hardware - page 12

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 — The Swivl ($159) is like a mini non-union cameraman who just wants to record you all day long — no lunch or bathroom breaks needed.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – At CES last year, Nikon booth-guy Lindsay wasn’t subdued, but he definitely wasn’t as rambunctious as he was tonight when I got him talking about the new D4. Let me tell you, this guy really loves the D4. I’m a fan too though, so it was fun getting him to walk us through some of the camera’s new features.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 — Over the past year, Nokia has been making steady incremental improvements to reshape the company’s image by showing the world that greatness doesn’t come to those who merely copy what the best company is doing. Greatness is achieved by setting yourself apart from the competition by taking a radically different path than everyone else. Apple has known this fact for decades and have used it become the most admired company in the world, and during Nokia’s press conference today it was readily apparent that the only company that should be viewed as a truly worthy adversary to Apple in the mobile market is Nokia.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 — I’ve personally been waiting a very long time for this sort of thing, disappointed by idle promises and vaporware. This set of LEDs paired with audible announcements isn’t exactly what I’ve been waiting for, but I’ll take it. Question is, does Lance already have a pair?

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – Professional audio and music equipment maker Behringer wants to sell you an iPhone sound bar, but if that doesn’t interest you, they’ve got 49 other new just-announced-at-CES consumer electronic products that just might.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 — Toshiba’s Excite X10, a tablet the company calls the world’s lightest and thinnest, is finally landing on U.S. shores, and we got our first hands-on experience with it at CES last night as Toshiba readies to release it here in a few months.

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – Debuting here at CES 2012, the GoPano Micro ($80) is an odd-looking little device that lets you record 360° panoramic videos on your iPhone 4 and 4S. You can then scroll around those videos in a way similar to how you move around in Google Maps street view, watching your video from a ton of different angles and perspectives.

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – Remember those old “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” ads (and the never-ending parodies that followed) for LifeAlert in the ’80s? Zomm has leveraged the new Bluetooth v4.0 technology to create a device with features that harken back to that older gadget; it too comes with a live operator — but the Zomm Lifestyle Connect‘s inclusion of Bluetooth makes it way cooler and vastly more useful.

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – We figured health and fitness was going to have a large footprint at CES this year, and so far we haven’t been disappointed. Case in point, the Zensorium Tinke dongle: it measures heart rate, respiratory rate and the amount of oxygen in your bloodstream — all just by pressing your thumb on it.

Nikon Rumors has put out a good comparison chart showing the differences between Canon and Nikon’s new flagship D-SLRs, the Canon EOS 1D X and the Nikon D4. Specs-wise, the cameras look quite similar, but there are some notable differences.

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – Fish and chips and Jony Ive may remain Britain’s most favorite imports among Cult staffers, but maybe Pure’s new Contour 200i Air will get close.

The idea behind the Zeo Sleep Manager Mobile ($99) is that the quality of your sleep affects your health in a bigger way than we generally recognize, and that measuring the amount of time we sleep and its quality — then quantifying that sleep with a number on a 100-point scale — will give us the information we need to improve our sleep, and ultimately our health.

So by now you may have heard that Nikon’s flagship pro D-SLR, the D4, is real and will be on the floors of CES. The new features of this new drool-worthy machine are numerous, but one that immediately caught my eye was its ability to be controlled remotely by an iPhone or iPad — wow! I don’t think anyone saw that coming.

Despite all our 21st-century technical wizardry, one of the easiest and least expensive ways to get a very basic idea of physical health is through a metric that’s been used for a very long time: body weight.

The Withings WiFi Body Scale ($160) takes this concept to the next level in many ways, including allowing you access to all your data on a gorgeously designed iOS app. It also adds an even more important metric, body fat percentage, and goes a long way to erasing many of the pitfalls using a simple scale can lead to — and it does this all while remaining incredibly easy to use. In fact, it might be the most effective tool I’ve used to keep healthy.

I’m wearing a big shimmering wrap on my head with a jewel in the middle. There’s incense going, and I’m now ready to make these CES 2012 camera predictions: new pro DSLRs from Nikon and (possibly) Canon will reign supreme; it will be another good year for small mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras, like the new Nikon 1; and in-point-and-shoots, I see more of the same blah.

I also see this year’s PMA show (Photo Marketing Association) being combined into CES, bringing with it imaging accessories galore — but that’s not a prediction — it’s on PMA’s website.

Logitech isn’t waiting for CES next week; instead, the gadget giant is releasing two new products today — one of which raised eyebrows here.

Here’s a fun idea from Kickstarter: hip headphones with built-in housing for your iPod shuffle.

Nikon fans, rejoice! Word on the street says the Nikon mothership is going to announce a new flagship professional-grade FX (full frame) DSLR camera, possibly two, at its Thailand headquarters during their January 6th “The Image You Are Waiting For” press event. And if the rumors are true, you can bet Nikon is going to be showing off their new baby on the floors of CES, and we’ll be there to cover it.

Launched a few weeks ago, the Pogoplug Series 4 ($100) is Cloud Engines’ latest attempt at making their network-attached storage device as ubiquitous as the microwave oven. Like its predecessors, the S4 allows you to attach a hard drive or flash drive to create your own cloud, which you can use to stream media, share files or create slideshows, all of which can be accessed over the Internet and shared with others. Additionally, it can also be used for remote backup.

The Sennheiser HD 650’s ($500) audio performance is among the best available, but they won’t be worth their high price tag unless you’re willing to listen to them correctly, and for some, the hassle may not be worth it.

Seems like there’s been an explosion of small, portable, Bluetooth speakers onto store shelves this last year — the most popular or well-known of which is probably the Jawbone JamBox — from the advance notices we’ve seen, in a few weeks the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas will herald a whole new crop of the little tribbles.

Monster’s take on the concept is the Monster iClarityHD Precision Micro Bluetooth Speaker 100 ($100). And like pretty much everything the company puts out, the iClarity is bassy and L-O-U-D.

Christmas day has historically been a record shattering day in terms of new device activations and app downloads. This Christmas was no different according to these recent stats published by Flurry Analytics. Using a baseline average taken from the first 20 days of December, Flurry showed that new Android and iOS device activations rose 353% on Christmas day. While averaging around 1.5 million activations during the month of December, activations jumped to more than 6.8 million on Christmas day. Ho, ho, ho — ly rising reindeer! That’s a staggering increase and to get a better feel for just how impressive those numbers are, only 2.8 million devices were activated last Christmas day.

If you’re ready to make the leap to hands-free talking, or are looking to upgrade from an older bluetooth headset, the Plantronics Voyager Pro+ ($99) is one of the best headsets on the market and is worthy of your dollars. But beware, its voluminous size may leave some sheepish, wishing for a more discreet unit.

Just got an iPad for the holidays? You lucky sod! You scored the crown jewel, the Big Tamale — the most marvelous gadget Apple has ever made. Yes, go ahead, pick up its slim aluminum frame and dive right in — Steve knew that’s what you wanted to do, and he designed the iPad so you could do just that.

We want to make sure you get everything right though, and we know there are a few key setup tricks along the way that new (and even some not-so-new) iPad users miss. So take a look at the short list of steps we’ve lined up here. They won’t take long, and they’ll make sure you get the best out of your iPad 2. Ready? Here we go.

Wahoo’s popular ANT+ Fisica dongle, which allows the iPhone to read signals from fitness gadgets like heart-rate monitors, pedometers and bike sensors, is probably most widely used fitness iPhone accessory since its release a little  over a year ago. And today, Wahoo took the first step toward killing it.