Kicking around in technology since 2002. I like to write about technology products and ideas, but at the consumer level understanding. Some tech, but not too techie.
Posting on Quora.com as well.
Research In Motion announced the 8800 BlackBerry today and there are a long list of features, but where’ the camera? Wasn’t the camera feature the top requested feature? Our only conclusion is BlackBerry devices make it into enough highly secure environments RIM got heavy pressure to keep a camera off the device to eliminate sneak peaks of company secrets from getting out.
Moving on, the BlackBerry 8800 is the slimmest yet, trackball navigation, enhanced software for out-of-the-box compatibility, built in GPS to instantly send maps via email,
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The Samsung SCH-U620 is about to ship and with streaming live, digital TV from Verizon V CAST TV service. With a 320×240 screen and a MicroSD slot to stash all those American Idol shows there is no reason to jump at a $600 Apple iPhone. On top of that, it does things the Apple iPhone does not, like read Microsoft Office docs and PDF files.
It’s very possible the end of MultiMediaCards or MMC flash memory is at our front door. Over 62% of new cell phones in ’06 used a smaller format like MicroSD and only two known phones where introduced exclusively with MMC expansion slots (Nokia N72 and BenQ M81).
“Between them, Samsung and LG introduced 65 new handsets with removable memory card slots in the last nine months, all of them using the microSD slot format,” comments Stuart Robinson, Director of the Handset Component Technology service at Strategy Analytics.
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HaCha is one clean looking PMP player and some killer resolution too. Andrew from GearFuse stubmled upon this one and from one look GFM wanted to let our readers know. Although the 1GB version seems a littls small in capacity for it’s use the 2 & 4GB should do just about anyone.
The Chinese are among the heaviest commuters in the world, and we know that commuters just love to watch themselves some movies. The Chinese-made HaCha R280S media player features a 16 million color 2.83-inch LTPS LCD display with a clear resolution of 320 x 240. The HaCha has around 4 hour playback for video, supporting WMA and AVI files, along with WAV and MP3 files for music and JPEG images.
Measuring in at 85.5 x 55 x 9.8 mm, the HaCha is expected to be available in 1 GB, 2 GB, and 4 GB models with miniSD card support on each. Weighing in at 57.1g, the R280S is proof that good things come in small packages. Simple, sleek, and useful is how we like ‘em.
It’s almost an oxymoron to provide as simple instructions as what PALM did on how to disassemble your Secure Digital card without providing even more detail on how not to cut yourself using a razor knife. Here are some screen shots from the official PALM disassemble .pdf document:
What is Rockbox?Rockbox is an open source software replacement for a larger number of MP3 players. Since Rockbox is open source this means an infinitely larger number of developers are constantly working on Rockbox…kinda like WordPress blogging software.
Rockbox aims to provide more functionality and efficiency to MP3 players.
In addition, Rockbox is a great management tool for flash memory. For example, I just found out Rockbox may be used to run microSDHC cards on microSD compatible devices. Although the Rockbox solution might not work for all devices, it’s a great place to start when looking for possible solutions.
Here are some key features of Rockbox:
Support for over 15 Sound Codecs, including OGG and FLAC
It’s possible you want to delete files off flash memory and not be able to retrieve them back. Gone is gone – no recovery software would do the trick – permanent removal.
Well, if you can live without the DOD (Department of Defense) specification, then here is some free software to perform secure deleting. This program allows you to specify a directory (and optionally all subdirectories) in which all files should be deleted. When each file is deleted the contents of the file are filled with random data prior to deleting the file.
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Finally a digital picture frame which holds some worth, the Kodak EASYSHARE digital picture frame is loaded with features. First, as any Kodak buff would expect the digital display is fine tuned to Kodak color standards then stack on some MP3 capability to sooth the sole of those fond memories.
Next, bring pictures to life with the EASYSHARE picture frame’s capability to play MPEG 1, 4, MOV and AVI files then funnel those joyous moments through the built-in stereo speakers – load these formats up via compact flash, secure digital, multimedia card, xD, memory stick or interface via USB. And if this isn’t enough
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The new W880i Ai Sony Walkman phone is slim – about as slim as we’ve seen so it begs the question, does the Q need to lose some weight?
With a generous 1.8inch QVGA display and 2mp camera, Bluetooth, 1GB Memory Stick and tri-band GSM support, not much was left out. Well, expect a decent push-button console as this looks very difficult to opperate.
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A report from Prudential Equity Group indicates Apple would be smart to shift from HHD to flash memory for the larger iPods. Although the cost-per-gigabyte would be more, the user experience and product logevity would improve. Currently only about 3.5 hours of juice are available for iPods when running video you don’t want to lose power at the climax.
Switching to flash memory reduces power consumption and extends video play to 5.5 hours, as significant improvement. With current iPod sizes at 30GB and 80GB and the largest flash memory (at a decent price for CE products) at 32GBs it’s a fairly easy decision to make. By the time all solid flash memory devices are ready to hit the market we are looking at a high-end capacity range of 120GBs.
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