Hottest gadget accessory of 2011 - Beats by Dr. Dre

No! The hottest gadget accessory is not the multicoloured iPad covers or your Wi-Fi signal detecting T-shirt (though I would love to have one).

The hottest gadget accessory this year are the headphones. And I am not referring to just any headphone but Beats by Dr. Dre headphones. I first noticed them in some celeb pictures but now I see them everywhere.

Pic by MB-one (Alexander Kaiser)

I noticed a couple of University students with the headphones hanging around their neck and asked them what they liked about them. Their reply: "They are cool!"

They do look nice but they are definitely not cheap. For example one of the best selling headphones on the Apple store is the Monster Beats by Dr. Dre High Definition Wireless Bluetooth Headphones which costs £249.95. However, according to some of my techie friends, its' just a fashion fad and you can have comparable or better quality headphones for lesser, for example, the Sennheiser MM400 Bluetooth Headset (in comparison to the Beats headphones), only costs £184.95.

Check out the list of the best budget headphones on the Stuff website.

TomTom Vs Google's Navigation app

update: 20/12/2011

Car navigation systems maker TomTom has been experiencing a slump in sales and has recently detailed plans to cut around 10% jobs globally. A major reason for this is attributed to the development of GPS enabled mobile phones and more specifically the Android phones which come with Google's turn-by-turn Navigation app.

The major advantage of the Navigation app. over TomTom is that it is completely free. Furthermore, maps are updated more frequently and the updates are free as well.

I bought my TomTom One in 2007 and upgraded the maps in 2009. As I wrote in one of my old post, I was thoroughly disappointed with the new map. Several post codes were missing - including some which were present in the older map.

Quite recently I was going over to a friend's apartment here in Coventry and like several new builds, I could not find the address on my TomTom. In the end I had to use my Samsung's Navigation app. It was a bit frustrating a couple of time when the map lagged behind and I had to slow down a couple of times. However, it did get me to my friend's apartment in the end and even showed me a picture of the building when I arrived.

All Satnav makers including TomTom and Garmin are going to face some serious challenge from Google in the near future and I feel that offering frequent and free updates to their maps might be one way to retain their customers.

Grand launch of the Nokia Lumia 800 in London

Nokia teamed up with Drive Productions for a spectacular 4D light show projected on Millbank Tower in London's South Bank to mark the launch of the Nokia Lumia 800.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus: 1st with Android Ice Cream Sandwich

The World's first smartphone with Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is finally here. Ice cream Sandwich brings together features from Android Gingerbread (phones) and Honeycomb (tablets) - BTW, don't you love those tasty sounding names.

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus comes loaded with some amazing new applications including a facial recognition system to unlock the phone and Google Beam – which allows simple content sharing using built-in NFC (Near field communication) (updated: 29/11/2011)

The phone is powered by a 1.2GHz dual core process. Thus I was curious as to what that would mean for the battery. Well Samsung claims that the phone has up to 1060min (2G) and up to 500min (3G) Talk Time and up to 290Hours (2G) / upUp to 270Hours (3G) Stand-by Time- which is not really impressive.

It features a contoured screen with 4.65" HD Super AMOLED display and 280 x 720 External Resolution. The 5MP camera with LED flash offers fast image capture, panorama shot and HD video recording.

However, was very disappointed when I found out that it does not have a SD card slot and you only get 16GB internal storage to store all your data.

Fast and accurate typing with the Sony Ericsson Experia Pro

It's not new but I just found out that that the Sony Ericsson Xperia™ Pro was found to be the fastest and have most accurate typing according to usability tests carried out by an independent test institute, beating the HTC Desire, Nokia E7 and Blackberry Torch.

This Android 2.3 Gingerbread powered smartphone (dimensions: 120 × 57 × 14 mm) comes with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

It has a 8.1MP camera capable of recording HD videos and a front-facing VGA camera as well.

For those who love to listen to music on their phones, the Xperia Pro has 31 hours of music listening time.

The Xperia Pro is available in three colours (Black , Silver , Red) and is available on Amazon UK.

For more information visit the Xperia Pro features/ specifications page.

Christmas gift ideas

You know Christmas is near when you start receiving Christmas Secret Santa emails in your inbox. For those who are not familiar with this western tradition, you are randomly assigned a person -whom you are supposed to give an anonymous gift. This usually comes with an affordable price range and gives you the flexibility to give and receive gifts without spending much. However, I often have difficulty choosing a gift, especially if it is for a lady.

Fortunately there are several online stores which help you with greats ideas and tips for Secret Santa gifts. The "Find me a gift" site has gifts suited for different personalities. Not surprisingly, I ended up on their Gadget page and were delighted that there were so many affordable yet fantastic gifts and novelties ranging from voice recording novelty mugs (£9.99) to the Flip Mino HD Camcorder (£19.99).

Check out the site, I am sure you will find something you like. I do need a camcorder (Hint Hint!)

Update (20/12/2011): Apparently the camcorder was very popular. It is no longer listed on the site.

The Nokia Lumia 800

The Nokia Lumia 800 with the Windows Phone Mango OS was launched at the Nokia World event at London along with a few other models.

The phone has a smooth curved glass, 3.7" WVGA AMOLED touchscreen and powered by a 1.4 GHz processor (single core).

Key features include:

• 8MP camera with Carl Zeiss lens and LED flash.
• Can take HD movies (720 pixels resolution) with 30 frames per second playback.
• Comes with 512 MB SDRAM memory and 16 GB storage memory. I was surprised when I learnt that there was no slot for micro-SD cards. However, I learnt that users would have 25GB of free SkyDrive storage.

Some people were not happy that it also does not have a TV output though I wonder how many people would use that particular option. The phone also lacks a front facing camera.

The Nokia Lumia 800 is available in 3 colours, viz., Cyan, Black and Magenta.

You can preorder the phone on their website and it looks like it would be cheapest on the Vodaphone network (£99.00 cost for the phone and £33.50 monthly or free for £36.00 per month (both on 24 month long contracts).

Hear what the designer have to say:

The JBL MS-2 - for a better listening experience

Some great news for audiophiles who love to pump up the volume on their car stereos. The groundbreaking JBL® MS-2 car audio accessory from HARMAN International Industries automatically tunes your car stereo to improve the listening experience from portable music players and smartphones - making it the perfect iPod, iPhone or Android™ smartphone accessory.

Small enough to fit in a shirt pocket and really simple to use, the JBL MS-2 uses digital signal processing to create clearer, more powerful sound from existing speakers in any car or even at home (with a 6-volt DC power supply). Once connected all you have to do is press the Setup button and the JBL MS-2 will automatically tune the tonal balance, bass impact and sonic clarity across a car’s existing speakers.

The JBL MS-2 has a suggested retail price of $239.95 in the US. Not sure how much it will cost here in the UK.

Amazon launches Kindle Fire

Features:

• 7" color toughened touchscreen, anti-reflective treatment, 1024 x 600 pixel resolution at 169 ppi, 16 million colors.
• Dual-core processor
• Size: 7.5" x 4.7" x 0.45" (190 mm x 120 mm x 11.4 mm).
• Weight 14.6 ounces (413 grams).
• 8GB internal storage
• Free cloud storage
• Over 100,000 movies and TV shows
• Comes withe the Amazon Silk cloud-accelerated browser - supports Adobe Flash
• All in one email app
• 1-year limited warranty and service included. Optional 2-year Extended Warranty available for U.S. customers.

The Kindle Fire will be released on November 15, 2011 and is now available for booking at $199 on the Amazon.com.

Info about Startup Sauna

The next web interview in a sauna. What a great idea to get noticed (and heard)

Rubbish Barbie branded toys

Like a lot of girls her age, my daughter used to love Barbie dolls. However, she seems to have lost interest in playing with them and I can think of a possible reason - Barbie branded electronic toys.

The first Brabie branded electronic toy I bought her were a pair of pink Barbie Walkie talkies. She was really excited and she enjoyed playing with it You had to imagine what the other person was saying as you could hardly hear them over the static and I guess the novelty wore off and it ened up among the old pile of toys.

However, what really made her angry was a Barbie camera which I bought for her last birthday. She choose it from the Argos catalogue and it was not cheap - it cost around £30 and was bright pink (what else). She was happily taking pictures of everybody, her cake and presents.

Imagine her disgust when we downloaded the images next day and found out that the pictures were really awful. The resolution of the camera was really bad and pictures were dark and grainy. She was really disappointed and told me that she didn't want to buy any Barbie products ever again.

One of the better images taken - a close up of my face by my daughter.

I know it's a toy and I was not expecting HD quality images but at that price, I was expecting something better. In fact you can buy 7MP digital cameras for less than £25 and older digital cameras for less than a tenner on eBay if you are lucky.

My advice: stay away from Barbie branded electronic toys - just a waste of money. And I have nothing to say to toy makers who think kids are stupid.