I’ve been blasting music through a variety of Sonos products for years now, I have slowly been increasing the collection of Sonos devices throughout the house and especially since they are adding new music service every day it makes for a very good music distribution system. Debuting today is the next step forward for at-home or at-work networked music playing with the release of Sonos Play:3. The device, designed as an all-in-one unit, promises bigger sound quality in a compact package, perfect for any room in need of bumpin’ tunes.

The Play:3 gets its name from its three integrated speakers, three dedicated class-D digital amplifiers and three drivers. With an overall goal to crank up the quality, each unit also has a passive rear-firing bass radiator to keep the sound rich.

The beauty of Sonos is that the hardware all blends perfectly together to be controlled from your iPad, iPhone, Desktop, Sonos Controller, or Android device. They slowly keep improving the selection of hardware that you can use with the Sonos music Distribution system and all you have to do is add it easily and play your music normally. I can’t help saying how much I love their system and all the music that I can play through it. And for $300 this isn’t too bad to join the Sonos music system and then expand later on and you see necessary, the best part about the Sonos guys is that they make sure the sound of their devices is fantastic before putting it in the market.

Link: Sonos

Recently while traveling in Europe I wanted to see what options I had to get a data roaming packages and I always annoyed with overcharges. Looking around TEP Wireless seems to have the solution I needed, I wanted a Mifi type device that I could take with me wherever I am going and have internet the moment I land. They used the Huawei device for the connectivity which is standard use by telco companies.

What they are good for?

If you are traveling through multiple locations through Europe and need internet connectivity, they provide a good solution. Keep in mind that the service is based on the carrier such as Vodafone, Orange, or O2, not their own native network. If you want a smartphone when you travel you can also rent it from them but there are a few short comings which I will point out below. Overall for mobile network they did the job.

What they aren’t good for?

I was looking to get a chip for an iPad or iPhone, or a chip for BB service while roaming. They don’t provide this service which would have been very useful, they provide you a full smartphone or blackberry but not the sim card by itself, so with a Blackberry its useless, your groups and emails are synced to the device not the sim.

Overall:

For 75 GBP I had roaming internet at a very 2 to 6 MB speed which is very good, but when the cell service is bad you don’t get any connectivity. I had it working in a few remote locations which isn’t bad, and the device worked fine but after a few hours of being on it would hang so I would have to restart it every few hours but thats a problem with the device. I think its worth it if you are roaming a lot and need data connectivity, but if you are only based in the UK you have other options.

I have been looking an Android Tablets for a while now and waiting for Honeycomb to come out with them. There have been a lot of options for the past few months but nothing that really struck my eye. There were a few tablets but then I wasn’t sure, one turned out too heavy, or not powerful enough, or the design just didn’t click with me. At some point I know that I will be getting one and after seeing what Archos is coming out with I am very tempted to get their tablet, there are two versions and you can get a light one or the 250 GB tablet. $279 for the G9 80 with 16GB or $349 for the 250GB G9 101 which is very reasonable and you can get the 3G stick for an extra $49, overall its a very good tablet and lower priced with good specifications, and its supposed to be coming out at the end of September.

Specifications:

• Available in 8″ and 10.1″ models
• G9 tablets have a dual core 1.5GHz OMAP4 CPU
• Android 3.1 Honeycomb
• USB port
• HDMI out
• Either 16GB flash storage (plus microSD slot) or a 250GB hard drive
• 3G Ready

Link: Archos

Physical Media is becoming less and less important these days but I for one still have a decent DVD collection and I tend to buy Blu-Rays of movies that I love like Star Trek, Transformers, 300, Die Hard, and a few others. I have been depending on my PS3 for all my Blu-Ray needs but some times I have some other region DVDs and nothing to play it. Overall prices for Blu-Ray players have dropped drastically over the past two years, when they first launched they were expensive as hell, slow and very annoying. Now they are fully featured with lots of options and internet integration. On the higher end of the scale is the Onkyo with every sort of option you can have as well as internet integration and media playback from your network.

Announced for august at a $599 suggested retail price, the BD-SP809 is made to support everything, from CDs, DVDs and BRs, as well as most common video and audio format available on the market with DviX HD, MP3, WMA via USB of stored on your NAS! Not only the BD-SP809 is DLNA 1.5 but also support many of US best VoD Services including VUDU, Netflix, Blockbuster….
Compatible with most audio standards including DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD, the BD-SP809 is THE Blu-Ray player you must own if you are looking for one right now!

Alternative Options:

• Oppo BDP-93
• Integra DBS 50.2

Ever since the iPhone camera was invented, it’s aspired to be what it simply never quite could be: a DSLR. Sure, apps have helped your camera phone inch forward with simulated focusing and faux filters.

Faux no more. The iPhone SLR Mount gives you the real thing. It’ll set your phone photos apart from everyone else’s on Instagram in an unprecedented way (#nofilter)!

This case-adapter combo lets you mount your Canon EOS or Nikon SLR lenses to your iPhone 4 giving your phone powerful depth of field and manual focus.

Since the iPhone came to this world people have been snapping photos left and right, and some are very high quality images. And with the iPhone 4 the camera improved drastically over the iPhone 3Gs but it still lacked the professional quality of DSLRs. It seems someone else thought the same thing and came up what with an adapter that every photographer would love. There are two kinds of adapters one that works with Nikon Lenses and the other with Canon Lenses, and each one costs $250 which isn’t too much in the DSLR world but very expensive compared to the phone. But if you love photography and do have these lenses then these would be a very good addition to your kit.

Link: Photojojo

I have been to a few 3D movies this past year and I keep getting annoyed with the glasses they provide, some are better then others. It seems that someone else realized this and so Oakley made their own 3D glasses and this time around they have come out with a Transformers special edition glasses. I have always been thinking about getting my own 3D glasses but I was never sure if any 3D glasses can work with any movie theater. At this point I have been nudged just enough to get it because they made a Transformers addition, and in addition to that my hatred for the crappy lenses keep increasing. So for $150 you can have these cool 3D glasses and no need to use the germ infested ones from the theater.

Link: Oakley

Since getting the first Android phone I have loved the quick development of the OS and the variety of the phone, the updates were initially extremely annoying but they have gotten much better at it and more streamlined with more manufacturers on board with a larger variety of very cool powerful phones.

My last phone is the HTC Desire and I have banged up the phone until there isn’t much left of it. I have had my eye on the SE Xperia Arc since it was announced and especially since they would launch Android 2.3 Gingerbread with it, not like the mistake they made with the X10. The SonyEricsson Xperia line is a very beautifully designed line of phones, and the Arc caught my eye.

I did the migration between the HTC Desire to the Xperia Arc over a two week period, I wanted to get used to it and small differences between the HTC Sense customization to the Xperia customization, and I am a big fan of the HTC Sense UI so it took some time. Migrating the contact details, emails and usual settings took just 10 minutes. But I took my time migrating the programs, I wanted to see what kind of widgets it had preinstalled and then added the programs I like and the new ones I wanted. My old phone had a limited memory so I couldn’t add any more applications, I kept running out of memory so in this case it had a substantial amount of memory on the Xperia.

Some of the programs I installed:

• 3G WatchDog
• Sonos
• BBC News
• GReader
• Latitude
• FourSquare
• Shazam
• DropBox
• ESPN
• RetroClock
• RetroDate
• Flixster
• Wifi Manager

After using the phone for a few weeks I’m impressed with what SonyEricsson have done and I hope they keep making some high quality phones such as these. The battery life is decent not great, I expected it to be better. The build quality is very nice, one solid piece, and I like the buttons on the bottom but sometimes I touch the screen instead of pressing the buttons which does something else. The feel of the phone is amazing, its very very light, sometimes I forget its in my pocket. The screen is huge, 4.2 inches is a lot of real estate that you can use, and the touch interface and keyboard is very good. The camera is 8MP with a very clear flash, it is seriously amazing, better then anything I would expect from a phone. Overall I think this is a fantastic phone and I love everything about it, except the battery capacity it needs to be doble what it is now

Another very cool project from Kickstarter! For those who have trouble mounting their phones in different locations that is the perfect solution. For once someone came up with a simple solution and you can mount your phone in any location and use it for different things. I really like how it was designed to work in different angles and lets you use your phone or even a small tablet in different ways. I went for the high pledge to get a few Oonas but check it out.

Link: Kickstarter

HTC Sensation comes with a fresh serving of Android 2.3 Gingerbread, but it’s all about the HTC Sense UI version 3.0 with a touch of refinement and functionality straight from the lock screen, the power house from HTC. You can choose between a number of lock screen options such as weather updates, quick access to apps and a handful of clock widgets. A 1.2GHz Qualcomm dual-core chipset supports the nice 3D-like transitions in the menu, all carrying resemblance to the ones on the HTC Flyer tablet. The phone is the first with a contoured glass 4.3-inch display meaning that your Super LCD screen is set back slightly to avoid scratches. The resolution is qHD (540×960) with an aspect ratio of 16:9. On the back you have an 8MP camera with dual-LED flash with “instant capture,” meaning little to no lag between pictures. The camera is also capable of recording video at 30fps in full HD (1080p) resolution.

HTC ChaCha is one the coolest Qwerty phones for Android yet. Its very smooth looking, I like the design of it, its more business like and it still has the functionality of a touch screen. It is an Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread) running smartphone with Facebook button for instant access to the social network. It has QWERTY keyboard, 2.6″ touchscreen, 5MP rear camera, 0.3MP front camera, Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth. The perfect on the go phone, quick connectivity and light use.