Archive for May, 2008
Posted on May 28, 2008 by Sam Costello at 5:16 pm
The Popcorn Hour A-100 media streamer is hitting the market soon. The device connects to your PC or home network via 10/100 Ethernet and routes your digital content to your TV.
The US$179 device is currently available for pre-order, with a shipping date as yet unannounced, but presumably imminent. It supports a wide range of technologies, including MPEG2 and 4, BitTorrent, NAS, YouTube video, RSS feeds, Flickr, and podcasts and is able to deliver them all to your TV via standard TV connections such as HDMI, S-video, and Composite video.
The support for Flickr and RSS feeds is what caught my eye here. With those, you’ll be able to show vacation photos on your TV, have a FrameChannel feed running as a screensaver on your TV, and much more.
Posted on May 25, 2008 by Sam Costello at 5:16 pm
A Swedish start up called Manodo is field testing a new device in an apartment building in Gothenburg, Sweden, that tells residents when they can expect the next public train, who’s at the door, and how much CO2 they’re emitting from their day-to-day activities.
The device, built around an LCD display and a network connection, displays all of this information and more (think weather forecasts, etc.) in a useful smart-home gadget. While this is, of course, a very small test and the device offers only a limited number of features, it suggests an interesting potential future.
If these devices were to get into the house broadly (because they were installed for free by utilities looking to help people regulate use, for instance), they’d be a built-in platform for all kinds of web-connected content, such as photos, sport scores, and more. Probably we’re a ways away from tests outside of Sweden, but if this device takes off, this device, or ones like it, could be the wedge that brings technology previously contained in science fiction movies into our homes.
Posted on May 21, 2008 by Sam Costello at 4:51 pm
When I’ve written about set top boxes in the past, it’s always been in the context of devices that will eventually support the ability to grab image content, like that served by Frame Channel, directly from the Internet, or from PCs in the house, and then serve it up on the living room TV.
Well, with the ZvBox, eventually is right now. The ZvBox, from ZeeVee, connects PCs to TVs anywhere in the house using the house’s existing coaxial cable system and plugs. Essentially, as long as you can get content onto your PC, you’ll be able to use to ZvBox to display it on your TV.
Of course this means video, but it also means content frequently updated over the web like photostreams. Users can even control their PC desktop right from their TV.
The ZvBox, the first device of its kind that I’ve seen, ships in June for US$499.
Posted on May 19, 2008 by Sam Costello at 2:25 am
Well, here’s a weird kind of device you don’t see everyday: a digital camera for dogs. In case you want to discover if your dog has some hidden talent and is the next Robert Frank or Annie Liebowitz, just snap up this sub-$50 camera, snap it to Rover’s collar, and set him running.
The camera only sports 640 x 480 resolution and enough memory for 35 pictures before you’ll need to upload to your PC, so it’s not likely that we’ll be seeing any dog-umentaries any time soon. The camera can take pictures in intervals of 1, 5, and 15 minutes.
Strange, yes, but who knows? We could start seeing dog’s –eye-view pictures showing up on displays someday soon.
Posted on May 16, 2008 by Sam Costello at 2:25 am
Huddling close together around vacation photo prints can be fun, but isn’t it better to project those photos in all their wall-size glory? Now you can do that without needing to worry about your slide carousel.
The Sunview iView IPL630 PMPP combnes a portable media player with a pico projector, a tiny, low-power digital projector. Now, all you have to do is load the PMP up with your favorite movies or digital photos and you’ll be able to project them on any nearby wall.
Pricing and availability details about the Sunvision are scarce, but here are the tech specs: a 3.5-inch LCD, a 5.2 x 3.1 x 1-inch enclosure, a speaker, an SD card slot, and a remote. It runs Windows CE.
Most PMPs these days have WiFi. The Sunvision doesn’t, but you’d hope that’s coming in a later version. With that onboard, you’d be able to stream web content to the device and then project it, opening the door for art installations, constantly updated photo shows, and streaming video.
Posted on May 14, 2008 by Sam Costello at 2:25 am
WiFi will become the most dominant advanced feature on portable media players and MP3 players by 2012, outpacing touchscreens and Bluetooth, according to market research firm iSuppli.
According to iSuppli’s forecast, more than 20% of all such devices will have WiFi by 2012, up from about 4% in 2007. Touchscreens and Bluetooth support on the same devices will max out at around 12% or 13% in 2012, the firm said.
Having WiFi connectivity on these devices will, no doubt, open them up to all kinds of new and powerful applications that will make them more useful and sought after.
