Mobile Lo-Jack: BluAlert Bluetooth Bracelet

Never miss a call again

Ladies, how many times have you found yourself feavoursly digging in your purse for your cell phone. It seems like no matter how small the bag is, the phone is always ending up M.I.A. Men don't typically share in the same problem but everyone at some point has been looking for phone that has managed to pull a temporary disappearing act. Well the makers of the BluAlert Bluetooth Bracelet have put the bluetooth technology to good use.

This bracelet serves two man functions. First, once paired with your phone, the bracelet will alert the wearer every time the phone rings. This way if you are in a lound environment, you'll never miss a call because you couldn't hear your phone ringing. It would be nice though if the bracelet could also display your caller id so you would know in advance if you wanted to answer it. An added bonus, due to the fact that bluetooth objects have to be within a resonable proximity of eachother to continue the link, one your phone leaves that range it will alert you with a buzz. Once you are more than about 15 feet away from your phone, the bracelet will alert you. No more leaving it in the resturant bathroom.

The bracelet is compatible with most handsfree devices and has about a 3 hour charge time, 100 hour stand-by time. The bracelet is made of a resizable neoprene band and it fits wrists from 7.5" - 9.5". It's available from thinkgeek.com for $39.99.

[Source: thinkgeek.com]

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Measuring Up: Wooden Digital Ruler

Not your mama's ruler

You read it right. This concept is a spin on your traditional wooden ruler. The ruler would start counting from zero wherever you start creating your mark. It appears to feature sensors along the edge that would track the position of your object from your start point and display the measurement digitally. With no lines on the ruler at all I'd be concerned about the accuracy, but the idea is great. You wouldn't be getting any spankings with this ruler.

[Source: gizmodo.com]

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Go-Go-Gadget Car: Audi Exo Concept Car

A kinetic driving experience

The great people over at Yanko are showcasing a concept car for my all time favorite car companies: Audi. The Exo Audi concept was created by Andrea Mocellin. The concept would use nanotechnology as an energy source and make the car human powered. The drivers own kinetic energy would power the car. Just to be clear kinetic energy is created by a body's movement. How your body would move to keep the car moving is uncertain. The whole point of taking a car is so that you don't have to walk or bike your way to your location. Perhaps the technology would pick up on the movement of object in our body such as your heart or lungs (or maybe a not so vital organ). Or maybe it would be powered by small movements such as a wave of your hand. Not really sure how that would work but the concept is beautiful. You can find more pictures at Yanko Design.

[Source: yankodesign.com]

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Let's Play: Sony PSP Go

From concept to reality

A few posts ago I posted some concepts of the redesign of Sony's PSP. It's only right that I show the actual product. The new PSP: Go is the fastest PSP system yet coming in at about 44% faster than the previous models. It features a 16gb hard drive that allows you to save movies, tv shows, etc. directly to the drive. The PSP: Go comes in either black and white and is packaged with a USB cable and AC adaptor. This model is much smaller and thiner than it's predicessors neatly tucking the game controls underneath these screen. Ubergizmo has photos of the new PSP: Go in the hands of the reviewer so you can see the scale of the new game system very well. I know the reasoning behind making it smaller. However I'm curious as to how someone's giant man hands wil be able to play a game comfortably.

[Source: playstation.com]

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It's Just That Easy: Snap Capp

Late Night TV wooed me


So it's the middle of the night (or the beginning of the morning, which ever way you want to look at it) and I flipped past a product that made me say 'I Want That'. It's called a Snap Capp. It basically allows you to turn your can into a bottle. It claims to work with almost all 12 to 16 oz aluminum cans and keeps your fizzy beverages fizzy. Not sure how true the fizzy part is considering most of your standard bottles don't keep the fiz in once you've opened them. I'm sure like most late night infomercial products it works within limitations. I also read that sometimes hotter settings in the dishwasher so it's probably best to hand wash them. However, they were running a pretty decent special for 6 or so on the infomercial I saw but you can get one for $3.99 from here.

[Source: ampco20.powweb.com]

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Jabra Go: 6400

Can you hear me now?

This week, a good friend of mine Mr. Stark introduced me to a phone called the Jabra Go: 6400. Taking the technology that has already been incorporated into mobile phone devices everywhere, Jabra has launched a line of phones called the Jabra Go. This phone features a bluetooth headset that is compatible not only with your standard landline phones, but also with your computer.

The base features a charging station and a LCD touch screen that is about 2.4 inches in size. All of your controls are accessible via the touch screen such as volume, caller id, etc. For a mere $199 this phone can be yours......

[Source: gentlemansgadgets.com]

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The Way You Move: Xbox 360 'Natal'

Microsoft Xbox 360 Motion Sensor Controller Demo

At this year's E3 conference, Microsoft unveiled it's much rumored motion sensor technology code named "Natal". Gamers would be able to play titles on the console using no controllers, no wires, basically no limits. Not only will it pick up large gestures, but it's even supposed to be able to detect minor movements such as wiggling of fingers. What makes this possible is a peripheral motion sensing camera that allows the device to detect pixel distance. In other words, it can detect not only the color of the objects in front of it, but how close they are to one another.


With Sony releasing demos of their own motion sensor technology, many are wondering what the delay was in releasing this and competing with the Wii. Remember a little gadget called the "Eye Toy"? The ability to track motion sans controller has been in development for a while. Consider the games that are typically offered on the two consoles. I would imagine games in the relm of Halo and Grand Theft Auto become difficult due to the currently established mental model of how those games are played. Moving your controller to walk around walls, pressing buttons to shoot make more sense than trying to do that in the real world around imaginary object. It's not to say that it's not possible, but in the initial phases it probably wasn't very practical. However the games demoed in the video would, in theory, work really well with controller-less game play. The gestures used to play these games would make enough sense that you wouldn't have to actually have a physical object in front of you.

The additional features such as teleconferencing and the navigation through the video and menus also seem very possible. There are many applications already using the technology. The only thing that seems a bit far fecthed is when the girl puts on a virtual outfit and models it on the screen. I would be interested to see how that worked in person. All in all what Microsoft has managed to do with this technology is a huge step into the future of game play. At the very least it begins to nip at the problem with obesity and America's sedentary lifestyle by making us get up and move.

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