Cool gadgets, we must all buy one…

RIP – Laserdisk

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laserdiscPioneer has announced that they will halt production of laserdisk players once the production of the last 3000 units has finished.

My my, Laserdisks was introduced in the 1980’s and I actually thought that production of players had stopped long ago as laserdisks (the media) was no longer being produced.

I sadly never owned one which is a bit of a shame as the quality was supposed to be better than DVD, but with the introduction of HD, I guess time finally caught up with the aging Laserdisk.

Anyway if you just have to have a Laserdisk player then this is the last call unless you are Ebay’ing, or maybe you should join the new millinium and try on Blueray.

RIP Laserdisk 🙂

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DVico TViX R-2230

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r2230It would seem DVico has released TViX R-2230 a small form factor mediacenter with DVB-T build in, it looks quite interesting even though there seem to be some confusion regarding HD playback (supports 1080p but not MKV and H264).  I really liked the previous versions of TViX (se earlier post) and thus this is  interesting for when I will be decomissioning my good old X-Box1 classic (which I use as a mediacenter today) 🙂 one major issue however, it would seem it does not come with a network adapter which seem kind of silly 🙁

A few links for you;
http://www.laymansreviews.com/review.php?id=49
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/125825,tvixhd-pvr-plays-ripped-bluray.aspx

Danish site;
http://www.av-connection.dk/?PGr=2198&ML=884

Dvico;
http://www.tvix.co.kr/eng/products/PVRR-2230.aspx

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Philips Lumalive Textile

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Now THIS is awesome, Philips have invented a technology to embed led technology into textile, possibilities are endless… Nifty, but also likely to be somewhat expensive :-(

Have a look at their intro here;

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Microsoft Surface a visual demo

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Well this is not exactely new, but this was the first time I saw it in action, and even though I’m not quite sure how this eventually will be used (who would buy such a thing?), the gadget effect is quite high – the price however is likely to be A LOT higher that my current coffe tabel ;-)

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Sony Rolly – I’m speachless

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Ok, this is ……. well I don’t quite know if I’m impressed or just thinking WHAT… But it’s quite geekey and as such it deserve a slot on my blog.. Sort of an animated MP3 player I guess? Would you buy one at the price of UK £350? :-D

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Ultra portable laptops – which one?

A firestorm of new ultra small cool laptops are flodding the marked these days, I want one (who dont) but which one should I choose?

These days the answer lies just a URL away 🙂 so here is some inspiration to which model to choose.. I lean towards the Acer Aspire One, but then again there really is nothing wrong with my trusty IBM Thinkpad X31.. oh well, time will tell 🙂


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Gear gadget magazine – free

This is regarding a Danish magazine and would thus not likely be interesting to non Danes, sorry.

Gear Magazine has put many of its old issues out on the web for free reading (not the one currently in stores though), you can even download them as PDF’s if you fiddle a bit with their URL 😉

http://gear.comon.dk/index.php/gear-online

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100 portable apps for your USB pen

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With a 8 or 16gb usb pen you may be wandering what to fill it up with?

Well dont, here is a “getting started” list to fill it up 🙂

Link for the list;
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/portable-software-usb/

100 Portable Apps for your USB Stick (both for Mac and Win)
Apr. 17th, 2007 | by Aibek

Free Portable Apps This stuff can be installed on any portable drive, i.e. USB thumbdrive, PDA or an iPod. You can use them at work, school, or any other place where you can plugin your device. Check them out, you can either scroll-down for relevant category, i.e office software, email tools, messengers, games, etc. or get a ‘all-in-one’ package (all essential tools) . While there are more apps for windows users, I tried to include a mac version for each essential tool. All free. Enjoy!

What is a portable program ? : A portable program is a piece of software that you can carry around with you on a portable device and use on any other computer. It can be your email program, your browser, system recovery tools or even an operating system. The coolest part about it, is that all of your data and settings are always stored on a thumbdrive so when you unplug the device, none of your personal data is left behind.

Portable Office Software

  • Abiword [Win (6.3 mb) / Mac (9.5 mb)] – word processor (compatible with Microsoft word)
  • OpenOffice [Win (65 mb) / Mac (127 mb)] – free alternative to Microsoft Office (fully compatible with Microsoft Office docs)
  • PDF Viewers: Sumatra [Win (1.1 mb) ], Foxit PDF Reader [Win, (1.8 mb) ]
  • Notepad ++ – feature-rich Notepad replacement.

Portable Email/Calendar/ToDo Programs

Portable Text and Voice Messengers

  • All-in-One (Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, etc.): Gaim [Win, 6.9 mb], Miranda IM [Win, 1.2 mb], Adium [Mac, 15.5mb], Trillian [Win]
  • iChat [Mac] – requires locally installed iChat
  • Newspeak [Mac, 1mb] – Newspeak Cocoa IRC client
  • Skype – exlpains how to make skype portable

Portable Media Tools (Audio / Video)

  • Audacity [Win (2.4 mb), Mac (5mb)] – simple audio editor and recorder
  • VLC [Win (9.3 mb), Mac (24 mb)] – powerful media player that plays almost all popular audio and video formats
  • K-Lite Mega Codec Pack with Media Player (resource unaccessible) – another powerful media player for playing all conceivable formats
  • iShout [Mac, 7mb] – record and listen to your favorite internet radios.
  • CocoaJT [Mac, 8.7mb] – stream live TV programs from major broadcast channels.

Portable Graphics Viewers and Image Editors

     

  • GIMP [Win (8.6 mb), Mac (87.5 mb)] – free alternative to Photoshop
  • IrfanView [Win, 1013kb] – fast graphic viewer with basic image editing features
  • XNView [Win, Mac, Linux] – image viewer and converter (supports more then 400 image formats)
  • Inkscape [Mac, 24.6mb] – scalable vector graphics editor

Portable Browsers and Internet Tools (FTP, Feedreaders, Torrent Clients…)

Portable Security Software

  • Antivirus: ClamWin [Win, 5.9mb], Dr.Web CureIt [Win, 5.5 mb]
  • Keepass Password [Win, 1mb] – securely store and manage your passwords
  • Omziff [Win, 0.5mb] – lets you encrypt/decrypt a file, using secure encryption algorithms. Also includes a password generator, file shredder, file splitter and some more tools.
  • LockNote [Win] – simple text file that lets you store sensitive info with 256bit password encryption.
  • RoboFor2Go [Win] – secure password manager and form filler
  • Smart Sniff [Win, 57kb] – lets you inspect network traffic that passes via your network adapter.

Portable Games

Other Portable Utilities

  • 7Zip [Win, 1.1 mb] – file archiver and compressor, supports 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, RAR and more
  • Registry Tweaker [Win, 1.52mb] – registry tweaking tool
  • Restoration [Win, 229kb] – handy program for recovering deleted (or formatted) files
  • YamiPod [Win] – powerful iPod manager (copy mp3/AAC files to and from your iPod, import/export playlists, search for songs, remove duplicates,..). More iPod tools
  • Drive Manager [Win, 1191 kb] – quick summary for each local and removable drive.
  • PStart – lets you organize and create menu-like list for quicker access to your portable programs.
  • SyncPAppX – script that syncs preferences between portable and local applications.
  • RQ Money – handy utlity to manage your credits and debts
  • SIW – a system analysis tool that tells you almost everything you need to know about a computer, i.e. hardware, configuration settings, etc.
  • WinAudit – one more analysis tool
  • Convert [Win, 155 kb] – fast metric unit conversion tool (distance, temperature, volume, time, speed, mass…)
  • UK Calender [Win, 321kb] – straightforward calendar with ToDo and reminders
  • CPU-Z [Win] – provides detailed info about your processor and other components
  • Country Codes [Win, 1358 kb] – a small database of country codes and additional information for all countries.
  • TreePad Lite [Win, 866kb] – personal database program, lets you store all your notes, emails, bookmarks, etc. into one well-structured file
  • StartupList [Win, 158 kb] – displays all items that are in any way related to your computer startup and are executed without any user interactions
  • eTextReader [Win, 279kb] – read plain text files provided by Project Gutenberg in a book-like manner.
  • Index Your Files [Win, 640kb] – provides an easy way to create index databases (of specified folders and drives) for quick file/term search
  • RockXP [win, 768kb] – handy utility for retrieving Win XP’s product key
  • WhoisThisDomain [Win, 42kb] – view owner and registration info for any domain name
  • Converter – portable unit convertsion utility

Portable Developer Tools (Techies Only)

  • Nvu [Win (7.3 mb), Mac (12 mb)] – easy-to-use webpage editor. Simpler alternative to Dreamweaver and Microsft Frontpage
  • Server2Go – apache webserver (no configurations needed)
  • InstantRails[Win, 60mb] – contains Ruby, Rails, Apache, and MySQL, all preconfigured and ready to run.
  • Putty [Win, 0.9 mb] – lightweight telnet and SSH client
  • Follow-Me IP – displays your external IP address
  • XAMPP [Win, 25/17 mb] – integrated server package of Apache, mySQL, PHP and Perl. Just Unzip and Run
  • HTTP File Server [Win] – simple and easy-to-use file server for personal file sharing.
  • CurrPorts [Win, 46kb]- lets you view a list of ports that are currently in use, along with applications that use them
  • FTP Servers: Quick’n Easy FTP Server [Win, 355kb], PureFTPdManager [Mac, 10.9mb]

All-In-One Packages

  • PortableApps Suite [Win, 89.5mb] – includes 7 programs for essential needs (office, email, IM client, etc.) + cool Startup manager and backup utility
  • FSuite [Mac, 668.3mb] – over 30 useful tools in one file (Office, Graphic, Audio, Video, Internet, Developer Tools and Games)

Portable Operating Systems (’HowTo’ Articles)

USB ThumDrive Tips

That’s mainly it… In case you’re looking for something that wasn’t mentioned above, there are a couple of resources you may want to check out. These are Portablefreeware.com and Tinyapps.org

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“Cross reference” your E-Mails

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Xnobi 3
www.xobni.com If you as I recieve and send a ton of mails daily you quickly loose ‘the big picture’, when did you send that mail to whomever@whereever.com well, here is a plug-in for Outlook that will assist you in “data-mining” your email contacts.  It is very simple and cool, but also somewhat hard to explain in a simple manner.

Basically, once installed you can click on any mail and the plug-in will immediately give you a lot of information about the sender (what ‘contacts’ you have in common based upon CC’s in e-mails between you, a list of the latest mails to and from this person and finally a list of files exchanged in e-mails to and from you and this person)..  Go to www.xobni.com website for a more detailed presentation.. 

I’m sold to this concept.

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Neat DVB-T TV Antenna gadget

Flagpole
Now I receive TV via a Cable provider, but many still use their old analog antenna’s on the roof.  In 2009 or 2010 the terrestrial broadcast of analog TV signals will cease in Denmark, and be replaced by purely digital broadcast DVB-T (at least for the national channels), thus the time is right for replacing those old “bird catcher antennas”, but why not make it an aesthetically pleasing experience at the same time!?! – let’s face it antennas are not gennerally that pretty..

Along came www.tertek.dk with a cool antenna to mount on the top of your flagpole 🙂  nifty, the Danish IT magazine www.pcworld.dk tested the product and were very pleased with the result.

One concern I have though, what about lightning?  But hey, they must have thought about that and added a fuse or something..

Video here;
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1578365155649182560&q=tertek&pr=goog-sl

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