Digital Tech News - Digital Technology & Consumer Electronics

Slingbox PRO, Slingbox AV, Slingbox TUNER Announced by Sling Media

Sling Media, Inc. has announced the availability of three new Slingbox models that include the Slingbox PRO, Slingbox AV, and Slingbox TUNER that transform PCs, laptops and Windows-based mobile phones and handheld computers into personal portable TVs.  For those who have not been following past Sling Media news, the company has gotten a lot of attention this year with various product announcements.  With these new products, Slingbox owners can watch and control their home cable, satellite or digital video recorder anywhere they can access the Internet. Otherwise known as "Place-Shifting."

Sling Media has enhanced performance (up to 400% over the original slingbox), increased the feature set and segmented the new Slingbox models for specific customer needs.

FREE Tickets to DigitalLife 2006 in NYC!

The folks from DigitalLife, the largest consumer technology, gaming & entertainment event of the year, were nice enough to let us all in on some FREE tickets to this year's event.  If you'll be in New York City, DigitalLife 2006 will be taking place October 12 – 15, 2006 at the Javits Center in NYC. The regular price is $15, so go save some money and redeem your FREE Digital Life tickets now. Just use the source code “INSIDER” on this page, where you can print out your own tickets: http://digitallife.com/tickets.html

News from DigitalLife 2005

DigitalLife 2005 Photos

PC Magazine's Digital Village at DigitalLife

DigitalLife 2005 is ON!

Cool Stuff at DigitalLife

Digital Life 2005 Best of Show Winner: Xbox 360

Sony VAIO C Series notebooks for your Style

Sony wants you to express yourself with their new VAIO C Series notebooks.  As you can see, these slim notebook computers come in five colors, including seashell white, blush pink, spring green, espresso black and urban gray. Fashionably designed, Sony VAIO C notebooks are also ready for work with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, for high-speed computing and an energy-efficient battery life for games, music and movies.

Sony Ericsson Bluetooth Watch

Sony Ericsson's unique MBW-100 Bluetooth watch, designed in partnership with watch maker Fossil, let's you be discrete while handling calls, you know, like Dick Tracy. When a call comes in, the callers name or number is displayed on the OLED display beneath the watch face. If you can't take the call, just press a key on the watch to send the caller to voice mail. The Sony Ericsson Bluetooth Watch lets you control your calls and music by allowing you to play, pause and skip to the next track in your phone's music player.  As you would expect, you'll also be notified of incoming text messages.

The cool Sony Ericsson Bluetooth watch is compatible with Sony Ericsson K610, K610i, K618, K790, K800, V630, W710, W810, W850, Z610, Z710, but it would be great if it worked with my Nokia N93 as well.

The MBW-100 Sony Ericsson Bluetooth Watch will be available globally during the fourth quarter of 2006 for $399 USD.

Zune Price and Release Date Set for the U.S.

It's official. Microsoft's Zune digital media player will be released on November 14 in the U.S., and will retail for $249.99. Microsoft also announced that songs available for download from the Zune Marketplace service will cost about 99 cents a song. There will also be a music subscription pass for $14.99 a month that allows users to listen to any of the songs on Zune Marketplace. Videos will be sold at a later date, but no price has been set for now. To get Zune users going, each Zune device will come preloaded with a selection of songs, video, images and short films.

read more | Microsoft Zune Release date, price and details

more Microsoft Zune player details

via

Logitech FreePulse Wireless Headphones

To help untangle your life, Logitech has introduced the Logitech FreePulse Wireless headphones, which have a wireless range of up to 33 feet (10 meters) using Bluetooth 2.0 EDR technology. The FreePulse Wireless headphones work with any audio device with a standard 3.5 mm headphone port. The matchbook-size Bluetooth adapter fits all iPod models and a wide range of other MP3 players. The headphones and adapter, with the embedded rechargeable batteries, have a play time of more than six hours on a full charge.

Sony Reader Released with 10,000 eBook Titles Available

The Sony Reader Portable Reader System is now available ($350) online and will hit retail stores next month, with more than 10,000 eBook titles available to download to the Reader via the companion PC software. For a limited time, when a Reader is registered on Sony's CONNECT site, you can receive a $50 credit towards the purchase of any available eBook titles which can now be reviewed online at ebooks.connect.com.

JAJAH Mobile Offers Free Calling from your Mobile Phone!

How would you like to make free calls from your mobile phone? I thought so. It might sound too good to be true, but JAJAH Mobile, announced at DemoFall 06, lets you inititate a JAJAH call directly from your mobile phone, either free or very inexpensively. Registered JAJAH users can go to the JAJAH site and check if your phone is supported, and if so get the plug-in which will allow your mobile calls to be JAJAH calls.

JAJAH Blog writes:

"The default setting takes numbers with an international prefix and sends them through the Jajah "network". The first phones we are going to support Java based (J2ME) and Symbian TM S60 version 7.x or 8.x phones and we'll be adding to the list as fast as we can. We are counting on our community to tell us what you think and to tell us what phones you'd like to have supported - we'll add them to the list. JAJAH Mobile is the next big step towards free telephony for everyone, everywhere, on any phone! These are good times for JAJAH and these are great times to be a JAJAH user."

TechCrunch adds:

"Once configured, the Jajah software handles certain types of calls made from the phone, bypassing the carrier entirely. When you place a call, Jajah routes the call to its own local number, moves the call over VOIP to the destination and calls the recipient via a local number where they are located."

If the new JAJAH Mobile service works as good as they say, it could shake things up in the Voip, Mobile, and Telecom industries who would probably prefer that JAJAH Mobile be kept secret.

Sony Vaio VGN-TXN10 Notebook with Sprint Mobile Broadband Capability

The new Sony VAIO VGN-TXN10 Series notebook connects to the Sprint Power VisionSM Network for wireless, broadband-speed for downloading e-mail and accessing the Internet and large data files. You'll have to wait for later this year though for Sprint's upgrade to EV-DO Revision A (Rev. A) technology for even faster mobile broadband connections. These laptops have a carbon fiber chassis, and weigh just 2.8-pounds, and with average download speeds of 450 to 800 kbps and upload speeds of 300 to 400 kbps, the one-inch thin VAIO TX notebooks should be great for mobile computing.

There's a state-of-the-art, ultra-low voltage Intel Core Solo processor for increased computing power and standard battery life of between five to 11 hours. The notebooks are Windows Vista capable and Windows Vista Premium ready. Additional features include a fingerprint sensor, a vibrant XBRITE  11.1-inch widescreen display (measured diagonally), DVD+R double layer/DVD+RW drive and Sony’s Instant Mode, so you can watch movies or listen to music without having to boot up the machine.

Asus W2P HD DVD Laptop

The new Asus W2P HD DVD laptop computer line is equipped with a range of 'Merom' Core 2 Duo mobile microprocessors, 4MB L2 and 2MB L2 cache, ATI's new Mobility Radeon X1700 chip and an HD DVD drive with HDMI output.

Reg Hardware got a look at the specs, and writes:  "the 3.3kg, 39.5 x 29 x 3.5cm colossus will sport a WUXGA 1,920 x 1,200 display driven by the ATI GPU, which is connected to 256MB of GDDR 3 video memory. The Asus W2P can also feed an HDTV through its HDMI port. The machine has on-board HDCP support."  The W2P also contains a hybrid analogue and digital TV tuner, and a Dolby-certified sound system with four main speakers and a sub-woofer.