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Car horns have only one tone, but multiple meanings. Often, honking it can not only be misunderstood, but it’s omnidirectional nature means it just about everyone within earshot gets the message. Now, you can’t do anything about the omnidirectional nature, but you sure can add more meaning to your honking by changing the message from time to time. HornTones helps to do just that. Horntones is basically a car horn married to an mp3 player. The player has 256MB on board memory for MP3 audio clips and a USB slot to upload more. Like a stereo, 10 preset triggers allow the driver to customize and assign tones for just about any given situation. (Read the full post about ‘HornTones gives your car its own soundtrack’…)

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Sony has just rolled out the HT-CT100 Home Theater System that was specially designed to complement your High Definition TV as well as Blu-ray Disc players, bringing eight channels of uncompressed audio to your living room for a superior entertainment experience. Features of the Sony HT-CT100 include :- Three 1080p-capable HDMI inputs Optical and coaxial digital inputs 3.1 channel unit with sound bar and a separate subwoofer 250 watts R.M.S. Sony S-Force PRO Front Surround Sound technologyThe Sony HT-CT100 Home Theater System will be released this March for approximately $300. (Read the full post about ‘Sony HT-CT100 Home Theater System’…)

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Even the most expensive, impressive laptop will look like junk, if its strewn with random cables. Everybody knows that when your charging your ipod, cellphone, laptop, plugging in a monitor and tracking speaker cables around, things are going to get a bit messy. Bluelounge is finally releasing a do-it-all dock that has pins underneath for wire collecting and can take 4 USB cables. For example, a printer, mouse, cell phone and iPod, and convert them into one output, for efficiency in your laptop. The dock sits 5mm above desk height, and the manufacturers claim that when you put your laptop on top, it tilts it towards you, making typing more ergonomic and creating a passage for air to cool the underside of your laptop. (Read the full post about ‘Bluelounge Spacestation Dock will clear up your unwanted desk clutter’…)

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Ah, remember the days of Tupperware parties? It seems like it was only yesterday. Actually, they still do them, but there is a new trend in this marketing campaign: Taser parties. That’s right, these are parties devoted to Tasers. According to my source, the idea was conceived by Dana Shafman, and it is where the lady of the house invites all the other ladies and shows them the latest trends in Taser-ware. The cute little electric guns you see to your left are just a few in the latest trend of taser fashions. I suppose taser parties give housewives and other Pyramid company users the chance to make a little money on the side while giving others a feeling of security as they carry around some serious electric stunning action. (Read the full post about ‘Taser parties the latest fad? I hope not.’…)

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The Bluetrek BIZZ Bluetooth headset has just been launched in the UK, and it takes pride in itself for being the first headset in the world that offers storage in addition to hands-free functionality. This means you can carry out a conversation over it while transforming it into a flash memory device in an instant. Battery life currently stands at 6 hours of talk time and 10 days on standby, although in practise those figures never really tally. You probably won’t experience a low battery warning too often though, considering the frequency of plugging it into a USB 2.0 slot when transferring data, charging its battery at the same time. The Bluetrek BIZZ tips the scales at 10 grams and stores data on a microSD memory card slot. (Read the full post about ‘Bluetrek BIZZ Launches In UK’…)

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The Urban Street Concept Bike from Cube belongs to the descriptively obvious school of product naming. The carbon fiber bicycle is yet another take on the folding bike theme, an increasingly popular niche (and if you don’t know why you’d need a folder, try living in a European apartment with no elevator and tiny rooms).

The bike collapses around a central hub just behind the handlebars, which is locked and released by the red handle you see in the photograph. The seat post slides in and the rear wheel flips around the bottom bracket (counter-clockwise as shown). Designer Gregor Dauth claims that the fully-folded Cube will fit in either a tiny Smart car, or inside a rucksack.

(Read the full post about ‘Cube’s Collapsible Carbon Concept Cycle’…)

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Earlier today, the Apple Store was offline worldwide. Typically, this means new products or updated ones. Today was no exception. The MacBook received an upgrade today featuring “[T]he latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors, larger hard drives, and up to 2GB of memory standard. Best of all, MacBook still starts at $1099. It’s the same does-everything-you-want notebook but better.” The new MacBook comes in three models (all featuring the 13-inch glossy widescreen display) and includes faster processors and larger hard drives across the board. The white 2.1 GHz and 2.4 GHz models come with a 120GB or 160GB 5400 rpm hard drives respectively and the black 2.4 GHz model has a huge 250GB 5400 rpm hard drive, previously only available as an option - now standard. (Read the full post about ‘Apple Announces New MacBook Models’…)

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For the last few days we have known that we would be getting some Apple news today, and Jobs and team did not disappoint. The announcement ended up being an incremental upgrade to the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines, each of which was ready for some changes. The big happenings were the addition of multi-touch to the Pro and the move to Penryn-based processors along both lines. Also 2GB of RAM become the new standard for most, but not all, of Apple’s notebooks.

The refresh that came out today was really just a collection of small upgrades which will make the MB and MBP competitive with the computers that have recently been coming out from other manufacturers.

(Read the full post about ‘Apple rolls out MacBook and MacBook Pro upgrades’…)

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When you work on computers, one of the easiest ways to pull data off of a hard drive is to plug it into a different working PC. Rather than actually cracking the case on said PC, one of my favorite tools to use is an external USB adapter. While this method is much easier than putting the old hard drive inside of your computer, I always wondered if there was an easier way. As it turns out, there is. This cool dock from Fujitsu actually lets you use a hard drive in the same fashion as your ipod when you want to sync it. Just slide in the hard drive and you’re good to go. This eliminates any of the annoying cables that you must plug and unplug with the traditional adapters. (Read the full post about ‘Fujitsu Calmee Space lets you dock your hard drives’…)

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Posted Feb 26th 2008 3:01AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Portable AudioSony’s not courting the absolute in audiophiles here, but if you’re willing step up from your current pair of drugstore crapphones, you might find something to like here. The new MDR-NC40 noise canceling headphones feature an open-air design, with the battery pack moved to the cord to keep the weight off your head. The headphones can fold into a neat little softball-sized package for packing, and will be out in March for $100. The EX series is a bit more complicated, but the top-of-the-line is quite obvious: the MDR-EX700LP has “lightweight magnesium housings” and an “exclusive multilayer diaphragm” — which we hear is a good thing — along with seven sizes of hybrid-silicone earbuds for most effective ear cramming. (Read the full post about ‘Sony’s debuts new noise canceling headphones, refreshes EX series earbuds’…)

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