New Home Gadgets

Posted Jan 29th 2008 3:23PM by Paul MillerFiled under: Household If you’re like us, you’re sure to have fond memories of gathering around the radio in your jammies on Saturday morning and listening to the likes of Adventures in Odyssey and Life with Luigi; an experience that was only marred by the smell of your Dad’s rotting stereo speakers. Maybe that was just us? Well, perhaps you can learn to commiserate with this USB Aroma Radio + Speaker from Brando. It sounds a lot like that Aroma Geur radio we saw a while back, only it’s about $400 cheaper and probably much less likely to synchronize its aromas and LEDs to the music. You can also use the unit as a line-in speaker if you’ve had enough of radio — and who h (Read the full post about ‘USB Aroma Radio almost smells as bad as the regular kind’…)

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Isn’t this air purifer cute? Brought to us by Takara Tomy, the Climo (Baby Clean Mobile) is so compact, it can go where your baby goes, suppressing bacteria, odors, and mold, along the way. With two 2 modes (normal and quiet) it would also be good for sleeping (wouldn’t it be handy if our babies came with a sleep switch? ) and you can set the timer for 4 hours to 12 hours. $229 at Japan Trend Shop. (Read the full post about ‘Little air purifiers for your baby’…)

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There’s the old saying that you can never be too rich or too thin. Well, that old saying seems to be the operating strategies of laptop manufactures in recent months. The amazing Sony Vaio Type T may have lost its thin crown to the MacBook Air, but Sony has revamped its slimline notebook recently and they look hot. The latest revisions and updates that have been released show that Sony is boosting the CPU from a Core 2 Duo U7500 (1.06GHz) to an ULV Core 2 Duo U7600 (1.2GHz). In addition to the hardware upgrades, the exterior has undergone a makeover to showcase some pretty sexy designs in either a creme or graphite color. Also, it looks like that these are actual designs on the laptop and not skins like the original article suggests. (Read the full post about ‘Sony’s Vaio T Bringing Sexy Back’…)

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Posted Jan 29th 2008 12:51PM by Donald MelansonFiled under: Digital Cameras Panasonic didn’t exactly do the best job keeping its PMA camera lineup a secret before things got official, but it looks like it’s finally gotten its act together and it’s now loose pictures details on the whole lot of them. As expected, those include new entries in the company’s LZ, FS and TZ-series as well as, perhaps most notably, the FX35 (that’s the tiny one up above), which is the first Lumix with a 25mm wide-angle lens. (Read the full post about ‘Panasonic gets official with PMA camera lineup’…)

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Posted Jan 29th 2008 11:39AM by Donald MelansonFiled under: Cellphones, Wireless We’re going to hazard a guess that it’s been a while since most of you used good ‘ol IrDA to transfer any data to your cellphone, but it looks like the folks at KDDI have got themselves on an old school kick, and they’re now looking to bring the technology back to some of its former glory. To that end, the company recently revealed its progress on a new form of the technology that upgrades transfer speeds to a full 1Gbps, or about 250 times faster than the previous limit. That’s apparently possible by replacing the standard LED with a new speedy new semiconductor laser, which gets paired with some nonvolatile memory to ensure that burst of data doesn’t get lost along the way. (Read the full post about ‘KDDI touts speedy upgrade to IR transfer technology’…)

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In the proud tradition of putting diamonds or gold on otherwise-uninspiring devices and giving them a ridiculous price tag to get publicity, Japanese company PC Zeus is offering a couple of rich-idiot aimed computers. The first is a PC with a diamond-encrusted platinum case. It sells for $750,400. Too much? Well, there’s also a gold case PC available for a much more reasonable $562,800. What about the specs? Do you really care? Whatever, here they are. (Read the full post about ‘Six-Figure Japanese PCs Are Not Even Close to Worth It [Bling]’…)

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USB Weather Station Hub This is a great little gadget for work or home. This USB Hub displays the time and temperature. The hub has an attractive blue LCD backlight display. The USB 1.1 hub has 4 USB ports A type female connectors and 1 USB mini 5P female connector. The hub supports both full-speed 12mbps and low speed 1.5mbps transfer rates and comes with 113cm USB a male to mini 5P male cable. The device can chain up to 127 USB devices has individual port over-current protection provides up to 500mA port sufficient for diverse devices and is truly plug & play The time can be set in 12/24 hour format and includes second hour minute year month and date. (Read the full post about ‘USB Weather Station Hub’…)

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Gadget Lab’s Rob Beschizza has made himself a little piss-take of the MacBook Air. Curved corners—that’s an Ives-esque attention to detail you’ve got there— and a killer punchline. This one goes out to all the secret Luddites who read the Giz. [YouTube via Wired]

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From the bestselling cellphone in history to the most ignominious departure of a CEO not related to any criminal behavior, Motorola’s had a hell of a slide, but still, the latest speculation comes as a punch to the chin. Richard Windsor, an analyst with a firm called Nomura International, says that Moto may exit the handset business. On one hand, it could sell the division to Chinese investors, but on the other hand, not even the Chinese really know how to solve Moto’s problems. What happened, Motorola? Seriously, what in hell happened? (Read the full post about ‘Moto Knocked Out of Handset Business? [Moto Blues]’…)

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Maybe Sprint wasn’t pulling inventory, but the rumors about the LG Rumor’s shoddy firmware turn out to be, well, rooted in truth. Now you or your Rumor-owning loved ones can get a fast free upgrade: Either go Main Menu > Settings/Tools > Tools> Update Firmware, or get your sorry butt to a Sprint store and go to the back of the customer-service line. Message from Sprint: “While we have confidence in the quality of this device, we do encourage Rumor users to take advantage of this simple over-the-air upgrade.” [Sprint] (Read the full post about ‘LG Rumor Rumor Confirmed: Firmware Update Now Available [Cellphones]’…)

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