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PluggedIn: Watching your own TV, thousands of miles away

Posted by jestin Wednesday, September 23, 2009 0 comments

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - So you're moving from the United States to another country and the most important thing you can think of is how you can watch the new season of "American Idol"?

You're not alone -- "placeshifting" is one of the hottest new areas in TV technology. People no longer need to live in a country to see all of their local TV stations. In fact, they don't even need a TV anymore.

There are platforms for watching popular shows on the Internet and there is technology to actually make a full television feed available just like in the living room. Either way, it can be relatively cheap and surprisingly easy to keep up while on an overseas assignment.

PLACESHIFTING

The best-known technology for moving an entire TV feed from one place to another is the Slingbox (www.slingbox.com), which came out a few years ago. Although the developer was later acquired by satellite company EchoStar, the device works with any platform, even an over-the-air antenna.

The Slingbox, which currently comes in two models starting at $180, connects to a video feed and to the Internet, and lets users watch that feed as though they were in the same room. It even offers an on-screen remote control for changing channels, pausing, opening menus, and so on.

The Slingbox is available for Windows and Mac, as well as the BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile, Symbian and classic Palm mobile platforms.

One downside of the Slingbox, though, is that it does not offer wireless support out of the box, meaning users need to put their Slingbox close to their Internet router or buy a separate wireless or home powerline adapter. Also, it is not designed to let users record video onto computers.

For those who want wireless or who want to record to a PC, Monsoon Multimedia's Hava Media Player (www.myhava.com) offers many of those features. It leverages the Windows Media Center software to turn a PC into a personal video recorder, using a remote video stream from a Hava box. Hava has four models that start at $120.

However, Hava does not offer a Mac version, and its cellular support is limited to Symbian and Windows Mobile. Hava also charges a subscription fee for some services.

The problem with the Slingbox and the Hava is that if something goes wrong overseas -- a power outage, a broken cable, an overly inquisitive cat -- they can be difficult or impossible to fix.

For American expats with money to burn and a need for guaranteed service, there are options like Nationphone & TV. The company will actually sign you up for cable service, put your cable box in their data center and stream the output to you over a fiber-optic connection.

The service costs $99 a month for 65 channels without a digital video recorder, or $199 a month for 200 channels with a recorder and premium movie stations. There is also a one-time set-up fee of $175. (here)

THE INTERNET

Some people are content with just a few shows, though, and don't necessarily need to watch the Sunday morning current affairs program from their local public access channel.

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Gmail
Gmail: push it real good!
Google's finally come up with a solution to bring Push Gmail to iPhone, iPod Touch, Windows Mobile and Symbian phones.

Until now, Push Gmail on the iPhone was only possible through 3rd party apps like the super-simple GPush app.

If you're an iPhone or iPod Touch user you'll need iPhone OS 3.0 as that's the first version of the OS to support push notification from 3rd party apps.

Hope over to m.google.com/sync for the instructions. The only problem for iPhone users is that if you've already got one Exchange account set up (probably a work one), you may not be able to add Push Gmail as a second account.

Let us know how you get on with Google Sync and take a look at our smartphone top 10 to get the low down on the best pocket emailers.

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South Koreans will soon join the millions of others worldwide as its government on Wednesday approved the sale of the iPhone there.

(Credit: Apple)

For years, the Korea Communications Commission used technical rules to stifle competition, allowing homegrown companies like Samsung and LG to take over the market, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

With an estimated 93 percent of South Korea's population subscribing to a mobile service, Apple should be able to overcome one of the biggest barriers to smartphone success in South Korea--applications. Apple has been able to entice developers worldwide to build apps for the iPhone, with 75,000 apps available and 1.8 billion apps downloaded thus far.

There was no indication of a release date, price, or carrier for the iPhone yet in South Korea.

This is the second piece of news related to international iPhone sales in less than a month. Apple landed a deal with China Unicom in late August to begin selling the iPhone in that country. Apple is also in talks with China Mobile, that country's largest wireless carrier with 141 million subscribers.

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Nokia N97: Facebook Birthday Exclusive App The Nokia N97 is set to get a whole lot more social with the launch of Facebook Birthday, an app that will help you keep track of your friends birthdays and even send them a special Nokia birthday card. Exclusive to the Nokia Ovi Store, Facebook Birthday is set to launch over the next few days. Find out more about Bithday Facebook for the Nokia N97 after the jump…

Nokia is starting to ramp up the number of apps that will appear exclusively on the Ovi Store, it’s one-stop shop for the latest Nokia apps and utilities. The first of which takes the already hugely popular Facebook app and gives it a twist in the form of the Facebook Birthday for the Nokia N97.

Facebook Birthday works in conjunction with your Facebook account by sending you a reminder two days before your friend’s birthday, giving you plenty of time to plan something special, or just be aware that you need to get in touch with them. What’s more, the app also allows you to send a special Nokia birthday card.

Check out the Top Ten Free Nokia N97 Apps

The app is based around a calendar view and allows you to import your Facebook friends details from your Contacts list. It’s really a simple idea with a lot of thought behind it. If you’re not already using Facebook on your Nokia N97 then now is the perfect time to start.

The first version of Facebook Birthday is aimed at Nokia’s flagship handset, the Nokia N97, but should work with other Symbian S60 5th Edition devices. What’s more, we expect the app to be quite a hit with the social networkign set, so no doubt will quickly appear on other S60 handsets and it may even make its way on to S40 devices over time.

The Nokia N97 Facebook Birthday is due for release from the Nokia Ovi Store in the next week or so.

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Nokia MD-8 portable speakers

It’s small, but it’s got it all! Nokia Mini Speakers MD-8 are multi-compatible, so you can plug and play from more than your mobile. Battery-powered, slick design and clever cable management.

[Via]

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Your typical friendly Canadian. A beaver on the highway at the Canada US border, welcoming drivers to Canada. Don’t forget to turn on your speakers.

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Nokia X6 Hands-on

Posted by jestin 0 comments



Nokia X6 Hands on

The folks at fonearena has published another hands-on video of the Nokia X6. Check it out after the break.

Nokia X6 is the most technologically advanced music-oriented handset of the manufacturer to date and sports 3.2-inch touch sensitive screen, 32GB built-in memory, 5-megapixel camera with double LED flash and Carl Zeiss optics, A-GPS, 3.5mm jack and battery that will allow 35hrs of continuous audio playback.

[Via]

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Want to put your ears in control? What if you could insert 2 ear buds to kick-start your tunes? Or plug in just one bud to take a call? Discover Motion Activated Headphones MH907.

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Nokia N97 vs N97 mini

My buddy Stefanos takes a look at the Nokia N97 and the N97 Mini. Check it out after the break.

Note: this video is not in English. For comparison pictures, clic

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Augmented REality App for the iPhone 3GS-2

NearestWiki is a new application available in the AppStore that uses augmented reality to display information about where we are. The app works only with the iPhone 3GS, and requires Firmware 3.1. Check out the video demo after the break.

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ProfiMail

ProfiMail

ProfiMail is a powerful e-mail client for mobile devices.
It allows you to read your mail on the go, and send text with
attachments directly from your device. Send photos, recorded
sound or simply text messages to friends, from anywhere.

Version: 3.14


What you get

ProfiMail is an application for your everyday life. It is a communication solution for your mobile device. Wherever you go, you have your e-mail with you. With the program's user interface, you can see a great part of the message on the screen at a time, and easily navigate during reading.

You can use ProfiMail for your professional work - reading documents sent in messages, comfortably answer to sender, or send documents from the device.

You can also use ProfiMail for being in touch with your friends, who use e-mail on a desktop computer. For example, you can immediately send photos taken with the phone's camera.

The program was designed to be as simple as possible, while offering very easy control, and many useful functions, essential for comfortable work with your e-mail.

From now on, don't be tied to your desktop PC anymore. Simply have all your e-mail always available anywhere you go.




Main ProfiMail screen, displaying multiple accounts.
Next to each mailbox are icons summarizing its contents.

Mail reader with HTML text support,
comfortable attachment browser,
and easy navigation.



Built-in image viewer, for comfortably viewing images,
scaled or in original size.

File Explorer for browsing files,
managing attachments, viewing and sending files.

Features

  • Automatic synchronization of messages with the mail server
  • IMAP folders
  • Attachments - view, save, send
  • HTML messages with images and hyperlinks
  • Built-in File Explorer
  • Push email - instant notification about new messages (using IMAP IDLE)
  • Address book
  • Signatures
  • Support for POP3 / IMAP / SMTP mail servers
  • Writing mails using T9 dictionary (if available on phone)
  • Multiple email accounts
  • Rules and filters allowing selective message download
  • Opens and browses ZIP archives
  • Support for various character encoding - Western, Cyrillic, Central European, and more
  • Build-in image viewer for JPG, PNG and other popular formats
  • Text viewer for standard text, HTML and Word documents
  • Optimized for GPRS - get headers first, then download message bodies which you really want to see
  • Scheduled message download
  • Sound notifications

More screenshots:



Languages

English Norwegian Polish
Slovak Dutch Portuguese
German Romanian Finnish
French Ukrainian Spanish
Hungarian Czech Swedish
Latvian Russian Greek
Turkish Italian Chinese




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SmartMovie

SmartMovie

SmartMovie is a video player for your mobile device,
with a counterpart converter utility for the PC.

With the converter, you may prepare any video
clip for optimal playback on your mobile device.






How it works

Locate source
on your hard disk
Load it into
Converter utility
Let PC converter
make it smaller
Transfer to your
mobile device
Use mobile player
to play the clip

Play your videos on your mobile device,
anywhere, anytime, you need just a few steps

  • Convert any video file on your PC into a phone-friendly video file
  • Upload video into device/memory card
  • Play the video in SmartMovie Player installed on your mobile device

Features

  • Standard AVI format, allowing you to preview converted files on your PC
  • Also plays MP4V, FLV and 3GP file formats
  • Player uses the phone screen in portrait or landscape mode, utilizing the full screen size of the device
  • Rescaling of video to utilize the full screen area
  • Support for subtitles - allowing you to watch movies in different languages
  • Friendly PC converter - preview videos on PC, select parts you want to convert, change conversion quality
  • Converter supports DirectShow codecs, so you may use video codecs downloadable from the internet
  • Fast conversion; on a standard PC conversion is 5x faster than the video clip playback time.
    You'll convert entire movie in just a few minutes
  • Quality rescale algorithm in player, delivering best possible picture quality
  • Customizable video player (brightness, language, volume, and more)
  • User-friendly interface - watch movies, don't waste time configuring obscure settings

Intuitive PC converter

File browser with preview


Comfortable player

Requirements

  • Mobile device with one of the supported operating systems (Symbian, Windows Mobile)
  • PC with Windows 2000/XP/Vista

Languages

English

Licensing information:

  • Upgrade note for SmartMovie 4.00 and newer: if you purchased SmartMovie version 3.xx, you can upgrade for free if your purchase was made in 2008. We're sorry, we don't offer a free upgrade to SmartMovie 4.xx for older purchases. Proceed here to upgrade from version 3.xx.
  • You can download the older SmartMovie 3.xx version here for Symbian phones or for Windows Mobile devices.
  • Your SmartMovie license is transferable to your new device during two years after the purchase, with a maximum of three times. Click here to transfer your purchased license to the new device.
  • We provide technical and customer support for this application for up to two years from the date of purchase.







Requirements

  • Mobile device with one of the supported operating systems (Symbian, Windows Mobile)
  • PC with Windows 2000/XP/Vista

Languages


English

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