Digital Technology for Digital Living.
March 29, 2005
Sleeptracker Review.
Have you ever woken to your bed clock alarm from an incredibly deep sleep? When it happens it can take some time for the body to completely wake up. I’ve found myself at work, an hour or so later, still feeling groggy after a moment like that, and I’m really not that productive. Normally your body gets into a routine, and prepares itself for your waking time. For travelers and people on a varying schedules this can be impossible. So being able to coincide the time you wake with a moment when your in a light stage of sleep, or almost awake, can save time and improve performance in the early part of the day.
That’s where Sleeptracker comes in handy. Sleeptracker is a watch that monitors the wearer’s sleep, and will wake them when they are almost awake, rather than at a given time. Wearing the watch and having it sound an alarm in one of these moments is close to surreal, almost spooky. The principle however is very scientific.
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Gadgetman | Comments (10) | General
March 21, 2005
Music Piracy, It’s Your Choice. Or Is It?
There is a growing trend for major music labels, and their industry counterparts, to point the finger of declining sales at peer-to-peer file swapping. Over the last few years, the Recording Industry Association of America has been very vocal about the damage they claim the technology is causing. Now the Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) is jumping on the same bandwagon.
In their Australian Record Sales - 2004 Full Year Results, they point out that CD Albums declined by 4.75% in volume and 5.52% in value. They go on to say that the “CD singles market experienced a slight decline of 1.89% by volume, though the larger decline in value of 6.45%”. All up “wholesale recorded music sales (including albums, singles and DVDs) were down almost 4% by volume to 63.1 million units and the overall value fell by 6% to $607 million”. Which as an industry is something to be concerned about, especially when this is the second year in a row for a decline in sales of CD singles.
So what do they attribute to this decline. Bad management? Crap music? Lack of innovation? No. In fact they point to three main reasons for the decline. Firstly, competition from “digital music carriers” like the iPod, and non-music DVDs, and not only the dollars they consume, but retail rack space. Secondly, competition in general from the retail environment, where all forms of consumables are now competing for the buyers dollar. Finally, broadband. Yes, that good old subversive medium, where all things evil occur. Or as they put it, “which more easily enables the illegal downloading of music”. Admittedly, they do see this as a potential boon, suggesting that when the Australian online music market gets its act together they’ll see growth like the rest of the world, but it’s interesting to see them pick that as one of the three reasons for decline.
What they neglect to point out is the major decrease in choice they’ve provided to the Australian music consumer. Fortunately, we’ve got some very clued in researchers, just like Alex Malik. Malik is conducting research at the University of Technology, Sydney, toward his PHD, and being a former ARIA in house lawyer, happens to know the market well. His research, which uses ARIA’s own data, points out that the major labels have released 39% less albums and 42% less singles for the year when compared to 2003. No wonder sales have decreased.
Even more concerning is the reports suggestion that the majors are investing less in developing new artists as well as releasing and marketing less Aussie music. Thank God for indie music scene though, who doubled their album releases last year.
The point is, that while pointing the finger at broadband and suggesting that the decline in sales is due in part to illegal downloading of music, they should consider that it’s the lack of choice that is the root of the problem. I’d say that a 6% decline is a fabulous result for a 42% reduction in choice. It seems almost unfair, because you’d certainly expect a much greater decline in sales. It also seems, with numbers like that, that major labels have made a concerted effort to contract the market.
In fact, with numbers like that, thank God we’ve got digital music carriers, broadband, and the indie scene, because otherwise music may already be dead.
Cross posted on The Gadget Show.
Gadgetman | Comments (4) | Broadband, Music
March 16, 2005
Skype Beta for OS X.
Skype 1.0.0.15 Beta for OS X has just popped up for download which includes the SkypeIN and Skype Voicemail that Windows users got last week. We’re still unsure just how much we would use either of these additions, and most will depend upon the location of the SkypeIN number, which still currently only includes France, Hong Kong S.A.R., China, and the United States (all U.K. numbers are currently sold out). Honestly, why everyone isn’t on Skype yet is beyond us.
Gadgetman | Comments (3) | VOIP
March 15, 2005
Microsoft Spys On Kids.
Does anyone else think that the people at Microsoft behind this one have totally lost touch with reality. We understand the principle, but don’t you think it just shows a complete lack of trust in a child.
The teddy bear may never be the same again - Microsoft has designed a version containing microphones, a camera and technology that will allow it to watch a child’s every move.
The bear, which the computer giant has rather unimaginatively named Teddy, can use face recognition software to watch any child whose image has been programmed into its computer.
The SMH has the story.
Gadgetman | Comments (4) | General
March 14, 2005
Laserpod.
Laserpod is the Lava Lamp of the naughties, and has just come to Aussie shores.
Laserpod uses three electronic lasers and three blue and purple LED’s, chosen so that the combination of their wavelengths work as a background to the red laser to give a super sensory experience.
This intense light energy is projected through a crystal and the output of this wondrous device can be described as awe inspiring!
With the diffusers on top of the alloy cylinder, as supplied in the package, the effects are contained and Laserpod becomes a soothing ambient lamp.
The visual images start when the diffusers are removed-the light forms will radiate and project across an entire room and over great distances.
You can interact with Laserpod by placing anything optical on top of the unit, glass, crystal or clear plastics will all produce the most profoundly beautiful effects.
Their Australian website has many photos and a video, but we’re assuming their correct when they say that it doesn’t do the device any real justice.
Laserpod’s sells for $AU139 + $AU9.95 for postage and handling, and, at the moment, orders can be placed via email or phone.
Gadgetman | Comments (1) | General
Expedition Oz
Australia’s own Mick Stanic, Co-Founder of The Podcast Network, has started a blog “to bring you news on the gadgets and gizmos that can make spending time in the great outdoors just a little bit geeky”. You can find it at Expedition Oz and should be a fun look at some technology that’ll enhance the outdoor life. Check out on the first posts on Contact 3.0 packages to help every communications need when out in the wild. I’d call that Extreme Moblogging.
Imagine yourself in a tent, pitched on a wall in a high camp on Everest, or buried deep in a snow cave on Denali. Imagine yourself floating on a piece of ice in the Arctic Ocean, wind blowing and the ice screeching. Or, imagine yourself rowing an oversized bathtub all alone in the monstrous waves of the Atlantic ocean.
“They should see me now,” you think to yourself as you contemplate¬† how and why you once again got yourself into this crazy situation. But these kinds of places do not allow for laptops and complicated transmission routines.
Instead, your pal picks up a tiny digital camera and snaps a picture of you from deep inside of his sleeping bag. He then digs out a small handheld device (PDA) and a handheld Sat phone slightly larger than a mobile phone. He makes some fast commands on the tiny screen of the PDA, jots down a few lines, and your photo along with a few of your thoughts are instantly shared with your mom and dad, your girlfriend/boyfriend and your pals back home. And out to the entire world if you wish.
Gadgetman | Comments (0) | General
March 13, 2005
24″ LCD Monitor For Cheap.
It appears that a few people on the Whirlpool Forums are organising a group buy of the Dell 2405FPW 24″ Wide UltraSharp LCD Monitor, with a sweet 1920 x 1200 resolution. The list price of the item is $1788.60, but they aim to get it for around $1340 by buying over 100 at a time.
This thread is the central thread of the group buy for the 2405FPW as suggested by martino. Several other threads have come and gone in an attempt to make a solid commitment to getting this group buy happening. The list price for the 2405FPW is $1788.60, although most people who’ve ordered over the phone have got it for around $1650.
It seems that people in the US have managed to successfully orchestrate one of these, and were able to get a dramatically reduced price on the item. I’m not quite sure what would happen about payment and shipping, but it’s seemed that in the past Dell has been open to each individual in the group ordering separately, but under a group order code that has allowed them to benefit from the price reduction.
More details are available at the forum
Gadgetman | Comments (4) | General, Peripherals
March 10, 2005
ABC2.
We missed the launch of ABC2 that happened on Monday March 7. So sue us, it was a public holiday here in the West.
From the Media Release.
ABC2 will be a complementary service to the main ABC TV channel offering a block of children’s content (weekdays and Saturday), premier investigative journalism programs such as Foreign Correspondent and Australian Story, quality documentaries, history, arts, science and lifestyle programming.
Work/life patterns in contemporary Australia are rapidly changing - the ABC2 schedule is a response to these changes, and provides more opportunities at more times for viewing a range of great programming. Time-shifted programming means audiences can now see their favourite programs again or catch programs they missed on the main channel, along with a range of new content.
Tune in via channel 21 on your Digital Set Top box. If it doesn’t appear on the list, you might need to re-scan for channels.
Gadgetman | Comments (1) | Digital TV
Aussie VOIP List.
Anthony J Hicks mentions today a great resource for all Aussies interested in using VOIP. OZ Internet Phones has a list of providers with Local, National, Mobile rates, and if applicable the Setup and Monthly fees. Very worth while monitoring as the options expand for us across the country. One thing’s for sure, they’ll have their work cut out keeping up with all the announcements over the next few months.
Gadgetman | Comments (0) | VOIP
March 08, 2005
Waking Up to the iPod Alarm Clock
The iPod?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s Alarm Clock is nestled among other features like Calendar and Notes under the iPod?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s Extras menu. While you may already be familiar with many of the iPod Extras (especially Games), the Alarm Clock is largely an under appreciated feature.
Whether you prefer to be woken by the scream of a rock star or the French horn in a classical symphony, the iPod?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s Alarm Clock can help you open your eyes every morning with style!
Tutorial: Waking Up to the iPod Alarm Clock
BeSocial: digg it | methodshop.com
methodshop | Comments (0) | Music, Peripherals
Computerworld Live Launches.
Congratulations to Mark Jones and the team at Computerworld for launching Computerworld Live today. Mark’s a cutting edge media type guy who’s doing some great things at IDG, and we at Gadget Lounge know he’s been plotting the launch of this show for a good many months.
Computerworld Live is a weekly podcast brought to you by Computerworld Australia’s editorial team. Hosted by editor Sandra Rossi and senior journalist Julian Bajkowski, Computerworld Live analyses the week’s significant news stories and IT trends. Added to the mix are interviews with senior IT decision makers, making Computerworld Live the hub of Australian ICT conversations.
The beauty of the show, as well as the fact that it’s a time shifted medium, is it is all about Australia and technology. Point your podcast app at the RSS feed to subscribe to the show, or visit the site to download manually.
Gadgetman | Comments (1) | General
Life Caching.
The Sydney Morning Herald ran a story in last weekends Icon section about Life Caching, Blogs of our lives. One of the people they chatted with was Christian Lindholm, whom I interviewed for a podcast a couple of weeks ago. The article explorers Nokia’s Lifeblog, blogging, the increase in storage capacity in gadgets, digital personal assistants and Microsoft Research’s SenseCam. All in all a nice little piece on where some gadgets are taking us.
I like the quotes from Dr Ross Wilkinson, CSIRO’s Science Industry manager.
“Try to imagine, and this is interesting, my personal avatar [a virtual representation of oneself] is going to be some sort of device that is kept on my network that has a fair idea about me and what I like and think is important. It could help me select parts of my life that I would wish to keep in my sort of more active memory, as opposed to just the soup that is everything that I collect.
“And then this device could start stringing things together so that there are some stories. And every time I’d say, ‘Oh! I didn’t like that bit much’, or ‘What about this?’ it learns from that - so you can imagine a solution, if you like, [where] your avatar is telling you your story and you’re sort of conserving or denying it.”
Sounds like something from a Philip K. Dick story to me. How about : the avatar gets a mind of its own and arranges a murder, then stitches together some memories to frame its owner. Spielberg to direct.
Cross posted from The Gadget Show.
Gadgetman | Comments (0) | General
March 07, 2005
Freshtel, VOIP For Australia.
Channel 9’s “A Current Affair” had a story on Freshtel tonight. Another Voice Over IP technology just made available in Australia. The great thing is the story brings the news in to the main stream, and highlights the Telstra’s strangle hold on communications around the nation.
“The big telcos have been delaying this type of technology for quite some time because it would erode their profit margins and revenue streams,” he says.
SkypeOut is still cheaper.
Gadgetman | Comments (5) | VOIP
Sleeptracker.
Ever wake up an feel really drowsy, knowing that you’ve just interrupted one of those deep sleep moments. Well a new product from the US, Sleeptracker claims that it’ll wake you when you’re at the best point to wake.
Using our patented software, SLEEPTRACKER continuously monitors signals from your body that indicate whether you are asleep or awake. Because you wear SLEEPTRACKER on your wrist like a watch, its internal sensors can detect even the most subtle physical signals from your body. SLEEPTRACKER finds your best waking moments, so that waking up has never been easier.
Essentially it’s a watch, but it tracks body signals to test when you’re at a stage when you’re almost awake. During a user prescribed time, if you hit that stage, it will wake you gently. So for those that need to start the day quickly, you set a defined time range, within the Physicians recommend 8 hour slot of course, and it’ll wake you when’s best for your body.
It’ll also record your sleep data for review later, is water resistant, and is your everyday watch.
It’s only useful of course if you want to be awake.
Gadgetman | Comments (0) | General
March 04, 2005
PP5022 Chip From PortalPlayer.
MobileMag has details on a new chip from PortalPlayer, the PP5022. Whoopy you might say. Well as it happens, the PP5020 is the chip used in iPods.
Current 4G iPods, iPod Minis and iPod Photos use the PortalPlayer PP5020, a predecessor to the new PP5022. The PP5022 is specifically designed for enhanced features on hard-disk drive-based personal media players (iPod?) and offers triple the battery life of the PP5020. With the PP5022 chip, a 5G iPod would give you an estimated 36 hours playback, the iPod Photo around 45 hours, and the iPod Mini around 54 hours. This is a huge jump in battery life, which could make the future iPods even more irresistible than they are today.
It sounds too good to be true, and in all honesty it probably is. Just become the chip consumes less battery power, doesn’t mean the whole device will. It still has to run the LCD, backlite and the hard drive. Ah well. The news itself offers a snippet into the future of the most popular gadget in todays market, and we all know we crave that.
Gadgetman | Comments (0) | Music
Skype Journal.
For anyone interested in VOIP technology, you’ll be very aware of Skype. With between 1 and 2 million concurrent users at any time, the application has exploded onto the net. Recent news suggests that it is the single fastest growing application by user, with “24 million registered users” and “130,000 downloads per day today, compared to 90,000 per day in October last year and 30,000 in March”* that’s an easy stat to believe. Well today’s good news, for those who like to watch the details just like the statistics, Stuart Henshall has announced his new Skype Journal. It’s fair to say that Stuart is the most vocal Skype watcher, and certainly is the expert on the topic. All the news you could want about the technology, and definitely worth subscribing to the feed.
* Statistics from the Skype Journal.
Gadgetman | Comments (0) | VOIP
iiNet To Continue DSL Expansion.
My good mate Richard points out on Whirlpool that iiNet have just made an ASX announcement to increase their DSL infrastructure.
iiNet today announced the next phase of its DSL infrastructure deployment which will enable an additional 111 exchanges with DSLAM technology costing $9.6 million over the next nine months. This will bring the total number of iiNet DSLAM exchanges to over 200 nationwide by the end of 2005.
iiNet’s DSLAM technology provides broadband customers with improved service functionality and much higher speeds, while reducing iiNet’s dependence of its wholesale provider. This latest phase of iiNet’s DSLAM deployment encompasses exchanges in the Eastern states of Australia, with 86 sites in Sydney providing access to 90 percent of metropolitan customers in Sydney.
iiNet is also investing an additional $2 million to increase capacity in exchanges already DSLAM-enabled in order to meet customer demand for higher speed broadband service. To date, iiNet has invested $12 million in deploying its own DSL infrastructure and has over 22,000 customers using it.
More at their announcement. (more…)
Gadgetman | Comments (0) | Broadband
March 03, 2005
Telstra’s VOIP Trial.
We’re getting close to an all out war on residential VOIP. Currently several ISPs are running trials, and Telstra’s just announced their Melbourne trial that includes 200 users.
Telstra has revealed some details of the trial, which began this week and is due to complete in mid-April. Telstra planned to offer services to the wider public by mid-year, a spokesman said.
The trial uses IP-based soft switches, which allow home services to carry multiple phone lines and call control features. IP based home services would eventually carry other “value added” services, outgoing Telstra chief executive Dr Ziggy Switkowski said.
Services that may be added include click to call, email notification and video calling.
By mid-year we’ll have a bunch of options in the market. Our guess is that Telstra won’t be the first ISP to the market. The driving force for the service will be cheaper calls, and the range of new features.
More at AustralianIT and Telstra’s Media Release.
Gadgetman | Comments (0) | VOIP
Telstra’s VOIP Trial.
We’re getting close to an all out war on residential VOIP. Currently several ISPs are running trials, and Telstra’s just announced their Melbourne trial that includes 200 users.
Telstra has revealed some details of the trial, which began this week and is due to complete in mid-April. Telstra planned to offer services to the wider public by mid-year, a spokesman said.
The trial uses IP-based soft switches, which allow home services to carry multiple phone lines and call control features. IP based home services would eventually carry other “value added” services, outgoing Telstra chief executive Dr Ziggy Switkowski said.
Services that may be added include click to call, email notification and video calling.
By mid-year we’ll have a bunch of options in the market. Our guess is that Telstra won’t be the first ISP to offer the service for real. The driving force for the service will be cheaper calls, and the range of new features.
More at AustralianIT and Telstra’s Media Release.
Gadgetman | Comments (0) | VOIP
March 01, 2005
Nokia’s New Phones, Out-Launched By Sony Ericsson’s Walkman.
Today’s Nokia announcement couldn’t have been more boring, adding a few features to some new mid-range phones, but nothing outstanding. Perhaps it was just an attempt to distract from Sony Ericsson’s W800 Walkman phone that was also announced, as promised at last months 3GSM.
Have your music with you wherever you are. One press on the music button to start your music player, choose your song or playlist and enjoy. Getting your music into your mobile is easy – W800i comes with CD ripping software. Move your favorite songs to your mobile. Quick and easy. Drag and drop.
In addition, you have a 2 megapixel camera for quality images and video record when you want to catch some action.
It’s a good start, but with only 38MB, expandable with a 1GB stick, it won’t break into the MP3 player market just yet. We’ll wate for future versions with at least 5GB. The W800 will be available early in the second half of 2005.
Gadgetman | Comments (2) | Mobile Phone, Music
