Seems that so many companies are coming up with these crazy cases for the iPhone since the introduction of the new iPhones 3G/3Gs. One is this metal case with Fish eye lenses which I think is pretty cool. Metal and leather case with interchangeable lenses, $200 for the case and $15-$55 for each lens but this case does have an impact on your reception levels.
Link: Gizmodo
Then there are these cases which make the iPhone look like it came from a Steampunk project. Cases are available in aluminum, bronze and titanium with the lesser meetals costing $95 and the high end titanium going it for $300.
Link: Gizmodo
When I see something from B&O I’m usually expecting a ridiculous price tag and this time around I wasn’t wrong. For a $112’000 you can be the owner fo the new BeoVision 4.
A 103 inch screening weighing in at 580 pounds and a base of 600 pounds with a screen that can lower itself to the floor to cover with the center with dual gas shocks. Its nothing short of insane what B&O have done with this system, they do have nice screens and equipment but the price just isn’t right, if you opt to mount your screen on the wall that alone reduces the price by $20’000. One thing B&O always gets right they tend to build some quality products and they do look good.The BeoVision 4 is built to order with a waiting period of four months, I’m assuming a structural engineer has to look if your room can take the weight of the equipment.
Link: Luxist
I’m always on the look out for high quality A/V equipment and this time around the DVDO Edge is one amazing product. From all the reviews and details of this video processing unit, and the best part is that it takes a load of your A/V reciever. The amount of connections this machine has is ridiculous, for something so thin it packs a punch.
- 6 HDMI 1.3 A/V Inputs (5 Rear/1 Front)
- 4 Analog Video Inputs (2 Component/1 S-Video/1 Composite Video)
- 5 Seperate Audio Inputs (3 Optical/1 Coaxial/1 Stereo Analog)
- 2 HDMI 1.3 Outputs (1 A/V to be connected to HDTV or A/V Reciever, and 1 Audio HDMI to be connected to receiver)
I like the output solution of the DVDO Edge meaning that the reciever literally just receives the audio while all the video connections are maintained with the DVDO Edge and it outputs your selection to the screen, and directs the audio to the A/V Reciever. The latest reviews say that most of the kinks have been ironed out with the final firmware update, but if you are looking for high quality video then this is your best bet.
Link: Amazon
Link: AnchorBayTech
Price: $680
The HTC Hero has tickled my fancy, I’m not really a fan of HTC but I’m curious to try it out, especially with this being the third iteration with a lot cleaned up.
They have worked on integrating, Twitter, Facebook, and Flicker seamlessly into the one. The only one that really interests me is Flickr but a lot of people would enjoy the other application. And this time around they have Adobe Flash support for the phone. And now that the Android Market has had time to develop it won’t be an issue to find some applications that will suit my needs.
- 3.2-inch HVGA touchscreen
- 5-megapixel cam with autofocus
- GPS
- 3.5-mm headphone jack
- 512MB of onboard memory with microSD expansion
- Flash support
Link: Coolhunting
Now that they have all launched Blackberry its interesting to compare all the services. I will be doing that at a later point but Viva packages seems interesting, they went for the idea of more expensive packages, but they are quite interesting.
- BB 15 KD – 200MB Local – Pay as you go for International
- BB 25 KD – 1 GB Local – 20 MB International
- BB 44 KD – Unlimited Local – Unlimited International
One other note you can switch between these plans at any point in time without any contractual problems, if you traveling you can take BB 44 and if you are just in Kuwait you can switch it back to BB 25.
I have to say that they give you a better bang for your buck for the packages, unlike Zain. I think Zain might lose a few customers if they don’t offer more value. I for one only use my BB for data and connectivity usages, not really calling people from this phone so switching to Viva does seem very appealing. The idea of having unlimited data is unprecedented for international use and never has been offered before, and that looks very appealing.
Link: Viva
Kingston are always making those jumps in USB Storage. Now they have 128 GB, 64 GB, and 32 GB with the smaller ones costing $213 and $120 respectivaely. I’m assuming the cost of a 128 GB stick is a little more then a netbook laptop.
Link: Gizmodo
I’m always interested in new hardware, what I have always found interesting is SSD drives and what they are doing with them. Fusion io came with the idea of a PCI Express SSD with 256 GBs and priced at $4000+ but this time around they teamed up with Fatal1y to come up with “budget” priced PCI Express SSD. You still can’t boot from this PCI Express card but the read and write speeds are ridiculous, there are some firmware updates which my add some new features but thats at a later stage.
Link: Gizmodo
I have to ISP coming in and I have two different technical setups for them, but both of them are the same idea. An ADSL modem which is a attached to a router which handles the network. For past couple of weeks my internet from Qnet has been acting up, I have done pretty much every possible conceivable solution to try and remedy this but to no avail. I have decided to do some testing with my modem, I have feeling that its life has come to an end after 6 years of good service, its a Thompson ADSL Modem but I can’t really do any configuration on it when I try to access it, so I wanted to replace it. Called my Qnet and all they offer is the Linksys ADSL which was crap from Kems, I asked for a Cisco modem but they said that it is only for corporate customers and they don’t have that in stock.
I’m judging these modems by a few of the points listed below, the main point is stability and no issues then I go on to other testing.
Key Points for successful modem:
- Faster Connection, with the newer modems surfing is substantially faster due to the better architecture, a Cisco modem is much more stable and faster the a Linksys modem and I have tried that first hand
- FTP and VPN access without any issues
- Extra features such a Port Forwarding, VPN configurable, Black or White Listing IPs & MAC addresses, DynDNS, and Wireless options
I have taken the options into my own hands, and after reading up online I decided to do some testing on affordable regular ADSL modems to post it up later. All the below have decent reviews and had their own problems and what they were good at, I’m going to test it to my preferences and see what I come up with as a winner.
- D-Link ADSL Modem/Router/Wireless
- D-Link ADSL Modem/Router
- Actiontech ADSL Modem/Router/Wireless
Wicked Lasers have been making the coolest looking lasers I have seen period, they look like those used by snipers and these could probably be used by snipers the beam can reach so far. They titled it as “The worlds most powerful hand held laser”, and I can believe it after looking at the laser. The Spyder II GX Laser for $1,700 is a military-grade hand held laser that’s sort of a like a laser pointer, only much, much awesomer. Airtight and water resistant, I don’t know if its water proof I’m curious of its capabilities under water but that would be an expensive test. Its also the first hand held laser to have some sort of cooling system so you won’t burn your hand after shining it for two minutes. If your goal is to cause chaos in the world then this is for you, if you are asking about the price then don’t even bother.
Link: WickedLasers
I never thought that there would be a curved screen such as this. A 43 inch display in a curved widescreen format, its resolution is around 2880×900 double WXGA, a 10’000:1 Contrast ratio, single link DVI-D and HDMI inputs, on screen display, and probably the coolest screen to hit the market. You can have it by July with a very nice price tag of $8,000. The one part which seems to be missing in the description is that there is 9 inch back end resembling the good old CRT monitors from back in the day. Still for the techi who can afford this its one interesting piece of equipment, makes working on panoramic photos and editing IMAX movies easy as pie.
Link: UnCrate