Hardware and gadgets

As I have noted in the past, I could easily have an entire category devoted to nothing but iPod accessories. But there are entire blogs and news sites devoted to the topic. I try to pick out the items that have some broader implications.

The latest iPod accessory, as usual, is much bigger and more expensive than any of the current iPod models. It is a flat panel television. Manufacturer JVC is putting an iPod dock in some of its new television sets. Once an iPod has been plugged in, users will be able to use the TV remote control to play music, view photos, and watch videos from the iPod.

If you have not yet purchased a big, expensive, flat screen TV, you may want to wait a bit. Tiny, iPod-size projectors may finally be coming this year. Prototype small projectors have been promised for at least a couple of years, but the size of the image and the brightness were limiting factors. This new projector from a company called Microvison uses red, green, and blue lasers to generate an HD size picture on almost any surface.

This article suggests that the iPod may be the new TV and radio. The writer talks about how she is regularly downloading radio and TV programs to her iPod and watching them on her train ride home every afternoon from the office.

Internet radio dropped off the radar years ago because of royalty issues. Start up Internet radio stations streaming music were not always paying royalties, and the record companies responded by imposing absurdly expensive royalties that put most Internet radio stations out of business.

USA Today and many other papers and news outlets are carrying stories on Google's gPhone, which will be an open source software-powered cell phone. Sort of. The phone will use a variant of Linux, and users will be able to load non-Google software on it.

But the exact business model is still under wraps. It will probably be free or very low fee, but Google is in the business of making money. The company already intends to put many of its own applications and services on the phone, and one has to wonder if you will be able to remove them or use competing software.

The iPhone has broken all customer satisfaction records, with 82% of iPhone owners saying they are "Very satisfied" with the device. This is the highest rating that any cellphone has ever received, and an indication that Apple once again has raised the bar for a market.

It must have been a slow news day yesterday. During a long drive, I heard a news story on the radio at least ten times. It was about a new capability added to GM cars and trucks equipped with Onstar. The vehicle can now be turned off remotely. The news story was all about what a boon this was going to be to law enforcement officials, who could request that the friendly Onstar person turn off the engine in a car being chased by the police.

If you have worried about having some alternative source of power during power outages but don't want to keep a gas-powered generator around, this new human-powered generator from Freeplay may be just the thing.

It is a bit of a stretch to call this gadget a "robot," but since it comes from the iRobot folks, who pioneered the robot vacuum cleaner, it is hardly surprising. I don't think this gutter cleaning "robot" has much more intelligence than a remote control toy, but it is still a pretty good idea.

BoingBoing has a short article about a dumb crook that stole an iMac. What the crook has not realized is that the computer, which has a built in camera, is running a little program called Flickrbooth, which automatically takes pictures and uploads them to a Flickr photo account.

In a strange twist, PC World has found that a MacBook Pro 17" laptop runs Windows Vista faster than all the other Windows laptops it has tested.

The 'net is abuzz with discussions about the dramatic price cuts announced yesterday by Apple. The price of the pricey iPhone was cut by $200, and Apple also introduced an new iPod, called the iPod Touch, which is an iPhone without the phone function.

An article on a fairly obscure tech blog provides details about the iPod that have been suspected for a long time but never confirmed. The iPod is a Macintosh. Apparently, the iPod has always been powered by Apple's OS X operating system (a smaller version, obviously, with fewer features). Over all this time, Apple has declined to provide any technical details of what software powers the iPod.

By all reports, the iPhone is already a success. Apple has not released complete sales numbers, but analysts who were predicting initial sales of 200,000 phones are estimating that between 500,000 and 700,000 phones have been sold. Virtually every Apple and AT&T store sold out of initial supplies in three days, and online orders are now being filled and delivered in as little as two days.

The hype over the iPhone is reaching the boiling point as the release of the new gadget is now just a week away. Speculation over still unknown features, frustration over the price, and the lure of the touch screen interface that no one really knows much about is fueling the furor.

In the biggest change to personal computers since the arrival of an affordable 5 1/4" hard drive about 25 years ago, solid state "hard drives" will be appearing soon in laptops. The solid state storage devices have no moving parts, use much less energy, weigh less, are faster, and are more durable.

An Apple blog reports on a Gartner Research study of computer sales. While growth of PC sales has been an anemic 2.6%, sales of Macs over the last six months have been increasing at a rate of 30%.

Hard on the heels of the release of the $300 Apple TV device, Apple has announced partnerships with Sony and Ikea today. Sometime in June, Sony will release an Apple/Sony flat screen television with the Apple TV completely integrated.

Apple TV is a small multimedia management device that allows users to send movies, TV shows, music, and pictures wirelessly from their computer to the Apple TV box, which is normally connected to a flat screen TV (it also works with tube-style televisions, but Apple is not promoting this feature).

Here is an interesting iPod gadget: a multimedia center designed for the kitchen. Not only can you plug in your iPod and listen to music, but it will also play video content from your iPod. It has a fold down LCD display, a TV tuner, an AM/FM radio, a clock, and a cooking timer. It is designed to mount under a cabinet, so it could replace a lot of stuff that takes up counter space.