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It’s anyone’s guess as to what features, functions, form factor and technologies a future 5th Generation (5G) cell phone might have, and so the following predictions might be supercilious or maybe not …

• High-end smartphones in 2025 will have 16 Terabytes of memory and operate at 70 Teraflops (see Moore’s Law).
• They will be the size of a sugar cube or less, and be built into a ring or perhaps a tooth.
• They will have multi-multi terabyte flash or hard drives.
• These devices will come pre-loaded with all the worlds’ movies, TV shows, or videogames.

…We’re thinking it’s going to be tough playing all those vidgames from your tooth.

Ottawa and 20 year future of mobile telecoms - by Tomi Ahonen June 14, 2005

Posted in Phones ~ 1 Comment

Motorola may be about to announce 2 new RAZR-derived products, the Scalpel, and a slider version of the V3. The Scalpel is only about half as thick as the RAZR V3 and may sell for as little as $40 when it is released next year. At that size and price point, the Scalpel should move well, espcecially in it’s target market of Asia, Africa and the Mid East. Zander goes for Nokia’s gut - article in ChicagoBusiness July 05, 2005

Posted in General ~ 2 Comments

There may be a slider version of the Moto Razr V3 in the offing, as evidenced by these images garnered from some Chinese website. Or they may simply be proof of someone’s skills with Photoshop.

Posted in Phones ~ 8 Comments

Sharp has demonstrated and intends to manufacture a monitor that shows two different images at the same time. The images come into view as one shifts one’s viewing angle. …Cool…now I will be able to fool passers-by into thinking that I’m doing actual work. Sharp Dual-View LCD Monitor News Release - 2005-7-14

Posted in TVs & Monitors ~ No Comments

The unreleased Creative Vision portable media player has drawn some rave reviews from the folks at Trusted Reviews… They liked the 3.7 inch VGA display, the 30GB hdd, the good battery life, the AVI, MPEG1/2/4, WMV, Jpeg and Xvid support, as well as a whole bunch of other features… More Creative Vision Details Emerge - Trusted Reviews 11 Jul 2005

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The Viliv P1 is a new portable media player from Yukyung Technologies. It’s got some very good specs and stylistically, is a kind of blend between the Sony PSP and the Apple iPod. The Viliv P1 was previously called the Concept A1. The P1 measures 161 x 74 x 18 mm, weighs 250g and has a 20GB hdd. The device plays MP3, WMA, OGG, AC3 and AAC format audio files. Video-wise, it supports DivX, Xvid, MPEG 1/2/4, SWF, ASF and WMV formats. Images can be in any of TXT, JPEG, BMP and PNG formats. The P1 has a four inch screen with a resolution of 480 x 272 pixels and a color depth of 24 bits. PMPEvent Viliv P1 website

Posted in General ~ 1 Comment

Although the year’s only half over, CNet has already declared some gadget winners. There are six contenders for the best gadget for the first half of the year. Although the Slingbox is listed as 1 of those contenders, the reviewer seems to be leaning towards the Shure E4c earphones as the best gadget of the first 6 months of 2005 … I’m basing that on his choice of words : “They’re pure audio nirvana”. As for the second half of the year, while the reviewer likes the Motorola RazrBerry, I think he’s leaning towards the Samsung SCH-i730 cell phone. Reasons being the QWERTY keyboard, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and support for the high-speed EV-DO protocol. Best of 2005: rewind and fast-forward – by David Carnoy CNet, July 6, 2005

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The July 2005 issue of PCWorld identifies 30 useful but little-known sites & services that are available on the Internet. I suspect that those 30 things are more widely known than they think, but they’re interesting nevertheless. Some of those thirty include the following :

• mail2web provides a web-based interface to any POP3 or IMAP4 based email system allowing you to “pick up your email from any computer, anywhere in the world”. [Good for them ... they're one of our sponsors.]
• The Wayback Machine, aka the Internet Archive, provides access to archived copies of many websites, with some dating back to 1996. There are even a couple of entries showing how Gadgetmaniac looked last year.
• PubSub watches 12 million weblogs, 50,000 newsgroups & all SEC filings for any new matches to your (subscribed) search item. It then notifies you by email when new info is created.
• ManiaTV provides film clips, music videos and chat to the 20-something demographic.
• Wirefly provides comparative info on cell phone carriers, products and plans.
• Tech Support Guy has forums that discuss computer hardware & software trouble – search them or post a question about your particular problem.

30 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do on the Internet - PC World July 2005

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Systm.org is a new net-only technology show put together by some refugees from TechTV. It’s pretty much the only episodic tech-friendly geek-oriented thing out there. The shows are ten to fifteen minutes in length, and you’re going to need BitTorrent in order to download them from the Systm website. There have only been 2 episodes so far. The first, on May 23, dealt with how to build an auto-switching warspying box, and second one focussed on MythTV, the free and open source PVR alternative. Systm looks promising — it helps if you don’t dislike soldering irons.

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JVC has just intro’d their HP-DX1000 headphones. The main merit of these new stereo headphones seems to be the more natural sound produced by virtue of enclosing the speakers in wood. The use of wood creates a “wide sound field impression” … or so they claim. The tech specs aren’t too bad though, at a sensitivity of 102 db and a frequency response of 4-30,000 KHz. But both the weight (380 grams = 13.4 oz), and the price (105,000 Yen = $934, plus an extra $230 for the matching stand) seem a bit high. Stereo headphone “HP-DX1000″ – JVC announcement 2005 July 7th

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