Archive for the ‘Office Gadgets’ Category
Friday, October 31st, 2008 |
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Digital photo frames are quite “young” in the market, but since there are already many such products on sale, manufacturers try their best in order to diversify their approach to this segment. Their goal is to make their offer more attractive and that’s also the case with Sanyo’s latest announcement, the HNV-M70 ALBO digital frame, whose design doesn’t resemble anything we’ve seen on the market lately.
You must agree that this seven-inch LCD frame has one of the most interesting designs, straight out of a science-fiction TV show, meant to predict what television would look like in the future. It makes sense, isn’t it, if you give this thing a chance and you analyze a bit its design? You’ll see that the new digital frame from Sanyo has a very peculiar design, being a mixture between retro and futuristic.
The main selling point of the Sanyo digital frame is represented by the display, which has a 7-inch diagonal and an 800 x 480 pixel resolution. Additionally, the LCD TFT screen has a 16:9 native ratio, plus 140 degrees and 120 degrees horizontal and vertical viewing angles, respectively. This device is primarily designed to display photos, but it also boasts the ability to display RSS feeds via WiFi and receive photos from your cell phone via infrared port.
Furthermore, the HNV-M70 also incorporates a few more “classic” interfaces, such as a memory card reader compatible with the SD/SDHC, miniSD, microSD, Memory Stick Pro Duo and Memory Stick Pro-HG Duo card formats, plus a USB port. The ALBO digital frame from Sanyo has 256 MB of internal memory, which can be increased by adding memory cards. It also sports 1-W stereo speakers, which explains why the device is compatible with a wide range of multimedia files, including MP3, WAV, WMA, as well as JPEG and BMP picture formats. As you can see from the photo, it is possible to turn the screen on a swivel for various formats, and you can use the slideshow mode with image display special effects.
The Sanyo ALBO is scheduled to come out in November 14, for a price of about $422, and it will probably be available only in Japan.
(Source: Dvice)
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Thursday, October 30th, 2008 |
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Though you might consider Parrot to be a rather casual when it comes to the various portable gadgets that they roll out, this time they’ve done it. They seem to have a clear cut winner on their hands. The Parrot Specchio was designed by Martin Szekely, and this stylish digital photo frame is not short on innovation and technology, featuring a whole bunch of ways to transfer and share pictures and albums.
If the name of the designer doesn’t ring a bell to you, let me remind you that he is a contemporary well-known French artist acknowledged worldwide as a “master of minimalism”, with pieces in the permanent collections of the world’s major museum, including the Centre Georges Pompidou and Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Well, this guy co-created an artful digital photo frame that incorporates a timeless mirror in the overall design.
When lights, shadows and reflections play on its surface, the Parrot Specchio frame becomes a mirror when it is turned off. In the blink of an eye, the mirror becomes a screen which projects your memories. The designer explained: “If you look in the mirror, your left is on your left and your right is in your right. On the photo, your left is on your right and your right is on your left. So, this object is both a mirror and a photo”.
If you are opting for this modern-day Polaroid, moments are instantly brought to life and shared through a beautiful frame that offers multiple connections (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth(R), NFC – Near Field Communication, mini-USB port and SD card reader). This way, special moments are captured and framed immediately. Using the latest in wireless standards, sliding an NFC mobile phone against the back of the Parrot Specchio Wi-Fi digital picture frame will enable photographs to be right away transferred and displayed on the screen of the digital photo frame without the need of pairing the products.
Featuring Wi-Fi connection and email functionality, the Parrot Specchio frame by Martin Szekely brings the virtual picture sharing experience into every day home decor. Therefore, the frame can automatically receive and display pictures that are sent by an owner’s friends and family, as well as those that are uploaded onto community sites (such as Picasa, Flickr, Fotolog and so on). This way, the shared virtual images can be viewed from the comfort of any living room.
More than that, you can also use the frame to view articles scanned from newspapers or magazines, recipes for dishes, to-do lists for the weekend. In other words, it can be used to view practically any information or pictures that help make daily life easier for the user.
The Parrot Specchio Wi-Fi digital picture frame can store up to 1,500 photos and will be available starting November 2008 at a recommended retail price of $500.
(Source coolest-gadgets.com)
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Friday, October 24th, 2008 |
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Wizcom’s Quicktionary TS brings us back, spiritually speaking, to some certain artifacts of the 1990s. You must remember the times when a handheld text scanner the size of frying pans was dragged across the page in order to scan it? This successor is much the same thing, but now has a more focused purpose – it looks up words and tells you what they mean – and is only (only?) the size of an adult forearm.
It’s not the first time to see such an electronic language translator, and while this device is surely useful to some people, I think this Quicktionary TS model goes a little bit overboard. When it comes to its features, there are no complaints, as the 400 dpi scanner built into the tip of the pen allows you to scan single words or full lines of text which are then displayed on the high-resolution LCD screen complete with detailed definition, such as idioms and phrases. Most Quicktionary TS products provide audio pronunciation for selected languages, so it allows the user to hear the words spoken back so that you can familiarize yourself with the correct pronunciations.
In addition, the LCD display is a touchscreen, so you can access the dictionary functions by manually typing in words or phrases via an on-screen keyboard. But the device is a little bit… oversized, as it has a relatively normal-sized human adult hand, which is pretty much.
Anyway, the Quicktionary TS is an ideal tool for anyone in need of multilingual support, such as students, travelers, researchers and business people. This electronic language translator features some advantages that might catch your eye. First of all, it allows you to stay focused on your reading while the Quicktionary TS helps you interpret your text quickly and easily. Not to mention it allows you to save all the time you would have spent searching through paper dictionaries or typing into electronic dictionaries. More than that, you can take this handheld text scanner wherever you go, being small, portable, designed to fit in your pocket, and you can practice your vocabulary using the included word games.
There is a Quicktionary TS German that has the following additional special features: a sophisticated algorithm that identifies the 2 elements of a split verb in any given sentence, a unique algorithm that divides compound words into their corresponding dictionary entries and a German spelling support that includes the 2005 spelling reform.
As far as the Quicktionary TS Chinese Simplified is concerned, it includes: English and Chinese Simplified OCR (optical character recognition), bi-directional translation, a unique algorithm that divides Chinese Simplified strings into their corresponding word segments and a handwriting recognition with an additional input method using the stylus to insert Chinese and English characters.
The Quicktionary TS is available from the Wizcom Technologies online store for $189.95.
(Source gadgets.boingboing.com)
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Monday, October 6th, 2008 |
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How many of you still remember the Aeron chair, the famous Herman Miller product, designed in 1994 by Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf? You must remember it, because Aeron wasn’t just any chair, Aeron was THE chair. It was regarded by many as very comfortable due to its wide range of adjustability. In addition, the Aeron brilliantly anticipated the Digital Age by allowing workaholics to spend endless hours in front of their computer screen without worrying about bedsores. Aeron had a mesh suspension system that conformed to a user’s body shape and generated more than $1.5 billion in revenue, looking so cool that it’s still being used by lots of people.
But if you thought that the Aeron chair gives you the chance to live the ultimate experience in sitting, then you should take a look at this. There are 14 years since that ultra-comfortable chair debuted and now it’s time for Herman Miller to top itself. It’s time for the new Embody.
Herman Miller is back with thins new ergonomic desk chair meant to enhance not only health, but also productivity of workers. Embody was designed by the late Bill Stumpf and Jeff Weber and comes as a response to involuntary human behavior. According to Jeff Jansma, director of new product commercialization, “sitting in this chair versus other chair you can actually reduce your heart rate, increase your blood flow and open up your chest cavity”.
Herman Miller speaks highly of the Embody’s ergonomics, but the appeal is really the technology. One significant feature of the chair is an exposed spine-like flexing structure for the backrest. The back moves with the help of 56 flexors which support the occupant, while the seat cushion is also specially designed, with 93 interconnected plastic discs, called pixels, to move as the sitter moves. The seat cover allows air to pass through, cooling the user’s body. As far as the materials are concerned, the company says the chair uses nothing that could pose a health or environmental risk during manufacturing, customer use or final disposal.
If you’re interested in this new Herman Miller chair, you might want to know that Embody will be available at retail stores in 13 colors and three finishes starting early in 2009. Too bad it’s a little expensive, no more, no less than $1595. Yes, you could get two Aeron chairs for the price of one Embody, but if this is better than its predecessor, than it might well worth it.
(Source Dvice)
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Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 |
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I have just finished reading an article on how to improve my writing and becoming the master of all masters in wielding words. All I have to do is to just free my mind, relax and start spreading words all over the place. It doesn’t matter if I write them down, on a piece of paper, or I type them; the important thing is to be myself and write as if no one is going to read it. Easier said than done, don’t you think?
So much the more the pen doesn’t seem to listen to me and refuses to take into consideration my desire of soothing both my mind and soul. It’s not like I’m asking the impossible, after all it’s not the first time I hold a pen between my very own fingers.
Maybe it’s the pen’s fault, why should I blame it on my brain? Or maybe it’s the fact that the pen doesn’t look anything like the keyboard I’m so accustomed to and the idea of waggling my wrist and smearing ink in order to express whatever I have to say is old-fashioned as far as the laptop generation is concerned.
Takumi Yoshida’s Aptus pen is the ultimate in modern writing instruments and features a unique and stylish design. “Aptus” is the Latin word for suitable, appropriate or fitting. Therefore, the pen, a mixture of elegance and functionality, doesn’t follow the strict mechanical requirements of all writing instruments – to be very thin – and adds volume in order to better fit into our hands. The body of the Aptus pen has an undulating ribbon which is specially designed to fit the hand and each contour is ergonomically suited to fulfill the task of a fluid and comfortable writing.
Despite its bodyless appearance, Aptus features four large contact points (three points near the tip of the pen and one supporting point between the thumb and the index finger) when held in a hand so that it gives a same holding and writing experience if not better.
This new instrument could undoubtedly be the perfect substitute for the impersonal keyboard and, why not, a helping hand in order to express feelings and thoughts. The keyboard should fear!
(Source gadgets.boingboing.net)
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