An in-car HD Radio device from Jensen.
(Credit: Ibiquity Digital)Ford Motor just can't seem to get enough lately of high-tech flourishes for the dashboard.
Earlier this month, the automaker unveiled plans to integrate Wi-Fi into its Sync entertainment systems so that drivers can turn their cars into wireless Internet hot spots. On Tuesday, Ford said that starting in 2010, car buyers will be able to get a factory-installed HD Radio receiver with iTunes Tagging capabilities:
"Through the Sync system," Ford said in its press release, "iTunes Tagging will provide Ford customers with the ability to capture a song they hear on the HD Radio receiver for later purchase. With a simple push of the 'TAG' button on the radio display, the song information will be stored in the radio's memory."Up to 100 tags can be stored on Sync until the iPod is connected to receive the download of metadata. When the iPod is then synced to iTunes, a playlist of 'tagged' songs will appear. Customers then can preview and, if desired, purchase and download tagged songs from the iTunes Store."
Ford is proclaiming itself the first automaker to offer HD Radio with iTunes tagging as a factory-installed feature, but its announcement comes nearly a year after consumer electronics company JVC began touting its KD-HDR50, an in-car stereo system that comes with a built-in HD Radio tuner that incorporates iTunes Tagging.
For more on HD Radio and the gadgets that get it, see:
(Credit:
Tag Heuer)
If you like fast cars, you might get revved up by the Meridiist phone from luxury sports watch maker Tag Heuer. The company has teamed with Italian super sports car manufacturer Lamborghini to create the limited-edition phone, which flashes fancy dual LCD displays made from 60.5 carats of scratch-resistant sapphire crystal.
The phone's design references the Lamborghini Murcielago down to its signature on the battery cover--the same one as on the Murcielago LP 640's V12 engine block. The device has a hand-brushed stainless steel case and backlit mechanical stainless steel keypad customized with Automobili Lamborghini's trademark Taurus bull on the steel central button.
The Meridiist measures about 4.5 inches by 1.8 inches by a little more than half an inch, giving it something of a 2002 aesthetic, but it does boast above-average battery life--seven hours of talk time or 28 days of standby power. Otherwise it has standard specs, like a WAP 2.0 Web browser and a 2-megapixel camera.
In tribute to the year Automobili Lamborghini was founded, 1,963 of the quad-band Bluetooth phones will be sold worldwide.
You can reserve a Meridiist in different colors of real leather or alligator skin, but the fact that we're not seeing a price listed anywhere on the Tag Heuer site makes us think we're better off sticking with our Ford Explorer handset.
If you're the kind of video game player who likes to spend hours in shooters like Call of Duty or Halo and you want to instantly pick up some serious street cred, what better Xbox Live gamertag than "Hitman" could you get?
To date, of course, the best you could do would be something like "Hitman238" or "xxHitman42." That's because "Hitman" itself was snagged back in the summer of 2002, during the beta phase of Xbox Live, by a then 16-year-old named Chris Graziano.
But now, Graziano, 22 and a student at SUNY New Paltz, has decided to sell Hitman, and has put it up for auction on eBay. He is hoping someone out there will plunk down big bucks for the right to shoot their way through the most popular war games while sporting such an obviously old-school gamertag.
Longtime Xbox Live player Chris Graziano has put his gamer tag, "Hitman," up for sale on eBay. It may end up netting big bucks as a desirable moniker.
(Credit: Chris Graziano)"Don't bid on this item if you don't want to be the center of attention of every game lobby you're in," Graziano wrote on the eBay ad. "You'll regularly hear comments of 'You're the original Hitman?' and 'Wow, how did you get that gamertag?!'"
It's too early to tell how much money the Hitman name might bring in the end, as the auction doesn't end until February 19 and as of this writing, the high bid is $49.99. But Graziano said he was inspired to sell the account by another auction he'd seen not too long ago in which a player sold a gamertag with a very high gamerscore--the measure of how many achievements someone has earned in Xbox Live--for thousands of dollars.
... Read moreWith its launch of iPhoto 09, Apple has begun showing some reasons why it's worth enduring the hassle of geotagging your photos.
It's generally not easy right now to label your photos with information about where you took the pictures--the process usually is done with special software to marry the photos with location data taken from a separate GPS receiver.
Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, demonstrated geotagging in iPhoto 09 at Macworld 2009.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET Networks)Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, demonstrated what you can do with iPhoto at the Macworld 2009 keynote Tuesday.
iPhoto 09 works best with photos that already have been tagged. That's getting more common, as GPS hardware support becomes less of a rarity. For example, Nikon's Coolpix P6000 has a built-in GPS receiver, and Nikon has begun selling its GP-1 GPS receiver, which can plug into its SLR's flash mount so location data is embedded in the photo. Apple's iPhone can geotag its own photos, and camera manufacturers say GPS support in cameras has become a matter of when, not if.
But the software also can help you tag your own images. Clicking a photo flips it over, letting you type in a location, then showing the spot using a map. (Google supplies back-end mapping services). Helpfully, iPhoto then can spread that location data to other photos with similar time stamps, and they can be bundled together into a group called an event.
OK, but what can you do?
Once you have geotagged photos, what can you do with them?
For one thing, sift through them geographically using iPhotos' new Places interface. Viewing an iPhoto event can show an associated collection of pushpins on a map, and clicking each pin shows the photo.
For another, you can search for photos based on where you took them, not on whatever filing system you might use. iPhoto can handle geographic hierarchies, so if you labeled a photo with "Eiffel Tower," it'll find it with a search for "France" or "Paris."
... Read moreZebra Technologies just announced their new "G-series" line of thermal printers. These little guys fall under the four-inch desktop printer category and, while not specifically for the consumer market, will still appeal to industries that deal with printing labels, receipts, price marking tags, shipping and return labels, boarding passes, ID wristbands and tags, and admission tickets.
The new offerings from Zebra include the GX420t,GX420d, GX430t, GK420t, and the GK420d. Across the board, these printers feature a wide range of convenient, easy to operate printing solutions in the work or home office. Notable specifications include:
- Wireless: 802.11g and Bluetooth in addition to 10/100 Ethernet
- Speedy six inches per second print time
- Available in both direct thermal and a combination of direct thermal/thermal transfer versions
- Flash memory built into the printers for faster and more robust processing power
- Remote activation and management via ZebraNet Bridge Enterprise software
The new G-Series thermal printers from Zebra are available to purchase now on Zebra's Web site.
Sony Ericsson C905 Cyber-shot
(Credit: Sony Ericsson)Always pushing the limits of camera phones, Sony Ericsson has done it again. Today, the company announced the Sony Ericsson C905 Cyber-shot, a slider phone equipped with an impressive 8.1-megapixel camera. (As far as we know, the Samsung SCH-B600 is the only mobile to have a higher lens at 10 megapixels.) But it's not all about the megapixels as the C905 has a Xenon flash, an image stabilizer, face detection, and autofocus, to name just a few of the camera options available to you.
The C905 Cyber-shot also follows in the footsteps of the Nokia N78 by adding integrated GPS and the ability to geotag any of photos that you take with the phone. The handset will also be able to provide you with voice-guided directions for more than 50 countries, since it comes preloaded with a three-month complimentary subscription to Wayfinder Navigator.
Other features include a 2.4-inch scratch-resistant display, an included 2GB Memory Stick Micro, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (with A2DP support). The Sony Ericsson C905 Cyber-shot is a quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) phone with support for the 2100 UMTS/HSPDA band, while a second model, the C905a, will be tri-band UMTS/HSDPA 850/1900/2100. The C905 is expected to ship to select markets in Q4; no word on U.S. availability or pricing yet.
(Credit:
Le Journal Du Geek)
It's been a busy day for Paris-based ModeLabs. Only a few hours ago we posted an item on a slider phone it made for MTV, and now there's an update about its project with Tag Heuer. The buzz around the co-branded phone was renewed last week when rumored photos were posted on various blogs, though Tag Heuer certainly has been in no great rush to bring the handset to market.
Now the first official press photos of the "Meridiist" have been released, according to Engadget. The specs are the same as previously mentioned and, unfortunately, so is the price range. In fact it's a little higher, though that doesn't matter much at these levels: This fashion magnet will run between $5,420 and $6,216, to be exact. And here we thought the Prada and Armani phones were expensive.
Tag Heuer has been threatening for months to get into the mobile handset game, even hinting about a branded watch phone. (Actually make that years, not months--the company's timetable for such a product began in 2004.)
The watchmaker may finally be preparing to make good on its protracted promise, as purported images of its new phone were posted on Le Journal Du Geek and are making their way across the blog circuit. The handset is reportedly named the "Meridiist" and comes with optional crocodile skin, which may be the most noteworthy aspect of the phone other than its price range of $5,300 to $6,100, according to Gizmodo. At those prices, the rest of its specs--1.9-inch QVGA screen, 2-megapixel camera, audio and video playpack--are unremarkable at best, though it does supposedly have seven hours of talk time. We were holding out for the Dicky Tracy watch anyway.
(Credit:
Luxurylaunches)
It's hard enough to distinguish a new product in the ridiculously crowded mobile phone market, and even more so when it comes from an outsider--such as a clothing company. But rather than just make another phone whose only difference is a logo, Levi's is at least trying something different that capitalizes on one of the trademarks of its jeans: the red tab. No, it's not a cloth tag sticking out of the keypad, but a red section of the limited edition "Red Tab" phone being sold by French retailer Colette for 550 euros (about $870).
Other than that, plus a few accessories and the option for custom engraving, it's the same handset that's been on the European market for a few months, with an MP3 player and 2-megapixel flash camera, according to Luxurylaunches. For that price, they should throw in a matching pair of denims.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
I get my music from several places. Over time I've ripped most of the CDs in my collection and have also bought songs on iTunes. Though file sharing is tempting--and fairly popular judging by our Most Popular list--I've only used those applications a couple of times over the years for long lost remixes. I guess I try to stay legal out of respect for the musicians, but this article isn't about the legality of file sharing.
The problem is, when you get your music from a lot of different sources, you end up with strangely tagged tracks and artist information which completely messes up your library. Particularly if you have a large music collection, you'll find duplicates of songs you forgot you had, partial downloads of songs, and songs you had forgotten you even added to your library because they were tagged in such a way they show up at the bottom of your list.
One way to remedy this problem is to go through and switch each of the tags yourself. iTunes lets you switch each tag manually, but you have to go through each song one by one to change the information. Fortunately there's a group of programs which let you batch tag and convert multiple songs so your audio files stay organized. Though it takes some work, when you're finished you'll be able to find everything easily and sort by genre, name, artist, and year, knowing all your songs will show up that fit the criteria selected.
There are free and paid versions of this type of music tagging software, and in this Killer Download I've included a little of both. As always, if you have a better alternative, let us know in the comments.
A tabbed interface makes it easy to get the tagging functions you want.
(Credit: CNET Networks)My Mp3's has a misused apostrophe in its title, but as a free MP3 tagging editor is pretty useful. You'll be able to grab huge chunks of your library and switch all the tag types at once to lighten your load. It offers handy tools to standardize your tagging method and it lets you copy your chosen tagging method to other groups of songs to save time. The included track player was a little buggy during my testing, but most of the features are well designed and work fine.
Exhaustive tagging options in this application make it perfect for the detail-oriented audiophile.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Mp3Tag is a shareware tagging editor ($24.95) which offers a few more features than My Mp3's. Mp3Tag lets you batch tag several audio file formats by filling in the appropriate fields, and offers a few other cool features in its multiwindow interface. Those who like to sing along will appreciate the capability to search the Web for song lyrics to attach to the file. You can also use Mp3Tag to download album art from the Web so all your music will have that nifty picture when it loads up. The included player on this application worked fine in my testing and I liked the amount of info you can edit for each song with My Mp3's.
A skinnable interface and extensive tagging options make this full-featured jukebox a hit.
(Credit: CNET Networks)MediaMonkey Standard is probably our most popular application in this category and for good reason. MediaMonkey can be used as your main jukebox application, complete with custom playlists, album art, an excellent included player, and CD ripping and burning. The tagging system is excellent as well, with the ability to ping Amazon for album art and tagging conventions with the click of a button. A left navigation window lets you sort by any tags you've assigned which makes playlists from a specific era or genre a snap. After your songs are properly tagged, you can drag and drop conventions to other artists to get your preferred layout. It even supports syncing with your iPod. A gold version of MediaMonkey ($19.95) adds options to automatically tag new music as you add it, autofile conversion, autoplaylists, and more.
If you have a big library of music which is getting out of control, try standardizing your tags with one of these programs. Once your music is fully organized you'll be happy with how easy it is to find your favorite songs. For more on MP3 tagging, check out this post by our very own Seth Rosenblatt.

