Beamer, an iPhone case with a built-in LED light, will only be available for purchase if at least 500 people preorder it.
(Credit: Quirky.com)It's not like us to get too excited about an iPhone case, but this one shines--literally--because it's the very device I was wishing for last month while traveling in Europe.
This iPhone day shot of the Leaning Tower of Pisa turned out just fine, but my night shots didn't work at all. Beamer would have helped.
(Credit: Michelle Meyers/CNET)Beamer, as the name connotes, is an iPhone case with a built-in LED light you can turn on to use as both a flashlight and a camera flash. Just the thing I needed when I wanted to shoot the Leaning Tower of Pisa at night with my iPhone, having left my real camera back at our hotel.
And it sure would have helped in Paris when we returned at night to our historic apartment building and had to climb six flights up a pitch-black spiral staircase. (I did light the way with my iPhone, but this would have been much better.)
Beamer has a hard-plastic, two-piece design, equipped with a replaceable coin cell battery that provides about 10 hours of illumination. Pressing the silicone button once will turn the light on for 10 seconds. Pressing it twice in a row will leave it on indefinitely, or until you press it a third time. It comes in an array of bright colors.
The case is just the latest design from Quirky, a relatively new collaborative design community that also conceived of the super-cute DigiDude tripod and that cool Watt Time light-bulb shaped alarm clock.
In line with Quirky's crowd-sourced production model, the Beamer won't be available for consumers until 500 orders have been made, at which point those who have committed to buying it will be charged $32. Right now, 44 prospective Beamer owners have preordered.
You gotta love a Lego rock star.
(Credit: Warner Bros. Interactive)Too busy comparing Droid and iPhone price plans and not waiting in line outside a Verizon store to keep up with Crave this week? Fret not. As always, the weekly roundup is here for you.
• We (finally) got our hands on Dell's Adamo XPS.
• Netflix-compatible video devices--how to choose?
• A closer look at Courier's swipes, snips, and scribbles.
• Let's say you only have $350 to spend on a laptop...
We test-drove an Adamo XPS.
(Credit: Dan Ackerman/CNET)• Next time you have a date with an iPhone user, hide your landline.
• David Bowie in Lego form!
• Salam wa aleikum, Arabic-speaking robot.
• David Carnoy hit the court with NBA 2K10 and BNA Live.
• Global battle of the... power plugs?
See anything we missed? Working on a brilliant and fascinating invention we should know about? Write to us at crave at cnet dot com.
LG Chocolate Touch VX8575 in hand
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)Perhaps the biggest letdown of the LG Chocolate Touch VX8575 from Verizon Wireless is that it's not the LG Chocolate BL40. After getting teased for months by the sexy shots of the LG BL40, we thought there might be a chance we would see it stateside. Alas, the LG Chocolate Touch VX8575 looks nothing like its European cousin. In fact, the touch screen interface reminds us a lot of previous LG touch screen handsets, like the LG enV Touch for example. The geometric shapes on the back of the phone and the blob-like buttons underneath the display are about the only things that are unique about the phone's design.
Still, that doesn't mean the Touch VX8575 is a terrible phone. Continuing the Chocolate tradition of strong music features, the Chocolate Touch VX8575 has a great music player with Dolby Music equalizer settings (both manual and preset modes), an FM radio, and an integrated song ID feature. There's also a really fun "Join the Band" feature that gives you either a virtual drum kit or a scrolling 88-key keyboard to play along with your tunes. The drum kit even has a cow bell, which we found amusing.
That, and it has a nice 3.2-megapixel camera, EV-DO Rev. 0, V Cast video access, stereo Bluetooth, and a 3.5mm headset jack. We weren't big fans of the full HTML browser -- you have to keep going back to a URL-entry page to enter URLs, for example -- but it's otherwise a decent touch screen music phone from Verizon Wireless. The LG Chocolate Touch VX8575 is $79.99 with a two-year service agreement with Verizon Wireless.
Flixster sure didn't look this good on our BlackBerry Bold.
(Credit: Flixster)We were excited to hear that Flixster's popular iPhone movie app was making the jump to BlackBerry. Unfortunately, not all apps dive as elegantly into other mobile platforms. Flixster's Movies app is one of them.
The free Movies by Flixster app for BlackBerry has all the essentials: a tab for box office hits, an area to enter your Zip code to find movies near you, a list of upcoming titles, and movies that have come out on DVD. You can even purchase movies via movietickets.com. Yet this movie "app" is not so much a native application as it is a shortcut to a BlackBerry-optimized version of Flixster's mobile Web site.
While a nicely formatted mobile site routinely delivers a better experience than navigating the site through a browser, winding up with a not-app after downloading an application feels like a cheap trick. To top it off, Flixster Mobile looks like a mobile site on BlackBerry and reloads every screen as you navigate. In contrast, the iPhone version, pulls show times and theater information into a stylized interface that in no way resembles the Flixster.com site, apart from the information it downloads.
Users aren't fooled by the bait-and-switch, either. Flixster's movie app on BlackBerry rates 2.5 stars out of 129 votes at the time of writing. The program's average iPhone rating scores higher, with a 3.5-star average for the current version out of about 16,000 user reviews.
Come on, Flixster. We know you can do better than that.
We're getting close to the holidays and we know you're starting to make your wish lists. So we're treating this month's most popular products list as a request. You're spending a lot of your time viewing these products. We get it. Feel free to send this video around to friends and family as a hint.
And while we're at it, let's give you something. Well, one of you. Go watch the video, answer the trivia question, and come back here and post your guess. It could light up your holidays. Literally.
The answer to last week's question was: The GNU Project.
Special hint. If you have a bogus e-mail address in your account, you won't win because you'll never get the e-mail. Just a thought.
(Credit:
Gizmodo)
The single-purpose TwitterPeek is a crazy device. But hey, now that Peek has gone down this road, why stop there? Here are some ideas for the next generation of Peek handheld devices.
NotepadPeek
Take notes on the go! Never be without your shopping list again! Doesn't sync with anything on your normal computer. $99 for six months of service or $199 for lifetime use.
YelpPeek
Find restaurants and businesses around you, and leave reviews of those you go to. How convenient! No GPS. $99 for six months of service or $199 for lifetime use.
TimeZonePeek
What time is it in various time zones? Now you know with this Peek! $99 for six months of service or $199 for lifetime use.
ClockPeek
What time is it? Never ask such a stupid question again! No alarm function. $99 for six months of service or $199 for lifetime use.
Mobile phone maker Nokia is jumping into the Netbook pool with its recently announced Booklet 3G laptop (as seen in the video). We've just gotten our hands on the final version of the system, and here are our initial impressions.
The Booklet 3G is easily one of the most upscale-looking Netbooks we've seen. It feels solid and well-built in your hands, without being too heavy. The screen hinge in particular feels pleasingly tight, while the slightly too thick keyboard tray has zero flex even when pressing down firmly on the keyboard.
Unlike the gently tapered sides of many other Netbooks, designed to create the illusion of slimness, the Booklet has sharp, angled edges. True to the name, there is a booklike squareness to it. The inside is devoid of quick launch or shortcut keys, and even the power button is relegated to the right side edge, next to a tiny hatch covering SD and SIM card slots.
Unfortunately, the keyboard itself is cramped, with tiny keys that are hard to hit accurately. Considering the strides other Netbooks have made with creating very usable keyboards, it was a letdown. The touch pad is large and easy to use, even though we had to crank up the pointer speed in the Windows 7 options.
The 10.1-inch display has the higher 1,366x768-pixel resolution found on many high-end Netbooks, and a single sheet of glass covers the screen and much of the screen bezel, but there's still a separate outer lip, so it's not quite what we call edge-to-edge.
The AT&T mobile broadband service connected automatically, and the process was wonderfully transparent, especially compared with the software setup and manual log-ins required by other mobile broadband laptops. The option to manually join a local Wi-Fi network is also available. Our review unit lacked the final versions of the Nokia and Ovi networking and connectivity software, but we did fine with Windows 7's built-in versions.
Despite an excellent design and well-integrated mobile broadband, the Booklet 3G hits a rough patch as as an actual Netbook. Using the slower Z530 version of Intel's Atom CPU (instead of the more common N270 or N280 versions) means that performance was generally sluggish, especially with only 1GB of RAM.
Opening windows and navigating around the Windows 7 environment led to some stuttering and slowdown. Even something as simple as running multiple Web browser windows and a Microsoft Office doc at the same time slowed the system in our anecdotal hands-on testing.
With a two-year AT&T contract, the Booklet3G costs $299, and its excellent design and build quality puts it miles ahead of other $299 Netbooks. But keep in mind that you're then tied to a monthly fee--usually around $60--for data. The Booklet is also available sans contract for $599, but that's both largely pointless and way overpriced.
We will conduct our usual battery of benchmark tests and report back with a full review next week.
How did U.S. power plugs fare in the smackdown? Read on.
(Credit: Crave UK)Here at Crave UK, we might be British, but that doesn't mean we're generally swelling with national pride. After all, there's much about the U.K. that's simply broken and highly annoying (Hello, trains! Take a bow, Royal Mail!). We do have some things going for us though. Our health system means that if we get ill, we get treated--and our power plugs are excellent.
Yes, you read correctly. We said power plugs.
So, let's take a 100 percent objective* look at the plugs and plug sockets of the world--who will rise to be global victor in this crucial battle between the power interconnects of the planet? We welcome you to a no-prongs barred fight that will eventually decide what sort of sockets they use on Mars.
*Objectivity in this sentence has a one-off, government-approved change in definition. Its meaning here, and only here, is the exact opposite of what it usually means.
Read more of "Plug versus plug" at Crave UK.
The Droid doesn't do everything.
(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)One of the latest misconception to make its way around the blogspehere was that the Motorola Milestone features multitouch functionality whereas its Droid counterpart does not. As it turns out, Verizon's first Google Android smartphone does offer multitouch, just not in the same capacity. What's the difference and, more importantly, who made the decision to water down this feature for the Droid?
Made popular by the iPhone, pinching and pulling has become the preferred method for zooming in on a smart phone. While Verizon's Droid handset is built using the same Android 2.0 OS as the Milestone, users are left using a less-accurate double-tap.
The Milestone has multitouch built directly into the Android framework while the Droid relies on APIs that come with the 2.0 SDK. That means that it's up to app developers to implement the features.
For reasons unknown, however, Google hasn't integrated the capability into apps such as Google Maps. Though it could be added into future updates of select titles, the question remains: Who decided to leave basic multitouch off of Droid?
... Read more
The big car audio companies chose to sit this round out. Fortunately, there was still a lot of cool tech at the 2009 SEMA Show.
(Credit: Antuan Goodwin/CNET)With the absence of the major car audio OEMs at the 2009 SEMA Show, it would be easy to assume that car tech has taken a backseat to tuning and muscle. However, the more compact electronics section allowed smaller companies with truly innovative products to shine. We found ourselves spending more time learning about cool products like the PowerSafe jumper cable, instead of rushing from booth to booth looking at amplifier after amplifier.
For example, On-Board Diagnostics (OBD-II) interfaces were a major part of the tech scene at SEMA. From add-on modules for your GPS device to standalone OBD-II devices to Wi-Fi dongles that transform your iPhone into a handheld diagnostics station, there were dozens of different devices that allowed users to listen in on what their vehicle used to only share with a mechanic. These devices allow tuners to search for more power, greenies to eke more miles out of a gallon, and regular consumers to feel more confident when they take their cars in for maintenance.
Other cool technologies that picked up awards were rearview camera interfaces, off-road iPod cradles, and a funny little device that actually makes all of those cupholders useful.
Check out our gallery of award-winning new products at the 2009 SEMA Show for more details and pics.
