Virtual-Hideout has posted a review of the Kingwin Sound Xtream Digital Multimedia Player here on their website. At first glance, the Sound Xtream looks like many other portable external hard drives… but look a little closer. It’s actually a digital multimedia player which uses a 2.5 mm HDD inside and is capable of connecting to a television set via S-Video or RCA jacks. Sweet huh? Some specs include:

• Light weight alumimum alloy enclosure
• USB 2.0 support
• Supports DVD/MPEG4/DivX/SVCD/VCD/VCD3/MP3
• Music and photo slide show capability
• Remote Control

Here’s the verdict from Virtual Hideout:

The Kingwin Sound Xtream media player is a great solution for those who do picture or video presentations and don’t want to carry around a heavy laptop with TV-out hardware attached to it, or for taking ripped movies to a friend’s for movie night. The overall function and performance on the media player  was flawless.  My only real complaint about the media player was the over saturation I noticed on some of the pictures. This was noticed on a standard TV and not as bad on my LCD monitor.

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The folks at FutureLooks.com have posted a review of the WACOM Intuos3 6×8 tablet with USB here on their website. This tablet features:

• Customizable menu shortcut buttons
• Thick, durable overlay
• Limited Lifetime warranty
• Pen tablet with USB connection
• 1024 levels of pressure-sensitivity

Here’s the verdict:

The Intuos 3 6X8 tablet is highly recommended for all professional artist and designers. It’s a good size that is neither too big or small to work on (both on your desk or on your desktop). Its sleek and compact design (about the width and height of a 15” laptop and only ½ inch thick) makes it easily transportable for those who work on their laptops or are on the go, as well as making it very unobtrusive on any desk or workspace.

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So here we are waiting for new TiVo Series3 hardware to come out and TiVo decides to unleash new Series2 hardware on us. These new boxes include larger hard drives and… appear to have dual something tuners. Why the suspicions on the dual tuners? Well the boxes are named as follows:

TiVo TCD649180 SERIES2â„¢ DT 180-HOUR DVR
TiVo TCD649080 SERIES2â„¢ DT 80-HOUR DVR

Notice the “DT” in the name? Yes… very suspicious if you ask us. We don’t know if these are regular analog tuners or digital tuners or whatever… but we suspect there are dual tuners in these bad boys. Other details from the TiVocommunity website include:

Recording from 2 basic cable channels or 1 basic cable and 1 digital cable (so maybe one digital tuner and one regular?)

Ethernet and USB ports built right in

Price for the 180 hour unit is $349.99 while the new 80 hour unit is $249.99

[Check it out via PVRBlog.com]

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If only we had DMB broadcasts here in the states huh? Well Samsung has begun to finally sell the YM-PD1 PMP in Korea and yes.. it supports DMB TV broadcasts. The unit comes with a digital DMB TV tuner, a 4 inch screen (which is large for a portable unit), a 30 GB internal HDD, MPEG4/WMV/AVI/DivX/XviD support, and an SD slot. I always mention this .. woman not included. Sorry guys.

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Oh man - I absolutely need one of these sometimes. It’s called the Nap Alarm and it’s made by a Japanese company called Takanoha. How does it work? Well you place this thing behind your ear and it vibrates when it detects that you’re about to fall asleep. It figures this out by your head movement speed .. although I wonder what it’s looking for? No head movement or sudden head movement?? If I’m sitting at my desk and I fall asleep, I tend to slowly move my head downwards so .. yeah.. I don’t know how this works. Finally, I wouldn’t recommend using this to keep you awake as you drive.

[Check it out via I4U.com]

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Are you a big time biker? Do you also own a sleek thin Apple iPod nano? Well now you can carry the nano directly on your bike while your riding about. The device is called the iBikeMount and it basically allows you to easily secure the nano directly onto the handlebars of the bike. You can mount the iBikeMount by simply lifting a lever and positioning it on the handlebars. The unit fits handlebars that measure between 22m to 26mm and weighs only 40grams. You can get one yourself for around $30 bucks. Not too shabby. My only concern about all of this is … should you be listening to music while riding your bike? Especially in the big city? Well at least the folks at iBikeMount are being good citizens since they have a whole section on their website dedicated to listening to music responsibly.

[Check it out via Gizmowatch.com]

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If you ever ask me what Windows laptop to purchase, I’ll always tell you the same answer - if you have the cash, go get yourself a Thinkpad. Whether they’re manufactured under the IBM brand name or the Lenovo brand name, it doesn’t matter. Thinkpads simply rock. Having said that, you’ll have to check out the review of the Lenovo ThinkPad X60s over at PC Magazine. The X series have always been the ultra portable lineup for the ThinkPads, and the X60s certainly doesn’t disappoint. You’ll get an Intel Core Duo processor in a system that weighs a scant 3.5 lbs! That’s 1/3 the weight of my behemoth laptop from Toshiba. So what else does 3.5 lbs buy ya? You’ll get a 12.1 inch screen (not a widescreen though) with 512MB of RAM, and an 80GB HDD. Ah yes - there’s also a DVD burner inside. Here’s the verdict from PC Magazine:

For those who live out of a suitcase and fly frequently, this ultraportable provides integrated EV-DO and plenty of battery life.

How much battery life? How about 7 HOURS BABY!!!

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I guess I’ve been on this Apple Boot Camp thing for the last few days. Oh well - that’s because I’m seriously thinking about moving to OS X in a few months time but I don’t really want to drop my Windows systems either. If you’re curious on what Boot Camp looks like, check out this News.com section which shows screenshots of the application.

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Microsoft has announced that they have won the biggest contract ever for their Windows Mobile OS and its with none other than the U.S. government! Well sorta - it’s with the U.S. Census Bureau as they’ve signed up for a whopping 500,000 smartphones made by the folks at HTC. These smartphones will run the Windows Mobile OS and they’ll be used to take the 2010 census.

Aside from the fact that the U.S. Census is using Windows Mobile, it’s an interesting tidbit since this is the first time the Census has ever used anything high tech in taking the national census. Previous census results were tabulated using paper and pen. 

The Microsoft contract is part of a larger 600 million dollar contract involving Harris Corporation which will develop an automated way of field data collection.

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The Microsoft Xbox 360 has been in the news recently and I thought it would be good to link to two separate articles from the last few days. First up.. Lucent has decided to sue Microsoft over its use of MPEG-2 decoding technology found within the Xbox 360. Lucent went after several companies in the past regarding their use of the decoding technology and it appears Lucent is at it again - this time with the next gen. console that we all love (or hate?). You can read more about it here on News.com.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has been busy with the gaming industry annoucing that they have purchased the UK game studio company Lionhead Studios. Lionhead is known for games such as Fable, The Movies, and Black & White. With this purchase, Lionhead will exclusively design video games designed for the Xbox 360 and the Windows platform.  As is typical with many of its game company purchases, Microsoft will more than likely keep stay out of the way of Lionhead Studios while giving them far more resources than they ever have. Here’s more info on the purchase.

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