings. Better yet, download and install for yourself and tell us what you think in the comments below.

Read — Opera Mobile 9.5 beta 1
Read — CNET first look

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Filed under: cellphones

by Thomas Ricker, posted Jul 17th 2008 at 5:18AM As the saying goes, the great thing about standards is that we have so many to choose from. Enter TransferJet, as much as we’d like to ignore it, it won’t go away. In fact, today the nascent close (real close, as in 3-cm or less) proximity wireless technology just snowballed itself into a proper consortium which lists a who’s who of consumer electronics and camera manufacturers including Sony, Canon, Panasonic, Nikon, Samsung, Kodak, and interestingly enough, Sony Ericsson. Sony will lead the effort to develop the specs, guidelines, and licensing schemes required to interconnect TransferJet-compliant products offering a 375Mbps data transfer rate (560Mbps theoretical) without requiring any complex setup (just touch the devices together). Right, they’re looking directly at your NFC and Wibree shortcomings Bluetooth SIG. Full list of TransferJet members after the break.

Sony Corporation (”TransferJet Consortium” Administration)
Canon Inc.
Eastman Kodak Company
Hitachi Ltd.,
Victor Company of Japan
KDDI Corporation
Kenwood Corporation
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd (Panasonic)
Nikon Corporation
Olympus Imaging Corporation
Pioneer Corporation
SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.
Seiko Epson Corporation
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications
Toshiba Corporation

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Filed under: Wireless

Summer is here; time to get outside to cook up lots of hot dogs and hamburgers. I came across a cool grill called the “Evo Grill”. I was particularly fascinated by its unique design. It has a round top on it that is used for grilling. Just think about the times that you are typically over a grill. More times than not you are there by yourself or have people behind you trying to talk to you. With this gadget you can have people surrounding the grill having the conversation with you, or perhaps even cooking something else on the other side.

Another thing that was quite interesting was its ability to have multiple temperatures across it. As mentioned above, you can have two things cooking on it at once. Perhaps you want your hot dogs to cook a little quicker than your hamburgers. That’s not a problem. You get to specify exactly how hot it is through a two burner system ranging from 250 degrees to 670 degrees!

Gimme!

Price: $3150.00
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)

Posted in Gizmo of the Day, Home Automation, Sports, Health & Fitness, Outdoors

by Ryan Block, posted Jul 17th 2008 at 3:06AMJust in case you weren’t already watching enough YouTube at work and on your home computer, on your iphone, Ocean, etc., or on your Apple TV, now TiVo’s getting in on the action as well. Originally announced earlier this year, TiVo users can finally expect the update to pop over your TiVo’s regularly scheduled updates over the next couple of weeks. Oh, and our man Dave Zatz shot some video of the new feature and put it up on (where else?) YouTube — check it out after the break.

[Video via ZNF]

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Filed under: Home Entertainment

by Thomas Ricker, posted Jul 17th 2008 at 4:30AM var The New York Times is reporting that Amazon is scrapping its Unbox service in favor of a new online TV and movie store called Amazon Video on Demand. Unlike iTunes and Unbox, Amazon’s new digital store-front will stream any of 40,000 movies and television programs to customers. According to Bill Carr, Amazon’s VP for digital media, “Our goal is to create an immersive experience where people can’t help but get caught up in how exciting it is to simply watch a movie right from Amazon.com with a click of the button.” In this regard, the first 2 minutes of every video will begin to play when customers visit the video’s product page. Movies can be purchased and downloaded to your hard drive or stored in an Amazon video library allowing you to stream the content to other (any?) Internet connected devices. Films and TV shows from “almost all the major studios and television networks” will be available for sale or rental in the US at undisclosed prices — only Disney and its ABC subsidiary are holding out for uh, obvious reasons (Steve Jobs is Disney’s largest individual shareholder).

Amazon also plans to bring the service directly to the living room through a deal with Sony (and others) which will ultimately embed store access into future Bravia TVs. For now, Amazon’s VoD store will be available through Sony’s $300 Bravia Internet Video Link device. The store goes beta-hot today for a limited number of “invited” US Amazon.com customers before going a live later this summer.

[Thanks, setteB.IT]

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Filed under: Portable Video

by Donald Melanson, posted Jul 17th 2008 at 3:41AM
As we’ve seen, Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (otherwise known as AIST) is a pretty prolific place and it, along with its cohorts at the University of Tokyo, are now boasting about a breakthough in NAND flash memory that could result in far longer lifespans. The key to that, it seems, is the use of ferroelectric gate field-effect transistors (or FeFETs, pictured above) as memory cells, which apparently not only “dramatically improves” the performance of NAND flash memory, but allows it to be programmed and erased more than 100 million times. What’s more, the FeFET-based memory apparently also requires less power than traditional NAND flash memory, with it able to operate at a programming voltage of less than 6V, as opposed to the 20V of current memory. Of course, there’s no indication as to when any of this will find its way into consumer products, with AIST only saying that plans to design and develop the “Fe-NAND” flash memory array circuits and verify their operations in cooperation with the University of Tokyo.

[Via Slashdot]

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Filed under: Storage

by Darren Murph, posted Jul 17th 2008 at 1:46AM
We genuinely hope you don’t have a need for this thing, but after standing in one of the many iphone lines for hours on end, only to hear Apple tell you to come back in the morning and try again, we can certainly see how it would come in handy. Best we can tell, the shouting vase is just a sophisticated (or not) muffling utensil, which enables tempestuous individuals to unleash incredible roars that no one will be forced to endure. Still, at €51 ($80), this thing better produce thoughtful alternatives to our maddening rants for it to be even close to worthwhile.

[Via Engadget Chinese]

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Filed under: Misc. gadgets

by Paul Miller, posted Jul 16th 2008 at 7:20PM
So Sony’s got a $399 Blu-ray player on the market now, huh? Really blasting away at that price point, huh Sony? Really keeping on your toes now that hd dvd is dead and gone, giving you zero competition in the physical format space, yeah? Oh, we forgot, you’re using a blue laser, and those require bloody war with dastardly intelligent man-eating monkeys to boot up. We got to handle Sony’s new BDP-S350 Profile 2.0 Blu-ray player tonight, and while we aren’t mad that the new player draws less power, takes up less space, and supports more technical HD hotness, it literally feels like a $20 DVD player in the hand — no way Sony has $400 of electronic components in this thing. Even the front LCD is teensy: we’ve bought $200 home theater in a box systems from Sony with more extravagant displays. We understand Sony trying to make back a few dollars from a pricey format war, but at this point this ridiculous price point is looking way artificial. In other, less insulting news, Sony was showing off the new HT-SS2300 Home Theater System, which is designed to complement the S350, along with the HT-IS100 “Micro System,” which we found intriguing. Sony also showed off its HDR-CX12, which is nothing special in person, though we certainly like what’s under the hood.

Gallery: Hands-on with Sony’s new BDP-S350 and other HD frivolities

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment