Joy of Gadgets

No, not a snowflake snowflake, the Snowflake from Blue Microphones!

This little USB microphone is about the size of a deck of card, when folded up. When you separate the white plastic from the aluminum base with the microphone–they pull apart easily–you can either put the microphone on top of your monitor–it hooks on an LCD monitor, or you can set it on your desk. An included USB cable is hooked to the back of the microphone.

The sound quality? Pretty good! I used the Skype test call plus a call with a friend of mine to verify the audio quality. It will be a worthy addition to my laptop bag for travel.

I’ve heard Andy Abramson use this microphone with Ken Rutkowski on KenRadio and have heard the recordings over Skype, it sounds great. That is, when Andy has a good Internet connection

You can get the Blue Snowflake for $69 (or less) from a local Blue Microphones dealer or through the Internet, of course. Well worth it if you want your voice to sound good on the go!

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I recently signed up for the T-Mobile @Home service through the folks that support voice services at Nokia, where I work. I was sent a Nokia 6301 along with the Hotspot @Home router. The draw? Free calls on the home WiFi, or in earshot of any T-Mobile Hotspot. Why not?

Normally, I would not be buying–or necessarily wanting–a phone like the Nokia 6301. I am quite firmly a smartphone user. The Nokia 6301 is most certainly not a smartphone, but if you want the free calls over WiFi, this is one of the handful of phones T-Mobile sells that permits you to use the Hotspot @Home service.

The technology behind T-Mobile @Home is called UMA. I won’t get into it in detail here, but in short, it allows seamless transitions between your home WiFi and the mobile phone network. I cover UMA in a little more detail on phoneboy.com.

Now, onto the phone hardware. It’s a pretty run of the mill S40 5th Edition FP1 device. Has the usual assortment of keys on the front, power button on the top, volume control on the right side, a 2.5mm headset jack, power, and a not-very accessible USB port. On mine, I basically have to take the back cover off in order to be able to get the port cover off.

Once you take the battery cover off, you can also access the MicroSD slot. The device comes with a 512mb MicroSD card that you can load with music or use to store pictures taken with the 2 megapixel camera.

Unfortunately, I have been spoiled by the two variants of the N95 that I currently have as well as the older N73 and the newly arrived N96, which I will cover later. The 2 megapixel camera on the Nokia 6301 certainly won’t win any awards, but it takes servicable pictures, as shown on my Share on Ovi account. The one feature the Nokia 6301 camera DOES have is the ability to take pictures in landscape mode, giving you a 960×1280 picture. You have to manually put it in that mode, but it’s a nice touch that it has that feature.

The phone has an Active Standby screen like my Nokia smartphones have, but it is disabled by default. Once it is enabled, you can have a number of icons display along the top–you can choose as many as you want among the pre-selected choices. There’s also sections for Music/Radio, Calendar/Notes and more. You can even customize in which of these sections–if any–these will show.

The features are nice, but the real test for this phone is the sound quality–particularly over WiFi. I called someone today and talked with them for an hour on my Nokia 6301 using my home WiFi. They had no idea I was on a mobile phone, much less over WiFi. The audio quality–for both of us–was that good.

I also tested the phone handoff between WiFi and GSM. I started a call with 800-555-TELL (a.k.a TellMe) and played the blackjack with the lovely Sean Connery impersonated voice. The call didn’t miss a beat, though there was an audible “thunk” when the call handed off.

I tried the web browser, which is a fairly basic XHTML/WAP browser. It’s functional, but it’s not the Webkit-based browser that’s on my Nseries devices. Of course, when you’re not in WiFi range, you really don’t want to be web browsing much since the phone only supports GPRS on T-Mobile’s US network–not even EDGE.

One note about the WiFi on this phone: it is only provided for use with the T-Mobile @Home service, or whatever UMA service provider you buy the phone from. It will not work independently of UMA. The good news is that while you’re in range of a configured WiFi access point, the data transfer is much faster.

One downside to S40 devices is that contact and calendar sync are a little more of a challenge. T-Mobile has a (presumably subscription) service where you can sync your stuff to the cloud. Since I have no interest in that, I set up PC Suite on my work computer and am syncing my calendar and contacts over Bluetooth. The phone also, surprisingly, has Nokia’s “Phone switch” application, which makes it possible to sync information between phones.

All in all, the phone is not a bad little device. It’s probably something I’ll carry alongside something more functional and with an AT&T SIM, but for a voice-centric device, it does the job.

A developer involved with the Nokia Internet Tablets posted on Jaiku about the latest iteration of the Maemo software that runs on these tablets. Note that unlike the Symbian OS that runs on all of Nokia’s smartphones, the underlying Linux OS of Maemo is open source–80% of it is, anyway.

The big news–although not entirely surprising–is that the the next release of Maemo is going to have HSPA support, and it will be open-sourced! Is that for data only or will it have phone features, too?

There is also mention of photo sharing, a higher-quality camera, and a faster OMAP3 process. Wonder just how this stuff will all go together. Will it be a replacement for my beloved Nokia N95 8GB? Will it be a data-only device or a phone as well? What’s it going to cost?

Software is one piece of course. I wonder what the hardware’s gonna look like. We obviously won’t know for a while yet, but it’s nice to have a new piece of gear to look forward to.

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The folks at Master Lock are taking the threat of iPod theft or loss very seriously and have come up with an intertesting product: the iCage Locking Skin.

The iCage Locking Skin is durable, lightweight protective skin complete with a 3-digit combination padlock and a flexible cable to make lockdown easier. Despite this, all of the buttons and ports of the supported iPod models can be used when in the iCage.

My question is: where the iCage for the Nokia N95?

When my son goes through the neighborhood to find someone to play with, he takes an FMRS walkie talkie with him. They have a range of about a mile, though it’s not like he goes anywhere near that far. The use of the walkie talkies are free and are limited to calling home, making them ideal in this situation.

Except for one problem: they take batteries. Every few weeks, the batteries need to be replaced. These FMRS walkie talkies don’t have that problem. They include a hand crank and can also be charged with a USB connector.

A pair of these walkie talkies can be had for around $110 US, though the Thumbs Up UK store suggests a minimum of 6 items are required. Think I’ll stick with the radios I have, thanks.

Via Red Ferret

If you’re taking an extended vacation, and you take metric tons of pictures, how do you get the photos off your camera so you can take more? Do you take a laptop, multiple memory cards, or just delete photos?

Enter the Photo Safe II from Digital Foci. It’s got a hard drive and an all-in-one card reader. Plug your media in, push a button, and within a couple of minutes, you’re all backed up.

This battery-powered device comes in two models, an 80GB and a 160GB model. Both will take CF Type I (including Extreme III, IV, UDMA), MMC, SD/HC, miniSD, MS, MS PRO, MS Duo, MS PRO Duo, and xD cards and will take the data off those cards at speeds of up to 5mb per second. Both models will also allow you to get the data off the drive with a USB 2.0 connection to a computer.

Via The Red Ferret Journal