Logitech has completed its purchase of Ultimate Ears and is launching the company's earphones locally in December.

Ultimate Ears, of California, made its name with custom in-ear monitors for professional musicians and sound engineers.

The company was founded in 1995 by Van Halen's sound engineer to address the on-stage sound-monitoring needs of the band's drummer. An estimated 75% of today’s top touring rock musicians now use the Ultimate Ears custom-fit in-ear monitor while performing.

The Super.Fi 5 model pictured here employs a single, wideband driver with a frequency
response range of 15 Hz to 15 kHz and a top sound pressure level (SPL) of 115 dB. A custom armature houses a proprietary tuned filter that shapes to deliver detailed bass and crisp, clean mids and highs.

The Super.Fi 5 earphones will be available before Xmas for a suggested retail price of $299.90 inc GST. Also available is Ultimate Ears Super.Fi 5vi which features a multi-function button that answers/ends phone calls and controls music/video on iPhone for a suggested retail price of $329.90 inc GST.

Posted by Ted Gibbons at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The new Asus N50 notebook features a 15.4in display, multimedia touchpad complete with backlit buttons for instantaneous multimedia enjoyment and a built-in Air Ionizer that not only helps clean the surrounding air of allergens and germs, but also promotes refreshing air-flow and circulation.

The N50 will be available netxt month, is priced from $2,799 and specs and options are as follows:

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T9400/T5850/P8600/P7350
Mobile Intel® PM45 Express Chipset
Intel® Wi-Fi Link 5100/ Intel® WiMAX/ Wi-Fi Link 5150
DDR2 800 MHz up to 4,096MB
15.4" WXGA VESA-like LED panel
SATA 160 GB / 250 GB / 320 GB / 500 GB
DVD Super Multi
Blu-ray DVD Combo
Built-in 2.0 M Pixel camera
10/100/1000 Base T
Built-in Bluetooth™ V2.1+EDR (optional)
36.9 cm (W) x 27.6 cm (D) x 2.90-4.30 cm (H)
2.95 kg (with 6-cell battery)

Posted by Ted Gibbons at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here it is folks (although in its US Verizon livery), the Blackberry Storm. Vodafone showed it off yesterday afternoon and put a release date on it for November.

RIM is making a point that its touch interface "enables easy and precise typing", following criticism of the difficulty of typing with the iPhone's on-screen keyboard. Unlike the iPhone however, the Storm has a "clickable" touchscreen, which apparently responds much more like a physical keyboard.

"The BlackBerry Storm is a revolutionary touchscreen smartphone that meets both the communications and multimedia needs of customers and solves the longstanding problem associated with typing on traditional touch-screens," said Mike Lazaridis, president and co-chief executive officer at RIM in a statement.

"Consumers and business customers alike will appreciate this unique combination of a large and vibrant screen with a truly tactile touch interface."

Essentially, the Storm's touch screen actually depresses ever so slightly when pressed. The user feels a gentle click when the screen is released, similar to a key on a keyboard or a button on a mouse. RIM is hoping that this clickable touchscreen will give the user a positive confirmation that they have made a selection, and should provide a more 'intuitive typing experience'.

The BlackBerry Storm offers the familiar navigation keys ('phone', 'menu' and 'escape') that are common to other BlackBerry smartphones, but adds support for multi-touches, taps, slides and other touch screen gestures, so users can highlight, scroll, pan and zoom for smooth navigation.

Like the iPhone, the BlackBerry Storm also features a built-in accelerometer, allowing its touchscreen to automatically switch between landscape mode and portrait mode as the user rotates the handset.

A SureType keyboard layout is available in portrait mode and a full QWERTY keyboard layout is available in landscape mode.

Posted by Ted Gibbons at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sony showed off its 40-inch ZX1 Bravia LCD this week. The TV screen is only 9.9mm thanks to a clever bit of engineering that places the LED backlights around the screen edge, rather than behind it.

Another clever lifestyle feature of this TV is its wireless HDMI connectivity. Much of the ZX1's electronic gubbins like the tuner and the inputs and outputs are housed in a separate box that is able to connect to the TV wirelessly to provide both audio and a 1080i picture signal. Sony wasn't able to shed much light on the technology behind this connection except to say that is was based on 802.11 wi-fi.

The connection is good for a range of up to 30m but while it looked good from a distance, up close the image featured a lot of noise. This is probably due to the fact that the wi-fi connection would have to throttle back the image bit rate significantly compared to a wired connection.

The ZX1 is due to be released some time next year.

Posted by Ted Gibbons at 4:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)