Keith Shaw’s Cool Tools Alert
* LATEST COOL TOOLS VIDEO:
Keyboard madness, part 2
Keith goes hunting for a vanquished foe and challenges him to another keyboard race with the latest new peripherals.
* LATEST COOL TOOLS COLUMN:
Sleepy-time Cool Tools
This week we have two products that cover my favorite activities – listening to music and sleeping.
Abcron’s PillowTalk memory foam pillow includes stereo speakers inside to let you connect an iPod or similar music player and then drift off to sleep while listening to music. JBL OnTime is a dual-alarm alarm clock that’s also a speaker system for iPod or other music players. It lets you wake up to personalized playlists instead of an annoying buzzer.
* PAST 7 DAYS ON THE COOL TOOLS BLOG:
Sierra Wireless has Rev. A stuff too
Let the war of the EV-DO Rev. A equipment continue. Apparently we missed Monday’s announcement from Sierra Wireless regarding its EV-DO Rev. A PC Card, the AirCard 597E. Sierra says its card will be out in Q1 2007, while the Novatel Wireless card announced yesterday with Sprint support will be out by the end of the year.
TeleNav goes 3D with its driving directions
TeleNav, which helped pioneer the “driving directions on a mobile phone” movement, today announced a 3D moving map feature as part of its new Global Positioning System (GPS) application. The TeleNav GPS Navigator 5.0 app also includes a Wi-Fi Hotspot Finder and predictive and error-correcting address entry features.
Verbatim USB drive forces mandatory encryption
Verbatim has a great idea with its new line of Store ‘n’ Go USB flash drives – make it mandatory that the data is secured. The new Corporate Secure USB Flash Drives include new mandatory safeguards, including hardware-based AES data encryption, as well as “anti-tamper password entry protection.”
Buy now, get faster speeds later
If you’re one of those types that like having a gadget the moment it comes out, you’ll be happy to hear about the new PC Card (click for photo) from Sprint and Novatel Wireless, which is capable of accessing the EV-DO Revision A wireless broadband network – and you’ll get those speeds once Sprint upgrades its Sprint Power Vision Network by the end of this year.
Toshiba puts HD-DVD on Qosmio
One of my favorite notebooks, the Toshiba Qosmio, has been given an upgrade. The latest version of the notebook, the G35-AV660, now includes an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and a high-definition DVD-ROM drive.
Logitech wants you to think differently about PC speakers
Logitech’s new Z-10 Interactive 2.0 Speaker System, announced this week, features a new design that includes touch-sensitive controls and backlighted display that shows digital music track data, a clock, volume and other features.
Archos launches new PMPs
The iPod may have the hearts of the masses, but the really cool kids hang with Archos. The company debuted its Generation 4 line of portable media players (PMP) this week, with five new models and features that include video playback in DVD resolution, TV recording and large capacities (up to 160GB).
Hawking: Wireless is about the range, baby!
Hawking Technologies says with Wi-Fi networks, it’s all about the distance and not the speed. All the speed in the world isn’t worth squat if you’re too far away from the access point. Which is why it launched the HWUG1 Wireless-G USB Networking Adapter …
