Peter Rojas
Articles by Peter Rojas
Creative's MuVo SPORT C100 MP3 player
Do we even really need to explain what the MuVo SPORT C100, Creative's new 256MB or 128MB MP3 player, is all about? Probably not, but we should probably mention that besides being suitable for all your heavy activities, the C100 also runs for 15 hours on a single AA battery, has a built-in FM tuner, and an SD card slot around back if you want to add extra storage space. P.S. - Just to be clear, this is NOT the MP3 player we'll be giving away later today, ok? Ok.
Review of Mattel's Juicebox personal video player for kids
If your kids are at all tech-savvy they'll probably be desperately disappointed by the Juicebox, Mattel's new $70 portable video player that only works with their proprietary prerecorded cartridges. That means you can't use it to watch your own video clips (or stuff you downloaded off of the Internet), and a cartridge with a full-length feature will set you (or your hard-working child) back $25. Peter Svensson from the AP checked one out and basically confirmed what you already knew, i.e. that the screen was sucky (he put it much more eloquently than that) and the sound quality was awful, but that the battery life was surprisingly good, even better than Mattel what claims for it (he managed to get 10 hours out of it).
The Nokia 2651 gets closer
We have yet to hear about an American carrier committing to the 2651, that new super stylie, all-white flipphone from Nokia that would fulfill all of our minimalist 2001 fantasies were it not so feature-poor (i.e. no Bluetooth, no built-in digital camera, and a 4,096 color LCD screen—we're just way too spoiled to go back now), but it is getting a little closer: Nokia announced that the phone will be available later this year all over Latin America. [Via Designtechnica]
Norcent's DC-420 four megapixel digital camera
If you know Norcent at all it's probably for their DVD players or home theater equipment, but they've been kicking out digital cameras for a little while now, with their new 4.2 megapixel DC-420 being the latest to roll off the assembly line. The 3x optical zoom lens and a decently-large 2.0-inch LCD screen are more or less standard these days for an ultracompact digicam, and at $300, they're pitching it on the budget tip.
Day Five of our giveaway! Win a free MP3 player or Audible audio book >
It's Friday, which means it's the last day of our weeklong giveaway of Creative's 128MB MuVo MP3 players and audio books from Audible. Today we're going to do things differently. Instead of having you compete to be the first to post a comment, we're going to have a little Engadget scavenger hunt. Sometime around 1pm EST we'll be putting up another post detailing exactly what you need to do to win, but suffice it to say, it won't just be a matter of being the fastest to hit refresh. P.S. - Remember that we do require email authentication for comments, so make sure you authenticate your comment if you want to win. Also, we'll be disqualifying anyone who uses scripts to automatically post comments to the site (though that's why we have the code-word dealy in the first place). Oh, and if you already won a prize for this contest, you can't win again. Give some other people a shot! Last thing: for various reasons the contest is restricted to residents of the United States. Sorry everywhere else!
Ask Engadget: What do you keep on your USB keychain drive?
Last week reader Andrew wanted to know what the best wireless data plans were, this week our own Dan Wu has been curious about what stuff people keep on their USB flash memory drives. Email and bookmarks? Excel spreadsheets? MP3s? Do you just use them to transfer files between computers? We're dying to know (seriously), so give us the scoop, especially if you have any recommendations for useful applications to carry around on your keychain.
Here's your fourth chance to win a free MP3 player or Audible audio book!
Ok, sorry to make you all wait a bit for this one today, been sort of a hectic day here at Engadget HQ for a variety of reasons. But anyway, it's officially your fourth chance to win a free MP3 player and/or audio book in our five day giveaway this week. Here's the deal: Be the first person to comment on this post with the code-word "miniature" and you'll win one of Creative's 128MB MuVo MP3 player and a coupon for a free Audible audio book (so you'll have something to listen to on your new toy). Be the second person to comment on this post with the code-word "miniature" and you'll scoop up a coupon for a free Audible audio book. Here's the tricky part: we require email authentication for comments, so make sure you provide a valid email address (don't worry, we won't do anything with it, scout's honor!) to confirm your comment. P.S. - Thanks to Audible for being so generous with the loot, they actually only asked for one thing in return for all this stuff: that we ask our readers to give them some honest feedback on their service. If you're already an Audible user, or if you win one of our prizes this week, here's your chance to let 'em know what you like and what you don't like. UPDATE: We have some winners! Phil already won a prize yesterday, and so wasn't eligible to win this time around, so our winners today are Rosanna, who wins the MP3 player and Audible audio book, and Brian, who wins an Audible audio book. Congratulations! Tomorrow is your last chance to win, and we'll be doing something a little bit different. Check back after midnight EST for details on that.
The XDM-S710BT, Aiwa's new Bluetooth MP3 player
Aiwa announced a couple of other new flash-based MP3 players (the 128MB XDM-S500 and the 256MB XD-S700), but the one we're really keen on is the XDM-S710BT, a 256MB player with built-in support for Bluetooth. Doesn't look like it'll work with Bluetooth stereo headphones; instead you're supposed to plug your regular wired headphones into it, and then use those along with its built-in mic as a sort of ad hoc wireless cellphone headset so you can make and receive phone calls even while you're walking around listening to music.
Entelligence: Digital video is still just too hard
Every Thursday Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research contributes an interesting item of gadget-related research data. Last week he discussed home networks, this week he looks at digital video: The market for digital imaging is growing; sales of cameras and recordable drives used to archive and distribute content are up. Digital camera sales are particularly impressive: In a recent Jupiter Consumer Survey, over 30 percent of online consumers said they own digital cameras, and nearly a quarter of them said they plan to buy them. Even if some of those planning to buy are replacing existing units, this number represents an enormous market presence. Some in the industry have suggested digital camcorders are following the same path, but the growth-rate trend does not support this assumption. By comparison, recordable CD drives are a mature technology. Because most PCs ship with them, nearly one-half of respondents said they already own one, and the 10 percent who said they plan to buy them represent late adopters. At the other end of the spectrum, recordable DVD drives have the highest growth potential, with slightly more people saying they plan to buy them than already own them. Both digital cameras and camcorders are somewhere in the middle—a maturing growth phase. Plenty of room still exists for additional growth, but most consumers who want them already have them. As such, digital cameras are poised to exceed 50 percent penetration over the next five years, but digital camcorder ownership will not.
Send a hug using a robotic pillow
There's something totally, totally sad about the Hug, a new wireless-enabled pillow created by robotics researchers at Carnegie Mellon University that let's you remotely send a hug to someone far away (it's mainly meant as way for grandparents and grandchildren to "stay in touch". Basically you have one person squeeze the left paw of their Hug, then say the name of the person they want to send the hug to. It then automatically calls up the Hug owned by the corresponding person, who then squeezes the left paw of their Hug to accept the hug and create a direct link between the two pillows. Then each person can use sensors to…ok, this is getting way too creepy. Just read the article.
Microsoft locks modded Xboxes out of Xbox Live
Microsoft wasn't joking around when they said they were serious about cracking down on people modding the Xbox, and they even picked a killer time to do it: the day before the launch of Halo 2, which has turned out to be their biggest selling title ever, they decided to lock anyone with a modded Xbox out of their Xbox Live service (at least everyone who couldn't switch their Xbox to a non-modded mode, that is).
Casio's Blue Ice Exilim Zoom EX-Z50
They already did it in red, so apparently Casio figured that they should do a version of their ultraslim five megapixel Exilim EX-Z50 in blue, too. But not just any blue. They had to take it up a notch and call it "Blue Ice", we think mainly because someone in marketing wanted to use the phrase "icy little one" in the press release. We aren't kidding.
Down on Sony Ericsson's P910 smartphone
infoSync checks out the P910, Sony Ericsson's upgrade of their much-loved P900 smartphone that adds a flip-down QWERTY keyboard to the mix (and which still isn't out here). They like the nicer screen and extra memory, but the painful part is that just like pretty much everyone suspected when Sony Ericsson announced this thing a few months back, the ergonomics of the keyboard are just totally off: "Keys are easily distinguished and the character and symbol set is fully adequate, but a backlight is sorely missed. What's more, the P910i frustratingly flops all around the place when using both thumbs to enter text, yielding a usability level best suited to very short messages." Oh, and there's absolutely no support for WiFi, either. Next?
HP's hx2750 Pocket PC
The hx2000 series has sort of been HP's mystery Pocket PC, with lots of conflicting information and sketchy pics leaking out over the past few months, but absolutely no inkling from HP about when they might actually introduce this thing. We still don't know when it'll be officially announced, but we do at least have some concrete details about one of the handhelds in the series, the hx2750, which just turned up on the HP website. The specs really not too far off from what was expected, it has a 624MHz processor, 256MB of memory (128MB of Rom and 128MB of RAM), 3.5-inch touchscreen LCD (320 x 240, not VGA quality like we'd heard), a built-in biometric fingerprint reader for that extra bit of security, 802.11b WiFi, Bluetooth, an SDIO expansion card slot, and runs on Microsoft's Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition software. Except for maybe having more memory, doesn't seem like a major step up from the iPAQs HP already has out, does it? [Thanks, Mozongo]
Fox making mini version of the show "24" for cellphones
To be perfectly honest, we never really started watching that show 24 mainly because it just seemed like 24 whole hours was a little more of a commitment than we were ready to make to a TV show. But 24 minutes? Yeah, we can probably handle that. At least, that's what Fox is hoping. They just cut a deal to create a new series of 24 one minute episodes based on characters from the show 24 (they're trying to get everyone to call them "mobisodes", but that is way beyond weak) that are exclusively for download over Vodafone's new high-speed 3G wireless service in the UK. At least at first. Eventually you'll be able to get your mobile fix of 24 in at least 23 other countries (see, the number 24 keeps coming up), and sooner or later even here in the States courtesy of their joint venture with Verizon Wireless. [Thanks, Rainie]
The Hoodio
The Gap is getting in on the whole wearable tech trend. It won't have a built-in MP3 player or Bluetooth or anything like that, but they've teamed up with Wild Planet on the Hoodio, a fleece jacket with a waterproof FM radio sewn right into it, with a control panel on one sleeve, a power pack in one of the pockets, and detachable speakers in the hood. Goes on sale at GapKids next week, but if they know what's good for them, they'll figure out a way to connect up an iPod in there somewhere, like that Amp snowboarding jacket which came out a while back from Burton.
The BD-HD1000, Sharp's new Blu-ray recorder that also burns DVDs
Sharp's been hinting about making a move into Blu-ray, and the BD-HD1000, their first foray into the market, is a ferocious beast of an A/V component. It's bad enough that it's a Blu-ray disc recorder with a 160GB hard drive and a digital TV tuner (so you can record HDTV and then burn them to Blu-ray discs without a loss of quality), but apparently it can also burn DVDs (it looks as if it has a second tray). But it gets worse. As if you couldn't guess by now, this one is for Japan only.
The Mirror TV
Either they beat Philips to the punch or this is a knock-off of their idea (well, it could be both), but Smarthome is selling a bathrooom mirror with a 15-inch LCD TV embedded into it. From the pic it looks like it's just a TV with a mirror around it, but when you turn the TV off all you see is a regular mirror. So good, because you really wouldn't want to miss a second of Good Morning America. Oh wait, that's what TiVo is for. Forget it. [Via TRFJ]
iPod Socks are real
To all the haters who thought that those iPod Socks we posted about a few weeks ago were fake, you can now pre-order them over at the Apple Store (unless being able to pre-order them is also part of the joke). 29 bucks for a pack of six, but if you want we've got some freshly-washed Engadget socks we'll let go for even cheaper than that. [Thanks, Karim and Lars]
1GB RS-MMC and miniSD memory cards
Besides the cost and how easy they are to lose, one of the biggest beefs people to seem have with those new tiny new RS-MMC and miniSD memory cards which have started popping up in cellphones is that they maxed out at 512MB. Nobody seems to have ever heard of them, but Teravit have been showing off a couple of 1GB RS-MMC and miniSD cards. [Via Mobile Gadget News]