It’s magical..the iTech’s virtual keyboard!
I have been in love with the friendly keypads of Nokia forever but there is no denying the coolness of owning a smart(er) phone, surfing on the beach and emailing in the elevator. So when I bought a Blackberry, it is an understatement to say it was difficult to type on a cramped QWERTY keypad. I Struggled. (C’mon now, not everyone can get used to the hundred new phones hitting the market everyday!)
Oh, for the comfort of a spacey keyboard (sigh)! Especially when I started using the Blackberry to email and chat and browse the web, I really longed for simple, single keystrokes for every character, whereas most smart phones have two letters on each button. Seeing me battle to get the right word to appear, my friend suggested I get a virtual keyboard.
Now wha-da-hell-is dat, I said! A keyboard that is not? “You will see,” said my friend mysteriously and ordered it for me online.
My iTech virtual keyboard came with such sophistication that I could not help but fall in love with it. A littl larger than a zippo lighter, it still fits easily in the palm of my hand and can slip into any purse or pocket right next to my phone.
The virtual keyboard (VKB) connects to my Blackberry via bluetooth and projects a full-size laser keyboard on a desk. In fact, the keyboard flawlessly appears in all its uber-chic glory on any flat surface. It is slightly different from a regular computer keyboard to accomodate all the keys in a single laser beam but then all keyboards are slightly different, aren’t they? It took me far less time to get used to it than to the Blackberry keypad.
And it is a head turner. My friends just can’t stop talking about this sexy device. I have seen pretty cool gadgets and geek toys but the virtual keyboard beats the best of them. Typing on a keyboard that hovers a hair’s breadth above the surface of my table, it looks straight out of a futuristic sci-fi movie.
Setting it up is really simple. The set up process takes a few minutes, and then you have to establish a bluetooth connection between the laser projector and your smart phone, palmtop, PC, notebook or pocket PC (check to see whether your device is compatible) and then it’s ready to roll!
Wow technology combined with super sophistication makes the virtual keyboard an amazing tech product!
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UPDATE: The Eye-fi family explores new horizons
The Eye-fi is going to get new cousins - the company has introduced two more versions of the card, and rechristened the original one - all of them are scheduled to hit the stands on June 6.
The different features of the Eye-fi Explore, Share and Home sure give me a better choice of features. The Explore is the one that has me squirming to get my hands on it. This one packs a punch with Wi-fi Positioning System (like GPS but uses wifi networks to position itself) and a year’s connectivity with wi-fi hotspots around the country.
Imagine you are out for coffee with your buddy and laughing at him balancing the coffee cup on his head (he will probably spill it on his shirt soon). Of course, you dig out your digi and click a pic. Then you have to wait till you reach home, connect to your wi-fi network and upload the photos to share them with all your friends and get a laugh out of it.
Wait a minute, all those photographs are already on your networking site, and your friends are ROTFL posting funny comments on the pictures. Ah, that’s the work of the Eye-fi Explore! The smart flash card can connect to about 10,000 wifi hotspots across the country and upload your pics through them to the photosharing site of your choice. So while you were still finishing coffee, the Explore uploaded your pictures to the site of your choice by connecting through the wifi available in the shop.
And Explore geotags the photos too, adding information about the location where the photograph was taken. Now the wi-fi positioning system will work best where there are multiple access points available, so of course it will point out your location more accurately in urban areas than when you go vacationing to somewhere out of civilization’s reach. And since the wi-fi connectivity is only for a year, I guess you have to dish out a subscription fee for continued access (uh, that sucks!)
The other new version, Home, is a downscaled version of the Eye-fi which can wirelessly transfer pictures to your computer but not to any website (it is far cheaper than the other two too). The third flash card is the Eye-fi Share, a rechristened version of the original Eye-fi with the same features.
There’s still over a fortnight to go before I get my hands on these new Eye-fis. Let’s see whether they are as good as they are being hyped. Keep watching this space and if you missed the review of the original Eye-fi, you can find it here.
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Go Green With The HYmini: A Portable Wind Power Generator
Practicality, environmental responsibility and convenience are all combined in the ground-breaking HYmini–a portable wind power generator, with external solar power attachments, to charge most of your portable devices, including cell phones, PDAs and MP3 players. You can purchase option bicycle and arm mounts, so you can even generate power when you are exercising or traveling to guarantee that your gadgets will never die. To guarantee compatibility with all of your portable electronics, half a dozen adapters come in the box (which is made of 100% recycled cardboard, by the way), which allow you to charge almost any portable device.
The actual device is small (5.4in high, 3.4in wide and 1.3in deep) and fits in the hand or pocket comfortably. The interesting curved shape is based on the so called “Golden Proportion” developed during the Renaissance, a mathematical theory developed to define a harmonious or beautiful shape. On the right side of the device, there is a power switch and two ports: one mini-USB port to interface with the adapters (or to be charged by your computer over a USB cable), and the other is a port for the included wall charger–just another option if you want to charge the built-in lithium-ion battery (the energy stored there will charge your portable electronics.)
The solar panel attachments seem to be the most intriguing feature to me. The HYmini comes with one solar panel, but you can purchase extra units and attach up to three more photovoltaic banks, to maximize your energy-gathering abilities when there is no wind, or you aren’t on the go. What never ceases to amaze is how all of these features interface with each-other and your electronics: all you need to do is attach the necessary wires, and you are good to go. Using the HYmini, you can charge all of your favorite gadgets wherever you are whenever you want, without harming our delicate environment. Overall a very innovative and helpful product!
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You can get your own HYmini via their website by Clicking Here
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The Venturi Mini: Combining Bluetooth® Music streaming Hands-Free calling and USB style charging
Transmitting music to a car stereo via an FM channel has been around for a while now, but recently, Venturi managed to use FM radio for something surprisingly new, the Venturi Mini.
Sure, you can still broadcast your songs from your iPod to the car’s stereo, but Venturi has managed to set it up so that you can actually broadcast anything that can be transferred through bluetooth to your car’s speakers.
In short, this means we can now broadcast sound from our cell phones.
I gave it a shot this week in a friend’s car. I’ve never used a bluetooth headset to speak on the phone (I still imagine this to be the domain of businessmen and -women, and people generally more urban than I), and I always imagined that if i were driving, putting on a headset would be more of a hassle than flipping open a phone. The Venturi Mini gets rid of the headset, and lets you speak to someone through the built-in microphone, and hear them — get this– through your car’s speakers. I called up my dad to give it a shot. I always keep my cell phone on the highest volume, because my cell phone’s speakers alone are kind of quiet, so my dad came in a bit loud, but I just needed to turn down the car speakers (which is actually faster/easier than turning down volume on a phone, and meant I didn’t have to change it back afterwards — another advantage over the headsets).
I was using the FM transmitter, but I should also note that Venturi supplied all of the cables to connect directly to audio in/out. And if your car has a digital display, it will also transmit the caller information, so you can see who’s calling without grabbing your phone.
The device features an LCD screen, and four buttons, which control music and phone calls. The Mini also lets you upload your phonebook, so that you can select someone from your phonebook and call them without pulling out your phone at all.
Venturi has taken a neat concept, and they’ve really implemented it very well! I look forward to more products from them, and, really, it’s nice to see such innovation from a smaller company — something I feel we’re seeing less these days.
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Use Eye-fi To Transfer Photos From Cam To PC, Wirelessly And Automatically…
Give me a camera and I shall live clicking happily ever after. But for all photo-philes like me comes a moment of reckoning - when the LCD screen at the back of the camera pops a “Low Memory” message (despite the 16 GB flash card you put in last month..sigh!).
Then I have to get down on my knees, peer under the bed and scour in the drawers for the USB cable - rummaging through a mess of cords, disentangle the reluctant cable that will connect the camera to the laptop (tug..tug..phew). And then there is the wait while the camera transfers thousands of memory-guzzling files to your computer. Oh, and then you must upload them in another excruciatingly-tedious process to Flickr, or Facebook, or wherever you connect with family and friends. Phew!
Now only if someone would do all that work for me, I would readily take some professional shots of the blessed soul!
Enter Eye-fi…an AmazingTechProduct.com award winner.
The Eye-Fi is a wireless memory card. It converts (hold your breath) your ancient digicam into a wi-fi enabled hip, self-thinking gizmo which automatically uploads pictures to your computer and to your favorite out of 21 preset photo sharing, printing, blogging or social networking sites like Costco.com, Facebook, flickr, Fotki, Kodak Gallery, Photobucket, Picasa, Shutterfly and Windows Live.
The Eye-fi card, sized like any other normal SD card, has a built-in processor complete with a Wi-Fi chip and 2 GB space. It is easy to set up the connection between the Eye-fi and your computer. All I did was insert the included memory card reader into the slot in my laptop (supported by Windows XP, Vista, Mac OS X 10.3, 10.4 and 10.5) and install the software. It takes minutes and then I was all set to get clicking.
The Eye-fi’s effortless photo-transfer technology works when you are around your computer because the camera automatically begins to send not-yet-uploaded pictures to your computer/network. No cable-scrambles for me anymore! 
I can do unlimited photo uploads to my computer or to a supported site or both at the same time. Also, the quality of pictures post-transfer was great because Eye-fi does not scale down the resolution like most other wi-fi enabled digicams and phone-cams.
It cannot, however, send your photos to multiple online networks and you have to reconfigure your settings to send your photos to different websites. Secondly, since the Eye-fi feeds off the camera batteries (and the camera needs to be switched on all the time while the photos are being transferred), you have set your cam to not shut off power automatically. Once you have ensured that all your photos have been transferred, you can just hit the ‘Delete all’ button on your cam and go on clicking happily! Now, that is amazing…
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