New Home Gadgets

Adobe has officially launched its new web-based office application suite available in beta at adobe.com. The web tool is kind of like a combination of both Google Docs and Microsoft’s Office applications. Adobe offers up a word processor called Buzzword, a web conferencing application called ConnectNow, file sharing, an online desktop solution and of course an online PDF creator which is a scaled-down version of Adobe Acrobat. The PDF creator allows users to convert up to 5 files only. So, it pretty much serve as an appetizer to Adobe’s proprietary Acrobat software.

In brief let us walk you through the different web applications that Adobe.com is offering.

(Read the full post about ‘Adobe formally enters the online office suite market’…)

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by Darren Murph, posted Jun 2nd 2008 at 6:37PM
Every so often, a completely unnecessary gizmo hits the scenes that hardly anyone will be able to afford, yet nearly everyone could imagine having as their own. Feast your eyes on one such device: the X10 Ten Player Automated Table from Play Hard Gaming. This masterpiece seats ten (presumably wealthy) players and features a central 27-inch LCD alongside ten 12.1-inch touch panels. The computerized dealer dishes out the cards, and individuals play along by simply tapping their dedicated touchscreen. Both Texas Hold’em and Blackjack are loaded on, and you’ll even get free game upgrades for life when you commit to taking one home. (Read the full post about ‘X10 automated Poker / Blackjack table is decidedly drool-worthy’…)

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Fortune is reporting that the New York State sales tax will be applied to all Amazon purchases beginning on June 1. This new rule will mean that New York residents will no longer be able to enjoy those tax free purchases, at least on Amazon. Of course even though Amazon, and other online retailers have not been charging tax at the time of purchase, New York state has, since 2003 required that residents claim any “untaxed out-of-state purchases.” However the failure to report those purchases alone would not have raised “enough concern to prosecute anybody.”

In the past the rule has always been that, as long as their was not a physical store location in that state, then the online retailer was not required to charge the state sales tax.

(Read the full post about ‘Amazon has begun taxing New York’…)

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by Darren Murph, posted Jun 2nd 2008 at 10:15AMTruth be told, Fixed Mobile Convergence still isn’t talked about much (comparatively speaking) ’round these parts. Yeah, we’ve seen a few FMC routers scattered about, but Vodafone’s taking a stand by rolling out its Station in Italy. The box, which was developed in cooperation with Huawei, is an integrated switch / router with ADSL2+, WiFi, UMTS / HSPA (via a removable USB key) and four Ethernet ports. Essentially, it’s designed to combine voice with fixed and mobile broadband services, and it enables users to make calls on their handset through a fixed line connection when they’re kicking back at home. (Read the full post about ‘Vodafone Station brings FMC service to Italy’…)

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The iPod touch has received a stand of its own from RockRidgeSound in the form of the iClooly stand. You get a 90-degree pivot joint, a dock-connector cut-out, and a headphone extension cable inside the box with each $47 purchase. They will hit the retail market from June 7th onwards, freeing your hands while you’re enjoying a movie on your ipod touch without having you suffer from a neck/finger cramp. I say they’d make the perfect traveling companion as well, if you happen to be stuck on economy class and have grown tired of all the inflight movies shown.

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InfoSync reviews the HTC Mogul and writes, “Even though Sprint has answered some of our earlier complaints with the Mogul update, there are still a few issues we wouldn’t mind seeing sorted out. Though HTC’s sliders are very well built, they are infamous for lagging graphics capabilities, and the Mogul couldn’t keep up switching its screen orientation as we opened and closed the slide. We’d also like to see more instant messaging options built in, instead of settling for just MSN Live. While we’re adding software, how about the Opera browser instead of Internet Explorer, as well?”

Read more about the Sprint Mogul (HTC).

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Apple has bought a slew of .me domains, the soon-to-be-launched domain suffix for Montenegro that’s scheduled to go live on July 17th. Macworld UK spoke to Predrag Lesic, in charge of the Montenegro’s .me registry, and he thinks the domain will be an international hit:

 

We think .me can offer a new business around domain names with verbs,” Lesic says, such as drive.me or fly.me

You can imagine what the others might be.

Speculation around the web says Apple may be planning to rebrand its withering-on-the-vine web service, .Mac, as Mobile Me.

(Read the full post about ‘Mobile Me: What a New .Mac Might Mean for the iPhone’…)

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A supernova is definitely a sight to behold, but I don’t think Nokia did a very good job with the S40-powered 7510 and 7610. The former is an auto-opening clamshell handset while the latter comes in a slider form factor, aiming to bring together both form and function into a single device pretty much like how Nokia’s previous efforts with the L’Amour was like. The Nokia 7610 is clearly the superior handset among the two once you check out their respective specifications after the jump.

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iTunes is much more than a digital music jukebox. It’s capable of handling many different tasks involving digital media. Some of iTunes’ most popular features include buying music and vidoes online, burning CDs, and syncing files with your ipod or iphone.

But one of the lesser known functions hidden within iTunes is the ability to convert audio files.

Why would you need to convert an audio file? Converting audio file types can be useful in many different situations.

(Read the full post about ‘Converting Audio File Formats in iTunes’…)

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Acid Mods has successfully forced a DualShock controller to play nice with the Sony PSP console, and this won’t require you to perform any software modifications or updates as it can be done on just about any PSP regardless of the firmware, relying on hardware modifications entirely. I’m not sure why you would want to play the PSP using a DualShock controller, but hey - whatever floats your boat. (Read the full post about ‘Sony PSP works with DualShock’…)

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