Gadgets

The owners of the Technicolor patent technology announced a new line of broadcast industry products on Monday that are the first to use removable storage disks from Iomega as replacements for video tape.

Thompson Multimedia, through its Grass Valley property, announced a new digital camcorder and media recorder (DMR) under its Infinity brand this week at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam. Both camera and VTR replacement can use either Iomega's REV or REV PRO removable disks in conjunction with solid-state flash memory instead of digital video tape for recording and playback media.

The camera is expected to … Read more

Is your child displaying early signs of Sir Mix-A-Lot-like talents? Then you might want to employ a new high-tech toy to help nurture those musical skills. The iZ is a 9-inch, tri-legged fusion of toy and music that lets kids (or adults for that matter) mix their own tunes. The space-age-looking gizmo will be out later this month from Zizzle, a new toy company founded by Furby creator Roger Shiffman.

Kids start by pressing iZ's stomach to get the beat going. Once they find a sound they like, they move to iZ's trombone-shaped right ear to add rhythm … Read more

Honda Motor on Thursday took the wraps off its first airbag designed to protect motorcyclists in the event of a crash.

The airbag will come standard on its new Gold Wing motorcycle, which is scheduled for release in late spring of 2006 in the U.S., and eventually in Europe and Japan.

The airbag module sits between the handlebars and inflates if the four sensors that monitor the bike detect a front-end crash. Honda has been working on the design as part of its Advanced Safety Vehicle (ASV) project since 1990. The company said the airbag could drastically reduce head injuries.… Read more

Logitech marked the 10th anniversary of its trackball mouse on Tuesday with the addition of four new models that feature optical-based tracking technology.

The PC peripheral maker took the wraps of its Logitech V400 Laser Cordless Mouse, the Logitech MX610 Laser Cordless Mouse, the Logitech LX7 Cordless Optical Mouse, and the Logitech V270 Cordless Optical Notebook Mouse for Bluetooth. Prices range between $59.99 and $39.99 and delivery starts this month.

The new mice are a far cry from the Logitech TrackMan Marble unveiled a decade ago. The pointing device helped reduce problems related to dust or dirt and … Read more

You could say this display's on a roll (all the while, of course, knowing that doing so might be setting yourself up for bad-pun ridicule from colleagues). Oh, well...

The Concept Readius from Philips Polymer Vision is a prototype of a functional electronic-document reader that can be folded and squeezed into a pocket. Philips calls the Readius the world's first prototype of a functional e-reader that can unroll its display to a scale larger than the device itself. All rolled up, the Readius measures in at about 4 inches by 2.5 inches by an eighth of an … Read more

The mean streets of America's cities have inspired Lincoln Steffins, the artists of the Ash Can School, Martin Scorsese and now the marketing department of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

In its latest cartoon, The Hard Drive is the New Bling, a young female extols the virtues of Hitachi's 1-inch and 1.8-inch hard drives amid towering, indifferent buildings in an inner city. A man with a boom box and gold teeth approaches her, but he falls down. She walks away with her dignity, an MP3 player, and a cell phone.

Educationally, it's not as deeply researched as … Read more

An apparent shortage of Intel chips has caused tablet PC maker Motion Computing to modify its orders for September.

According to an internal memo seen by CNET News.com, Motion's marketing department got word from Intel that there is a world-wide shortage of the Intel Pentium M Processor number 758 which is a low-voltage chip running at 1.5GHz.

"What this means is that existing orders of the Motion LE1600 tablet PC are now scheduled to ship during the first week of October. The current expected ship date for new LE1600 orders is the second week of October,&… Read more

Is the average 18- to 24-year-old so insatiable that they feel a burning desire for nearly unlimited storage space on their iPod or other MP3 player?

Apparently so, according to a new report out today from KRC Research.

The group affectionately known as "Generation Y" has a reported $2,199 worth of entertainment stored on digital devices, according to the Pennsylvania-based analyst group. And they are hungry for more.

Compare that to the average $1,135 worth of content that KRC found on laptops, MP3 players, DVRs, mobile phones, PDAs, digital cameras and portable movie players in a … Read more

I have to confess to being a sleep junkie. I have repetitive stress injuries from hitting the snooze button one time too many.

So when the people over at Innovative Sleep Solutions asked me to test drive their Sleeptracker digital wristwatch ($149 online), I wondered how well it would do in getting my head off the pillow.

Wearing a watch to bed is a lot less daunting than using the SleepSmart device from Axon Sleep Research Laboratories, which requires that you wear a headband that monitors your brain waves.

The Sleeptracker watch has sensors that monitor the wearer's sleep … Read more