HAPPY NEW YEAR 2008 TO OUR READERS!

Copy CD/DVDs on the go

image source: ezdupe.com

DVD Coach Single Target is a portable and slim CD and DVD cd copier. Its a simple to use device connect it to the computer or use it as a standalone unit. IT writes a DVD at 8x and a CD at 16x and features an external USB 2.0 and also plays Audio CDs with repeat mode and finally wth the a one year warranty and technical support.

Flickr Groups on UI Design

Flickr Groups are becoming a source of inspiration among Creative Professionals/Designers and not restricted to just being another photo sharing application. Listed below are a few notable Flickr groups that are contributing to the UI design and Web Design trends.

Design Patterns:
factoryjoe collections
jibbajabba

Web2.0 Interface:
webui

Interaction Designers:
Interaction Designers

Web design:
web_design
webdesign-inspiration

Design:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/brushfruit

Adobe’s 25 years of innovation

Adobe’s commitment to revolutionizing how the world engages with ideas and information is as strong today as it was when the company was founded in 1982. Over the years, Adobe has helped to re-define industries with revolutionary technologies and products, such as:

• PostScript and PDF for the print industry
• Dreamweaver and Flash for the web
• Premiere and After Effects for film and TV
• LiveCycle and Flex for the enterprise
• Adobe AIR for extending rich Internet applications to the desktop, and award-winning software applications like Photoshop and Acrobat that span all industries, serving customers of every size.

Visit Adobe for more details.

Blog : 10 years and going strong

The word "weblog" or popularly known as “blog” celebrates the 10th anniversary of it being coined on 17 December 1997. While many people maintained regular journals or diaries before the word was coined, 1997 marked the point when they started to become a particular online pursuit.

The word was created by Jorn Barger to describe what he was doing with his pioneering Robot Wisdom web page. For some time after Mr Barger coined the term, the numbers of people who could be said to be actually writing one was small.

Official numbers are hard to find but some estimate that the size of the blogosphere in late 1998 encompassed only 23 sites.

In 1999 the phenomenon took off as easy to use tools started to appear which made it much easier to write and maintain these sorts of websites. Also in 1999 the word "blog" was coined as a shortened form of the original term.

The word was an abbreviation for the "logging" of interesting "web" sites that Mr Barger featured on his regularly updated journal.

illuminated Shower Head

image source: kzl.en.alibaba

A shower head that has light built ito them. What is special about it? Well it has an in-built thermostat which controls the color of the lights based on the temperature of the water. The color of the light is White when its less than 32 and 33--41 blue and dark blue, 42--45 pink and violet when greater then 45 hot red.

The device powers itself up by running water and does not need any battery or any other power source.

image source: Baronbob

With Christmas just around the corner, we have an interesting gadget to hang on the christmas tree. Its an LED lit Christmas tree ornament. The light scrolls text messages across at all times. The pre-loaded messages are as follows

1. Merry Christmas
2. Happy Holidays
3. Happy New Year
4. Peace on Earth
5. Seasons Greeting
6. Home for Xmas
7. Joy to the World
8. Feliz Navidad

Quick Ribbon a Web 2.0 tool

With the trend of Web 2.0 designs floating around, the ribbon design element is increasingly being used on many websites. The Quick Ribbon, a Web 2.0 tool helps users to create nice looking ribbons for websites in minutes. The tool lets you format text, font color and a list of presets and pre-defined styles of ribbons. Generate the ribbon, preview it, copy the javascript and paste it on your website. Very simple and easy to use tool

image source: Yanko Design

Its always about cars and motorcycle isn't it, make life easy for the Drivers and Riders with whole lot of gadgets and devices for these fuel burning machines. What about the cyclist/bike riders, well dont let my hype take over your imagination. Its nothing complicated but a very nice and unique Type pressure gauge for a Bicycle. John Wrightson is the designer who came up with the idea and design of this nice device.

Ahem! you might need some sort of Anti-Theft device to have this device not disappear.

LM959 Bluetooth vibrating bracelet

image source: Netpcdirect

Have trouble with phones ringing at the wrong place or else you never feel the vibrating phone in your pocket while on the go or for some reason. No problem at all with the Vibrating Bluetooth Bracelet around on your wrist. LM Technologies launch the LM959 Bluetooth vibrating bracelet. When the cell phone rings it triggers the bracelet and it vibrates around your wrist alerting of you of an incoming call or short messages.

Unzip compressed files Online

Have you been in situations where you had to unzip a file on your computer and you did not have the unzipping software on your machine? These are desperate times and situations and you are helpless. Wobzip comes to the rescue letting you uncompress files online and on the fly. The application supports almost all comressed file formats. Its a very easy and simple to use application just log onto Wobzip, click the browse button, select the zip file and press the Uncompress button. The files are listed on the page and all we need to do is click on the file and download the same. Its fast, simple and easy to use. Try out Wobzip.

Creating Portfolios - Marking your online presence

Creating online portfolio for showcasing work samples has become inevitable these days. Though Flickr is an easy and effective place to build portfolios, there are more professional webspaces were the industry professional and projects providers search for the talent pool.

“Behance” has become popular like colorofolt by showcasing the projects, collaborating like minds and projects. The site provides easy interactions to customize the portfolio pages, that gives the uniqueness of user’s portfolio.

Apart from comments the site provides the concept of “Project Appreciations”, were users will vote against show cased project. It has usual functions for collaboration of other uses like inviting to your circle, messaging, Job Opportunities, Sharing Tips and watch-list.

More Portfolio tools:
http://www.creativebinge.com/
http://www.coroflot.com/
http://www.portfolios.com/
http://www.ifreelance.com/
http://deviantart.com/ ( Art)

Zigview S2 Digital Viewfinder

The ZigView S2 Digital viewfinder is a real cool and neat Idea of having a extendeable viewfinder screen. With a 1.5 meter extension for the screen, this contraption is very cool for taking pictures in difficult angles, and for survelliance photography. The device also carries motion sensing feature.

NASA.gov 5.0

Nasa has decided to revamp their website on account of completing 50 years since NASA's inception. The NASA.GOV 5.0 offers their visitors with their improved Information Architecture with plans of introducing Web.2.0 features for better user experience on the website.

Callpod Dragon bluetooth headset

The new bluetooth headset from Callpod is called the Dragon. The mighty small device has a range of upto 328ft and you can walk around anywhere at home or office without carrying the phone.

The device is also compatible with the desktop PC and hook up with Skype calls and also switch between phone calls and VOIP.

SolarRolls from Brunton

The SolarRoll from Brunton would have many people rush to the store to grab one. One can charge all electronic gadgets on the move. The SolarRoll is very useful for travelers to charge gadgets which needs power to operate, so all that needs to be doe is to spread the Brunton SunRoll and charge your camera, mobile phones, laptops in the strangest location possible.

Thanks Giving Deals

Thanksgiving is the time for deals and here are some of the leads to make life easier.

Monster GameLink 360 Fiber Optic Audio A/V Kit
Price was: $29.99
You save: -$10.03
You pay: $19.96
Click here

Panasonic - 5.8GHz Expandable Cordless Phone System
Price was: $79.99
You Save: $20.00
You pay: $59.99
Click here

Free $15 eGift card with the new 4GB iPod and 4GB Zune

click image

Get a free wireless controller ($49.99 value) when you buy an Xbox 360.

Xbox 360 Premium
includes Forza Motorsport 2 and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance
$349.99

Xbox 360 Elite
includes Forza Motorsport 2 and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance
$449.99
Click here

Free 70-300mm zoom lens with Select Cameras worth $150

Click here

For more check the online stores

• BestBuy deals
• CircuitCity deals
• Walmart deals
• Costco deals
• Target deals
• Compusa
  

Nokia N810 Internet Tablet

Nokia release the all new Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. The Internet Tablet will hit the stores in a day or two across America. The device has a new sliding keyboard, GPS feature, mp3 playback and WiFi capability. Very handy, stylish and sleek for portability and experience of internet browsing with all comfort. It has a large color screen with touch sensing panel, browser powered by Mozilla. The Nokia N810 connects to the internet via WiFi hotspot or even a mobile phone connected over GPRS network using the bluetooth connectivity.

The OS is a Linux based maemo OS2008 which is a good platform and supports Mozilla with AJAX and Flash9 and other feaures.

Twilight Umbrellas

image source: iwantoneofthose.com

Bored with the good old black and plain colored umbrellas? Twilight Umbrellas is something to flaunt around while wading through water under the heavy showers. The umbrella has optical fiber integrated within the umbrella which illuminates and shows up tiny stars that twinkle with different colors. The Twilight Umbrellas have a switch at the handle and requires 3 AAA batteries to activate the lights.

Sync TV from Pioneer

Pioneer electronics launch SyncTV which offers users to download and watch videos from channels. This is not a free service and its available for an affordable subscription rate per month. The service is no available for the computers only with future plans of having a setop box setup to view the service on your television sets.

The Flying Chair from Simon Desanta

Image source: Bonluxat

No its not a snippet from the Arabian Nights and no there are no Genes from bottles playing tricks. This is a nicely designed and sculptured easy chair designed by Simon Desanta and its called the Flying Chair. Its made out of a robust material and looks very impressive with a single piece appearance and looks floating in air.

Modstream advertise the wireless way!

Another new approach to advertising and promoting and this time its the shopping cart which takes the role of reaching out to the consumers. Modstream help reach out to the customers with their new technology of wireless streaming targeted messages onto the handles of shopping carts. The concept works on a simple internet and wireless technology to transmit messages across to all shopping configured by the user.

How do you get your advertisement across? Its very very easy. The user needs to log onto www.modstream.com, compose a AD message, pick the store where you want to advertise and voila your AD is delivered. The same can be operated and also controled by the store manager and so on.

Miro 1.0 - Turn your computer into an internet TV

Quite simply, Miro is a free application for channels of internet video (also known as 'video podcasts and video rss). Miro is designed to be easy to use and to give you an elegant fullscreen viewing experience.

There are thousands of free internet video channels that you can watch. You'll be able to download all the videos that each channel offers and when new ones are released, Miro will grab them automatically.

Unlike tiny videos on websites like YouTube, Miro videos are usually very high quality and look great when watched full screen. Since Miro downloads videos completely before you watch, your videos will never skip or stutter while they are playing.

Know more about Miro.

HTC launch the Touch Cruise

image source: Newlaunches.com

HTC launch the Touch Cruise integrated with their very own TouchFLO interface and screen area of 2.8 inches. The phone features GSM/EDGE/UMTS and very elegant and sleep on the outside. The phone also shods features like the Bluetooth, a 3MP camera with an expansion slot to accomodate a microSD card.

For more information log onto Newlaunches.com

I-Theatre HR

Always wanted that movie theatre experience while on the move? Well I-Theratre HR is here to make that a reality. The I-Theatre produce high resolution video with 922,000 px resolution and it weighs 2.1 ounces. Private movie on the movie is a treat during the long boring trips. The device is compatible wtih most mobile video, DVD, MP3 players, Mobile phones. This exclusive device retails for about $399.

For more information log onto Scientificsonline

USB Gauge from Visuals

No this is not some performance gauge for a car, this is an all new performance gauge for your computer from Visuals. You heard it right, its a gauge for a Desktop and Laptops. Gives a one tough display of the power limit, temperature and the speed of the PSU fan. The gauge uses some of the advanced and accurate stepper motor used in cars. Its gathers data through the standard USB interface and the gauge is powered up using the GAYBTEODIN GT series power supply only.

Also check: Gigabyte

Desktop Fan powered by USB

Another gadget powered through a USB port. Its a Retro fan with a model design of a Standard pedestal fan. The fan is powerful enough to help you cool off. The device is around 210/75mm of its height and width respectively. Retails for around $17.

Also check: DrinkStuff

The World Usability Day 2007 begins this month with events hosted across the globe by individuals or organized by sponsor's. Usability Analyst and Interaction Designers group up to discuss various issues and solutions faced/provided in course of developing an Application or Website. November 8th is the day for the grand Global Event. Apart from professionals in the Information Technology arena, there are other designers and professionals from Manufacturing Industry, Medical and Machine tools and Consumer article designer experts who volunteer to share their ideas, experiences and future plans of their respective fields.

Web Blog Awards 2007

Here we go, the list of the Finalist are given below. So which Blog is it going to be? You could get onto the polling site make your vote and let the best blog win. Click here to cast your vote.

Smashing Magazine
Gearlog
GoodCleanTech
Tech Rivet
The Apple Blog
Lifehacker
Medgadget
Engadget
ReadWriteWeb
Gizmodo

Clean AJAX

Clean is an open source engine for AJAX, that provides a high level interface to work with the AJAX technology. It can be plugged in any page or DHTML framework because it was designed in comformation with the separation of concerns principle, keeping focus on AJAX issues.

What Clean is:

1. Server side technology agnostic, you can use it
   with any server side language
   
   
2. Simple to install, to configure and to use; Small learning
   curve solution
   
   
3. Full based on client side JavaScript.

What Clean is not:

1. A DHTML widget framework with AJAX features
   embedded on it
   
   
2. A huge and complex framework that clains to
   be the main artifact in your applications
   
   
3. A toy implementation wrapping XMLHttpRequest
   and ActiveX

Umydo Humidifier

Blomus introduce Umydo Humidifier with a unique design and a perfect gift this Christmas or a good artifact for your home this winter. Iam not sure how this contraption works, Iam unable to find details on the Blomus website. But looks cool and Iam sure it serves its purpose.

Google PC for $199

The internet giant Google steps into the PC market retailing the Google PC at $199. The machine is sold with the the gOS which is an extract or rather a modifed version of the Ubuntu from the Linux stable and configured to run Google applications which includes Google spreadsheets, Gmail, Gtalk and apart from the Google products it also runs Open Office an open source office application which can also handle MS Office documents.

The PC shods 1.5GHZ processor, 512 MB RAM and 80 GB HDD. Interested? just walk to the nearest Walmart andpick one up.

Also check: Walmart

The Felt Mouse

Another all new design on your desktop. The Felt Mouse designed by Joey Roth is wireless and is fabricated out of wool felt and laminated bamboo ply.

The KitchenBug recipe bank

KitchenBug is a useful and very easy to use receipe sharing and consolidating tool. You can write down all your recipes and access the same anytime with easy features to arrange and list them for quick search and find the recipe you are looking for. Since your recipe is in public you can also let other users to place comment for your recipe. You could also search for other KitchenBug user's recipe.

Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 Beta

image source: Yahoo!

Yahoo! launch Beta version 9 of their messenger service. The new version has a whole lot of features. It has the ability to View Yahoo Videos, YouTube, Flickr, Forward Text messages, Voice calls between computers and whole lot more.

The Yahoo Messenger 9 will flaunt its new design interface and the favorite emoticons will feature new moods and stylish icons. The interactions and features using this new app has been improved at higher levels. For example, when you mouse over a friend's ID, options to IM, call or sms appear making it easier to navigate. Another interesting feature is the increase of file size that can be transferred over the messenger service, its upto 2GB of data which is a GB more than what was available before.

A very good package all together...

Flash Loaded

With plenty of interactive flash websites coming up everyday. We see drastic change in design and creativity over years now. This is purely because of broadband prevailing across the globe. With the popularity of Flash used on website, Flashloaded has come up with many flash components for designers to integrate on websites for a price.

Have a look at their extensive library of flash components and widgets.

Also check: FlashDen

The Winepocket

Now something to improve the way you gift a Wine bottle to your friend or family member. Tired of the good old brown bag? Here is something to impress your friend/party host with a cool and presentable carry bag and its the Winepocket. The design gives a comfortable opening at the top to grip onto the Winepocket and the same opening is used to place and pull the wine bottle out. The Winepocket is made out of industrial wool.

Cow-powered laptops !

One Laptop Per Child Project is finalizing the design of a cow-powered generator that can be used as a low-cost energy source in Indian villages. The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) is toying with a novel source of power for its low-cost cows.

There is a plan to drive a dynamo (taken from an old Fiat that is commonly used as taxis in Mumbai ) through a system of belts and pulleys using cows/cattle.

The goal is to develop a low-cost energy source that can be used in Indian villages. Working in a village close to Mumbai, OLPC's Sarwal said the group considered using solar energy but sunlight near Mumbai was not "consistently strong." There was not enough wind or running water nearby to use these as sources of power, and the cost of running a gas-powered motor was too high.But the village had an abundance of cattle that were being used in the fields. So we decided to design something around that.

Blue Pulse introduce Social Networking over a mobile phone. Future is mobile and right from banking, chatting, communicating, internet and now Social Networking. The service features a Universal Inbox where messages, updates and invites from friends are consolidated in one box. Group messaging is also possible on this service.

Bountii, product search engine

Bountii, is a search engine to look-up and compare price and best deals of consumer products. Their unique point is having detailed and intense price information and details on products when compared with other product based search engines. The site targets users looking for best deals on consumer electronics, digital cameras, television, LCD s, computers etc. The information shared with the users based on search results include Shipping, low prices of a specific product etc.

With the festive season just around the corner Bountii could have a lot of people hitting the site for better and smart deals to go for.

Sony launch HDMS-S1D 80GB photo album

With digital cameras giving the freedom to take as many pictures as any photographer would want, there are just too many photos to manage, store and organize the same. Sony with its HDMS-S1D Digital Photo Album help us solve the issues faced by us to manage all our photo collection.

The device not only has the ability to store and maintain 50,000 digital photos but also has the ports to support HDTV. The Sony HDMS-S1D has multiple ports on front facet to import pictures from different storage devices.

Microsoft mashes it up for beginners with Popfly

Popfly is the fun and easy way to build and share mashups, gadgets, and Web pages. It’s made up of online visual tools for building Web pages and mashups and a social network where you can host, share, rate, comment and even remix creations from other Popfly users.

Users can use Popfly to add games, slide shows, Halo 3 statistics or eBay auctions to their Facebook profile, blog or personal Web page; build a Web page for a club or organization; and leverage blocks from Popfly partners like Twitter, Facebook and Dapper to drive site awareness and traffic.

Here are some things you can do with Popfly:

1. Add some fun to your Facebook page, web site, or Windows Live Spaces page


2. Build a home page


3. Mix and re-mix photos and videos


4. Unify your online personality

Visit Popfly for more details.

Forus SR-500N speakers

I was looking for a nice set of desktop speakers for my PC and came across these cool speakers sets made and sold in Korea. These can be used with any music players in the market.

Andrew Fentem's touch screen game

Andrew Fentem's Research Design Art Engineering has gone through extensive research on touch screen computer games. Multi-object tracking and kinetic surfaces technology. This is a good form of game device. To start with Andrew Fentem has come out with the digital touch surface of the good old Rubik's cube and its called the FENTIX CUBE game.

This digital puzzle cube has multi-colored LEDs controlled by the touch sensitive surface. Have a look at the video to see how it works for real.