ZOMM, recognized today by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group and unveiled at CES 2010, capturing a 2010 Best of Innovations Award, is available for pre-order at zomm.com and will be available this summer for $79.95.
If you are unfamiliar with the little key chain size device, I’ll give you a rundown. ZOMM is the world’s first wireless leash for mobile phones. Armed with Bluetooth technology ZOMM will:
notify you if the ZOMM device and your cell phone are too far apart
alarm you to an incoming call
serve as as speaker phone allowing users to answer calls directly from the ZOMM device
During CES 2010 Tom Merrit and Rafe Needleman of CNET sat down with Karlheinz Brandenburg, co-inventor of MP3. Brandenburg is a professor at the Institute for Media Technology at Technical University of Ilmenau and also serves as director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT in Ilmenau.
MP3 is short for MPEG- 1 Layer 3 and is enjoyed by millions of people daily. Audiophiles often discredit MP3 for compressing and removing audio data found in the original recording.
Interview Discussion: (video is roughly 17 min.)
Origins of MP3 (what was it trying to solve, how was it named, file extension?)
Reasons for success of MP3
Problems with MP3 (pre echo issue with percussive material)
MP3 vs. AAC (“AAC is what MP3 should have been from the beginning”)
How MP3 works (Psychoacoustics, masking, quantization noise)
Audiophiles and MP3s
Best encoding bitrate
Blind testing
Future of MP3… MP3 Surround, MP3 metadata databases
Consumer level 3D televisions and Blu-ray 3D made big waves at CES 2010 back in January and now less than a month later Panasonic has announced that Panasonic Hollywood Laboratory has recently equipped the Advanced Authoring Center with the latest 3D technologies.
The newly upgraded facilities is capable of making 3D Blu-ray movies available this Spring. Read more in the press release after the break. [click to continue…]
This was one of the toys that I really wanted to see at CES 2010. Fortunately, I made it back to the You Rock Guitar booth and got to see the guitar close up. I’ll get right to the point – the You Rock Guitar is definitely more guitar than it is video game controller.
Sure, you can hook it up to your Xbox and play some Rock Band with it; however, you’ll still find it lacking as an in-game guitar. Basically, you just need to finger the right fret for the game and pick the string and you’ll get your note score in Rock Band. Is it an improvement over the button mashing fest? Yes. Have we arrived for music video games? Not quite. [click to continue…]
Lenovo has knocked out the worlds first hybrid notebook the IdeaPad U1 at CES 2010. IdeaPad U1 embodies two totally separate stand alone devices rolled into one.
The IdeaPad U1 is really more of a netbook size with a screen size at 11.6 inches, but weighs in at a hefty 3.8lbs. The system boasts an HD LED screen and runs Windows 7. The two separate devices are said to function seamlessly when connected together and when disjointed processes are uninterrupted.
Release the1.6 pound multitouch screen from the top cover panel and the IdeaPad U1 becomes a handheld slate tablet device with a powerful ARM processor, running Lenovo’s customized Skylight operating system and 3G wireless capabilites.
This new gem will set you back about $1,000 on June 1, 2010 when it becomes available. More in the press release after the break. [click to continue…]
Vivitar unveiled several new consumer-grade video cameras at CES 2010 yesterday. Two of the headline cameras are the waterproof DVR 850 (shown above) and the DVR 980, which features 1080p video capture and a 10x optical zoom. The DVR 850 will set you back $179, while the DVR 980 runs $399.
Vivitar announced several other video cameras with a range of specifications and color options available. More details about the new Vivitar video cameras can be found in the press release below. [click to continue…]
HD Radio is making a big splash at CES 2010 in the automotive arena. The Ford 2011 Taurus SHO, Volkswagen 2010 MY Golf TDI, and 2010 Scion xB all are showcasing HD Radio. Purportedly, in Calendar Year 2010, OEM commitments to HD Radio Technology will total 15 automotive brands across more than 80 vehicle types, 36 of which will include HD Radio Technology standard:
Audi
BMW
Ford
Hyundai
Jaguar
Kia
Land Rover
Lincoln
Mercedes Benz
Mercury
MINI US
Rolls Royce
Scion
Volkswagen
Volvo
Automotive Aftermarket
Pioneer DEH 5200HD
Pioneer DEH 7200HD
JVC KD-HDR40
JVC KD-HDR60
JVC KD-NT3HDT – First integrated in-dash NAV w/ Real Time Traffic
The Nexus One is one of the hottest items at CES 2010. The Nexus One booth was packed in tight and required swift moves and jockeying for position just to get my hands on one for a few minutes.
After throwing a couple of elbows, I spent several minutes playing with Google’s new toy. The first takeaway for me was how fast the phone was. Moving from app to app was a speedy and smooth transition. From what little you can learn about a phone in 10 minutes or so of use, I’m pretty impressed.
The video capture and still camera capability is pretty cool. While it doesn’t really rival what you can do with a real camera, it does its job well and, based on my first impressions, I like the interface better than my iPhone 3G.
After the jump, you’ll find a quick video that I shot with one of the display samples, followed by a photo from the same. I emailed these to myself from the show floor. The email process was noticeably quicker than what I get out of my iPhone. [click to continue…]
Popbox is a setup box that plays just about any kind of media you can throw at it. The box is about the size of a router and comes with a variety of built-in “Pop Apps,” including Netflix 2.0, Photobucket, Shoutcast, Revision3, Weatherbug, Twitter, Channels.com, Fun Spot Games and others. Additionally, Popbox has a full featured SDK available to developers for full screen applications or applets.
During my brief interaction with Popbox at a CES press preview show, the navigation seemed pretty smooth and intuitive.
The Popbox carries an initial retail price of $129 and should be available in March 2010.
Turtle Beach just announced a couple of new USB sound cards for Mac and PC. The new Amigo II USB card gives you a stereo output and mic input. The Micro II USB card gives you a stereo line out and an optical audio out, which allows you to add 5.1 surround or DTS surround on the most basic of computers.
The IdeaPad U1 is really more of a netbook size with a screen size at 11.6 inches, but weighs in at a hefty 3.8lbs. The system boasts an HD LED screen and runs Windows 7. The two separate devices are said to function seamlessly when connected together and when disjointed processes are uninterrupted.
