iShoes

They weigh about 12 pounds and zip along at 13 1/2 miles per hour; a single charge lets you take a three-hour trip. They're not cheap; a pair will set you back US$600. Watch this video to see them in action at CES. And so it seems that the tradition of putting the letter 'i' in front of any product will continue to attract attention no matter how ridiculous the product is.

Underwater Digital Camera Mask

Forget about waterproof digital cameras. This mask lets you snorkel at up to 30 meters and take underwater photos at the same time. The mask, powered by two AAA batteries, has a lens right above the tempered glass eye pieces (they double as a viewfinder embedded with cross hairs). Click the red shutter button atop the mask and shoot 55 low-res images, or more with a Micro SD card.

Photowatch

Doesn't it bother you having to whip out your wallet to show pictures of your kids?
Now you can carry around your pictures on a wristwatch. Yep, you heard right: a watch that stores up to 100 images on a 1.4-inch (128 by 128) LCD screen. Connect the Neutrano Photowatch to your PC using a USB cable, download the images to the watch, and you have 8 hours to view the pictures. In between showing off your darlings, you can (gasp) even check the time. The 100-image version runs about US$70 and a 40-image version is US$50.

Open It

New gadgets = good stuff!
Opening new gadgets in clamshell packaging = nightmare
Retailers clamor for them because they reduce theft; I end up bringing out a pair of pliers and a razor blade, and risk life and limb trying to open the freaking thing.
There's a solution: For about US$11, you can buy the Open It, a pair of clippers that snips open these annoying packages. One handle has a screwdriver, the other a small, locking razor for cutting open boxes. Simple genius.

Posted by Jan Birkeland at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Microsoft today launched the latest version of its Big Daddy productivity suite for the Mac ,Office:mac 2008. The software will be in stores by the end of the month.

Just like Office 2007 for PC, Office:mac now supports the Open XML format, which should eliminate those garbled files that sometimes turn up when attempting to send files between platforms. However, it's important to bear in mind that Open XML is only any use if you're sending to another user with software (like Office 2007) that supports it.

Another important advance for this suite is that it uses binary code and is thus native to both Intel and PowerPC macs. Office:mac 2004 was forced to work through the Rosetta Stone interface on Intel Macs, slowing it down considerably. Anecdotal reports suggest this new 2008 suite flies on Intel Macs.

Another wholly new development in this suite are Automator Actions based on Apple Scripts. Pull down the Automator submenu in an Application like Word and you'll be offered a list of actions like turning text into audio to be sent to your iPod. (Yes, this really works but inevitably sounds like a fembot, rather than natural speech.)

The interesting thing about Automator is that anyone can write a function for it using Apple Scripts and put it up on the web for others to download. However, the not so great thing is that Automator replaces support for Visual Basic and the ability to write macros. That's right folks, if you upgrade to this suite, all your precious macros will be gone.

Inside the applications themselves, Office:mac offers a lot of the same new functionality as Office 2007, like OfficeArt, but the interface layout and and a couple of handy extras are aimed squarely at Mac users.

Firstly, instead of Office 2007's 'Ribbon' interface, you get the Elements Gallery, which looks more like a set of pallettes from a graphics program and is also highly customisable.

Second, given that a lot of Mac users spend the majority of their day in one program like PhotoShop, there is a new Desktop widget called My Day that integrates with Entourage to keep you up to date on your appointments, tasks and schedules without actually having to enter your email program.

Within Word there is a new Publisher Layout View that makes it a breeze to create sophisticated documents, using a range of templates and specialised tools.

Excel now offers Ledger Sheets where you can easily manage your company's books, or your personal finances, and can even import information from the likes of credit card or bank statements.

PowerPoint gets SmartArt and Document Themes to quickly and easily take the yawn out of your presentations.

Entourage gets the My Day function as mentioned above but also offers much better integration with Microsoft Exchange in a business environment.

The software comes in three editions, Home and Student, Standard, and Special Media Edition.
With Special Media you get the addition of the new Expression Media application, which is a digital asset management tool for the likes of still images and video. You can store up to 120,000 assets, attach meta data for easy searching, edit files, and convert files from one format to another. The application supports 100 file types including Flash.

Apart from Expression Media, the other main variations between the editions are that Home & Student does not offer Automator Actions or Exchange Server support.

A new website called "mactopia" is also being launched at the end of the month for Office:mac 2008 that will host tutorials, developer blogs, special offers and Office:mac news. It can be reached via www.microsoft.co.nz/mac.

In the meantime, head to www.mactopia.com to find out more.

Pricing will be $269 for the Home and Student Edition, $899 ($549 for an upgrade) for the Standard Edition, and $1149 ($749 for an upgrade) for the Special Media Edition.

Posted by Ted Gibbons at 2:33 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 3 )

Apple Inc.'s CEO Steve Jobs took center stage at the Macworld Conference and Expo Tuesday to introduce what he called "the world's thinnest notebook," dubbed the MacBook Air.

The new laptop, which is priced starting at US$1,799 and will ship in two weeks, was the final, and flashiest, of the product roll-outs and upgrades that Jobs touted in a 90-minute keynote at Macworld, which opened Monday in San Francisco. But he also talked up a new wireless backup device, the Time Capsule; spelled out changes to the iPhone that will be delivered later Tuesday via a firmware update; and re-launched Apple TV by dropping its price and offering movie downloads via iTunes.

None of the announcements could have come as a shock to Apple fans who had followed the rumor and gossip mill during the past few weeks, and as several analysts noted last Friday, the MacBook Air was the biggest of the bunch.

The subnotebook, small enough for Jobs to pull from a manila envelope, takes the tape at just 0.16-in. at its thinnest on the keyboard-side edge, and no more than 0.76-in. at the hinge. It weighs about three pounds, and has a new multi-touch trackpad.

On the specification front, the Air uses a 13.3-in. display that, like the MacBook Pro 15-in. models, is backlit by LEDs rather than a fluorescent light. The standard processor is a 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo packing a 4MB shared L2 cache, and it comes with 2GB of memory. An 80GB hard drive -- a 1.8-in. model, the same size used in Apple's iPod classic line of music players -- rounds out the base $1,799 system.

Options, however, can push the price of the MacBook Air to nearly double that. By configuring the notebook with a faster 1.83GHz processor and swapping out the traditional platter-based hard drive for a 64GB SSD (Solid State Drive) that uses flash memory to store files and applications, the price tag jumps to $3,098.

Apple's online store, which began taking pre-orders for the Air within minutes of the end of Jobs' spiel, appeared overwhelmed. Computerworld was not able to access the ordering pages for the notebook even after repeated attempts.

"There were no surprises today," said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research Inc. "But it was execution, execution, execution. Apple's listening to its customers and then executing.

"I think they've got a real winner here," said Gottheil. "$1,800 is a very compelling price, and it looks like a good deal."

Check out the slideshow below for a comparison between the Airbook and ultraportables from some other vendors

Posted by Chris Keall at 9:58 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )