Gadgets

School swaps textbooks for laptops

A few hundred Arizona high school students can cross books off their fall back-to-school lists. The Vail Unified School District outside Tucson is getting ready to open the doors of the state's first all-wireless, all-laptop high school. There, students will use electronic and online articles as part of more traditional teacher lesson plans.

About 350 students at Empire High School will be loaned $850 laptops for the duration of the school year, and district officials hope to eventually increase enrollment to 750, according to The Associated Press. A set of textbooks runs about $500 to $600, the report said. … Read more

A USB flash drive with a brain

Ever found yourself at a conference or a dinner party without your laptop and someone wants to give you a large file from their USB dongle? Xmultiple out of Simi Valley, Calif., may have the answer.

The company recently began shipping USB transfer devices using its patent-pending FlashPoint technology, which lets users transfer files between flash drives without needing a notebook computer or USB bridge.

The small, lightweight devices are embedded into Xmultiple's ShareDrive line of USB flash memory pen drives. FlashPoint ShareDrives are powered by a rechargeable lithium ion battery and are available in 128MB, 256MB, 512MB, 1GB … Read more

Panasonic rebounds in plasma

Who rules the shelves when it comes to plasma TVs in the U.S? Panasonic. The Japanese electronics giant which is in the midst of a three-year re-invention took back the top spot in June by commanding 22.7 percent of shelf share in the U.S., according to Current Analysis. Sony had the crown in May.

New retail models for Panasonic resulted in an increase to 22 product placements in June (compared to 16 in May). Samsung also surged ahead of Sony in plasma TV placements in June, moving up to second place with a shelf share of 17.… Read more

TiVo slashes price on entry-level boxes

TiVo said it is cutting the cost of its 40-hour Series2 digital video recorder (DVR) in half--from $199 to $99--in an effort to drive sales this summer.

The cost on the 80-hour and 140-hour boxes will remain the same for now, but a representative with the San Jose, Calif.-based company said the dropped price on the entry-level model will stay at $99 until August 20.

Customers can still get a $100 rebate on the larger-capacity models. TiVo is also sponsoring a promotion for a free 40-hour box that must be purchased by July 17 and activated by July 31. … Read more

The incredible shrinking tablet PC

What is half the size of most slate tablet PCs and packs advanced features found in full-size laptops? Motion Computing says it's the new LS800, which has an 8.4-inch display, is less than 1 inch thick and weighs 2.2 pounds.

About the size of a paperback book, the device is a follow on to Motion's LE1600, the company's flagship full-size slate tablet PC, which it introduced in May. Like its larger cousin, the smaller slate also has internal Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support with a built-in biometric fingerprint reader for authentication.

The LS800 is one of … Read more

Fujitsu rolls out expressive robot

The bright minds over at Fujitsu have rolled out an updated version of their HOAP (Humanoid for Open Architecture Platform) robot.

The HOAP-3 is a follow on to the HOAP-2 and HOAP-1, which was originally launched in 2001. After four years of development with Fujitsu's Automation and Laboratory divisions, the latest robot can now process and interpret sounds and visual images and has various sensors that let the robot produce high-level kinetic expressions.

The HOAP-3 measures 23.6 inches tall and weighs in at nearly 20 pounds. The mobile robot runs on the RTLinux operating system over a 1.… Read more

A phone and fetus monitor in one

Inspired by the photo of a pregnant woman trying to record her fetus' heartbeat on a cell phone, Hyoung Won set off to find a "smarter" mobile phone for those with child.

The result--a project done for his master's degree in Interaction Design at Sweden's Umea University--was his own baby of sorts, "Emma." The Emma phone captures fetus videos, pictures, heartbeat sounds and tangible movements through a hand-held ultrasound tranducer, he said.

With Emma, Hyoung said he envisions the user uploading multi-media data onto a Web site "to share the pregnancy experience with … Read more

Slingbox takes TV a go-go

Sling Media made good on a promise to launch its Slingbox digital storage device this week.

First seen at the Consumer Electronics Show back in January, the silver box that resembles a candy bar hooks up to your television and redirects, or "placeshifts", a single live TV stream from a cable box, satellite receiver, or digital video recorder and blasts it out to a Windows XP-based PC located anywhere in the home.

If the Slingbox is coupled with a broadband Internet connection, the company claims the viewer's live TV stream can be "placeshifted" via the … Read more

Swim goggles to count on

For me, lifeguarding in high school was easy money and great tanning. For Katie Williams, it was the inspiration for her stroke of genius.

Williams, an industrial design student at Brunel University in West London, designed swimming goggles that display lap count and time on the inside of the lenses. The idea for the "Inview" goggles was seeded back in high school while Williams was lifeguarding lap-swimmers who often stopped to watch the time clock or look at their wristwatch, she said in a university statement. "I was aware there was a gap in the market," … Read more