Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Is your current camera phone giving you everything you want? If it isn’t, then you might want to check out the new telescopic lens specifically made for Motorola cell phones. This lens has the ability to capture images at a distance and works especially well with the Motorola RAZRV3 and Motorola KRZR KI models. It doesn’t look that hot with the phone, but you can’t have everything, can you?

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If the bigger and tougher the better is the axiom to be applied for computer gear, there’s no need for Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) to be left out of the equation. Stealth Computer, a specialty equipment manufacturer, is moving things along in this direction with its launching of “TuffTouch,” which is a 17-inch touch-screen monitor encased in aluminum alloy created for what the company calls “harsh environment applications.”

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The new Microsoft shopping cart promises turn your next mundane shopping trip into an adventure! Four years in the making, collaborating with Texas-based MediaCart Holdings Inc, Bill Gates has launched a grocery cart-mounted console that does everything but remove money from wallets to pay for items! It helps shoppers find products, then scan and pay for them without having to wait in line at the checkout counter (a blessing in itself).

But Bill Gates is not completely altruistic. (Indeed, no mogul ever really is.) Microsoft’s acquisition of Quantive, an online advertising company, last year for $6 billion increased the company’s capacity to serve video ads onto these grocery cart screens. MediaCart will begin testing in the second half of 2008, focusing on Wakefern Food Corporation’s ShopRite supermarkets on the East Coast. The way it will work is customers with a ShopRite loyalty card will be able to log into a Web site at home and type in their grocery lists. The list will appear, like magic, when they get to the store and swipe their card on the MediaCart console. As items are scanned and placed in the cart, the console gives a running price tally and checks items off the list.

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Are you proud of everything on your office computer? Are those items you might not be so eager to display really hidden from the view and scrutiny of others? Alas, for the answer is now unequivocally “no.” Your office PC, thanks to Microsoft’s new Big Brother-style software, may now be considered a weapon loaded with ammunition!

This new software is a lazy, ineffectual office worker’s nightmare, for it is capable of remotely monitoring a worker’s productivity, physical well being and competence. This monitoring system would enable computers to wirelessly pick up on a user’s heart rate, galvanic skin response, brain signals, body temperature, facial movements and expressions, blood pressure, and respiration rate. Previously, this technology was only the headache of pilots, fire fighters and NASA astronauts. This patent from Microsoft marks the very first time a company has proposed such a software for use in mainstream offices.

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Perhaps one of the simplest mobile phones to show its sleek, proud face at the Consumer Electronics Show is the Sanyo S1 Palmtop. It can hold its own even in the face of the amazing and dazzling strides made in the world of wireless technology. The Sanyo S1 Palmtop is for those among us who believe in simplicity and desire a phone that geeks might consider primitive; one whose primary selling point is reliability in getting connected for voice and basic e-mail.

Sanyo’s goal is to provide to all consumers a more comfortable life; a life in harmony with the environment. The S1 Palmtop lives up to that standard with every little breath that it takes. It is ultra sleek and weighs only 2.5 ounces. It is just 11mm thin, wrapped in a silky, soft-touch finish and feels like it belongs in your hand. Despite its size, the S1 Palmtop boasts a robust 24mm speakerphone, integrated Bluetooth wireless technology, large, colorful LCD screen and a voice-activated Wireless Backup allows users to easily manage the phone’s contacts list in case the phone is lost, stolen or damaged.

The Sanyo S1 Palmtop is ultra-slim, stylish and sophisticated and reflects Sanyo’s commitment to becoming an indispensable element in the lives of people all over the world.

Read [New Launches]

• Verizon phones may be designed to incite accidental data usage
• Sprint to kick off holiday shopping season with the release of the Sanyo Incognito
• Simple Mobile launches, offers cheap voice on any GSM phone

To be at the movies and yet also in your pajamas and bunny slippers is the ultimate hi-tech entertainment experience for movie buffs everywhere. Home theater surround sound, however, can be cumbersome to wire and hang. The way around that is to single-enclose sound bars for mounting under flat panel TV screens. Proud as a peacock to be among the first, Definitive Technology displayed its best at CES, the Mythos SSA50, which is slated to go on sale next month.

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Have you ever dropped something or committed some other social faux pas while searching for your cell phone in order to turn the damn ringer off? Well, drop no more when incoming calls arrive, as so has help in the form of FlipSilent, a small software that helps you “use your phone naturally.”

FlipSilent utilizes accelerometer technology, which is the very same that is used to re-orient phone and camera displays horizontally or vertically. FlipSilent transforms the process of quieting an incoming call to an action as simple as flipping the phone from its back to its face (assuming of course, that you know where your phone is to flip, a malady that sometimes befalls a small segment of our population).

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Korea seems to be the launching pad for innovation when it comes to new technology and the world of portable navigational devices (PND’s) is currently madly spinning. Computer Telephone Technology (CTT-Net) is now ready to launch its two newest PND’s to a waiting world.

The CSN-7040 is the very first portable navigation device to incorporate Immersion’s TouchSense system, which enables tactile feedback on touch-screens. The CIN-7000 is a built-in car navigation system that also uses the TouchSense technology and improves general safety by reducing the “glance-time” while driving. Both navigation units have a 7-inch touch screen and a DMB receiver for satellite downloads.

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Is there some celebrity you secretly (or evenly openly) admire and whose autograph you would absolutely love to have? Well, if there is, chances are your quest is over, unless of course you seeking the signatures of Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan, or others who are not only dead but unavailable in the truest sense of the word.

Thanks to Mobile Fun, a popular mobile accessory and content provider, autograph collectors now have an easier way to collect their favorites. Of course, like everything else it life, there is a price tag; namely, $10 each to get their autographs directly onto your phone in the form of a wallpaper. Some notables include: literary great, Charles Dickens and megalomaniac lunatics and mass murderers Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler. (There is truly no accounting for the tastes of some.)

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James Bond had Q to make all his spy gear function and fashionable.  It seems one company has figured out the functional part.  Meet the Ajoka Buckle Cam, which slips around your waist and transforms itself from a mundane belt holding up your pants into a full color, sound-enabled digital video recording device (DVR).

While the fashion police would probably arrest you on the spot, no one else will

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