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MSN Tech & Gadgets1/11/2009 Words Will Never Escape You with the Pulse Smartpen As a journalist, I can vouch for how hard it is to write down every single word -- or even make sure you don't miss anything important -- when conducting an interview or listening to someone speak at, say, a press conference. And students, stenographers, attorneys, business people or anyone who needs to take detailed notes deals with the same issue. That's not a problem when using the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen, which not only has a built-in voice recorder but also incorporates an infrared camera to track whatever you write on Livescribe's Dot Paper so that your notes sync with the recording. Then simply tap on the notes and the recording is played back. Plus, the paper has printed controls to start, stop or pause recordings and allow bookmarking parts of a recording or jumping backward or forward during playback. The Smartpen has two microphones, a built-in speaker and an audio jack for plugging in an included 3D Recording headset that also has an embedded microphone for recording in noisy environments, while an OLED display lets you track recording time and mangage other functions. The Smartpen's on-board battery is charged using an included USB cradle, which also transfers recordings and notes to a computer so that Livescribe Desktop software can manage and transform them into Flash movies. Now you'll never miss a single word. -- Posted by Doug Newcomb, special to MSN Tech & Gadgets Internet Radio on the Go Internet radio is great -- while you're sitting at your computer. But Slacker's G2 portable ($199.99) takes the website's easy and simple to use Internet radio service and puts it in the palm of your hand. Simply set up your service at slacker.com and choose from over 100 radio stations in dozens of genres. As songs play, you can click on a heart-shaped icon to indicate that you like a track or on a "ban" icon to nix a selection. The more you choose your preferences, the more the site tailors tunes to your taste. Best of all, it's absolutely free, although a couple of ads are inserted into the music mix every hour, and a premium service with fewer ads and more features is also available. The Slacker G2 portable connects to a PC or Mac to load your favorite stations, and it has Wi-Fi capability so that you can do it on the road. The service is also available for BlackBerry smartphones as a free download, and an iPhone app is coming soon. It's like having a personal DJ in your pocket, but without all the annoying commercials and between-song banter. -- Posted by Doug Newcomb, special to MSN Tech & Gadgets 1/10/2009 PC Peace of Mind You know you should back up the valuable data on your computer, but it's so hard to remember to do it. And when the worst happens, you always wish you had. That's where ClickFree's Transformer ($59.99) comes in. It plugs into a USB port on your computer and connects to any brand of external hard drive, and there's no need to install special software on your computer to automatically back up your precious digital pictures, music and other data on a regular basis. Just connect the transformer and it does the rest. Plus, it can be used with multiple computers and hard drives. It's a small price to pay for PC peace of mind. -- Posted by Doug Newcomb, special to MSN Tech & Gadgets Ride and Jam in Your Car With Your Favorite Star  Imagine having your favorite rock, rap, pop or country music star riding along with you in the car and calling up music suited to your particular taste, as well as turning you on to other artists you may like. That's what Gracenote plans to bring on the road with its new CarStars technology. The company has teamed with Capitol Records and Nissan to demonstrate the technology at CES 2009, which uses canned celebrity voices and images to cue up and display tunes on a car stereo. The system employs Gracenote's MusicalID and Playlist Plus to catalog a driver's digital music collection, and voice recognition can be used to select tunes hands-free. It even uses "Voice Models" to translate a celebrity's voice into several languages for use in other countries so that J Lo could, say, speak Japanese. And if 50 Cent suggests you listen to his latest discovery, you better just do it. -- Posted by Doug Newcomb, special to MSN Tech & Gadgets 1/9/2009 Will 2009 Be the Year of Connected Portable Navigation?  In just a few years, portable navigation systems have gone from a novelty to a fixture on millions of windshields and dashboards. Now that the market has reached a saturation point, the trend at CES 2009 points to a future of Internet-connected navigation systems. Two examples include the TeleNav Shotgun ($299, plus $11.99 a month for a data plan following a free three-month trial) and the TomTom GO 740 LIVE ($499 with one year of free service). The TeleNav Shotgun uses a cellular connection to download real-time traffic reports and allow Internet searches for Points of Interest (POIs) such as gas stations, restaurants and ATMs. Plus, you never have to worry about the mapping software becoming outdated since the unit can retrieve automatic updates. You can also wirelessly send an address to the TeleNav Shotgun from a PC via an icon that can be added to an Internet Explorer, Firefox or Google toolbar. The TomTom GO 740 LIVE also uses a cellular connection to warn drivers of traffic ahead in real time, and it can get gas prices and perform Google searches to look for POIs along a route. And because it has built-in Bluetooth and voice control, drivers can control the unit and call a POI without taking their hands off the wheel. This makes us think that portable navigation is definitely headed in the right direction. -- Posted by Doug Newcomb, special to MSN Tech & Gadgets |
The sights and sounds from the Consumer Electronics Show
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