Archive for gadgets
March 6, 2010 at 10:53 pm · Filed under gadgets, Ramblings
Got the beta of Swype a couple of days ago for my G1 and I didn’t have huge hopes for it. Figured I would give it a try and then uninstall it.
I was pleasantly surprised, it’s really good! It’s fast, it’s easy to use. It’s the first time I’ve felt like maybe I could get used to typing on a touch screen keyboard and I’ve had my G1 for almost 1.5 years already.
I don’t think you can beat the tactile feel of a blackberry keyboard but Swype really brought up my typing speed on the G1 to a whole new level. It’s an amazing product and it actually makes me not hesitate to type out long responses on my phone.
August 28, 2006 at 11:37 pm · Filed under gadgets, Ramblings
I’m in the market for a digital audio player. I have an iPod nano already but the capacity for me has been an issue. When I first got it, I thought 4 gigs was plenty, I’ll just put music on it that I’m into at the time and change it when my mood changes. I didn’t realize back then that my music listening mood was so fickle. I want to listen to a big variety throughout the day and it changes from hour to hour. Sometimes I need music to concentrate to, sometimes I need music to give me an energy boost, sometimes I just want to listen to something I haven’t heard in a long time but it just popped up in my head for no reason.
So iPod is an obvious first choice for an mp3 player, but then I hear rumours about the Zune and it has peaked my interest.
Now, I wouldn’t normally think much of Microsoft attempt to take on the iPod but I think this is going to be different and mainly because they have Jay Allard supposedly running the Zune show.
He’s the same guy who’s brought us the Xbox and Xbox 360. Coming from someone who isn’t that big a gamer, I’m damn impressed with the Xbox 360.
I figure if the guy can take on Sony and I think bring them down(We’ll see how the PS3 actually does when it comes out), he’ll be able to take on Apple and their iPod. Also, the iPod hasn’t really seen any real innovation since the original product. Yeah it’s gotten smaller, a color/video screen, bigger capacity, but those were pretty predictable changes. There really hasn’t been anything ground breaking since it’s lauch.
From what I’ve been reading about the Zune, it sounds like it’ll cover most of what I want in a MP3 player, we’ll just have to see how they implement it. Here’s my dream list.
It needs to have at least 20-30G, video that supports divx/xvid codecs, good battery life, an FM tuner because sometimes I like listening to the radio, wifi support so that I can transfer new songs wirelessly or listen to an internet radio station, maybe an FM transmitter built in so that I don’t need a separate add on to stream music to my car.
The wifi capability of it has so much potential for the product. Imagine having it automatically download new podcasts every day at a set time without you turning on your computer or having to doing anything. What if it had widgets on there you could program, you could have it fetch RSS feeds that you could read later, you could have it download the weather, fetch your calendar for the day. It would almost be like a scaled down PDA. You could set up friends list and preview what your friends are listening to. The possibilities are endless with this product beyond it just being an audio/video player.
Hello Microsoft, are you listening?
August 27, 2006 at 4:15 pm · Filed under gadgets, Ramblings
I’ve posted about alarm clocks before and how they never break and how cheap I am and I won’t go out and spend money on something because mine works just fine.
However, that is before I heard about the Chumby.
It has a screen on it, it’s hackable, wifi enabled, I can control it from my computer!
It sounds like a computer geeks dream alarm clock. Like if you took a bunch of geeks and told them to design an alarm clock, this is what you get. Which incidentally is exactly how the Chumby came about.
Here are a couple more links about Chumby.
August 22, 2006 at 8:45 pm · Filed under gadgets, Ramblings
The almost 2 year old Sony Ericsson T637 I have is slowing dying. My reception is getting worse and worse which might be Cingular’s fault. It seems like I have to recharge the battery on a daily basis now. My contract is up sometime in October so I’ve started looking at phones.
The Blackberry Pearl which is supposed to be embargoed until Sep. 18th is one option.
The official specs aren’t out yet but it looks like it’ll do what I want. Something with a decent screen that I can check my email, surf the web, be on IM. It’s also skinny, skinny in the width sense. I don’t mind a phone that’s a little bit think depth wise but I’m not a fan of the older Blackberry’s that are wide.
There are also a few interesting HTC phones coming out in the next couple of months as well. I’ll cover those in a separate post.
