Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Nowadays it’s all about content delivery isn’t it?  Revver, a video download site, is trying to revolutionize online video.  Well, industrialize anyways.  What they do is attach an ad to the end of all of the video clips you submit.  Here is a quote from Revver’s FAQs:

“It’s really simple; you upload a video to Revver, and we attach a brief, unobtrusive ad, called a RevTagâ„¢, at the end. You can then track your video’s performance via your Revver account - which tells you exactly how often your video is being watched, and how much money you’ve earned from it.  Since RevTags are attached to the video itself, there’s no restriction on how your videos can be distributed. It’s a totally open system—the more that people email your video, post it to other websites or download it from P2P, the more money you will earn.”

The advertising revenue for your videos is split 50/50 between you and the company.  The site handles MOV, MPEG, WMV, ASF and AVI (including DIVX) and restricts you to under 100MB files.  You can tag your videos so they are searchable by others.  They also have a button on the top that says “show adult content” for all of you looking for porn with ads in it.

It’s only a matter of time before this startup gets bought by Yahoo isn’t it?  This is definitely worth checking out if you’ve got some content you want to get out there.  If you’re not down with the whole ad thing, check out lulu as well.

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Starting your car with a remote starter is the easy way out.  I suppose its more expensive but it’s just not as cool as this.  Guidepoint is now offering a service that you control certain functions of your car on the web.

The company created a WAP version of its existing Guidepoint service, allowing customers to unlock their doors, start the engine, and honk the horn from any device with a web browser… including cellphones and PDAs.

According to Guidepoint’s CEO Rand Mueller, “The addition of WAP and our recent move to digital reflect our drive to deliver value innovation to customers. Our goal is not to create bleeding edge technology. Instead, we are focused aligning innovation with utility, price and costs to deliver a unique experience.”

Guidepoint is in the same industry as OnStar but adds the ability to track your stolen vehicle.  In addition, you don’t even need to call them anymore when you lock yourself out of your car, because you can do it yourself from your mobile phone.

Press Release
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Samsung’s been in the news quite a lot lately.  It seems they’re getting pretty interested in portable multimedia.  Their latest is the SPH-V7900 phone, which has storage capacity of 3GB.  With this amazing amount of storage, it will be able to store a few high-def video clips and around 700 MP3 music files.  The Smartphone will feature a 1.3 megapixel digital camera, Bluetooth, MicroSD, plays back WMA, MP3, AAC and WAV and has a nice jog-wheel.

Until now, the highest storage mobile phone to hit the market has been the Samsung SPH-V5400, which hit the shelves last September.  It appears the multimedia age is upon us.  With this massive amount of storage, its only a matter of days before we won’t need any of our media devices except for one.  Laptop, PDA, mobile phone, MP3 player… all in one.

The SPH-V7900 will only be available in Korea, and will sell for the USD equivalent of around $780.

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I’m going to first start out by saying how sweet the design for this phone is.  The phone looks like a classic Nokia phone until you open it.  It then looks like a laptop/two-way pager with a 640- by 200-pixel color screen.  Pretty sweet idea.

The phone comes with quite a bit bundled software including Microsoft Office (word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications), an Adobe Acrobat viewer, RealPlayer, the Opera browser, an MP3 player, a voice recorder, and PIM applications.  It’s also pretty well equiped with wireless networks with Bluetooth, EDGE, and Wi-Fi on board.

While the phone sounds pretty sweet, PCMag.com was not impressed at all.  They rated it 2.5 out of 5 stars and had the following to say: “The most apt analogy for the Nokia 9500 Communicator is a luxury SUV with a four-cylinder engine—big, comfortable, slow, and expensive… To justify the 9500’s size and $799 price tag, it should really be a powerhouse of a phone, and it simply isn’t.”

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Sprint launched their new Power Vision service’s website today.  According to the site, the EV-DO service is only available on the Sanyo MM-9000, but we know there’s more.  Sprint has done a great job of undercutting Verizon’s price points in many areas.  Their maximum pack for smart phones is only $25 compared to Verizon’s $45.  However, on non smart phones, V CAST has the advantage by $5-$10.

The service has several different levels available to customers.  They start with their “Access Pack” which includes unlimited web/data access, streaming live news, and streaming music.  The Power Vision Plus Pack goes for $20 a month, and includes unlimited imaging, and Sprint TV Plus.  This is streaming content from ABC News, Fuel, Fuse, and Fox News/Sports.  The Power Vision Ultimate Pack is $25 a month, and includes all of the above plus yet more channels including NBC, ESPN, Discover, and TLC.

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MySoldius has recently announced the release of the Soldius1, the world’s first portable solar power source for iPods and mobile phones.  The company will market it primarily to the iPod market for obvious reasons, however, adapters are available for more than 250 models of mobile phones.

The device is very portable, folding in half and fitting into your shirt pocket.  It generates enough energy from the sun to fully recharge your iPod in about 2 to 3 hours.  Wanna recharge as you listen to music or watch music videos?  Go ahead!  The Soldius1 works as you play.

Traveling is sometimes a hassle isn’t it?  You can never find the right adapters… and don’t know which ones to pack.  The solar power of the Soldius is a great travel item since it only has one cord, the one that goes to your device.  I’ll stop ranting and raving now… it’s just about time somebody came out with a product like this.

The Soldius1 ranges in cost from $89.99 to $109.99 and is available from MySoldius.

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I have to say this is pretty amazing.  The LaCie Carte Orange is a credit card sized storage device that offers 4 or 8GB of storage.  The company stated that the device is perfect for “exchanging or backing up large amounts of office files, and storing hours of music, videos, photos and slideshows.

Worried about it breaking because it’s so thing?  Don’t.  It has a sturdy metal casing and a rubber bumper around the outside of it.  “Measuring at 6mm height and weighing less than 60g, LaCie Carte Orange’s smart and convenient design easily fits in small pockets and wallets making it the most convenient way to travel with lots of data”

The 4GB sells for $99 and 8GB at $149.  The company is now accepting pre-orders.  The Carte Orange will ship in mid November 2005.

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Ever wish you could sit at a computer and see the image all around you?  I know I have!  (kidding) Meet the VisionStation by Elumens.  The VisionStation is a low-cost 3D immersive viewing system with a wide range of applications.  The screen is 1.5 meters in diameter and apparently helps to give you some depth perception.  Elumens patented TruTheta software enables software applications for use with the Vision series products.

The product’s website outlines the various applications for the VisionStation… which is good because I couldn’t think of any practical uses.  The applications include Military Training & Simulation, Education, Commercial Training & Simulation, Product Design & Presentation, and Entertainment.

Via The Cool Hunter

Early next week (most likely Monday), Sprint is expected to launch their music download service called Power Vision.  Power Vision will be a dual-download service meaning the songs will be available on the customer’s mobile phone as well as their home computer for $2.50 per track.

At first, the downloads will be available to select Samsung and Sanyo models.  According to PhoneSchoop, “this service will likely be one component of Sprint’s “Power Vision” EV-DO service, which the company is expected to launch soon with handsets from Samsung and Sanyo.”

Earlier this week, Sprint released their first two handsets that will be compatible with the network: the Samsung A940 and Sanyo MM-9000, which were placed on Sprint’s website.  Neither of the phones are available for sale yet.

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Bored with the iPod in black and white?  Head over to Colorware where they will customize the colors of your gadget for you.

Colorware announced that they will now sell and paint the new iPod.  The site currently says “coming soon” and features a pink iPod and a black one with a blue wheel.

UPDATE: Colorware is now selling and shipping personalized video iPods.

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