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Archive for the 'CES 2009' Tag

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Power up: Different takes on travel chargers

January 13th, 2009, 2:00 pm by

The show ended Sunday. Here is the rest of what I saw at CES… To see more, visit Gadgetress@CES 2009

If you had one charger that charged your cell phone, iPod, laptop, camera and all of your other electronic devices, wouldn’t you want it? Multi-device charging hubs got some sleek redesigns and technology boosts so that travelers won’t have to lug multiple power bricks on a trip.

In addition, quite a few companies showed off portable power, so you can charge your cell phone, camera or other small gadget while on the road. I got an APC Mobile Power Pack for Christmas and believe me, it came in handy. Smartphones really weren’t meant to last all day on one charge. 

Here are a few such gadgets I spotted at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show:

Travel power options: Click to enlarge:
6-in-1 charger: Callpod’s VZ ChargePod, a CES Innovations honoree, is an update from last year’s version (a handy device itself that charges 6 mobile gadgets). The new model includes multiple ports, including 3 USB 2.0 ports, 1 for either a PC or Mac laptop, 3 ports for small devices. Four tips are included, with extra tips at $9.99 each. Available April 2009 for $199. More details at callpod.com/products/chargepodv2
6-in-1 charger: Lenmar’s PowerPort Hub PPUHUB6, a CES Innovations winner, charges up to 6 gadgets. But it’s design is what attracts attention. The circular hub stores cables right inside. Twist off the lid to access the cables. It has 6 USB ports — 4 with retractable cables, 2 let you add your own cable. Includes tips for an iPhone/iPod, Motorola RAZR/Q and BlackBerry phones for $79.95. More details at www.lenmar.com.                 
Green tech: Go green with iGo’s new iGo Green laptop charger. This only charges one device at a time. But the key is that when it’s plugged into a wall socket and charging a laptop or other gadget, the iGo Green turns itself off after it charges the gadget. More details at igo.com.
3-in-1 charger: Ohmetric Power charges three devices at the same time, including a laptop, cell phone and another USB device. Power cable for the device wraps in the lower ring, while cables for other devices are on the top ring. The two rings separate. Product expected to launch this year. Price not available but rumored to be around $200. More details at ohmetric.com.
Portable power: The sleek Powerstick is about the size of stick of gum and looks like a USB storage drive. One end has a USB port (to get charged), the other has a port to plug in a tip. It comes with 9 tips to charge anything from an iPod to micro USB device. A small display shows amount of ‘power’ remaining to charge up gadgets. Available for $59.99 at BestBuy.com. More details at www.powerstick.com.  
Portable power: Energizer’s EnergiToGo charges aren’t new but the company has shifted focus to smartphones. These handy chargers use 2 AA batteries so you don’t need to worry about charging up the charger before you head on the road. The price isn’t too bad either, at $19.99. More details at energizer.com.


I’ve got a sample of the Energizer Energi To Go to anyone who wants it. This includes 2 AA Energizer batteries, 1 mini USB tip and 1 Micro USB tip. Leave a comment below if you’re interested and I’ll randomly select a winner. 

For more Gadgetress reports from CES 2009, visit gadgetress.freedomblogging.com/ces2009.

Posted in: Cell phones • Computers • Gadgets • • • • • • • | 7 Comments »

What happens when everything is on a cell phone

January 12th, 2009, 7:22 pm by

The show ended Sunday. Here is the rest of what I saw at CES… To see more, visit Gadgetress@CES 2009

When you try to cram games, texting, phone service, your medical history, satellite GPS and, well everything a computer can do into a phone, you get the iCEphone. The bulky phone is from Edinburgh, Scotland and it’s looking for a home in the U.S.

The twist behind the iCEphone and the hordes of other smartphones flooding the market is that this is meant for emergencies. The iCEphone, a nod to the In Case of Emergency trend of storing emergency contacts in a phone’s address book, does three things: Includes tips on what to do in an emergency (CPR lessons), automatically records what steps were taken and gives a report to ER services, and it stores medical records securely. More details on the company’s Web site.

But for the phone to show up in the U.S., it would need a telecom company to add it to its inventory. Without that, iCEphone officials estimate that the unlocked phone would cost just below $1,000 U.S.

More photos (click images for larger view):

  

For the list of Gadgetress reports from CES, visit the headline page at gadgetress.freedomblogging.com/ces2009.

Posted in: Cell phones • • • • | Comments Off

A more Apple friendly CES?

January 12th, 2009, 7:19 pm by

The show ended Sunday. Here is the rest of what I saw at CES… To see more, visit Gadgetress@CES 2009

Apple may have pulled out of Macworld after last week but that annual tradeshow hasn’t officially ended. Rumors are already flying that the similarly timed Consumer Electronics Show will become the new home for Apple, but CES organizers won’t say.

“Yes, we have had discussions regarding Apple but that’s all I can tell you,” Jason Oxman, a senior vice president with the Consumer Electronics Association told me just a week before this year’s CES.  ”We already have a number of companies that exhibit at the show that make Apple products.”  

O.K., fine. For the thousands of companies, journalists and retailers who hate trekking to San Francisco (for MacWorld) only to turn around to get to Las Vegas in time for CES, a combined show would make many lives easier. Then again, Mac products were not absent from the CES floor. Here are a few I stumbled on:

A golden MacBook silicon keyboard cover to protect keys from spills, crumbs and dust.  Click images for larger view. The company that makes this one is from Oceanside, but I should mention that at least two Orange County companies also make silicon keyboard covers. Check out the dermaSHOT cover from Irvine’s Incipio and the Carapace cover from Irvine’s Sonnet Technologies.

 

Candy-coated iPhone cases - Speck Products, which makes all sorts of covers for Apple laptops, just introduced its line of CandyShell cases, so named because they have a rubberized interior but a thin, hard shell on the exterior. Four colors are available: Lemon Drop Liquorice (high-gloss black shell with bright yellow interior), Key Lime Jawbreaker (high-gloss dark grey shell with bright lime interior), Cranberry White Truffle (high-gloss white shell with cranberry red interior) and Watermelon Gumball (high-gloss light grey shell with pink salmon interior). The $34.95 cases are available at Apple Stores, www.apple.com and www.speckproducts.com.

 

Nano-matching USB car adapters. These 2-port USB adapters from Casco Products aren’t just for iPods. They work with any USB device. This obviously is to appeal to the nano lover who wants matching accessories. Seven colors available. The guy manning Casco’s booth told me that the USB car charger sells for $9.99 and a matching cable with an iPod nano tip is $5.99. But I think he was telling me about the wholesale price. On Casco’s web site, the USB car chargers are $19.99 and aren’t available in the nano chromatic colors.

For the list of Gadgetress reports from CES, visit the headline page at gadgetress.freedomblogging.com/ces2009.

 

Posted in: Apple mania • iPhone • iPods • • • • • • | Comments Off

Tech toys at CES just for (wee) girls

January 12th, 2009, 5:27 pm by

The show ended Sunday. Here is the rest of what I saw at CES… To see more, visit Gadgetress@CES 2009

Girly gadgets and other frou-frou tech toys may not be the best tech around, but they are still fun to spot at CES. Here’s my roundup of fun stuff I saw:

1. The Barbie nail painter: From Mattel, this is a little fingernail printer that prints custom images directly on a wee fingernail. It’s definitely a relative of the industrial fingernail printer I wrote about in 2004 (where are these things anyway?). This offers an assortment of Barbie-friendly images, plus you can upload your own.

And better yet, it’s expected to become an actual product that people can buy at the store.  No price was available nor a launch date. I’m guessing it will be out my the holidays. I need one for my, uh, 1-year-old daughter. (Click images for larger view)

    

2. The Hello Kitty netbook. These mini computers have become very trendy, although I suspect they are more popular in Europe and Asia than here in the U.S. And what’s a world without Hello Kitty? With an Intel chip, no less. Comes with cute red bag. This one is apparently from Sotec (here are more details in Japanese).

 

3. Invasion of the Palachans: A strange assortment of USB storage creatures from Toshiba. Available in Japan only. These creatures were “born off the pristine tropical paradise of the Palau Islands.”

4. Bone bags: What started out as a silicon-based dog bone USB drive has developed into an army of cute things from the Fruitshop International Corp., which has a local office in Rancho Cordova. The USB keys are still cute, but a new product is a line of cases for iPods. On the back of the silicon case is room for headphones and cables. 

More images (click for larger view):

    

For the list of Gadgetress reports from CES, visit the headline page at gadgetress.freedomblogging.co

Posted in: Gadgets • iPods • • • • • • • • • | Comments Off

Sleeker gadget, PC bags from Urban Tool

January 12th, 2009, 2:37 pm by

The show ended Sunday. Here is the rest of what I saw at CES… To see more, visit Gadgetress@CES 2009

O.C.’s own Targus and Mobile Edge helped popularize the stylish laptop bag for women with sturdy designs and lower prices. But I’m always on the prowl for something nicer, especially for my new smart phone (how does one tote these around if you don’t want to cram it in your pants or a purse?).

The line from Vienna, Austria-based Urban Tool made me take a second look. The bags are made from a stretchy, Lycra-like material so they are light and maintain a sleekness that canvas and leather just can’t duplicate. With all sorts of pockets and funky but useful shapes, a simple “holster” that wraps under an arm like a gun holster, will discreetly hold a phone, pen, money, keys and an MP3 player with a hole to string headphones through.  

New laptop “bags” include sizes perfect for petite netbooks. A 15-inch bag is in the works. Prices are $40 to more than $100.

Company founder Mag.art Sabrina Tanner, was on hand to show off the products and said that some are available at ThinkGeek.com, but I could also buy one at the show.  I didn’t have the cash on me but now I wish I had bought one, especially since ThinkGeek has a limited collection. The company is looking for U.S. companies to resell the products.

Hmm… I wonder if Urban Tool will make fanny packs cool again? Or wait — were they ever cool?

  

For the list of Gadgetress reports from CES, visit the headline page at gadgetress.freedomblogging.com/ces2009.

Posted in: Laptop bags • news • • • • • | Comments Off

When a PC crashes, CMS’ BounceBack to the rescue

January 12th, 2009, 10:16 am by

The show ended Sunday. Here is the rest of what I saw at CES… To see more, visit Gadgetress@CES 2009

When a computer crashes, consumers bemoan the fact that they never backed up their photos, music and other valuable documents. No more!

CMS Products, based in Costa Mesa, announced a new fix at CES: Its “BounceBack Ultimate” software runs even if you don’t have a hard drive inside your computer. The company demoed the new software at CES by popping out a laptop’s hard drive and placing it on top so the computer was obviously running on the external drive:

Apparently, booting up a computer from a USB hard drive is difficult. CMS says this product is the first “commercially-available software product that enables computer users to instantly recover their PC following a hard drive ‘crash.’” The software stores (and backs up) all information on an external hard drive, which must be connected to the computer. The external drive can be from any company — not just CMS.

Whenever you restart your computer, it’ll ask whether you want to boot from the external drive or the computer.  If your computer suddenly stops working, a likely culprit could be a corrupt hard drive. So, select “external drive” when you boot up the computer, and you can begin the recovery process. The software will restore your computer’s hard drive to an earlier time when it was working properly. Also, make sure you have nothing on the external drive because BounceBack reformats the drive.

“BounceBack Ultimate” software is included with CMS’s external hard drives or you can purchase it for $99. It’s compatible with Windows XP. A Windows Vista version should be available in the next few weeks, according to the company. A trial version should be available. Check CMS’ site for details (the “Ultimate” version is not yet available on CMS’ web site, but here’s a link to BouceBack Pro). 

For the list of Gadgetress reports from CES, visit the headline page at gadgetress.freedomblogging.com/ces2009.

Posted in: Storage • • • • • • • • • | 7 Comments »

IOGEAR’s wireless HD video gadget wins CES award

January 12th, 2009, 10:14 am by

The show ended Sunday. Here is the rest of what I saw at CES… To see more, visit Gadgetress@CES 2009

Thanks to a technology called Ultra-Wideband or certified Wireless USB, consumers are now able to stream music and video wirelessly from their laptop to a nearby monitor. While the first products have been around for nearly two years, it looks like they are about to hit mainstream.

And IOGEAR, an Irvine gadget company, is out with the “first to market” wireless high-definition video adapter. Being shown at CES, the IOGEAR Video kit was streaming high-definition video on a nearby monitor. The monitor can be up to 30 feet away. This can handle 720p high-definition video. The product won a CES Innovations award (see image on right).

But it wasn’t as neat and clean as one would expect wireless technology to be. IOGEAR’s kit includes three pieces — one adapter for the laptop, one audio adapter and one video adapter for the monitor. To attach to the monitor, messy cables are necessary. 

IOGEAR’s kit also doesn’t include audio built into the adapter. Video and audio are separate. However, said Miranda Su, IOGEAR’s executive vice president, combining the two is definitely on the company’s to-do list. Click images below for a larger view.

  

The products will start shipping in two to three months (by March 2009), Su said. The three-piece kit is $349 and also be sold separately.

For more Gadgetress reports from CES 2009, visit gadgetress.freedomblogging.com/ces2009.

Posted in: Wi-Fi & networking • • • • • • • • • | Comments Off

USB gets faster, SD gets bigger

January 12th, 2009, 8:23 am by

The show ended Sunday. Here is beginning of the rest of what I saw at CES… For the list of Gadgetress reports from CES, visit the headline page at Gadgetress@CES 2009

The pervasive USB technology suits many just fine. But it’s still not that fast, especially if you’re trying to transfer large files from an external hard drive to PC, or vice versa.

A speed boost is pending, thanks the the next-generation USB standard getting approval in November. USB 3.0, also dubbed SuperSpeed USB, will reach speeds of 5 gigabits-per second — a steep increase from today’s USB 2.0 standard, which is around 480 mbps.

Translation: a file that takes 27 minutes to transfer from an external hard drive to PC using today’s USB High-Speed technology will take 60 to 70 seconds on USB 3.0′s Super-Speed technology. 

According to the USB association, which was present at CES, consumers could start seeing USB 3.0 products by early 2010.

SD-memory cards get bigger

Separately, the tiny flash-memory cards we call MicroSD just got a capacity boost, also thanks to the passing of a new engineering standard. Being  called “SDXC,” the new cards will reach 32 GB to 2 terabyte capacities by 2010. The read and write speeds also get a boost — up to 104 Megabytres per second this year and 300 MBps in years to come.

The good news is that the new standard won’t require consumers to get new card readers, as we all did in order to read SD cards over 2 GBs. And the industry is, of course, bringing the larger capacity cards to the teeny-tiny microSD format as well. Just think… 2 TB of storage on your cell phone. That’s equivelant to a total 136,000 photos in fine mode, or 480 hours of HD video or an assortment of files, as pictured below!

For the list of Gadgetress reports from CES, visit the headline page at gadgetress.freedomblogging.com/ces2009.

Posted in: Storage • Wi-Fi & networking • • • • • • • | Comments Off

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