Latest News - Page 5172

With all the things that the iPad is capable of doing, I can see people wanting a way to mount the thing to the wall easily. Being able to wall mount the iPad is a good way to watch video while you are in bed or use the iPad to view recipes in the kitchen. If you have a home automation system with iPad controls, mounting it to the wall makes a cool touchscreen control.

The trick is getting the iPad securely mounted to a vertical surface. A new system called the PadTab has started shipping as of today. The system is a very simply setup with a square section that attaches to the iPad or other tablet and a WallTab that can be placed on any vertical wall or surface.

I am glad that the days of the gigantic wireless receiver for wireless mice and keyboards are gone. Today just about every maker out there uses small receivers for their wireless gear that you can plug into a USB port and just leave there. The small devices don't block the USB ports around them either, which was an issue with large receivers of the past. The average flash drive is still a large and bulky gadget that looks like those old receivers though.

LaCie has unveiled a new flash drive called the MosKeyto that is just about as small as those little nano wireless receivers. The MosKeyto measures a scant 21 x 16 x 10 mm and weighs 10g. Despite the small size of the storage device, it has a decent amount of storage with 4GB and 8GB versions available. This might be the perfect external storage device for netbook users running out of storage space.

I like the idea behind pico and pocket projectors. There is nothing wrong with a projector that can fit in your pocket and run from battery power if you are the type that gives lots of presentations. The problem universally with small projectors is that they just aren't bright enough for real world use in rooms that are anything but dark. Toshiba has unveiled a new pocket projector called the Lumileo P100.

The P100 is like all other projectors on the market with a scant 14 lumens of brightness. That means you will need a very dark room to be able to view the projected image. Toshiba claims the projector can throw an image up to 65-inches if the room is dark enough. It has been my experience with small projectors that even in a very dark room; the colors are still washed out from lack of brightness.

One of the best features of modern discrete video cards for desktop computers is that most of them have multiple video outputs. ATI is putting three outputs on many of its video cards today with DVI, VGA, and DisplayPort. Most gamers are not using displays that have DisplayPort connectivity so they end up needing an adapter to use that port.

With an adapter, you can get three screens going at once from many AMD video cards. To make Eyefinity multiple display systems cheaper AMD has unveiled some cheap DisplayPort to DVI adapters that will let you hook up that third screen on the cheap. The adapters still allow support for all the video card features the other inputs offer.

One of the reasons I steer clear of shooters on the console is that I am a mouse and keyboard man. I prefer shooters on my PC, but there are some PC games that are best suited to a gamepad or a joystick. Any gamer who has tried to play a racing sim or a flight sim will tell you the mouse and keyboard are not best for those types of games.

Logitech has unveiled several new gamepads for PC gamers that look a lot like controllers that PS3 players will be used to. The F310 has a floating D-pad and ships with profiler software for programming the buttons. The F510 is the same as the F310 with the addition of rumble feedback. The really cool controller is the F710.

According to a source for Pocketlint, Sharp is planning to demo a prototype phone that features two cameras on the back for shooting 3D footage. Sharp will also debut mobile device screens ranging from 3 to 10 inches in size.

The concept for the screens is similar to the Nintendo 3DS, as they feature a lenticular lens that allows the user to view 3D content without need for glasses. The three screen sizes expected to be shown will be 3 inches, 3.8 inches, and 10.1 inches. Sharp is expected to launch a device with this technology by the end of the year, but no word on what part of the world will get to see it first.

It looks like Microsoft has decided Windows Phone 7 is ready for the masses. The RTM version of the mobile OS has been shipped to manufacturers according to a post on the Windows Phone Blog. This means a big step has been taken towards getting WP7 into our excited little hands.

Terry Myerson, Corporate VP of Windows Phone Engineering, stated that "Windows Phone 7 is the most thoroughly tested mobile platform Microsoft has ever released" and "the final integration of Windows Phone 7 with our partners' hardware, software, and networks is underway." With reportedly over ten thousand devices running daily tests and eight and a half million hours of fully automated test passes, I would definitely hope that the kinks are out and WP7 will give the current mobile big boys a run for their money.

Need to connect with nine of your closest friends around the world at the same time? It may be possible with Skype's 5.0 beta for Windows. Skype is doubling the amount of peope that can be involved in a video call from five to ten.

This new beta, which is currently available for download, also implements automatic call recovery, a cleaner user interface, and call quality improvement among other bug fixes. Users are reporting numerous bugs with the new features, but with this being a beta this is to be expected. When the features are smoothed out, it will definitely be a great shot fired back at Google and their new video calling service.

The world's largest mobile phone maker is shutting down a major service soon. Ovi Files, a popular free file sharing service offered by Nokia, is being discontinued on October 1st. Ovi Files allows Nokia users to remotely access their computer and send files via their mobile phones even if the computer is offline.

The service currently has 1.5 million registered users, but according to Nokia spokesman Tapani Kaskinen the service does not fit the company's overall strategy for the Ovi service package. He stated that "we want to explore broader horizontal offerings in mobile maps, e-mail, messaging, media, social networks and music." Nokia Suite will be offered as a synch and file transferring service between a mobile device and computer, but a wired connection will be required for use.

It seems that Apple's new Ping service and Facebook are not currently on the best of terms. Facebook Connect integration has been removed from Ping after Facebook denied the connection due to Facebook's policy that any service that wants to hit their friend-finding API an extreme amount of times has to sign a deal agreeing to limit network impact and protect Facebook's user data.

Apple and Facebook never had a deal in place for this service when Ping was launched because negations broke down due to what Steve Jobs dubbed "onerous terms," but Apple used the API anyways until Facebook blocked access. Rumor is that the two companies are still negotiating to get the services to play nicely with one another, so this may only be a temporary disconnection.