MD80 video camera - unbelievably cheap spy/helmet cam

MD80 video camera - unbelievably cheap spy/helmet cam
Smaller than a BIC lighter, and just about as cheap: the MD80 mini video camera/helmet cam. Photo: RC RockCrawler.

There's not a lot that's particularly remarkable about the MD80 mini spy camera - it's pretty tiny, it records reasonable 640x480 video in AVI format at 25 frames per second, and it can be set to standby for up to 250 hours until it's activated by a sound, making it a good little spy cam unit. It's pretty similar to any number of helmet cam/mini video cam units but for one fact - it costs less than US$25 on eBay, delivered to your door. For the price it's an outstanding product and the sort of thing you could habitually carry around in your car, recording driving conditions for an instant evidence stockpile in case of an accident or incident. And more broadly it's an example of how Chinese design and manufacturing can get a competitive, quality product to market at a price point that absolutely annihilates the competition, to the point where if you're still concerned about quality, you might just as well buy five of the things in case four break. Which they're not doing nearly so much these days.

Source: http://www.gizmag.com/

Tunebug Shake turns your helmet into a speaker

Tunebug Shake turns your helmet into a speaker

The Shake offers the ability to hear your ambient surroundings at the same time as your music and given that you're presumably wearing a helmet for good reason, situational awareness in dangerous situations is an extraordinarily good idea, particularly at just US$120.

If you haven’t previously heard of TuneBug, that’s because it is a new company and although its portable speaker solutions were shown at CES 2009, they are only just now making their way to market. The products are all based on patented NXT speaker technology which generate sound waves that pass through the surfaces the speakers (aka “sound generators”) rest on, effectively turning those surfaces into speakers. Predictably, there’s a desktop solution which sits on your desk. Now there’s also a helmet-top solution which sits on your helmet, giving you a kind of ambient bone dome surround sound like you’ve never had before – ideal for skateboarding, bicycling, skiing and motorcycling.

TuneBug speakers are highly portable sound generators that connect to audio sources via a 3.5mm input or Bluetooth to transform several flat surfaces into loudspeakers. TuneBug Vibe, which uses the 3.5mm input, is available now while the Bluetooth-enabled version, TuneBug Shake, launches January 30.

The Shake is the one which interests us most, as there are plenty of desktop speakers on the market, but a distinct dearth of solutions for listening to music whilst wearing a helmet, and none of them offer the ability to hear your ambient surroundings at the same time as your music. The Shake appears to offer this latter feature and given that you’re presumably wearing a helmet for good reason, situational awareness in dangerous situations is an extraordinarily good idea,
particularly at just US$120.

The Shake is a small attachable device for bike, ski and skateboard helmets which create surround sound inside of the helmet by “exciting” the entire helmet surface which then becomes a speaker.

The Tunebug Shake has a rechargeable battery with about five hours of playtime and charges via the included USB cord.

NXT's technology is also used in the Orb.

Source: http://www.gizmag.com/

Self-assembling solar cells built using ancient wisdom, modern technology

Self-assembling solar cells built using ancient wisdom, modern technology

Alright, so self-assembling electronics are hardly new in and of themselves, and nanoscale tech tends to always come with bombastic promises, but you don't wanna miss how this latest innovation is built. Two professors from the University of Minnesota have successfully demonstrated a self-assembly technique that arranges microscopic electronic elements in their proper order thanks to the absolute enmity that exists between water and oil. By coating elements with a hydrophilic layer on one side and some hypdrophobic goo on the other, they've achieved the proper element orientation, and the final step in their work was the insertion of a pre-drilled, pre-soldered sheet, which picks up each element while being slowly drawn out of the liquid non-mixture. The achievement here is in finding the perfect densities of water and oil to make the magic happen, and a working device of 64,000 elements has been shown off -- taking only three minutes to put together. If the method's future proves successful, we'll all be using electronics built on flexible, plastic, metal, or otherwise unconventional substrates sometime soon.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/

Nuvo's Ritmo Advanced Pregnancy Sound System jacks your baby in to your terrible music taste

Nuvo's Ritmo Advanced Pregnancy Sound System jacks your baby in to your terrible music taste

Nuvo has just released its $130 Ritmo "Advanced Pregnancy Sound System," which is a pregnant belly belt composed of four belly-firing speakers, with a built-in iPod pocket, 3.5mm jack and volume-regulating abilities. You could jack in your phone for a bit of long distance baby conversation, but for the most part you know this belt is going to be inundating your child-to-be with Josh Groban and The Ting Tings. And do you really want that on your conscience? There's video after the break.


RitmoTM - Pregnancy App from Nuvo Group LTD on Vimeo.


Source: http://www.engadget.com/

Otus Raw DJ controller outed ahead of NAMM

Otus Raw DJ controller outed ahead of NAMM

The big NAMM show's not started yet, but Otus is rolling out its latest DJ controller just in time. The Otus Raw is a controller that can work as one or two virtual turntable decks, depending on your needs, each with a SL-turntable-style pitch slider. Other notable features include mega-sized velocity pads, a layer switch for "virtually unlimited" possibilities, and we've got a feeling that with one of these bad boys, chopping and screwing Ke$ha's never been so mindlessly easy and entertaining. Regardless, the Otus RAW should be available this spring, though we'll have to wait a bit longer for pricing, unfortunately.


Source: http://www.engadget.com/

MagicJack femtocell sure to face legal battle royale

MagicJack femtocell sure to face legal battle royale

Despite MagicJack's official announcement last week of an in-home femtocell for connecting carriers' phones directly to its service, tons of questions remain -- including most of the questions we had when we first heard of the idea. Let's recap those questions and where we stand with each of them, shall we?

* Are these guys licensing spectrum from the gub'mint, sublicensing it from carriers, or just going rogue? Going rogue. Historically, this usually ends in an FCC-mandated shutdown -- and since both carriers and the CTIA will undoubtedly be throwing a fit that some company is stealing pricey spectrum for its own purposes, we're sure the pressure on the government to act will be quite high.
* Are any carriers in on this, and if so, why? Nope, none. The company says that "if they were smart they would take [it] on as a partner, because all [it] could do is enhance the value they create for their customer," but presently, MagicJack's all alone.
* If carriers aren't involved, why would they establish roaming deals that would allow carrier-branded phones and SIMs to roam on MagicJack's rogue airwaves? As far as we can tell, they aren't on any roaming deals.
* If they're not working on roaming deals, the femtocells will need to spoof a carrier ID. Furthermore, TDMA femtocells are virtually impossible to design and install for technical reasons, which means these would have to be 3G. So MagicJack's going to offer a UMTS femtocell? It appears to be a plain-Jane GSM femtocell, which is technically interesting considering what we've heard in the past about effectively making a TDMA unit that plays nice with the surrounding network. Considering everything else we know, though, it probably doesn't play nice -- and without a roaming deal in place, they'll need to spoof. That's going to rile up both carriers and the GSMA.
* Do you get to keep your phone number when you roam on the MagicFemtocell, and if so, how? For incoming calls, probably not, unless you forward to the MagicJack number.

Needless to say, both the carriers and the feds are going to have a lot to say about this product -- particularly considering that it hasn't even received FCC approval yet. If it keeps marching toward retail, we could be gearing up for one of the most entertaining legal battles of the year.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/

USB 3.0 hub

'3-point' USB 3.0 hub is self-referential fun and functionality

Admittedly, at first we didn't get it -- the hub (with actually helpful, twisting ports) was about 90 degrees counterclockwise from the pictured position and we couldn't get past the aesthetic similarities to the Dodge Ram logo. That's when the friendly overseer of the Dun Cheng Technology Corp. booth in the CES International Hall twisted both our minds and the hub itself to reveal an intentionally meta moment -- "3-point," as in USB 3.0. Needless to say, we were very amused.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/