Gadgets

Where are the wireless speakers?

If the technology industry is so wonderful, how come it can't resolve one of the prime headaches of home entertainment: speaker wires? It's a question that has bedeviled many interior designers.

It turns out it's a basic problem of electrical engineering, according to a representative from Samsung's home theater department. Speakers need an amplifier, and amplifiers need a wire for power. Sending electricity through the air isn't realistic, and batteries die. Some have made speakers that receive audio tracks via radio signals from the amp, but the quality is iffy and the speaker needs to … Read more

China's gadget processor pirated from U.S., says firm

China has produced the second version of the first microprocessor produced in the country, according to research firm In-Stat, and it's largely a copy of the MIPS chip invented by the company of the same name based in the U.S.

The Godson-2 (also known as the Dragon chip) is 95 percent compatible with the MIPS architecture. While China is only producing it for its domestic market now, legal intellectual property problems could occur in the future if it ends up in products bound for other parts of the world. MIPS, conceivably, could sue a manufacturer selling a product … Read more

Hard drive dresses as padlock

It's a hard drive shaped like a padlock. And if it's as secure as it appears, the cool-looking Imation Micro Drive could make stylin' fans of portable hard drives pretty happy.

The 1-ounce device--which packs a Toshiba microdrive--offers magnetic data encoding and error correction; 128-bit encryption; and file synchronization that automatically creates a backup copy of your data. The product is out now in a $159 2GB version and it's set to ship later this year in a 4GB version that'll go for $189. The Imation Security Manager software can be downloaded for free from … Read more

A musing on cable cards

Cable cards that plug into your television for HD signals are supposed to be the wave of the future, but it's very slow going. This week I had a cable card installed in my Sharp television in Nevada City (http://www.nevadacitychamber.com/history.htm), Calif., and was told by the Comcast cable guy that I was only the third person out of 10,000 subscribers in the county to get one. One reason cable TV companies don't like them: The companies can't sell you pay-per-view movies without a clunky digital box. A cable card sure reduces … Read more

Smart cart helps you shop

Are long checkout lines about to go the way of the manual cash register?

Fujitsu hopes so. The company has developed a wireless, shopping cart-mounted computer featuring scan-as-you-shop technology. The U-Scan Shopper tallies items as they're loaded into the cart, alerts shoppers to specials and reminds them what they bought on their last visit. Fujitsu unveiled the product Wednesday at the 2005 Retail Business Technology Expo in Sydney. Australian shoppers could see it in stores as early as 2006, and U.S. retailers are reportedly getting ready to roll out the system as well.

Among other tricks, the U-Scan … Read more

Orb moves beyond TV into photos, music

Orb Networks was part of the TV class of 2005 at the Consumer Electronics Show. Like Sling Media and others, Orb introduced a product promised to let users view TV programs recorded at home on a remote computer. If you're on a business trip, these companies promised, you can watch TV from home on your laptop. You could even watch TV shows from home through your laptop in a hotel while on a business trip, they all promised.

Of course, if you're in a hotel room, you probably have a TV anyway with a lot of the same … Read more

Transfer drive data sans the PC

Being the unofficial family photographer has meant shlepping my digital camera, laptop and USB cable on too many a flight across this great country. I'm highly snap-happy, so my camera gets full too fast to wait until I get home to do my downloading.

Thus, I was happy to hear about Belkin's new USB Anywhere, which lets you leave the PC behind and connect two portable USB units to transfer contents. You can use the $40 device to copy files from your digital camera to your external hard drive, between two MP3 players, and/or between USB flash … Read more

Hong Kong gets Treo 650

The newly launched Palm is spreading its smartphone message into Hong Kong with a Chinese-language version of its Treo 650.

The company said it is selling a GSM/GPRS/EDGE quad-band version of the device through various providers including CSL, 3, SmarTone-Vodafone and SUNDAY outlets, as well as chain stores and retail shops throughout Hong Kong.

The device comes built-in with the CJKOS Chinese character display and handwriting input system, and supports both traditional and simplified Chinese characters, as well as the Treo 650's native English interface.

Palm recently added Treo sales to Switzerland. Since it made its debut … Read more

New CEO for mini drive maker Cornice

Camillo Martino, who formerly toiled as the COO at digital imaging specialist Zoran, is the new CEO at Cornice, which makes mini-drives for music players and other consumer electronics devices. Founder and former CEO Kevin Magenis, meanwhile, will remain as Chairman.

The company says it can cut the cost of embedding hard drives into consumer electronics devices by taking out the packaging and some of the other extras in these components. While Cornice has landed design wins with a number of manufacturers, competition has heated up in the market. It also faces lawsuits from the high society of hard drives--companies … Read more