Gadgets Base

The photo you’re seeing here isn’t a bed on a beach with a portable wall. What you’re seeing is someone’s favorite memory blown up into wallpaper.

Personally, I think it is about time someone offered a service that can convert an average digital photo into wallpaper. The company, Myfotowall can print a digital photo up to a maximum of 1600%, or sixteen times larger. The quality is only as good as the quality of the original photograph, but that is no surprise.

The wallpaper produced by Myfotowall is UV cured, which means they are “lightfast for up to three years”. In other words, it will be three years before the photo will start fading.

As I have said in my title, this really is the ultimate in personalization. Even right now, I am picturing what photos that I want to use as my wallpaper. I mean, you could totally take a windowless room with plain white walls and turn it into a forest. Or, like the photo shown here, put your favorite memory on the wall forever.

Just to let you know, this service does not come cheap. Right now, the estimated price for a piece of Myfotowall is about £45 a square meter. It is available on the Myfotowall site.

Source

The FCC has just approved Nokia’s newest cameraphone, the N6220 classic which doesn’t look like any of the latest N-series mobile phones. But what the 6220 lacks in the trendy physical design, it made up through its high-end features. Topping the list of these features are a whooping 5-megapixel camera with Xenon flash, GPS and the latest version of the S60 operating system.

The Nokia 6220 either make the other Nokia high end phones pale in comparison or match them up with its own powerful features. The 6220 is better than the Nokia N82 with its built-in geotagging which will embed location of the 6220 users whenever there is a GPS signal in that location. The 6220’s video capability matches up with the N95, N82 and other Nseries phone with its 30fps shooting speed at VGA (640×480) resolution. And the 6220’s TV-out capability is not common among Nokia N-Series models.

With a Nokia phone that packs all those high-end features, some people are wondering why the 6220 will not be released as an Nseries phone model. Unfortunately, the 6220, despite having all those features has no Wi-Fi support. The Nokia developers might have been too busy sprinkling the 6220 with features that they forgot to include one basic feature common to high-end phones today.

Other than the lack of Wi-Fi and the TV-out feature, there is nothing more peculiar about the 6220. This could probably explain why it was not given the N marking. It would not add anything new to the Nseries model.

Via [The Boy Genius Report] Via [The Nokia Blog]

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Samsung’s entry level phones, the SGH-T229 and SGH-T339 will be nice additions to T-Mobile’s low-end offering. While other phone manufacturers are always offering the ugliest phones at a much cheaper price, Samsung is set to change the mood by coming up with these two clamshell beauties.

As no official announcement has been made, the information and specs are still at a minimum. Aside from the obvious clamshell style, the handsets feature a camera and external display. Based on similar phone offerings its safe to say that they will also include a music and video player along with a microSD card slot. The choice of red and maroon for these new Samsung’s will generally appeal to the female population. Overall these will offer a low-priced phone for someone who actually just wants a phone.

Via [phoneArena]

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This jacket is pretty interesting - it harnesses the power of your body warmth in order to recharge portable electronic devices, notably cell phones, handheld consoles and laptops. This process is known as “electroless etching”, featuring rough silicon nanowires synthesized with silver ions on a flat water surface. These wafers will then be woven into coats, where excess warmth from your body is turned into energy that could give you additional talktime on your cell phone. This is definitely an interesting development that I won’t mind seeing incorporated into the majority of my wardrobe.

Source: New Launches

If you’re like me, you’ve probably acquired a massive amount of old gadgets and computer parts. There are times where I have to just close my eyes and start throwing stuff out because I need the closet space. For some reason I always think that I’ll get around to finding a use for that old Pentium II or 8x CD burner. While I probably won’t actually use them, someone has figured out a good use for old optical drives. Just turn them into clocks.

Just from looking at this I would guess that they’ve simply removed the casing of an old CD drive, popped a CD in the microwave for a bit and then used a DIY clock kit. While it was likely a simple process, the end result does look pretty cool. Sure, you could probably do this yourself, but are you ever actually going to get around to doing it? For $35 you could save yourself the hassle and just have them do all of the work.

Source: UberReview

Tired of using your mobile phone’s default web browser or perhaps you do not like Opera Mini? Here’s a new mobile web browser which offers full web browsing right in your mobile phone’s small display screen – TeaShark.

TeaShark works with mobile phone models that support JAVA MIDP 2.0. It renders web pages on a mobile phones the same way that web pages are rendered on usual PC web browsers. Perhaps realizing that their product has to offer something different, the TeaShark developers have peppered their mobile web browsers with several nifty features not commonly found in other mobile phone browsers.

These features include; intelligent mouse cursor for easy navigation, 2-level zooming for fine reading and quick navigation between sections of the web pages, landscape orientation for a wider screen display, multi tabs and history, bookmark management with color tagging, enhanced click and search with phone number recognition.

TeaShark is currently on the beta stage. Uploading and installing it on your mobile is free except for the airtime charges that will be charge by your network providers for connecting to the web.

To install TeaShark on your JAVA enabled mobile phones, just point your browser to wap.teashark.com and follow the instructions for downloading and installing the browser. If you want to follow the long route, just visit the Tea Shark website and download the web browser to your PC, then connect your phone and upload the software, then install it in your mobile phone. You are then on your way to an enhanced mobile browsing experience.

Read [TeaShark] Via [Phone Scoop]

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Garmin will be putting up on offer a brand new GPS portable aviation device for pilots without breaking the bank - the GPSMAP 495 will come with Garmin’s Smart Airspace, AOPA’s Airport Directory data, enhanced high-resolution terrain database, aviation database with private airports and heliports, accelerated GPS update rate, and European VFR reporting waypoints. According to Gary Kelley, Garmin’s vice president of marketing, “Those familiar with our aviation handheld product line will see the GPSMAP 495 as a cross between the GPSMAP 296 and GPSMAP 496 because it provides some of the advanced features found on the GPSMAP 496, but is closer to the GPSMAP 296’s price point.”

The GPSMAP 495 features land graphics that have more than 10 times as much data compared to other Garmin handhelds, displaying proximity hazards vividly in order to avoid untoward accidents. In aviation mode, pilots will be able to take advantage of terrain and obstacle alerting, pop-up alerts, and customizable minimum clearance limits which provide audible terrain alerts at specified altitudes. Garmin’s Smart Airspace feature will highlight airspace close to the pilot’s current altitude automatically, while de-emphasizing airspace away from the current altitude so you won’t accidentally fly over the White House only to have a trio of F-22s on your six. The GPSMAP 495 also boasts an increased GPS update rate that is five times faster compared to other handheld GPS devices. This is extremely impressive, allowing the GPSMAP 495 to obtain fluid updates of GPS derived data such as the aircraft’s flight indicators, the HSI and turn rate indicator.

The Garmin GPSMAP 495 is tipped to make its debut when April 8 rolls around at the Sun ‘n Fun Fly-In in Lakeland, Florida. It will be accompanied by a recommended retail price of $1,595, which isn’t cheap to the layman but if you’re a pilot (casual or otherwise), that amount of money shouldn’t be a problem for you.

Press Release

The Jet Calculator cannot take to the skies, but what it does is look really sleek on your desk. This is more the domain of cell phones, but all the Jet Calculator does is look extremely sweet in its aluminum-alloy body and gold/silver colored design. It will be made available in Korea sometime early next month, with the silver and gold models retailing for $43 and $53, respectively. I think most people will think this is some sort of newfangled cell phone at first glance.

Source: AVing

Posted Mar 27th 2008 8:42AM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Portable Audio
Those darn kids — they just don’t listen! And soon, according to a report, they won’t physically be able to listen. It seems that modern teens, with their cloaking jackets, space telephones, and telepathic headsets fail to obey the simplest tenet of leisure-time music enjoyment: keeping their ipod and Zune volumes at a semi-natural level. In focus-group discussions, researchers found that high school students in the Netherlands were aware of the potential hearing loss which can be caused by high volume listening, yet had no immediate plans to crank their jams at anything but 11. Typical of our misguided youth, the teens feel that they have a “low personal vulnerability” to hearing loss — researchers also noted that they believed they were bulletproof, could fly, and would never, ever lose touch with people who signed their yearbook. The study’s findings suggest that the answer to this problem may lie with manufacturers of hardware and solutions like volume caps or warning lights, rather than with the self-control of the end user.

Posted Mar 26th 2008 11:53PM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Features, GPS
Not much has changed since we got to play with a beta version of the OpenMoko-powered Dash Express GPRS / WiFi-connected GPS unit, but the packaging is quite nice and the final hardware feels top-notch — and there are some thoughtful details like a separate cradle power connection so you can just grab and go when you get to your destination.

Gallery: Dash Express unboxing and hands-on

Gallery: Dash Express interface