Gadget Access

Posted Apr 8th 2008 4:17PM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Misc. gadgets
If you have a hankering for making pretty pretty pictures with your music, Yamaha’s finally going to fill that urge with a US launch of its Tenori-on music maker. The handheld device is sort of a Lite Brite for music, with 256 push-button LEDs for sequencing music and adjusting tones. The concept was first unveiled way back in 2005, but we’re glad to see it come full circle and land in America. Yamaha will be hosting launch events in New York and San Francisco on April 16th and 18th, respectively.

A freeware program recently featured on LifeHacker known as nLite offers great news. Just like we diet to shed pounds our computers can shed the extra weight of features and components that may not be needed. Spending extra RAM, hard drive space and battery power on unnecessary features is – well – unnecessary. Microsoft Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003 can be stripped down. You heard me right. Windows stripped down to what may be called a sportier model. Vista has not been left out but will require vLite instead.

Is there a PC user alive today that would not welcome a peppier version of Microsoft Windows? Or a Mac or Linux user that would not appreciate a virtual Windows experience with a leaner list of features without the bloat of unwanted ones? Powerful computers with mega GB hard drives are now the norm but that has not always been the case. On the other hand some new computers such as the Asus Eee PC and the Van Der Led Jisus are now selling with a mere 4GB SSD (Solid State Drive). Then there are those PCs and laptops relegated to storage because they don’t have what it takes to satisfy any longer – kept just in case. Just in case of what I am not exactly sure unless it is a second chance at a useful life. In all of these cases hope and help is alive and well with nLite. 

You probably already have everything required to burn a new Windows CD the nLite way. The list is short and includes a Windows installation CD, nLite, a PC already running Windows and a CD burner.

At the time of this writing I have not completed the entire process but I have visited the nLite site. It is a great place to find answers to questions you probably have and the forum is full of users discussing issues and successes.  After my visit I am confident that I can do this. Enough talk, let’s get to it. Once at the nLite installation wizard you will be asked to reveal the location of your Windows installation CD. The install files will need a temporary home so create a folder on your hard drive. Click Next to copy the files from your Windows CD disk to your new folder. 

The next window will show you any previous sessions if there are any. If you have one you could reuse those settings but if you don’t a fresh session is started. This is pretty cool. Not only can you can add or remove features - you can also add features that the original Microsoft Windows installation disc lacks. Service Packs, updates and hotfixes are a few examples of something you might want to add.

For anyone that has deleted files and then wish they had not, nLite looks out for you. As you choose components to keep or to discard nLite tells you what the consequences of your actions might be.

Once you are happy with your choices nLite will build a new trimmed down Windows installation CD. Burn the files to a CD and try it out. As in the beginning, this session is saved and can be used again. I am anxious to try nLite to build a new Windows XP install disk for my old PC that now runs Windows 98. It will then be transformed into a machine to test new software. 

Program [nLite] Via [LifeHacker]

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Don’t let its diminutive size fool you. Super Talent’s newest 8GB flash drives might be small, but upon closer inspection you’ll find that it’s actually terrible, in a helpfully geeky kind of way.

Super Talent’s newest 8GB flash drives are billed as the smallest in the world, and I’m OK with it. Although I can’t really imagine myself putting something as small and delicate-looking as this to good use, I’m sure a few other nano-obsessed individuals out there would be glad to know that these USB flash drives are going to be rolled out soon. Actually, 4GB variants are already available here right now, but if you can wait, the 8GB versions are surely going to be worth it. Plus, there will be three models to choose from, ranging from a swiveling one, a retractable one, and a plain old stick figure looking regular flash drive. Pricing starts at $35 each.

Via [Oh Gizmo]

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Yet another ultra-portable notebook has been sprung, this time it’s courtesy of a new (?) company called Van Der Led and their laptop is aptly named Jisus. Featuring a variety of five colors that include black, white, pink, and what appears to be a greenish yellow and a copper color. Aside from the rainbow of colors the Jisus will feature an 8.9-inch display with an 800 x 480 screen resolution, 1GHz processor, 512MB RAM, 4GB SSD, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, up to 4.5 hours of battery life and the typical variety of ports. The Jisus notebook will come with Ubuntu pre-installed, but according to the product website other operating systems are possible, but no mention of any choices.

Overall it seems a little too similar to the Asus Eee PC, except Jisus will not be hitting the US market. The Jisus notebook will be available as of May 25, 2008 and retail for €299 (around $470 US).

Product [VanDerLed] Via [Engadget]

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Finally, the long awaited Facebook chat is rolling out. First reported by the Inside Facebook blog, and a few hours later, the Official Facebook blog announced that new Chat facility is indeed being gradually rolled out in some Facebook networks.

The Facebook blog did not specify any exact date as to when the Chat feature will be implemented across all Facebook networks. But users don’t need to do anything to install the Chat facility, as it will just pop out at the bottom part of the users browsers. When the Facebook Chat bar appears, users can view the list of online friends and even start a conversation with any or all of them.

Unlike other Facebook communication facilities such as the Wall or Inbox, the Facebook Chat works in real time, that is, messages are delivered and displayed as soon as they are sent. Facebook is also working on pulling other features of Facebook into the real-time Chat facility.

Facebook is also assuring its members that they will have control of their Chat transactions to preserve their privacy. Hence, users can save message history or clear this out anytime they want to. Facebook for its part will not log chat sessions permanently, so users are assured that their information are safe.

Now that Facebook has officially announced its Chat facility, one can’t help but wonder what will happen now with the third-party developed Facebook chat facilities such as Social IM, Friendvox, and the recently launched Babuki?

Read [Facebook Blog] Via [CNET]

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May 1 could be the date of arrival of this sleek new PMP from KNC called the M-700, which is going to be released to commemorate the (presumably) Chinese Ching Ming Festival. Underneath the plasticky black and blue exterior lies a Swiss-RK2706 core chip running at 400Mhz, 4GB of built-in storage, support for USB 2.0, and Microsoft PLAYFX sound. The supported file formats are RM, RMVB, FLV, AVI, DivX, and XviD encoded AVI. It has a 2.6-inch screen that can play movies in 16:9 widescreen format, so it would be a great travel companion for watching short clips of your favorite TV shows. And while I’m liking the looks of the M-700, I’m constantly reminded by the blue highlights of another mobile device, although it belongs to another category. I won’t pretend, I really think they “borrowed” design cues from Nokia’s 5310 XpressMusic phone for this one. So now the Nokia knock-offs aren’t just closed out to rival mobile phones, but to stand-alone media players as well? What do you think, was the KNC M-700 PMP inspired by the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic phone or what?

Via [PMP Today]

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With any product or service, there’s always going to be room for growth (and complaints).  Below are a few Gmail features I think would make my life, and possibly some others lives easier.

Ability to Mark ONE Email in a Conversation as Unread

You’re scanning through your email, and get to one that you want to come back to later.  What do you do?  Mark it “Unread”, of course.  One of my biggest pet peeves in Gmail is how they won’t let you mark ONE email as Unread—you have to mark the whole conversation as unread.  Then, when you go back to that email later, you have to scroll through all of the old threads in the conversation to get to the only email you wanted to see.  The backbone for such a feature is already there, since when a new email comes in, only that one new email is unread in the conversation.  So why don’t they make the quick change an enable this feature?  Does this bother anyone else?

Colored Stars

Colored labels are great, but what happens if you need to categorize your important items?  Yes, you could use the labels to identify what each item belongs to, but what if you want to star items different colors based on importance… or work versus personal… etc.?  Which brings me to my next point…

Set Email Importance

Now wouldn’t it be great if we could sort our emails based on importance?  Outlook allows you to do this - granted it’s not as well as it could be done, but at least the feature is there!  Say you have a few emails that are not so important, and then some others that are very pressing issues.  You get around 100 emails a day (like many of us tech bloggers do) and your important items get lost in the mix.  Gmail… can you help me out with that?

Ability to Add Items to a To-Do List

And yet another task management need.  Many times we get emails and forget we had something to do.  Yes I could easily label things “To-Do” and then remove it from that label once I’m done with it, but doesn’t this seem like an attractive feature to have built in?  Wouldn’t it be neat to be able to highlight text in the email, and then click a button in the sidebar that says “Create To-Do Item from this Text”?

Alright, that’s enough ranting.  Now you tell me what you want to see in Gmail’s future…

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The white XV6900 Touch, a device that has had the mouths of Verizon users drooling for a while now will soon be available. Word is the Verizon branded white HTC Touch will be available for online purchases beginning April 16 with in-store availability just a few weeks later on April 30. As we learned when Verizon officially announced the XV6900 just before CTIA, it will retail for $349.99, which comes after rebates and attached with a two-year agreement.

Via [EngadgetMobile]

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Samsung has joined the growing market for HSUPA compatible phones with the release of the Samsung SCH-M470. Aside from the good looking Korean gadget girls that Samsung used for the promo of its first HSUPA phone, the SCH-M470 also sports an equally stunning look. That’s aside from the fact that the SCH-M470 boasts of 2mbps upload speed through HSUPA technology.

The Samsung SCH-M470 slider phone is not all HSUPA and good looks though. It also has some nifty features such as a 2-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, push email and Google search. The Samsung SCH-M470 retails in Korea for around $600 through SK Telecoms. No word yet on a possible U.S. release.

Via [Akihabara News] Product Samsung Korea

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Posted Apr 8th 2008 3:32AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: GPS, Handhelds
Although officially unveiled at Intel’s IDF forum last week, the UI of Lenovo’s Ideapad U8 MID has remained a bit of a mystery. Oh sure, we saw the teaser video. However, that vid was all flash based animation. Now we’ve got the real goods thanks to the folks at PCHome.net. That ain’t Windows kids, the U8 features a sexy Lenovo-grown UI which has us asking when we can get our hands on it outside of China… and for how much? Unfortunately, you’ll notice some serious lag between finger touch and application launch in the video posted after the break. We’ll attribute that to what we presume is a prototype device — certainly it can’t be the fault of Intel’s highly touted new Atom processor could it?

P.S. Anyone speak the native tongue found in the video? We distinctly heard “SSD,” “WiMax,” and “SIM card” mentioned, all of which would be new details.

Update: Helpful readers Riceman and rdy0329 provided us with the following snap translations: definitely a prototype, will not include WiMax but will support China’s 3G TD-SCDMA standard for voice and data, will ship in 4, 6, and 10GB SSD options.

[Thanks, Engadget Fan]