Tech from a Small Island is a brand new monthly column from our new Chip Chick European Correspondent, Zara Rabinowicz. Zara hails from the cold city that is London Town, but finds the horrible weather a great excuse to stay in and play on her XBOX. She has been involved in the technology world for many years now, and finds that her day can be easily brightened by a (tastefully) diamante encrusted USB stick or a new Android device. She’s an expert on all types of gadgetry, with a particular penchant for eReaders, compact cameras and PMP’s. You can find her musing about non gadget related goodness on her blog www.AlmostZara.com or updating you on her dinner plans via her Twitter feed (follow her @AlmostZara).
The USA may beat the Brits in terms of being the first to go hands on with Apple devices, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have a fair amount of exciting gadgetry up our sun deprived sleeves. January’s always a funny month in terms of tech news, as people are still recovering from the deluge of 3D goodness and the latest supersized TV that has been shown at CES. There are still cool and quirky products making it onto the market however, and here’s what has been making us tech savvy Brits excited this month.
The Magimix Vision Toaster
It’s hard to imagine how one could improve the humble toaster. Other than creating a Wallace & Gromit like contraption that would whiz freshly buttered slices of goodness to your table every morning, it seemed the job the toaster accomplishes in the home is well and truly fulfilled. Well, whilst we have learned to live with the frustration of unevenly browned bread, the design minds at Magimix weren’t prepared to stay in that unholy state any longer.
They’ve created the Vision Toaster, the world’s first workable toaster that features clear glass windows. Repeat: This is not a prototype folks, this is an honest to goodness actual product. It uses quartz elements to evenly brown the bread and the slots are extra wide, with an automatic self cantering mechanism so the bread is always toasts just so. You even get an extra lift lever included to allow smaller slices to be removed easily, and it can also warm and brown other baked goods- such as cookies or cupcakes. Sadly, you still have to wait at least 60 seconds for it to work- but we’re sure they’re working on a way to change that.
£160 from Magimix
The Lumie Clear
Skin is a tempestuous beast breaking out at the most inopportune moments with major zits occurring right before important meetings/dates/ accidentally bumping into ex-boyfriends (delete as appropriate). Stress, levels of estrogen and diet can all affect the way our complexion looks, so wouldn’t it be nice if there was some techie way of combating those dreaded pimples? This has been tried before, rather unsuccessfully with the Zeno machine which uses heat and light to target spots.
The latest anti acne gadget on the block uses rather different technology. Lumie are better known for creating SAD lamps than skincare aids, but their knowledge into light sources is cutting edge, and they’ve utilized the healing properties of red and blue LED’s. These are used in salons to kill bacteria and reduce inflammation, and now you can get these benefits at home without needing to fork out for salon procedures.
The Lumie Clear is UV safe, and can be used for up to 15 minutes daily on different areas. The kit includes a pair of goggles to shield your eyes from the LED’s and a detachable head for close up applications. It also has a stand so you can prop it up whilst you focus it on areas like the back, and the built in timer will let you know when your session is up.
Currently £119 from Lumie for a limited time
BeBook Neo
The UK is finally entering the wireless e-reader market, with the Kindle barely four months on our shores. It’s catching up quickly however, and the latest product by Endless Ideas offers up an interesting new eBook to the UK market. It utilizes Wacom technology to give us a fully functional touchscreen that lets you simply swipe your finger to turn pages, and brings up a virtual keyboard for web browsing. Web browsing is fairly basic so far, limited to Google searches and Wikipedia entries, but they’ve hinted more is in the pipeline.
It has 512MB of internal memory- expandable to 16GB via SD card and has a 3.5mm jack which allows you to listen to audio books and MP3 files. They’re also compatible with a huge range of formats- EPUB, PDF, TXT, HTML, RTF, MOBI, CHM, PDB, JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, which is a major bonus. I love the fact that they’ve used Wacom technology as this software is primarily found on graphic design tablets, so annotating and sketching on the Neo should be very simple. The previous BeBook models have been very well designed, and they say the Neo is the fastest on the market, using a Freescale processor for ultra quick browsing speeds- let’s hope it meets our expectations.
£279.99 from MyBeBook on February 25th 2010
Saying iDo to the iMac
I have a serious love hate relationship with my computer. Some days it’s my precious, and I lovingly install updates, backup files, and rearrange the desktop, other times when it freezes and crashes I contemplate dashing it to the floor in a pique of rage. We always make up however, though on occasion sleeker younger models have tempted me to look elsewhere.
Hermione Way, a 24 year old London girl is such a fan of her Apple computer that she proposed marriage to the device, and has created an amusing video log about her passion for it. She calls her laptop Alex, and indulges in a monologue about how much she loves him and how they go on intellectual journeys together and stay up all night. She has even got her own mother involved, who comments that all she wants is for her daughter to be happy in the video. ‘Alex’ is seen campaigning for inter-machine marriage outside the House of Commons in London, and proclaiming his love for her via text to voice software. Is this for real or just a spoof? Either way, it’s a fairly entertaining 4minutes and 3 seconds.
Archos 7 Android Tablet
With the recent release of the iPad on everybody’s tongue, spare a thought for another tablet in the making. Archos are well known for their impressive (if over-priced) PMP range and details have just been leaked about a new tablet that will soon be on our shores. The PMP they’re releasing is a 7 inch touchscreen that works on the Android platform. With Wi-Fi and 3G now standard on all Archos’s premium models, hopefully you’ll have access to the large Android marketplace (if they’ve been granted permission from Google) and be able to customize this piece of kit to your heart’s content. It has 8GB of onboard storage – which is expandable, and you can charge it via an adapter or a micro USB port.
What’s new and rather interesting about this is the inclusion of a forward facing webcam, so it opens up the possibility of Skype video calls, and even recording and uploading your own movies straight to YouTube – something which the camera-less iPad lacks. It has a 3.5 mm jack, so is compatible with all headphones, and also plays a fair amount of files- JPEG’s AVI, WMV, et al. It even reads TXT files, but why would you want to read books on a LCD screen- think major eye strain- yes Apple iPad, I’m thinking of you. If video quality is similar to previous Archos devices, the resolution will be impressive, with the menu intuitive and well-designed.
It’s expected to go on sale for £149.99 in March from Data Mind
(Via Gizmodo)
Ki Fit Armband
January is the time when people start looking at ways to address their diet and gym memberships soar. The Ki Fit is a new device that helps aid that fitness goal, by being the first of its kind to accurately measure the relationship between activity and calorie consumption in the individual. The Ki Fit is no ordinary fad style device as it comes with the stamp of FDA approval and has a well researched dossier that proves its accuracy and efficiency- measuring activity and calories burnt even whilst sleeping.
The idea is that the user constantly wears the armband monitor for a period of at least a week, and the data collected is uploaded onto the Ki Fit online system which helps track personal targets and goals, as well as give honest feedback on your activity- yes, those leftovers DO count as cheating.
The armband measures five responses in the body, to provide an overall picture. It contains an accelerometer to calculate your movement, galvanic skin response sensors to establish your sweating patterns (when you sweat your skin becomes more conductive) a thermometer for skin temperature, a pedometer for steps taken and a heat flux sensor to see how hard your muscles are working.
You pay a subscription fee to the Ki-Fit website for regular updates and nutritional guidelines, and there’s a one off cost to purchase the device. It’s not cheapo- but neither is a lifetime on Slim Fast, and reviews of this system are very positive.
Starts at £149.99
Dyson DC26
Japan is known for its love of Harajuku girls, random robot gadgets, and its major lack of space. Tokyo is the most densely populated city in the world, so it’s necessary that products people buy are on the small side. Dyson, manufacturer of the bagless vacuum cleaner have created the Dyson City DC26, also known as the space savers dream, as it has the proportions of an A4 piece of paper, yet has no loss in cleaning performance . First released in Japan, it has now come to the UK, and 13 mini cyclones are on offer to suck up dirt. It has also been engineered to retain allergens- keeping asthma sufferers safe from discomfort.
“It took us five years to painstakingly compress and rebuild every single component before we had a machine that was a third smaller than its predecessor, yet could still tackle dirt like bigger machines”, says Dyson.
£249.99 from Dyson
