The other day, my brother Scott Aiello tipped me off to a device that can be used as a convenient one-stop place to charge all of your handheld devices. It's called the Personal Electronics Power Station and it's available from several vendors on Amazon.com.

The Personal Electronics Power Station is an outlet strip with a special housing that allows you to clamp your handheld devices to its body using adjustible dividers. The body has an internal space where the plug ends of your handhelds' charging cables go. When not in use, the Personal Electronics Powerstation sits on top of a table or a bookshelf with your charging cables neatly organized.

Some of the comments I've read about this unit say that the internal plugs for the charging cables are two-pronged only and that adapters won't fit inside. That's a fair point, so watch out for that. Another common complaint is that the Personal Electronics Power Station doesn't support USB. How many of your handhelds charge only through USB connections? I can't think of any of my devices that have this problem.

Technorati Tags: Personal Electronics Power Station, electronic gadgets.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you are a regular radio listener in major cities in the USA, you've probably heard several ads for TomTom Go portable navigation systems. TomTom has a different strategy in France. They are running a two team road rally called TomTom Raid. The teams were given no food, no money, no credit cards, just a TomTom GO 700 and a Smart car to travel across France. The teams left Paris on Monday and the race will continue until December 8.

You can follow the progress of the race daily at the website TomTomRaid.com. The site is entirely in French, so it may make more sense to our readers in Quebec and people who studied French in school than it does to me.

My father asked me what a TomTom was the other day. For those of you who haven't seen one yet, they are portable navigation systems that can be moved from car to car. They are simple in that you plug them into your car's electrical system, mount them to your car windshield, turn them on, and go. There are two models of the TomTom GO that are being marketed in the United States:

• TomTom GO 300, a turnkey GPS device that gives door-to-door directions between any two addresses in the United States, maps included on a secure digital card. The system includes spoken turn-by-turn guidance.
• TomTom GO 700, including all of the features of the 300 plus faster CPU, more memory, a hard disk for larger map and route storage, and bluetooth for handsfree phone integration.

[ via Operation Gadget reader Alexander Baarde and Alt-Buzz ]

Technorati Tags: Tom Tom, Christmas gifts, Hanukkah gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I missed this in the run up to Thanksgiving, but Palm released Treo 650 Updater 1.17 for Cingular Wireless customers on November 21. This update supercedes the one that was released in July and adds the following improvements:

• Includes Versamail 3.1c,
• Gmail attachment downloads,
• Optimizes Bluetooth performance for some Motorola headsets and other car kits. I have a Motorola HS850, so I'm hoping that this will help me.
• Voice quality enhancements,
• Optimizes memory handling,
• Correctly saves Auto-off power setting,
• Adds an audible beep when the phone can't initiate a call properly,
• Improves battery life by turning off the screen 30 seconds into a call. This was part of the previous update as well.

I will have more comments on the Treo 650 update after I have time to apply it to my Treo.

Technorati Tags: Treo 650, Cingular, Bluetooth, Motorola HS850, Versamail, Gmail

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just resolved a bizzare problem that kept me from using my Motorola HS850 Bluetooth Headset with my Palm Treo 650 for a while.

When my Motorola HS850 successfully connected with a Treo 650 to which it has already been paired, the HS850 would play a very quick set of three ascending tones that lasted for about 8/10ths of a second. However, recently when the HS850 tried to connect, the Treo 650 would play a four tone sequence that sounded like notes played on a piano and lasted for more than a second. After that, there would be no connection between the headset and the Treo.

Some aspect of the data pairing the two devices apparently got corrupted. I was able to resolve the problem by following the instructions in the Palm Knowledge Base that called for deleting and re-establing the Trusted Device pair.

I was surprised to see this work because I thought I had tried this before and not been successful. Nevertheless, I got the devices to re-pair with each other and I'll have a lot more productive use of my Treo 650 for voice calls as a result.

Technorati Tags: Treo 650, Motorola HS850, Bluetooth

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

miniVox MV100: Speakerphone
for VoIP is available through
Amazon.com

Yesterday, Andy Abramson of VoIP Watch pointed out a portable speakerphone for use with VoIP services called the miniVox MV100 USB Speakerphone. I had never heard of this before Andy mentioned it. He said:

If you think Polycom makes the best desktop speakerphones, these guys deliver something at a fraction of the price that goes with you and works very well. In most cases it has caused me to abandon using the headset entirely.

This little box is about two-thirds of the size of my Treo 650 and it plugs into your PC using a mini USB cable. It's used mainly as a speakerphone, but you can also plug a mobile phone headset into it for privacy.

mVox also has a Bluetooth device for considerably more money called the mVox MV900 which interests me because I'm always looking for things I can use with both my mobile phone and VoIP.

More information about both of these products is available at http://www.mvox.com/.

Technorati Tags: Bluetooth, VoIP, mVox

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nikon has released two digital cameras with built-in WiFi capability. The Coolpix P2 is silver and has a 5.1-megapixel image sensor and a 3.5x optical zoom lens. The Coolpix P1 is black and has an 8-megapixel image sensor and a 3.5x optical zoom lens. Both cameras have nice-looking 2.5-inch LCD displays.

Wilson Rothman of Time Magazine featured the Coolpix P2 as the Time.com Gadget of the Week back in September. He felt that the camera was a little less capable than it should have been, because its WiFi reception wasn't as strong as two laptop computers that he was using in the same part of his house.

He considers this is a problem because he wants to use the WiFi capability to transfer photos to a computer while he continues shooting. I believe that the WiFi capability is actually intended to be used to wirelessly upload your photos to a PC after the photo shooting session is over. Therefore, WiFi would only be used for short periods of time, and somewhat weaker reception could be tolerated because the camera would be close proximity to a PC and a WiFi access point.

Wireless photo upload with WiFi makes a lot more sense than Bluetooth when you think about it. I transfer a lot of data with Bluetooth when I sync my Treo 650 to my Blogging Workstation. I can't imagine trying to transfer a 256-Megabyte SD card full of photos using Bluetooth. Bluetooth just doesn't have the bandwidth to make big data transfers quickly.

I think wireless photo uploading will make sense to a lot of people, and the Coolpix P1 and P2 can deliver on that expectation. I don't think the functionality is there to upload photos directly from the camera to Flickr, muchless to do moblogging or photo journalism from the local Starbucks.

Technorati Tags: Nikon Coolpix P2, Nikon Coolpix P1, WiFi, Bluetooth

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Amazon.com is offering the Motorola HS805 Bluetooth Headset for free for a limited time when you purchase a qualifying Motorola mobile phone. All you need to do is add a Motorola mobile phone from the list below and a Motorola HS805 Bluetooth Headset to your Amazon.com Shopping Cart. Use promotion code FREEPHN4BLUE at checkout. The offer is good from November 1 to November 16, 2005.

The qualifying mobile phones are as follows:

• Motorola RAZR V3 Phone for T-Mobile
• Motorola RAZR V3 Phone in Black for Cingular
• Motorola RAZR V3 Phone in Silver for Cingular
• Motorola E815 EV-DO Phone for Verizon Wireless
• Motorola V551 Phone for Cingular
• Motorola V330 Phone for T-Mobile
• Motorola ROKR E1 iTunes Phone for Cingular
• Motorola MPx220 Smartphone for Cingular
• Motorola V360 Phone for T-Mobile

Technorati Tags: Bluetooth, HS805

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While I've been grinding away on my consulting projects, Palm has apparently put the final touches on a Windows Mobile-based Treo that will support Verizon Wireless's implementation of EV-DO.

The first solid indication of an announcement was Engadget's first look at the Palm Treo 700w, published on Thursday. This was followed an announcement from Palm investor relations that Palm, Microsoft, and Verizon Wireless would make a joint announcement on Monday, September 26 at 12:00 noon EDT. This press release came out at 4:05pm on Friday, minutes after the close of the regular trading on the NASDAQ.

Palm's advisory was followed by an article in The Wall Street Journal reporting that Palm is set to use Microsoft code on Treo Phones. In my opinion there's a big difference between speculation about a Windows Mobile-based Treo by gadget-related blogs is less significant than a news article in publications like the Wall Street Journal [ Subscription required. ].

I'm very optimistic about the market prospects for a Windows Mobile-based Treo. I think that Palm would not be releasing it if it didn't meet their high user-experience standards. The Windows Mobile platform has been in desperate need of a manufacturer like Palm who are committed to adding value instead of just rolling out a compatible handset.

As for the future of Treo's based on the PalmOS, we'll have to wait and see. I don't think that Palm will ever integrate Treo functionality into the PalmOS Cobalt operating system, but subsequent PalmOS implementations based on Linux resulting from PalmSource's acquisition of China MobileSoft may be more to their liking. My experience with the Treo 650 is that there are times when it's really obvious that the phone could use an operating system capable of multi-tasking, and PalmOS based on a Linux kernel may be a good solution.

Technorati Tags: Treo 700w, Treo 650, Windows Mobile

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I received my Motorola HS850 Bluetooth Headset from Amazon.com yesterday and I've already used it during a 100-mile roundtrip from Newtown to West Chester, PA for a hockey officiating meeting. The sound quality was good on my end and the people I called thought I sounded good as well. This article focuses more on the process of getting the HS850 working for the first time.

I was glad I read the Motorola Bluetooth Wireless Headset Quick Start Guide. It's an 8-page fan-folded document a little larger than a credit card that told me how to:

1. charge the headset,
2. pair the headset with my phone,
3. turn the headset on or off.

The brief explanation of how to turn on Bluetooth on your mobile phone is Motorola-specific and meant to serve as an example in the event that you have a phone from another manufacturer. I have a Palm Treo 650 and it helped that I regularly use the Bluetooth feature of the Treo to sync it with my Blogging Workstation. I already had Bluetooth turned on and more or less knew how to search for the HS850 from my Treo and pair the two together.

Technorati Tags: Bluetooth, HS850, Treo 650

Continue reading "Getting My Motorola HS850 Bluetooth Headset Working With a Treo 650" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)