The Gadgets Page

I have been looking for a simple dock to charge and sync my iPhone ever since my old dock stopped working. The Pottery Barn Simple Dock looks like it could replace my iLive ghetto blaster and do just that.

I have some questions about it before I’m willing to plunk down the eighty bucks, though:

• Does it work with the iPhone 3G? The problem with buying electronics accessories from a furniture store is that they don’t give me any specifics. I even looked it up on their website (Simple Dock | Pottery Barn) and their product info tab was woefully incomplete. Since the iPhone 3G has a different charging system than the old iPods and old iPhone, a lot of the docks don’t work anymore. THAT’S what happened to my old charging dock. I’m not willing to spend $79 without some guarantee that it will WORK.

• Does it sync? Again, the product info is slim on this and I can’t even tell if this dock has a USB cable that will allow me to connect it to my computer to sync. If it doesn’t, there’s no point in me buying it. I don’t want to just charge my iPhone. I need to sync it as well. Did the designers at Pottery Barn think of that? Who can tell. It’s obvious that the WEB designers on their site didn’t think to include that information.

The cool thing about this little dock is that it can play music from the iPhone AND charge. That would make it a tasteful addition to your bedroom by your bed, near your computer or even in the living room. Even though it’s highly unlikely that the speakers are audiophile quality, they are good enough for me to listen to tunes before I go to sleep or while I type away at my computer. Without the essential technical information, however, I’m not willing to pay eighty dollars to find out whether they will work with my iPhone or not.

Via: Pottery Barn’s New Simple Dock Is Just That | iPod dock, pottery barn, shopping | geeksugar - Technology, Gadgets, & How Tos.

The geek girl inside of me is supremely happy to learn that YouTube is now showing full episodes of certain old television shows like Star Trek, MacGyver and the original Beverly Hills 90210.

I enjoyed a lovely 50 minutes with Charlie X today:

• Star Trek: The Original Series - Charlie X

There are advertising commercial breaks. I would LOVE to have cool 1960’s commercials for companies that still exist. Couldn’t Crest have dug up their old commercials for these episodes of Star Trek? They would have been FAR more noticeable than the boring Crest mouthwash commercials that are showing now.

Kudos to CBS for bringing us full episodes to YouTube!

Via: YouTube Gets Full Episodes of Geeky Classics! | News, online tv, Star Trek | geeksugar - Technology, Gadgets, & How Tos.

If you have been worrying about all those batteries you use every year on your remote control, here is an eco-friendly option for you, the wind-up remote control:

• Wind-Up Remote Control at Gizoo

Product Specifications

• 30 revolutions gives a full charge
• Can control up to 6 different devices
• Product Dimensions: (H) 22cm x (L) 5cm x (D) 3.5cm

My biggest problem with this product is that I don’t use that many batteries on my remote control. In fact, I only change them once every few years. I’m not going to hand crank a remote control just to save myself the bother of changing batteries. Honestly, the remote control isn’t a big power hog, so I’m not going to worry about it.

As one reader said:

Had one for over a year. A full windup is right. Fully wound for 30 turns lasts approx 1 hour if you’re lucky and don’t channel hop or change volume. I’ve gone back to eco-unfriendly battery operated controllers because at least they work. Nice idea but so poorly implemented.
Adrian, UK

Via: Pocket-Lint: The remote control goes Eco

Have you noticed those insanely inexpensive HDTVs for sale at Costco? They are made by a company called VIZIO and they are currently being sued by Sony, Mitsubishi and Samsung over licensing issues.

• Consumer Electronics Daily News: Rival Manufacturers Sue VIZIO Over MPEG-2 Patent Licensing

“VIZIO’s suppliers have licenses for the MPEG-2 patents, and VIZIO believes that these licenses extend to VIZIO’s products,” the company said in a statement today. “VIZIO has notified its suppliers of the lawsuit and expects full support and cooperation by them in the defense of the lawsuit…VIZIO is working to resolve this matter with the plaintiffs and its suppliers, and it intends to defend its legal rights with vigor.”

This appears to be a classic case of “If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Sue ‘Em.” Sony, Mitsubishi and Samsung have been gouging the buying public on HD televisions for the last couple of years and BRAGGING about their profits. VIZIO comes along and sells similar televisions for a full grand cheaper and the big companies don’t like them horning in on their profit margins.

If you have been sitting on the fence about buying a VIZIO television, hop to it now before Sony sues them out of existence.

I just noticed that my iLive Boombox is REALLY cheap right now at Amazon and it reminded me that I never wrote a review for it. I have owned this boombox for over a year now. I bought it to work with my 1st generation Nano:

I moved on to my 2nd generation Nano:

I have also used it with Mike’s 80GB iPod Video, a 160GB iPod (pictured here).

It works with my iPhone, even though it flashes the “not compatible” warning. You can just choose “no” and use it just like you normally would.

It is a VERY versatile little guy!

If you want to carry it around on your shoulder, bothering people on the bus with it, you’ll need a ton of batteries: eight C batteries, to be exact.

But if you usually use it at your desk or by your bed, then you can just keep the battery compartment empty. When you take it with you on a trip, you can conveniently pack the electrical cord in the battery compartment.

I have used this boombox for over a year now and I’m very happy with it. I thought I was getting it for a great deal back then, but now it’s amazingly cheap at Amazon:

• iLive iPod Docking System/Boombox in Black at Amazon.com

For years, I searched for the perfect little ghetto blaster to use with my iPod. I found some speakers that sounded good, but were inconvenient to use:

• Gadgets Page » Review: X-Mini Capsule Speaker

• Gadgets Page » Review: Logitech mm28 Portable Speakers

I found a compact and easy to use set, but the speakers were less than perfect and it only worked with my first generation iPod Nano:

• Gadgets Page » Xtreme Mac Microblast: The iPod Ghetto Blaster For REAL People

I lamented about the problem:

• Gadgets Page » IPod Boomboxes: They Don’t Freakin’ Get It

When I finally found a boombox that sounded good, was inexpensive AND was easy to use, I was so happy that I used it for a year and totally forgot to write a review about it. So, if you are looking for a good ghetto blaster, you can’t do better than the iLive.

The Sony Rolly was surrounded with so many people that it was impossible for us to get close enough to it. We could see on the LCD screen above it that it was some sort of rolling, dancing thing with lights. We heard from the people nearby that it as an MP3 player. We brushed it off as silly and moved on to other things.

Jen Cody was able to get past the crowds and interview a Sony employee about the Rolly. Here is her interview:

It was released in Japan last September, but hasn’t come here yet. Here are the features:

• 2 GB MP3 player
• Two speakers
• Ability to move to the beat of the music
• Ability to be programmed to “dance” to specific songs
• Ability to upload and download programmed “dances” to the Sony social networking site

I really don’t think Sony knows what they are doing in the portable music player world. Look at their ad for the Sony Rolly.

It just makes me tilt my head and squint my eyes. Do they really think this is cool?

This is another video showing the features of the Rolly:

The fact that Sony’s booth is ALWAYS super crowded with people didn’t indicate that the Rolly was anything that might appeal to people. Most of the people around the booth were too confused to even tell us what it was.

In the end, Sony loses another round in the battle of the MP3s.

Seventeen years before Thomas Edison, Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville recorded the first human voice. Unfortunately, he had no way to play it back.

• BBC NEWS | Technology | Oldest recorded voices sing again

The device etched representations of sound waves into paper covered in soot from a burning oil lamp.

Lines were scratched into the soot by a needle moved by a diaphragm that responded to sound. The recordings were never intended to be played.

It was retrieved from Paris by Mr Giovanni, working with First Sounds, a group of audio historians, recording engineers and sound archivists who aim to make mankind’s earliest sound recordings available to all.

To retrieve the sounds scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California made very high-resolution digital scans of the paper and used a “virtual stylus” to read the scrawls.

However, because the phonautograph recordings were made using a hand-cranked device, the speed varied throughout, changing the pitch.

All of this brings to mind patent and copyright. Edison held the patent for audio recordings, yet Edouard-Leon Scott beat him to the process by seventeen years. Since Scott was unable to reproduce the sound and only made a visual representation of it, I can understand why Edison’s machine was better, but in today’s environment of patent law, I could envision Scott suing Edison over this.

Via: Shiny Shiny: Oldest recorded human voice finally played back; Radio 4 newsreader amused

I love Skull Candy’s earbuds and headphones, so when I saw their booth at CES this year, I was so excited. Their booth didn’t disappoint. There were plenty of interesting headphones and backpacks in a wide variety of colors. Their booth had many headphones on the rack so you could see how they feel on your head.

They were also showcasing their Skullcandy FMJ headsets for the iPhone and the Blackberry Curve. In January, they weren’t available yet and the staff at the booth only had one to show us, but they let us test it with our iPhone. Here are the photos that we got.

They come in a round case like the Shure headsets.

The plug fits into the iPhone and the silver color matches the frame perfectly.

Here is the microphone for the FMJ.

The only problem I had with the FMJ is the cord is made of a stiff plastic that holds its shape (as you can see in the photo). If you use your headset all the time, then the cord will hang straight down, but if you store your headset most of the time and use it every once and a while, then it will be a curly mess hanging out of your ear.

Other than that, they are perfect. Skullcandy is known for their incredible sound quality (nearly as good as Shure for half the price), so you can safely plunk down the eighty dollars for the FMJ and know that you’re getting a good headset. Fortunately, they are finally available and you can purchase them now (which wasn’t the case when I saw them in January).

It’s always nice to see a company that was doing well before continue in the same vein and create even more great products.

I love this comic from Ballard Street:

• Ballard Street - 12-17-07

The couple looks so happy sharing their earbuds. The first time I ever saw anyone share earbuds, Mike and I were in Vegas. A busload of teenage girls were waiting for their bus while we waited in the taxi line. They were all quite noisy and excitable, as only teenage girls can be. One girl had a lime green iPod Mini. I had been coveting that very model of iPod. I watched as she offered an earbud to another girl. The other girl came in close and the two of them danced to the music.

When I was a teenager, I never had a girlfriend that I would have shared an earbud with. I had plenty of guy friends that I would have shared with, but never a female friend that close. I had girlfriends, but never one THAT close.

I felt the jealousy wash over me and I wanted an iPod more than ever.

Our gadgets change us. Our gadgets motivate us. Our gadgets define us, no matter how much we want to deny it.

The X-Mini capsule speaker is the solution for people who want volume from a laptop portable audio device that either doesn’t have a speaker or has tiny speakers that aren’t up to the job of delivering a wide dynamic response at reasonable listening volume.

To be honest, I didn’t expect to be impressed by this speaker—I thought it would be too small to deliver sound any better than the built-in speakers on a laptop. But I was pretty astonished by the volume, the dynamic, and the vibrant sound that was not at all brassy. The speaker has quite a wide dynamic, especially considering its size. I tested it with my Sony Vaio UX390 (which has a crappy little speaker only appropriate for Windows “bongs”) and it solved the sound problem perfectly, making the little Sony useful for movie watching.

The speaker is powered by USB but takes audio over a normal headphone jack, so you don’t have to carry a power adapter for it or install drivers to use it.

The rechargeable internal battery provides more than 7 hours of playback time when using it with iPods or portable CD players that don’t have a USB port. The device recharges whenever it is connected to a USB port, and can be charged from a USB wall adapter (like the one that comes with iPods) or USB cigarette lighter adapter (like the one that comes with iPod car kits).

The Sound is quite loud—it will definitely fill a small room—and the dynamic response is fairly good. Bass response is excellent considering the size of the device. Bass response is quite warm and not at all “brassy” like most small speakers. Distortion is apparent in the top 10% of the volume range, but that’s likely louder that you’d want anyway.

The speaker is tiny and will fit in any laptop bag with no problem—it actually takes less room than most headphones. It opens easily to expand its bass reverberation chamber, which is the secret to the bass response. You can clearly hear the difference in the warmth and volume of the sound when the speaker is opened versus closed.

The only downside is that it is a single speaker, so of course it is monaural and won’t reproduce stereo sound. This makes it ideal as a supplemental bass speaker for a laptop or portable DVD player if your laptop will play through both the speakers and headphone jack at the same time (many will not however). You can get stereo sound by using two of these speakers and a “stereo to dual monaural adapter” such as Radio-Shack catalog #: 274-375 (which is actually sold as a microphone combiner but will do the job). Don’t confuse this with a headphone jack Y splitter, which provides the same stereo signal to both ports.

The only way this device could be better would be if it had a mono jack for plugging a second X-Mini speaker into it for stereo sound (and that innovation would encourage owners to buy a second one—hint hint).