Vonage

I recently moved home and decided rather then paying £10/Month for the phone line I would pay £7.99/Month for Vonage so I could use VOIP. With this offer I get unlimited calls to landlines, cheap international calls and cheap calls to mobiles. With Telewest (my internet provider) I would have to pay extra on top of the £10/Month to get cheap calls to the US and free calls in the UK. I estimate £5 – £10 savings per month which is not bad!

I must admit, I am impressed with the service offered by Vonage. I ordered Monday night a couple of weeks back and the equipment was delivered Wednesday (just 2 days later… well 1 if you dont count Monday with me ordering after close of business). I received a new router (the Motorola VT2442), connected it and it fired up right away. It seems like the Vonage service just needs the MAC address of the new router and ties it to your account/number. No matter which internet connection I plug the adapter in to I can receive calls on my new UK landline number. Fantastic!

Calls so far have been clear and reliable. I decided to use cordless phones from Philips and connect them to the phone adapter. No problems there either. Some report problems with wi-fi using the same frequencies but I have not had that problem with my wifi network and cordless phones. It would be worth checking out to see if your phone is compatible though if you use wi-fi.

My overall rating… 5 *’s 🙂

Samsung SGH-X820

The Samsung SGH-X820 is an ultraslim phone which measures at just 6.9mm thick. Thats very slim! It has a 2″ LCD display, 2 Megapixel camera, bluetooth, music, tv out and more. The display is very impressive and the functions make it nice to use. One weird problem is that it wont ring and vibrate at the same time.

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Via: TechEBlog

Sony Mylo

The Sony Mylo has been reviewed over at Gizmodo. It has built in wi-fi with Google Talk/Yahoo Messenger and a nice sized QWERTY keypad. What makes this really stand out is that you can use it as a Skype phone also via wi-fi. The device also features 1Gb memory, a 2.4″ LCD screen and a duo slot.

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Via: TechEBlog

Dal Nippon Transparent Projector Screen with Built-in Speaker

Dal Nippon printing Japan has introduced the transparent projector screen. It also can deliver sound by using the screen as a speaker which seems like a similar idea to the whispering windows that you might have come across before. The screen is around 2mm thick and has SoundVu vibration modules on each side of the screen. The screen needs to be hanging when using sound.

The sceeen is 46″ and weighs just 2.5Kg. It will be on the market for around $4000.

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Via: NewLaunches

SanDisk Cruzer Titanium

SanDisk have created the Cruzer Titanium 2Gb USB flash drive. It is built with a liquidmetal casing and is pracivally indestructible. To prove this, someone placed it under his car to see how it with held to that amount of pressure on it 🙂

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Via: TechEBlog

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LED Time Fountain

cre.ations.net have created the LED time fountain which is one cool homemade device 🙂 I already want to run to the shops and buy the parts to build it. It works by dripping flourecent water from a brass pipe and then shining some bright LED’s while the strobe which makes the drops of water glow green and look like they are moving upwards, stationary or downwards at any speed.

All cool!! Check out the screen shots and video.

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Via: cre.ations.net

Vega UMPC

The Vega UMPC costs around $700 and has an AMD processor (The Geode LX800), 256Mb RAM and a 4.3″ touch screen which is LCD. It has a nice sized hard drive which is 30GB with all the good stuff such as wi-fi, USB and GPS support. It is powered by Windows XP.

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Via: TechEBlog

Casio HV10

The Casio HV10 has a 2.7 inch screen, 1920 x 1080 HD lens and CMOS sensor with a miniSD slot. Also a nice feature is a highspeed auto focus which is supposted to be a dramatic change of the speed of the average auto focus. The camera weighs 0.97 lbs and will be available September at around $1300.

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Via: TechEBlog

Handhelden

OhGizmo are reporting about Handhelden which is a site full of the old school LCD type games which Tomy, Nintendo etc… used to make. If you grew up in the 80’s then check out this site as there are a lot of memories to be found here!

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Via: OhGizmo

Anti Spam Appliance

Fed up of Spam in the office? The anti spam appliance named SpamCube is about to change that. The device costs $150 and sits on your network and can block spam for up to 4 computers although I am sure the technical minded can switch this behind a router and filter the whole office email out.

No word yet on subscription prices for the spam definitions update but for $150 the device could save an office way more then that in productivity. I sometimes spend 30 minutes in the morning just filtering out the junk from the good stuff.

More details of the anti spam appliance can be found below.

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Via: UberGizmo

3D Display

Ever since seeing Starwars I have wanted a 3D display which can project charachters in to thin air. Helio display comes close but you can still see the vapour wobbiling the picture a little. Other screens such as the fog screen also produce lots of amount of fog. This new True 3D display might actually be progressing some what closer to having the starwars experience in your home 🙂

The display works by firing lasters that intersect each other creating small amounts of plasma. Plasma is known to be on the hot side so it could be dangerous although it’s still a step forwards. The device which was on display at SIGGRAPH this year can produce 100 dots per second and in turn, creates a True 3D image.
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I see potential with this and over the next few years it will be expected that we will see 200 dots/second then 400, 800, 1600 and more till they can create an imense 3D object. Sounds great!

Via: Ohgizmo

Sony DSC-T10

Sony tend to have a habbit of making some great looking devices from the Vaio Laptops all the way to Digital Camera’s. The new Sony DSC-T10 follows down this road and offers very sleek looks. It has a 7 Megapixel CCD, a 3 x Carl Zeiss optical zoom lens. 56Meg RAM and a large 2.5″ display. The camera can also take 250 photos per charge. It will be available later this month for around $400.

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Via: TechEBlog