January 31st, 2005
By GadgetManiac
Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article entitled ” The Top 10 Trends in 10 Industries “, wherein they discuss “10 important industries and tell you the most important buzz in each”. Some of the categories seem somewhat pedantic e.g. “Accounting”, “Agriculture” and “Furniture”, however, in the area of “Consumer Electronics”, they say that some of the major trends include the following:-
- The Well-Connected Home. In the opinion of the Wall Street Journal, the most significant trend in the “Consumer Electronics” industry in the past six months has been the improved ability of Personal Computers to connect to stereos and TVs, and so bring music, video and Internet access to each room in the house. This is thanks to Wi-Fi, and networking over existing power-lines. Some specific products that they mention are MS Media Center Edition 2005, and Sony’s LocationFree TV.
- A Cell Phone Thats a TV, etc. Here, the WSJ states that the 2nd trend of note is the integration of cameras, music players, e-mail, video and (soon-to-be) TV, into the converged platform of the cell phone.
- Keeping Tabs. The 3rd most important trend is the improved ability to track people and things. They mention GPS-enabled cell phones that allow you to find your kids, and black-box equipped vehicles that track driver performance.
–In other items, they briefly discuss the booming sales of Digital TVs, increased demand for microdrives and SD cards, and the pending arrival of digital radio. CES estimates that US sales of TVs, radios and stereo products will exceed $125B in 2005.
And, interspersed amongst “Higher Education” and “Credit Cards” (…I didn’t even realize that these were considered to be ‘Industries’…), we find “Videogames”. The WSJ says that some of the trends that are reshaping the gaming industry include the following:-
- Games In Hand. The Wall Street Journal believes that the most important trend in “Videogames” has been the movement to, and the increased importance of, the portable gaming console. They cite the arrival of Sony’s PlayStation Portable as well as, the Nintendo DS.
- Phoning It In. The 2nd most important trend is the growing importance of games for cellphones. The number of people who play games on cellphones jumped 80% last year. They mention mobile-game publishers: Sorrent, Mforma and THQ Inc.
–The WSJ also makes note of the demise of PC-based games vis-a-vis game consoles . Game sales in general are expected to grow at a 20% compounded growth rate for the next 4 years. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, global videogame sales will reach $37B in 2006..
Posted in General ~ No Comments
January 31st, 2005
By GadgetManiac
Olympus Singapore announced their R1000 series of PDAs a few days ago. The units meet IP54 specifications on dust and water splash resistance, and are branded as the Tough Digital Assistant (TDA) the series of handhelds.
The main selling points are:
- Strength – withstands a 4 ft drop, with an Ingress Protection rating of 54
- Small – 180 grams and 5.2×3x0.6 inches
- Connectivity – Bluetooth, and with 802.11b WiFi on model R1018.
QVGA screen and configurable to either Win CE.Net 4.2 or Qtopia 1.7.0.
Posted in General ~ No Comments
January 31st, 2005
By GadgetManiac
Vodafone today announced two new mobile phones with integrated analog TV tuners and with motion-recognition:- the V603SH from Sharp, and the V603T from Toshiba.
The main marketing features for both phones are summarized below:-
The V603T folds backwards to provide a kind of TV viewing style:-
Posted in General ~ No Comments
January 31st, 2005
By GadgetManiac
WiMAX, that much-hyped, longer-range, Intel-centric, version of Wi-Fi is having its parade rained on, by an article in the current issue of The Economist entitled “The prospects for WiMax technology have been hugely overhyped“.
Many, if not most, people believe that WiMAX, which implements broadband wireless networks based on the IEEE 802.16 standard, will be a huge success due to its 70Mb/sec speed and its 30 mile range.
The Economist, however, seems to believe that WiMAX is mostly hyperbole. They dismiss the technology with words such as:-
In urban areas WiMax does not make sense, since it will be uneconomic compared with cable and DSL, argues Kenneth Furer, an analyst at IDC. It’s not going into New York, Los Angeles or London, he says. It is also too expensive for use in the developing world, at least for the time being, since early WiMax access devices (which must be fixed to the outside of a building) will cost around $500; other forms of wireless link, such as mobile-phone networks, will remain a cheaper way to connect up remote villages.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in General ~ 1 Comment
January 31st, 2005
By GadgetManiac
A survey by Brandchannel shows that Apple has beat out Google as the world’s top brand. The top 10 are now:
While Sony was first in the Asia-Pacific sub-category, I was surprised to see that it had only placed 11th globally.
Posted in General ~ No Comments
January 30th, 2005
By GadgetManiac
Security Analysis of a Cryptographically-Enabled RFID Device is the bland-sounding title of an article describing how to crack the security behind the Speedpass payment system, and some of those RFID-based immobilizer key fobs used by auto makers. The article caught my attention because I’m a user of both devices.
The authors describe some of the steps they followed to reverse engineer the codes. They attribute the weakness of the architecture to the use of (far-too-short) 40-bit keys, and describe some steps end users can follow to improve security slightly…e.g. wrap the transponder in aluminum foil when not in use.
The authors also have an article with videos detailing their approach, including how to read an RFID tag while its still in the victim’s pocket:
Funny … transponder sniffing, and its concomitant countermeasure of wrapping the key in tin foil, are not mentioned in Edmund’s article:- “Top 10 Ways to Steal a Car (and how to defend against them) “.
Posted in General ~ No Comments
January 30th, 2005
By GadgetManiac
Silent Communication’s ‘Talking Without Talking’ product allows mobile phone users to conduct and answer voice calls while remaining silent.
The TWT user interface displays a set of pre-customized voice recordings that can be played back in response to an incoming call, or the user can type an SMS message that will be converted to speech … all while being quiet in public events such as lectures and theatres. Such venues, however, are slowly responding to mobile phone abusers, by adopting counter-measures , such as cell phone jammers, and posting signage such as:-
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in General ~ No Comments
January 29th, 2005
By GadgetManiac
We got our hands on an Audiovox SMT5600 today. Its a very nice compact tri-band Windows Mobile 2003 Smartphone, with Bluetooth, a VGA camera, and a good battery life. The screen at 2.2 inch and 176 x 220 pixels looks sharp.
While the unit handled nicely and worked well, some of the buttons felt a little on the small side, and the 5-way navigation toggle (above the number keys) took some getting used to.
The built-in camera took good pictures:- 
Posted in General ~ No Comments
January 29th, 2005
By GadgetManiac
The Mio 269 Handheld GPS was announced a while ago, but is just now becoming available.
Th 269 is marketed mainly as “All of Western Europe, fitting neatly in your pocket “. Technologically, its a 3½ in QVGA with a 2½ GB Hard Disk Drive and a SiRFStarII high-performance GPS core running on Windows CE 4.2. With its built-in MP3 player it looks good for traipsing around Europe.
Competes with the same arena as the more-expensive auto-oriented Magellan RoadMate 700 with its 10GB hdd intended for the North American market. 
, or perhaps the hand-held Garmin Quest.
Posted in General ~ No Comments
January 29th, 2005
By GadgetManiac
The January 2005 issue of Nikkei Electronics Asia has a cover story called “SED: Rising Star in TV Market? “. The article outlines a joint venture between Canon and Toshiba to start producing Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display (SED) TV panels in August 2005. Some of the advantages of SED panels include: the displays are only a few millimeters thick, their image quality is better than that of LCD and Plasma displays, in the areas of brightness, pixel response time (1ms), contrast and color reproduction.
The JV, to be called SED Inc., will gradually ramp up production between now and 2010. Looks to be a promising technology.
Posted in General ~ 2 Comments
