22 February 2009
BEST OF CES: TELEPHONE AND PDA DEVICES
There were several new telephone products at CES that brought new and innovative features to the marketplace.
The Panasonic KX-TH1212 phone system could be a good solution for a small office practitioner looking to save money on paying for a cell phone and an office landline. The system is an expandable bluetooth phone system that sends your cell phone call to a phone system with multiple handsets. You don't need to bother connecting the cell phone each time because the bluetooth signal automatically is picked up the phone system. This is also an obvious solution for saving the cost of a landline at home as well. And at a retaile price well under $100, the price is right.
If you are in your car a lot and agree that handling a cell phone is annoying and dangerous (and even illegal in some places), you might want to get a bluetooth car kit which acts as a speaker phone wirelessly connecting to your cell phone. I've had one of these gadgets for over a year, but the products have been rapidly improving. LG's HFB-500 is very small, is powered by solar energy and has 16 hours of talk time and an amazing 1,100 hours of standby time between charges. The street price on the HFB-500 is around $75.
One of the first gadgets I bought for myself after seeing something at CES is Plantronics' Discovery 925 Bluetooth Earpiece. I've avoided using the clunky, ugly bluetooth earpieces I've seen on the market, but this vframe design caught my attention and it is small and comfortable. And at about $75, it is also reasonably priced.
21 February 2009
BEST OF CES: CAMERAS
I had the chance to get to the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show this year and saw lots of great products that will soon be making their way to law offices around the country. Here are the products that made my favorites' list.
Let's start with cameras.
Samsung had a number of fabulous new products, one of which is its new SSD camcorder. The camera has an internal 64 gigabyte, 4.7 megapixel flash drive that films in 1080p high definition. Because it is using a solid state drive rather than a regular hard drive, it has a longer battery life and also can withstand shocks and vibrations better.
Sony had several innovative new products that are worth a mention.
The Sony Cybershot T500 is a pocket-sized 10 megapixel camera. That's a nice number of megapixels, but what makes this camera unique is that it is also a high definition movie camera that can record video in 720p clarity.
Sony's done the reverse with its HDR-CX12 video camera. The high definition camera also is a camera for photos. But it has a very interesting feature. It's the first camcorder with Smile Shutter technology allowing for automatic photo capture when the person in the frame smiles. So you can be recording a video and the camera is also recording still photos every time it catches a person smiling.
The Alpha DLSR-A900 Digital Camera really packs a remarkable punch. The A900 has the distinction of being the world's highest resolution digital SLR camera - 24.6 megapixels! That's mammoth.
Finally, the Sony Cybershot T700 is another 10 megapixel camera, but this one comes with 4 gigabytes of internal memory which means you can store up to 40,000 photos on the camera without having to worry about inserting a memory card.
Sony wasn't the only winner in the camera category. And if you haven't heard the name Polaroid in a while, the company has a new camera that modernizes their famous concept. Snap a picture with their little pocket PoGo digital camera and it pops out print photos instantly.
And one camera that is going to be hard to claim is a business necessity, but is cool nonetheless is Liquid Image's scuba/swim mask with a built in camera. The model 310 films video and also snaps pictures with 5.0 megapixels of memory.
Let's start with cameras.
Samsung had a number of fabulous new products, one of which is its new SSD camcorder. The camera has an internal 64 gigabyte, 4.7 megapixel flash drive that films in 1080p high definition. Because it is using a solid state drive rather than a regular hard drive, it has a longer battery life and also can withstand shocks and vibrations better.
Sony had several innovative new products that are worth a mention.
The Sony Cybershot T500 is a pocket-sized 10 megapixel camera. That's a nice number of megapixels, but what makes this camera unique is that it is also a high definition movie camera that can record video in 720p clarity.
Sony's done the reverse with its HDR-CX12 video camera. The high definition camera also is a camera for photos. But it has a very interesting feature. It's the first camcorder with Smile Shutter technology allowing for automatic photo capture when the person in the frame smiles. So you can be recording a video and the camera is also recording still photos every time it catches a person smiling.
The Alpha DLSR-A900 Digital Camera really packs a remarkable punch. The A900 has the distinction of being the world's highest resolution digital SLR camera - 24.6 megapixels! That's mammoth.
Finally, the Sony Cybershot T700 is another 10 megapixel camera, but this one comes with 4 gigabytes of internal memory which means you can store up to 40,000 photos on the camera without having to worry about inserting a memory card.
Sony wasn't the only winner in the camera category. And if you haven't heard the name Polaroid in a while, the company has a new camera that modernizes their famous concept. Snap a picture with their little pocket PoGo digital camera and it pops out print photos instantly.
And one camera that is going to be hard to claim is a business necessity, but is cool nonetheless is Liquid Image's scuba/swim mask with a built in camera. The model 310 films video and also snaps pictures with 5.0 megapixels of memory.
