USB Missle Launchers

Yesterday I ran across these awesome USB missile launchers. You plug them into an open USB port on your pc and you can rotate and fire the little turret from your pc. They sell them at thinkgeek.com (usually sold out) and come in a variety of styles. There is your standard, wireless to extend your range, laser guided for accuracy and the latest one is a little mobile tank which I have not seen for sale anywhere. There are also a lot of other weapons for your cubicle war needs. If you have not seen these little gadgets before check them out and let me know if you can get a hold of one!

Verizon Hub

The Hub is a new land line replacement home phone from Verizon. It has a 7in touch screen and connects to your broadband service to do calls using VOIP. It will also sync with the VZ phones you tell it to sync with (calendar, phone book...) Also from the Hub you can get directions receive texts and send direction to the mobile phone. Overall it seems like a pretty cool land line replacement the problem it cost $200 plus $35 a month so how is that really cutting your costs?

MiFi

This is a great little gadget that we heard about last year but should finally be hitting the shelves in 2009. The MiFi router is a small bank card sized 3g wifi router. It will be sold by local carries using their 3g service to broadcast a small wifi hotspot from the MiFi router for around 2 hours on a single charge. There has been no word on which U.S. carrier will be getting this first but it has been reported that both GSM and CDMA models will be made.

Techcrunch Internet Tablet

The Techcrunch Internet Tablet is a pet project to try and make a simple and cheap touchscreen tablet. They have just come out with prototype B which if you asked me looks pretty good and I would definitely through down some coin for it. As for specs it has a 12in touchscreen, Via nano CPU, 1 GB ram, 4 GB flash memory, 4 cell battery, wifi, camera and it is running Ubuntu with a custom webkit browser. All this apparently only costs around $200 to make which could mean a $300 price tag. There are no plans for production yet but if they throw in a sd card slot and keep it at or below $300 I'll take 2.

Qik

So I talked about one app on here already (Slacker radio still working great on my Blackberry Curve) and I wanted to point out another one that is pretty cool. It is called Qik. It is a live streaming app for your phone. Not only can you do live streaming but it also saves your videos online so it is a great way to send your videos directly to the web. In fact if you are going to take video with your phone you might as well use this app and that way it will be saved on your phone and on the web. It is available on a lot of phones and they are adding new models as we speak. If you want to check it out head on over to www.qik.com. The app is free but you might want to make sure you have an unlimited data plan because I bet streaming video over your carries network would definetly rack up those data charges. Good qiking to you all.

LG Watch Phone

One of the coolest most James Bondish gadgets of this year might just be LGs new watch phone. For being so small it actually has a lot of features. For starters it has a 1.43 in. touch screen for entering numbers and apparently T9 text. It also has a music player, bluetooth, and a camera for video confrenceing. It has a built in speaker and three buttons on the side and is reported to have 70mb of on board storage. It will be released in Europe this year with no plans for the U.S. yet. Personaly I use my phone a lot for texting, blogging, and web surfing so I don't think it would fit my needs but it would be cool to show off! Let me know what you think?

Sony Vaio P

The Vaio P built with fasion and design in mind rather then speed and power is a very sleek and sexy device. The standard build packs your normal netbook stats (atom processer and 64 gb ssd) even though Sony calls it an ultraportable. The screen is 8 inches and the keyboard lacks a trackpad but replaces it with a pointing stick in the middle of the keyboard. This gives the P more of a rectangle look rather then a square. Some of the promo shots show it fitting in your back pocket (I wouldn't count on it!) It also includes 2 USBs, sd card and memory card slots, mobile broadband and GPS. If you are looking for something really mobile with very nice styling the Vaio P is for you. Oh I almost forgot you are going to also need $900 for the base model. Let me know what you think of Sony's new Ultraportable in the comments.

Windows 7 Beta

I am a OS X user but I am curious to see what people think about the new Windows 7 OS. From what I have heard so far it is a vast improvement over Vista and so many people started downloading after it was announced that Microsoft had to suspend the downloads to get everything working again on their servers. If you want it and have not gotten it yet you should be able to download your copy over at Microsoft. I hear it comes with a huge warning message so read carefully. If you have been using it let us know what you like and don't like in the comments below.

Internet on TV

Internet on TV seemed to be a key feature for most TV manufacturers at this years CES show. Many of them are using Yahoos widget engine to bring things such as weather, news, and sports to little widgets on your TV. Even going beoynd that it seems like many of the manufactueres are bring streaming video to their TVs like Netflix on LG and Vizio and Youtube and Cinemanow on others. It looks like 2009 is shaping up to be an internet on your TV kind of year. If internet on your TV is not a priority and you are looking for big screen bargians look now because they are clearing out the 2008 modles for the new ones.

Palm Pre: Software

Now its time to talk about what is operating Palms new device. WebOS is the new operating system from Palm that is running their new device. There is a lot going on and being promised with this OS and if what they say and have demoed is true this OS is going to be pretty slick and on par with the iphones OS. One of the features I find most interesting is the deck of cards layout. In this layout all the apps you have open are easy to get to by flipping through them like a deck of cards. Another cool feature to this is that the cards are not screen shots, they are actually live and will rotate inside the card view if you flip the phone. When it comes to search Palm has made it very simple all you have to do is start typing. First it will check your phone for contacts or phone apps if it does not find anything there it will go to the internet for you to search google, google maps, or wiki. Palm is also trying to simplify getting all of your contact and calenders on the phone by using what they call synergy. Synergy pulls information from all of your online source such as gmail, facebook and your corporate catalog. It will put all these names in one list and take out duplicates which is very handy. The software is also going to be very developer friendly with all apps for the phone being built in web based code. This should make addoption very easy and Palm has already announced an app store for the new WebOS called the App Catalog. There is a lot more that I could cover here but I think I went over the basics. I can not wait to test out this new OS and the new hardware. If you are still interested in learning more or catching the CES video head over to Palm.com. Also did I mention it has multi-touch and a full html web browser!

Palm Pre: Hardware

By now I am sure you have all seen what the Palm Pre has to offer. I am going to do a brief overview of the hardware so that if you haven't seen it yet you are not left out. For starters it has a beautiful 3.1 inch HVGA touchscreen. This dominates the front of the phone. There is only one button other then the touchscreen and that is the track ball. On either side of the track ball is the gesture area where you can flip back a page or flip up the app launcher. This gesture area allows you to open new apps while on any screen and scroll with out getting in the way of what you are looking at. It also has the standard side buttons (volume rocker, camera, power, silence ringer button, and a 3.5mm headphone jack). Next of course is the slide down full qwerty protrait keyboard for when you need to bang out some emails or update your facebook. Around back is a 3 megapixle camera with flash and a speaker for music or conversations. It also has an accelerameter, light sensor and proximity meter so the screen locks when it is by your ear so you don't accidently hang up. Overall a beautiful piece of hardware that will be offered in black by Sprint the first half of the year. Stay tuned for the software post and if I missed anything in the hardware or you want to comment on something leave it below.

Palm Pre

Any Palm fans out there? Any of you been very dissapointed by their current offerings? Well frown no more because sometime in the first half of this year they will be launch the Palm Pre. I for one am very excited about this device and the new Palm OS called WebOS. There is a lot to talk about with this new phone so I am going to break it into a couple parts. First the hardware and then the software. Check back for some info on this hot device for 2009.

Slacker Radio

For all you blackberry users out there Slacker radio has finally finished their app they have been making for the Blackberry. I downloaded it a couple of days ago and I must say I am impressed. It has a very slick and easy to use UI and many stations that are already made for you(rock, hiphop, country...) Slacker also has the ability to cache a group of songs from a station and store them on your media card so you can keep listening if you don't have service. The only problem I have with this is that you have to plug your phone into your computer for it to work. Otherwise a great streaming radio app with album art for all you Blackberry users. If anyone has something to add leave it in the comments.

2009 CES

There are a lot of new gadgets, tech, and software coming out in the upcoming months with end of the 2009 CES show yesterday. I plan to talk about some of the things I am most excited for in 2009 when it comes to tech. Keep checking back for the latest take and leave comments on what you feel about it.