If Only I Had It

 Hey guys, I know it has been a long time since I have last wrote on anything here. Have been quite busy with work and all. Yes I do have a life outside of this blog. I was also away on a holiday in the United States visiting a long lost friend of mine. Havent seen him for the past 12 years since we graduated.

He is actually a surgeon now based in the Big Apple. During my duration there I came across something that I thought I should share with you guys. Dont you get frustrated most of the time with promises from your ISP provider. They always say that their internet connection is the best but the truth is it is always expensive for nothing.

Most of the time my internet connection goes according to timing. Work time is always the best as well as from late night till early morning other than that the speed is more like a dial up connection although the price is more of a DSL line.

What am I talking about you might ask. Well it is Satellite Internet. This is more of a broadband service that uses a two way satellite connection. It is more clearly knowned as  Satellite DSL. The speed using this service is by far the best I have seen. Using it was a breeze and it was very good especially when I did a lot of video conferencing. I know by know you guys would say that this is great but is way out of my budget.

Well there is surely one thing I can tell you guys. It is within means. There is this company called HughesNet that supplies the equipment and the connection for this type of broadband facility. So far the pricing that I have seen them quoting is very cheap. It is only about USD 79 per month and there is multiple types of facilities that they are providing.

I would surely recommend this service to anyone who is seriously using the internet or even in fact to anyone who is using the internet paying for a service and not getting what they expect.

Head on down to their website which I have provided in the links above and you would notice that this is surely a service to get. Hopefully they will bring such a thing down to Malaysia as soon as possible as I am clearly down hearted with my service provider.

 This is surely the gadget for the fitness concious people. The healthy diets and 1 hour jogging trip in itself wont work. But with this phone in hand you would know what is actually happening. 

As far as I know Adidas is well known in producing sport wear or fitness products. What does Adidas have to do with mobile phone? Of course, these days, it wouldn’t be a surprise those specializing in fashion or sport wear products are venturing into cell phone business too. So, now Adidas and Samsung somehow have teamed up to produce cell phones. And their first product is known as miCoach (F110), which is a fitness-centered cell phone.

The miCoach is a quad-band slider phone that features a dedicated fitness button that furnishes you with the details of your heart beat, distance covered, and running time, when hooked up with a heart monitor or a step counter. You can view the running information by tapping the cellphone’s screen without needing to hook it up to a PC. It’s loaded with over 220 fitness programmes which you can choose from. And the cellphone will feedback to you with your heart beat rate whether you’re going too fast or too slow according to the chosen programme.

Cellphone strap is normally just for decorative purpose. But Brando has released a few cellphone straps here which come with quite useful function. The Brando’s cellphone straps work as a universal 3.5 mm earphone adapter for both Sony Ericsson and Nokia cell phones.

The Brando’s cellphone strap has two versions, which on one side is either the connector to attach to Nokia’s pop-port or the connector for Sony Ericsson’s fast port. And one end is a universal 3.5mm earphone connector that allows you to connect to any standard headset. It’s definitely handy, as long as the strap is attached to your phone, you could make use of it to connect to any standard headset to listen to your favorite tunes or use it as your hands free. How many of you have lost your original headset after a few months of purchasing a new cellphone? The universal adapter handy straps eliminates the hassle of having to pop around many shops to look for one that suits your phone’s port.

 Have you ever wanted a handphone that does not run out of batteries. No way you are going to get one unless it is solar powered and even so I am not so sure when it will be made available. But here is one that runs on normal AAA batteries. So when your power is low just go to the nearest 7/11 and get yourself that needed power.

Philips’ latest handset - Xenium 9@9j, which they have demoed at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is also another mobile phone that has excellent battery life, which can last more than a month on standby, similar to other Philips cellphones in the 9@9j series. Besides, the long battery life, the cellphone can use standard AAA battery as the alternative power source. This is a great idea, as AAA batteries can be easily obtained from any grocery shops while your phone is running dry of battery during emergency.

Actually, the Philips Xenium 9@9j does not operate on the AAA battery. It uses advanced power management technology that makes use of the standard AAA battery as a backup only to lengthen the life of its Li-Ion battery, which is the battery used for its operation. Once the Li-Ion battery is running out of juice, the standard backup AAA battery will start kicking in and feeding the Li-Ion with power so your phone operation will not be interrupted.

The single AAA battery can boost the talk time and standby time from 2 hours to 8 hours and one week to a month respectively.

What a cool GPS device but it is also a phone. When you think of Garmin, definitely you’ll relate it with GPS devices. But now, Garmin has a role to play in the cellphone or smart phone market. Their newly announced smart phone, nüvifone, is a phone equipped well with all the GPS functions that you will surely need in a big city in order not to go missing. Some people claim this Garmin’s new smart phone looks like iPhone because of the touch screen UI resembles what iPhone has.

The nüvifone smartphone supports full-fledged GSM HSDPA, runs on its own properitary OS and of course loaded with GPS navigation as the core. Besides, it’s also equipped with email and web browsing functionalities and also a built-in camera (Does it support geo-tagging?). It sports a 3.5-inch LCD display. And equipped with wireless capabilities including WiFi and Bluetooth.

Other eatures at a glance

• Google local search
• Garmin Online services - traffic, weather, fuel prices, hotel discounts, etc.
• nuvi-like navigation on the road or in pedestrian mode
• Email, text, IM functions
• Camera, video camera, MP3 and MPEG4/AAC

No info on the pricing and carrier. But Garmin promises to deliver it in the 3rd quarter and says the PND market is not dying yet and the phone sure will have a role to play.

It’s important to always stay alert with the incoming calls on our cellphones. I think you may have been into the situation that your significant other kept calling you for several times and you never noticed the calls and you two finally ended up with a big quarrel? Even though you’ve set your cellphone on vibration mode but sometime you’ll leave it away from you, so you can’t feel the vibration either.

Anyway, here comes a vibrating Bluetooth bracelet from LM Technologies, which you can strap it on your wrist or your ankle to keep you highly aware of the incoming calls by vibrating. Having this bracelet, you can even leave your cellphone more than 5 meters away from you.

When I first heard of flying car, I knew that it wouldn’t be that easy to build one, and finally we wouldn’t get any solid one in the market. How many times, we’ve heard the delay or uncertainty of release of these flying vehicles before?

Moller International Inc., a company that is developing the flying car, Moller M400 SkyCar, seems to be in a financial deep shit that will jeopardize the completion of their M400 flying car. The company nows has run up more than $40.5 million in accumulated deficits. They have even auctioned the M400 prototype on eBay with a 3.5 million dollar minimum bid, hoping to generate some money for its debts.

The M400 is a flying car that relies on a computer controlled autopilot, and 8 new rotary engines which rotate for a change in axis of flight from forward to hover. Behind all these great engines and system, what you need is a strong financial support.

The company is now desperately looking for other sources of funds or loans. In the event that the company fails to source such funds or loans, the M400 will most likely be discontinued!

Portable speakers for an avid traveler. This device can connect to your cell phone wirelessly using Bluetooth and play your favorite music from your phone.

This pair of speakers takes the advantage of Bluetooth connectivity and uses it to transfer voice/music signals from your phone. It also allows you to record through the line-in socket and transmit to your phone.

Once you have activated Bluetooth and connected this device, you can use these portable hi-def speakers as speaker phone, hands free (It has an inbuilt microphone) or for just listening to music.

These speakers have a power rating of 1.5 W each. It is powered by re-chargeable batteries and can work for about 8hrs in single re-charge. In standby mode, these speakers can stand as long as 300hrs.

Here are the specs :

• Bluetooth Version: v2.0
• Profiles: Headset, Handsfree, A2DP, AVRCP
• Operation Range: 10M
• Talk Time: 8 Hours
• Listen Time: 8 Hours
• Standby Time: 300 Hours
• Compatibility/Pairing: All Bluetooth devices V2.0and under
• Stereo Output: 2 x 1.5W (8Ohm)
• Power Source: Built in Rechargeable Li-ion Batteries or DC 5V
• Dimension: 45×146×45 (LxWxD)

DoCoMo is far ahead in the race of setting up a better lifestyle for the future generation. This time they have worked on a child friendly mobile phone that has lots of in-built security features.

The new F801i is an improved version of the popular FOMA SA800i model that DoCoMo released in March 2006. This new model can be easily held by kids in their palms. The waterproof phone never restricts the kids from playing in water fountains or beach.

You will surely be surprised to know the security features of this cute little phone. The F801i has an emergency alarm that yells out a big “HELP” (approx 100 dB). The LED blinks up with a bright light once the alarm is activated. This helps anybody nearby to identify the kid’s position.

Moreover the alarm ON state (means your kid is in danger)can be automatically notified to loved ones. By pre-setting this, it can even send the current position of phone to them. Just by clicking the button on the side, the phone will send the location message to the registered i-mode subscribers as well.

When the mobile gets switched off due to zero power, a pre-setting can bring the power back atleast to message a registered DoCoMo phone about the incident and location.

The bracelet that comes along will help you to find out the phone in case it is misplaced. A presetting can even switch off the phone from a distance as well as send a lost phone message to registered DoCoMo phone user.

The design of F801i mobile phone symbolizes safety, peace of mind, creativity and the future. This phone is all set to go on sale by December 20th. Surely if you care very much for your kid, can you find a better Christmas gift for your little one?

Gizmodo has done a review for the PocketSurfer 2, and it turned out to be more negative than positive for all of its features. They broke it down into a few points here as follows after the jump:

The Gadget - It is a handheld Internet browsing device that uses poor GPRS data connection. We’re all talking about 3G or higher G nowadays, but PocketSurfer 2 is still using GPRS. Well, although it’s an good alternative at places where you can’t find WiFi to hook up, but GPRS is really damn slow in speed. Anyway, the PocketSurfer 2 is claimed to have additional compression technology incorporated which makes surfing Internet over extremely slow GPRS data connection much speedier than usual. Datawind seems to be working for implementing an accelerated form of GPRS, but the gadget can only support in its version 3.

The Build - They claim that it’s not a gadget that fits well into your pocket as the entire device measures 152 x 75 x 15 mm, meaning it’s a little bit too big in size to go comfortably in your pocket. The 640 x 240 screen resolution wouldn’t give a good experience of browsing especially when coming to view high-res images. There is a little positive view on its full QWERTY keyboard, but you need some time to get used to it if you aren’t familiar with RAZR-type keypads. But once you’re about getting used to it and clicking, it seems to work extremely well if you ain’t mind about the clicking sound. And the backlights seem to be kind of annoying!

Getting Around - Poor navigation, no scroll wheel, you can only rely on the four-way direction pad to get you around webpages, which is kind of not feasible on a device with 5.2? wide screen. Generally, the gadget is kind of good-to-hold. But the gadget has some poor quality such as ports that do not fit well when inspected thoroughly.

Functionality -The Datawind compression software that helps speed up the poor GPRS connection seems to be in consistent and buggy, such as startup is lengthy and a number of occasions failed to connect such as time out or server error. (Well, sounds similar to what I’ve faced with certain 3G modems ocassionally). But when it does work, the compression and caching works impressively fast for a GPRS connection. Besides, the connection problem, the browser is also short of form of video codec compatibility and of course the screen as mentioned sucks with high-res images and provides no way to zoom out to get the whole picture. Surprisingly, Google maps seem to work well on the few occasions it loads up without fault, thanks to proper pseudo-GPS information.

Overall, it fails to gain the love of the Gizmodo guy. Well, I strongly agree that the device is behind in terms of technology implemented. Especially with its data connection relying on poor GPRS and depends on software caching and compression, hoping to get the users to feel the Internet connection is fast on it. Well, advanced users nowadays will need to have multiple screens and streaming data simultaneously, making use of software will definitely fail to handle mass data transmission. I bet the device would be taking lots of processor resources or burning hot while you’re having heavy download on it.

For the price, Pocketsurfer 2 is available for £179.98 in UK, with 20 hours of web surfing/month included in the asking price. For those in the States, it will be made available via T-Mobile for $29.99 per month for unlimited data plan, but will be bound with a 12 month contract. And the hardware will cost an additional $299.