gizmos vs gadgets: June 2011

Thursday, June 30, 2011

V-MODA announces V-80 on-ear headphones

Published on Coolest Gadgets | shared via feedly

V-MODA has announced its latest pair of V-80 on-ear headphones, which is part of the V-MODA for True Blood range that was developed in partnership with HBO. The V-80 not only looks great, it functions great (on paper) as well. Being a lightweight, high-fashion headphone which is poised to redefine the headphone industry, it fuses life-like 3D sound, timeless materials, ultimate durability and the unique ability to shapeshift its style.

Customization fans would definitely fall in love with the V-MODA V-80 right from the get go, as it offers a great deal of customization options – especially for True Blood fans as they can choose from a range of designs which showcase their fanatical passion for the show. There will be a couple of iconic V-MODA metal ear shields, located on either side of the ear cushions, where these can easily be switched out so that you can show off other popular images and icons from the show – ranging from the night club, Fangtasia, to the Japanese symbols featured on the Tru Blood beverage.

Heck, you can even opt for your blood type after choosing to etch your name into temporary immortality (ironic, I know, but that’s what it actually is when you laser etch your blood type onto the metal ear shields, no?). Active fans will be able to enjoy using the V-80 without worrying about its ruggedness, as said headphones were specially built to pass the MIL-STD-810G military standard guidelines.

Crafted from steel, aircraft-grade aluminum, Kevlar, microfiber suede, 24k Gold, unique textiles and an exoskeleton hard case, all of these make up the DNA of the V-MODA V-80 on-ear headphones. Right smack in the middle of it all would be the patent-pending, biggest-in-class 40mm Dual-Diaphragm High-Fidelity Drivers which are capable of delivering multi-driver sound with the efficiency of a single driver. The result? A combination of vibrant bass, a vivid organic mid-range and vivacious clarity.

Each purchase will come with an exoskeleton blood vial hard case, detachable Kevlar reinforced 1-button mic/audio cable, detachable Kevlar reinforced universal professional/home audio cable, carabineer clip, and a 2-year warranty.

Product Page

Cool Gift Idea: Digital Picture Frames, check out our reviews.
[ V-MODA announces V-80 on-ear headphones copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

ViVOtech: 30 to 70 million phones with NFC will ship this year, and we just raised another $24 million

Published on IntoMobile | shared via feedly

When it comes to enabling retailers to conduct transaction using near field communication (NFC) based technology, ViVOtech is a company that’s always being brought up by analysts and the media. According to Bloomberg, roughly 8 out of 10 NFC scanners deployed in the United States are made by ViVOtech. It shouldn’t surprise you then to hear that Google opted to work with them for their Google Wallet rollout later this year. But that announcement is now ancient news, let’s talk about what’s going on right now: Mohammad Khan, President and Founder of ViVOtech, during the 2011 GSMA Mobile Money Summit that “between 30 and 70 million NFC phones will be released into the market this year” and that 1.5 billion NFC enabled handsets will ship in the year 2015, or roughly 1 out of every 4 mobile phones sold during that year. The good news doesn’t stop there, the company has also just announced that they’ve scored $24 million worth of funding, their third round, bringing the total amount of cash thrown at them up to $94 million. Rumor has it that they’ll IPO, meaning they’ll become a publicly traded company, at some point in mid 2012.

Now color us skeptical, but we’re still waiting for NFC to ship on more devices before we get enthusiastic about the technology. Right now there’s the Nexus S and … that’s it. The Sasmung Galaxy S II will have NFC in a version to be released later this year. The same can be said about RIM, who will have an NFC BlackBerry at some point between now and Christmas. The recent leak of the budget Huawei Sonic has us excited at the possibility of a flood of NFC devices hitting the market in Q3/Q4, but until that flood actually materializes we’ll continue doubting what companies and analysts say about the future.

If you ask us, people aren’t going to take NFC seriously until Apple shoves it inside their products, and we don’t think that’s going to happen until the latter half of 2012.

ViVOtech: 30 to 70 million phones with NFC will ship this year, and we just raised another $24 million is a post from: IntoMobile

ViVOtech: 30 to 70 million phones with NFC will ship this year, and we just raised another $24 million originally appeared on IntoMobile.com on 2011-06-28T11:15:28Z. FV1gMYsz9b5j

Veebeam HD brings Internet to your TV

Published on Coolest Gadgets | shared via feedly

Smart TVs have been around for some years now, but it is safe to say that they haven’t really caught on just yet in the mass market. Well, for those who are sick and tired of watching videos as well as playing catchup on your TV programmes on a much smaller notebook display, here is the Veebeam HD to solve your woes. With this little puppy, you are able to effortlessly stream just about any content from your notebook to your home TV. You name it – live sports, streaming music, movie websites, home videos from your hard drive, the possibilities are more or less endless as long as you can view it on your computer.

Since the Veebeam HD works over the wireless spectrum, you have one less cable to worry about when it comes to keeping your home clutter-free and neat. All you need to do is plug in the USB receiver into the funky-looking £139.99 Veebeam HD unit, hook it up to your TV while plugging the separate USB antenna into your computer or notebook – it doesn’t matter whether it runs on the Mac OS X platform or Windows.

Cool Gift Idea: Digital Picture Frames, check out our reviews.
[ Veebeam HD brings Internet to your TV copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Web-based project asks "what is Toronto?"

Published on blogTO | shared via feedly

what is toronto website Flying somewhat under the radar (or at least my radar) until recently is a Toronto-based website put together by writer Susan Crean. Organized around the (ultimately unanswerable) question "what is Toronto?," it features a series of interviews, essays, poems and photographs that explore the nature of this city.

Although the site appears, based on its entries list, to have been around for a while, it's in its infancy as far as user interaction goes. And, as is the case with many websites of this kind, there's no guarantee that it'll ever take off (it helps, however, when you have Margaret Atwood tweeting about you). But it'd be nice to see something like this develop. Despite the limited interaction, the writing on the site is of the highest quality, with entries from Michael Redhill, Yvette Nolan and Crean herself. There's also a limited selection of photographs from Michel Lambeth and poems by Lillian Allen and Archer Pechawis.

Crean notes that she's open to original submissions from readers, which I suspect might just be the thing that the site needs to get a little bit of a kickstart. It'd be fascinating to see additional written and photographic materials because, at present, the project has yet to meet the scope of its founding question. But, it's an intriguing start, and certainly worth a preliminary visit.

The AGO goes mobile

Published on blogTO | shared via feedly

AGO mobile app The AGO's recently released iPhone app (designed by Tristan Interactive) offers a great way to get a little culture when you're stuck fiddling around on your phone looking for something to do. Along with the usual information regarding upcoming exhibitions, floor plans, and visitor hours, there's two features in particular that make this a nice addition to one's app collection: 1) audio guides and 2) an impressive sample of the gallery's permanent collection.

The former is of course, only really useful when you're at the gallery, but the latter is a wonderful little guilt-free time waster. Although it'd be nice to see a more extensive collection of photographs and contemporary art in general, the European and Canadian collections offer lots to look at with more than 800 pieces to browse between them (the Modern and Contemporary section, on the other hand, only features 39 pieces). I'm less taken with the puzzle game that invites users to piece together famous paintings, but that's mostly because I'd rather explore the collection.

The app's not perfect. Along with the obvious fact that it's not yet available on non-Apple platforms, it uses a lot of data, and the social media function could be improved. Although you can post content to Facebook, it's not possible to tweet images/artworks. I also had mixed success using the search function. But, hey, it's free. And why not get to know the AGO's collection a little better when you have a few minutes to kill and only your phone to entertain you?

Zinio magazine reader app for Android opimized for NVIDIA Tegra 2 devices

Published on IntoMobile | shared via feedly

With the lack of Honeycomb-optimized applications available today, it’s always nice to find one that is that you’ll actually use. This is the case with Zinio’s magazine reader app, which has worked closely with NVIDIA to bring the best experience to the app.

Zinio has quite a far reach and is available (or will be soon) on just about any mobile device you can think of, as well as desktop operating systems. The video below with show the difference in performance between the optimized and unoptimized Zinio application on the Motorola Xoom, and you can easily tell why NVIDIA and Zinio teamed up. That said, it also shows just how much Android applications need to be optimized, period.

Zinio offers up a lot of content and some of the magazines offered you may have never heard of. Unfortunately, my oddball and very specific love of horror movies didn’t yield any results in Zinio, but I guess I can’t blame them for that. Still, there is loads of content to be consumed, and the application itself is simple and easy to use. Android users who download the Zinio application right now will be given three free magazines of Popular Science, ESPN, and Bazaar. The latter of which has more ads than an Android application, which is really saying something.

Navigating through Zinio is about as simple as it can get. Once you launch the application, you be taken straight to your purchased content and can immediately jump into the Zinio store to buy more magazines.Reading magazines is a fluid experience, and pages scale beautifully. You can zoom into a page and thanks to the optimizations from NVIDIA, the task is handled with ease. You can also jump into a specific page by tapping on the screen and a small slide show of pages will be displayed at the bottom.

All in all, Zinio is likely the best magazine application for the OS, and thanks to NVIDIA, it looks the best, too. Grab it for your Android 3.0+ device for free here.

Press release after the break,

[Via: NVIDIA]

Zinio magazine reader app for Android opimized for NVIDIA Tegra 2 devices is a post from: IntoMobile

Judge and Apple don’t see eye to eye on ‘App Store’ trademark

Published on IntoMobile | shared via feedly

Apple has been hoping to trademark the term “App Store” since launching the iTunes App Store in the summer of 2008. Other companies, like Amazon and Microsoft, have said that it’s a bit silly to try to trademark such a broad term, and that Apple shouldn’t have the rights to the it. A U.S. district judge is inclined to agree with everyone else but Apple.

Judge Phyillis Hamilton has said that she may reject Apple’s request to own the rights to the term “app store” – a term that Amazon says is too broad and generic for one entity to own. Amazon, like Microsoft and Google, have their very own app stores wherein they sell mobile applications, including games, social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter and helpful utilities.

Apple decided to go after Amazon for infringing on its “App Store” trademark, but it doesn’t look like things will lean in favor of Apple this time.

TG Daily reports:

But Amazon’s argument is essentially that such a claim is like saying someone can own the exclusive rights to “electronics store” or “clothing store.”

I’m inclined to agree, and since Apple’s app store has dominated the smartphone market over the past few years, losing exclusive rights to the phrase won’t likely hurt its bottom line. I think Apple should let this one go, though we all know that it just isn’t the iPhone maker’s style.

[Via: TG Daily]

Judge and Apple don’t see eye to eye on ‘App Store’ trademark is a post from: IntoMobile