Sony Ericsson sees red with new handset

Sony Ericsson’s new W910i Walkman music phone was all shook up with the Shake Control action that changes tracks, but now it is seeing red with a new scarlet version, which has won Best Handset at the Global Mobile Awards.

Head of PR for 3, Rachel Channing, said: “Today’s mobile generation look for both functionality and form, and the W910i in red delivers both. It’s a talented entertainer and offers mobile music, TV, news and sport on the go.”

The W910i is the latest in Sony Ericsson’s all-rounder lifestyle phone with an emphasis on music downloads and listening experience, as well as Gracenotes’s Music ID service for recognising album tracks.Apple’s iPhone may get its edge from touch screen technology but Sony Ericsson has opted for a Wii-type experience where the user can change tracks while holding the phone, all with the flick of a wrist.

This slider phone also promises a 3D-gaming experience and user-friendly mobile web.

Asus Launching Bamboo Notebooks In June

What's better than an 11in or 12in notebook? How about an 11in or 12in notebook encased in bamboo? Well, the Ecobook which Asus was touting last year for a Q1 release is just such a machine. Although that release date has now slipped back to June, according to DigiTimes' sources, it is still just as bamboo-encased as ever before.

Called the U6 (12in) and S6 (11in), the systems specs aren't mentioned but given the eco-friendly leanings it seems safe to assume they won't be powerhouses. On the flip side of that, and if the prototypes shown off last year are a good indicator, features such as an LED which changed between green and red depending on energy usage - guilting users into acting greener presumably.

The manufacturing aims to be as environmentally affable as possibly too, foregoing paint sprays and electroplating. Internally no solvents or otherwise hazardous materials have been used.
All the plastics that are used are of the recyclable type, assuming the bamboo case doesn't biodegrade when you spill coffee on it (fair trade of course) first. As well as these notebooks, Asus also showed of desktop PCs in a similar vein, but apparently has no plans to actually ship any such product.

Price wise the U6 and S6 are expected to cost from NT$50,000 (that's New Taiwan Dollars, or £830-odd in real money) which seems pretty reasonable. Hopefully the UK will get a taste of the bamboo action - although not in the panda sense.

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Of course, this being a Sony Ericsson mobile it plays music. While it lacks the Walkman branding it still has a decent enough music player built in, and there is an FM radio too. There is 32MB of internal memory and a 256MB Memory Stick Micro card provided. That's rather measly in my view, and Sony Ericsson should have considered going the whole gig with the card.


As ever, the problem with music playback is Sony Ericsson's insistence on using a proprietary headset connector, and this time round there is no 3.5mm jack past the microphone for you to switch over to your favourite headphones. At least the connector is in a pocket-friendly location on the bottom end of the phone rather than being on one of the long edges.

As for battery life, I can tell you that it lasted for a couple of days between charges with a bit of music playback and some web browsing as part of my usage pattern.

There is a camera which shoots stills at 2-megapixels and lacks auto focus or flash. It is definitely not one of Sony Ericsson's better offerings and produced nothing I'd really be happy to do much with apart from look at on the phone itself or upload to the Internet.

The coloured dish, photographed under normal household lighting conditions has good colour tones though its background is not the uniform white it is in reality. Outdoors the detail on the chair is fuzzy, and the white is not uniformly reproduced.

Test Shotes

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With so many handsets doing the rounds at the moment Sony Ericsson has to find a differentiator for each one, and colour is not enough on its own. In this case the differentiator is all about the web and this is where I get onto the backlights.


There are four of them, to the right of the 3, 6, 9 and # keys. They are lit up when they can be used, which means you are in the web browser. Hit the relevant one and you can enter text into a Google search bar, slip quickly over to your bookmarks, go back to the 3 home page, or use the zoom and pan feature.

If you hit the zoom and pan button you can then use the navigation button to pan around a thumbnail of a web page, and zoom in by clicking the central select button.

Another web browsing plus is what Sony Ericsson calls ‘horizontal web browsing'. This doesn't refer to browsing the Web when you are lying down, though that is absolutely doable. No, it means you can turn the screen into landscape format. Hardly a novel idea, but it does make browsing through more complex page that bit easier with a few more pixels of width to play with.

If you are really into the online stuff, you get your own Blogger site with the phone and can upload pics and vids to it direct from the handset. The upload process is available as soon as you've captured an image or some footage.

To make the most of all this web browsing you are going to need reasonable data speeds. And you get them. The K660i is an HSDPA handset. When you can't get that kind of connection it'll drop through the spectrum till you hit GSM, at which it supports quad-band access. There is a front-facing camera for two-way video calling too.

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Sony Ericsson's K660i is available in several places. However only 3 has the lime white version I have here.

I rather like the look of this mobile. With the exception of pink, which I won't go on about again, and brown, which I just don't think is a good colour for a mobile phone, I'm pretty hospitable to a flash of colour on a handset.


Some might say that the lime green and white does look a bit ‘sweet-shop', but others might call it ‘spring-like'. Either way, if it is to your taste, it is certainly different.

Most of this candybar phone is actually white with silver borders, with the lime green coming into play as a band all around the edge as well as the background to the buttons which sit between screen and number pad. The lime green is also used in the various backlights, which I'll come to later, and as the colour scheme for 3's theme. All in all, then, this is a bright and happy handset for bright and happy people.

There is a little haptic response when you move around in the main menu. It is so subtle you could almost not notice it, but actually I rather liked it. I can't say the same for the number pad buttons which are small and round. They are easier to use than some I've seen on Sony Ericsson handsets, but more difficult to use than others, and I found it challenging to get text into the handset at my usual speed.

It is hard to fault the screen with its 240 x 320 pixels, 262 thousand colours, 2 diagonal inches of display area, and bright and crisp rendition of information.

The size and weight of this mobile meet with my approval too. At 95g the K660i is light to tote, and its 104mm of height, 47mm of width and 15m of thickness shouldn't challenge many pockets

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USB Powered CD/DVD Destroyer

You shred sensitive documents for security but what do you do with CDs and DVDs that contain sensitive data?

It's dangerous to break them but you can't just throw them away.

USB Powered CD/DVD Destroyer is the answer.

It is an ideal product for destroying data stored on CDs and DVDs, with three carbon steel knurled points, USB Powered CD/DVD Destroyer permanently destroys the surface of CDs, DVDs and other CD-size disks rendering the data-bearing surfaces unreadable within 5 seconds.

Your sensitive data cannot be read and you don't have to break disks.

Features & Specifications:

• USB Powered: 5V, 500mA USB bus power


• Render any CD/DVD disc unreadable by creates circular pattern on disc surface


• Applicable for CD/DVD/CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW,DVD-RAM,DVD-ROM


• Five seconds all data on the CD/DVD will be completely destruction


• Lifetime - Consume at least 100,000 pieces CD/DVD disc.


• USB power cable length: 50cm


• Dimension: 60 x 120 x 50mm


• Weight: 130g


• Price: US$ 27.00

Wireless Bullet Camera with Audio 2.4Ghz

The "Bullet" Wireless Camera with Audio incorporates a tiny colour video camera, a highly sensitive microphone, and a 2.4 Ghz transmitter in a tiny bullet shaped capsule! And at a great low price.

Its size makes it ideal for discreet surveillance. Now you can investigate your own suspicions with ease! The wireless technology means there are no wires to conceal and installation is minimal!

Whilst the set is provided with two UK Mains adaptors, you can also power the Bullet Cam with a standard 9V Battery.

Simply place the camera in a discreet position (i.e. in a plant, behind a picture frame or in-between a few books) and plug the receiver into any TV, VCR or security monitor in another room up to 25m away or up to 50m outdoors!

The picture quality will not disappoint either. The CMOS camera has 356,000 pixels, and a resolution of 380 Horizontal TV lines, and the microphone is sensitive to pick up sounds from across all but the biggest rooms!

Only: £79.99

USB Missile Launcher with Webcam

The latest weapon in your arsenal of desktop security this USB Missile launcher with webcam not only keeps your desk safe from interlopers while you are there, with the webcam and included software it can be operated remotely over the internet, thus allowing you to enforce your borders even when you aren’t there!

The USB Missile Launcher with Webcam has been co-developed with Microsoft to allow you, or anyone else you invite, to be able to control your missile launcher via Microsoft’s MSN Messenger from any location in the world.

Features:
Detachable Webcam
Compatible with Microsoft MSN allowing remote operation
Compatible with Windows XP, and Vista
Requires 2x USB Slots (1 for Launcher, 1 for Webcam)

Only: £49.95

USB Keyboard Keylogger

Keyloggers are small, discrete, easy-to-use devices that monitor all PC keyboard activity and install in a matter of seconds between the keyboard and PC.

They capture everything that is typed into any keyboard however this device will plug into any standard 1.1/ 2.0 port and capture everything including email, instant messaging, chat room activity and web URLs

Completely invisible for computer operation - no software or drivers required and also supports national keyboard layouts. Works with Windows, Mac, Linux

The USB KeyLog is organized into an advanced flash file system. Retrieval of the logged data is super fast - just press a secret key combination (you can configure your personal combination) and the keylogger shows up as a flash drive so you can load or copy the log as if it was on any folder on your computer!

A massive storage capacity of 2 million keystrokes which is the equivalent of a full years typing activity stored discreetly and ready to be recovered whenever required.

A few examples where USB Keylogger might be used include:

Parents monitoring their children's computer and Internet use

Employers in a company monitoring the way computers are used during work time

Writing important documents - the keyboard acts as an archivier of data entered, helpful with recovering of important information if the computer crashes!

Detect unauthorised access to PC, you will learn about computer use when unattended

Only: £59.99

Telephone Voice Changer

Don't be deceived by the small size or low price of our telephone voice changer. Save the deception for after you have used your voice changer

Hidden within the silver "peardrop" shell is enough electronic wizardy to disguise your voice using one of 6 different settings which alter the sound and pitch of the voice.

Its so simple to use - just place the voice changer over the microphone on your telephone, switch on, and speak into the microphone on the voice changer. Your voice will then be processed in real-time and the disguised voice will be relayed to the telephone!

- Choose from 6 different voices
- Dimensions 58 x 38 x 15mm approx
- Includes required CR2032 battery

Only: £14.99

Spy Specs - Mirror Sunglasses

The Spy Specs look like an ordinary pair of sunglasses. Yet they have a unique feature... you can see behind you!

The lenses on these sunglass-style specs have a special reflective coating that allows you to look straight ahead, yet see behind you as if you had a rear view mirror.
When you put them on, look out of the corners of your eyes and you'll see what's going on - and no one will ever know you're watching them.
Have you ever thought you were being followed? You won't need to turn your head to see what's coming up behind you.
One of the first rules for wannabe spies is to never sit in a room with your back to the entrance. With the Spy Specs, you can kiss that rule goodbye!
These Spy Specs make a great novelty gift and are great for parties as a conversation piece - ask someone to make a gesture behind you and tell them what they did with your "psychic" powers!
Supplied with a protective spectacles case.
Note: Spy Specs are not intended for use to offer UV protection, and should not be used when driving.


Only: £12.99

Retro Mix Cassette USB Drive

Compilation tape USB drive - for home taping.
Remember back in the days before digital music players and MP3s?
If you do, then you probably made compilations of all your favourite music, to share with your friends and loved ones, on good old fashioned blank cassette tapes.
If you miss making mix tapes this product will inspire you again! Home taping never killed music!
Features:
64MB memory - the same as a 120 minute cassette
Cassette style case and inlay card for added authenticity and nostalgia
Only: £19.95

Oregon Digital Action Camera

To many of us, the tedium of modern day life can only be counteracted by one thing – a good old fashioned adrenaline rush! Here we are at the forefront of the latest sports. Extreme ironing, lawnmower racing – you name it, we are there!
What we don’t like, however, is taking an expensive video camera and putting it in places where it can get knocked, bashed, or splashed with muddy water. It can be so easy to trash a jewelled box of high-tech goodness. What we really need is a decent robust camera with no moving parts, that can shrug off the odd dink and stores it’s videos on cheap SD cards. Well, if you enjoy sports which involve a bit of rough-and-tumble, you are going to love the Oregon Scientific ATC2K Action Digital Camera– we do!
It isn’t just a video camera with no moving parts and a robust case, it comes complete with a rather cunning mounting system, which enables you to securely attach it to your crash helmet or metal strut such as handlebars. Unlike many supposedly robust cameras, the ATC-2000 is waterproof down to around 3 metres and even includes some extra silicon grease so you can keep the waterproofing seal working at its best.
The simple to use controls are great for cold or muddy hands, making it equally at home whether you are windsurfing in a warm climate, or climbing in chilly Canada. Getting the videos off the camera is easy too. Provided in the box are a set of AV leads so you can plug it directly into your TV/VCR, and a USB lead so you can connect it to any standard PC USB port. Getting at the video files is as simple as drag-and-drop.
The built in memory is good enough for up to 11 minutes recording time, but if you slip in a standard inexpensive SD memory card (up to 2GB capacity) you can expect up to an hour’s full quality recording, or over 13 hours in super-duper-long-play mode – that’s a lot of adrenaline!
Oregon Scientific ATC2K Waterproof Hands-free Action Cam Video Recorder features:
Three selectable resolutions (640x480, 320x240, 160x120)
Built in microphone
Built in 32MB memory
Takes standard SD cards (up to 2GB)
Standard USB interface (software compatible with Windows 2000/XP)
Waterproof to 3 metres
Camera size 109 x 45 x 45 mm / 4 x 2 x 2in (approx)
Complete with helmet and crossbar mounts
Standard AVI file format
UK TV AV output
Requires 2xAA batteries (not included)
Only: £99.95

2.5" and 3.5" SATA HDD Dock with Hub

The SATA HDD Dock with Hub allows you to plug any 2.5" or 3.5" SATA Harddisk to your computer via USB port, a powerful tool for data transfer, backup and cloning. It functions as a 4-port hub as well. The device is compatible with both PCs and Macs
Features:
 Supports both S-ATA 2.5" HDD and 3.5" HDD
 4-port USB hub
 USB 2.0
 Temperature and Humidity: 5 ° ~ 35 °, humidity 20 ~ 80% **This machine should be used in the operation range of the connected PC
 AC Power Adapter input: 100 ~ 240V, 50/60Hz, 1.5A
 AC Power Adapter output: 12V/3A
 Support Windows VISTA, XP and Mac OS
 Dimension: 130 mm (W) x 68 mm (H) x 90 mm (D)
 Weight: 892g (approx)
US$82.00

USB Magnetic Hub

USB Magnetic Hub II is a high functional 4 ports USB 2.0 hub for the desktop or laptop. It is also great for mobile users that it can be placed almost anywhere with the built-in magnet pads. The 4 additional USB 2.0 ports let you connect any other USB devices, including an easy access port which is ideal for connecting a flash drive, a bluetooth dongle, etc.
Features:
 4-port hub
 USB 2.0
 Plug and play
 Built in magnet pad for quick mount and easy movement
 Support Windows Vista/XP/2000, Mac OS 10.2.7 or higher
 Blue LED indicator
 Two Colours available: Black, White
 Dimension: 50 x 50 x20mm (approx.)
 Weight: 56gUS$12.00

USB Badge Drive

Card Reader + Badge Holder!!! It can hold your badge and it supports various SD cards. You can use it to transfer your files from memory cards to PC.
Features:
 Card Reader + Badge Holder
 Support SDHC, MMC, Mini SD, RS MMC, MicroSD/T-Flash (Adapter is required)
 USB 2.0
 LED indicator
 Extended USB A type connector
 Support Windows98SE/2000/ME/XP
 Dimension: 90x77x10mm
 Weight: 29gUS$14.00

USB Fridge

Plug this USB mini fridge into your PC, and Brando says you'll have that drink chilled down to 8.5°C (that's 47°F for us Luddite Americans) after five minutes. Plunk down your $33 and you get this tiny plastic refrigerator that's reminiscent of those old-fashioned Coke machines. Too bad there's not a Coca-Cola logo across the side, but then, that would mean big trouble for Brando.
While 47°F is not exactly ice cold, if this thing can cool down drinks that quickly, it might be good for a brewski or two. Five minutes? Heck yeah, we can drink them that fast. Anyway, this little cooler would be perfect for that insecure, perpetually thirsty workmate of yours who walks around with a soda can as if it were a baby bottle. Seems like a pacifier would be easier and cheaper.

Description:
 This USB Fridge is the only way to keep your drink cold while you're at your computer and it looks cool on any desktop.
 You can keep your beverage chilled and stay at your computer longer.
 Just minutes after plugging in the USB Fridge the cold plater chills to the perfect temperature for helping keep your beverage cool.
 Takes 5 minutes to bring the fridge down to 8°C (47°F).
 Blue LED lighting effects.
 Easy installation, no driver required, plug & play.
 Powered by USB with 4 feet of cable.
 Compatible with all platforms.
 Dimensions: 19.5 x 9 x 8cm
 Weight: 365gmUS$ 30.00