Category Archives: Gadgets

Chug Plug Battery Backup for Macbook Air and Pro Laptops at CES

CES 2014, Computers, Gadgets, , , , ,

LenmarLenmar is known for their Undead Power batteries for mobile devices. Now they have come out with a new battery for 13 inch Macbook Pros and the Macbook Air laptop computers. The Chug Plug is a battery specifically designed to connect to the snap-together computer power supply plugs in Apple Macbook laptops. Jenny Simpson from Lenmar Enterprises joins Tech Podcast Network hosts Chris Montera, the Geekymedic and Jamie Davis, the Podmedic to tell them about this new battery technology.

The Chug Plug will give an additional 4 hours or so to your laptop’s battery life so that when you’re on the go, you don’t have to go without your laptop because of a dying battery. The Chug Plug is a “Smart Battery” which means that it can pass through charge when plugged into the wall and if the wall doesn’t provide enough power for some reason, the Chug Plug will use battery power to supplement AC, if needed.

You can check out the Chug Plug for yourself when if comes out this March for the 45 Watt and 60 Watt MacBooks for about $159.00.

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Follow-up with more segments from CES 2014 here at TPN.tv and over at the Health Tech Weekly Podcast with host Jamie Davis, the Podmedic.

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FYI Watches Give Bluetooth Connected Wearable Technology

CES 2014, Gadgets, , , , , ,
FYI_Watches
FYI Connected Watches

The gang at FYI Watches have looked at the other wearable technologies out there including the so-called smart watches. They noticed something missing – style and purpose. They took that observation and the knowledge of what we really wanted and needed in a connected wristwatch and came up with the FYI Watches. Chris Montera, the Geekymedic and Jamie Davis, the Podmedic from Health Tech Weekly chatted with Brian Pemberton from FYIwatches.com about these innovative designer watches from Geneva Watch Group, one of the largest designers of wristwatches in the world.

The FYI Watches are able to connect to your iOS iPhone or Android devices giving you all the alerts you’re looking for, without the additional wasted space or extraneous information, with just a glance at your wrist. No more embarrassing moments digging in your pocket or purse for your phone to check on a call. You’ll know who called or texted from your wrist and you can then make a determination on whether you want to bring out your phone to respond. There’s also a proximity alarm so you don’t walk off without your mobile phone, making sure you’re connected to your home and work all the time without worrying about losing your phone.

You can pick up one of these fabulous connected watches in a month or so at FYIWatches.com for around $69.00 or in a local retailer near you in the next three to six months.

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Follow-up with more segments from CES 2014 here at TPN.tv and over at the Health Tech Weekly Podcast with host Jamie Davis, the Podmedic.

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Neat Connect: Direct to Cloud Scanners

CES 2014, Gadgets, , , , ,
Neat
Neat

Chris Barber of Neat joined our TPN CES live broadcast with the newest models at the show. He showed us the Neat Connect: Direct to Cloud scanner. You don’t need any computer to connect to. You can scan business cards, receipts and more to cloud based drives.

Simply place the paper in the scanner area, hit scan and check out the preview. When ready, send to whatever service you use. You can crop or adjust before you send out.

The scanner can handle 15 cards or receipts at a time. You can also scan up to 50 pages, when detaching the adapter plate.

Anything you need to scan – recipes, cards, and more. With intelligent parsing, they are working on OCR technology to recognize text on cards and receipts so you don’t need to create your own spreadsheets.

More information, head to neat.com

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Interview by Jeffrey Powers of Geekazine and Daniel J. Lewis of The Audacity to Podcast

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D-Link NVR and Low-Light Webcam

Accessories, CES 2014, Gadgets, Home, Video

D-Link LogoAt CES’ Digital Experience, Ken from D-Link tells Todd about their new (NVR) and low-light webcam.

The NVR can record up to 9 IP cameras at once, storing the images on the SATA drive. The feeds can be viewed either via an attached HDMI monitor or else viewed remotely via D-Link’s mydlink solution which securely connects from the Internet back to devices in the home, using a web browser or a smartphone app.

The low-light web camera works down to 0.01 lux light levels and can still pick out colours. In complete darkness, a white LED provides illumination for up to 50 feet. As you’d expect, it’s 802.11ac wireless.

Both the NVR and the webcam will have an MSRP of US$379 when they go on sale in April ’14.

Interview by Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central for the TechPodcast Network.

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Kanex Multi-Sync Keyboard

Accessories, CES 2014, Computers, Gadgets

kanexlogo
Todd chats with Tracy from Kanex at CES Digital Experience about their new Multi-Sync Keyboard for Apple devices.

Although touch is great way of interacting with tablets and smartphones, it really doesn’t replace a keyboard when it comes to large amounts of text entry. In response, many manufacturers have come out with add-on keyboards that typically connect to the tablet via Bluetooth. These are generally useful devices but usually it’s one keyboard-one device and often there’s already a keyboard on the desk for the PC, so the desk simply gets more cluttered.

Kanex’s solution the Multi-Sync Keyboard which allows 3 Bluetooth and 1 USB connection to be maintained at any one time – Mac, iPhone and iPad. The user can then switch between connections, entering text into just one device at a time but being able to connect to up to 4 devices. Brilliant! Currently, it’s only available for Apple devices, but future versions should support PCs.

On-sale now for US$69.95 at www.kanexlive.com.

Interview by Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central for the TechPodcast Network.

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BeeWi Combat Toys

CES 2014, Gadgets, Home, Toys & Gaming

BeeWi LogoTodd and Don have some fun with Tobias Schoeler from French wireless specialists, BeeWi, and on show at CES are Bluetooth battle robots. Controlled from a smartphone app, the robots can fight against themselves or other BeeWi remote controlled toys including helicopters. Very cool and lots of fun.

The robots will be available in the first half of 2014 priced at US$35 and will be supported on Android, iOS and Windows Phone devices. More information and more toys at www.bee-wi.com.

Interview by Don Baine, the Gadget Professor, and Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central for the TechPodcast Network.

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FLIR Imager attached to a iPhone

CES 2014, Gadgets, Home, Mobile, Video

flirFlir appeared at Showstoppers, a pre-CES show that helps to kick off the Las Vegas electronics show, and we caught up with them to see what was new. It turns out, the company now has a case for your iPhone that can work a bit of optical magic, transforming the handset into a thermal imaging device.

The product goes a bit beyond just thermal though, as it combines it with the visible spectrum to produce a nice high-quality image. There are a lot of features added to this, and the user can choose the type of image seen. This technology does come at a cost, though. Retail pricing is slated for $349, and the release is planned for this spring. You can head to Flir to find out more.

Interview by Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central for the TechPodcast Network.

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YubiKey from Yubico Gives You Quick Secure Access to Your Sensitive Information

CES 2014, Gadgets, , ,

yubico-logoThe YubiKey from Yubico gives you the ability to login seamlessly and securely with your one-stop secure access key. Yubico is working with the FIDO alliance and U2 tokens to give you web security for your access to a variety of sensitive web materials. The user has a secure user-name and password along with physical USB token, the YubiKey.

The YubiKey can be used with your computers or smartphone. For use in a computer, you can just plugin the USB key into the computer’s USB ports to gain access to your sensitive passwords and usernames. For smartphones, the YubiKey utilizes NFC (Near Field Communications) technology to talk to your smartphone and allow you to surf the web safely. The device offers seamless authentication to your sensitive information online.

The YubiKey is available now on their website Yubico.com and connects with services like LastPass to give you true two factor secure identification and login. It’s available there for $25. The upgraded FIDO enabled version will be coming soon.

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Follow-up with more segments from CES 2014 here at TPN.tv and over at the Health Tech Weekly Podcast with host Jamie Davis, the Podmedic.

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PeoplePower’s Presence App Turns Old iPhones Into a Security Cameras

Accessories, CES 2014, Gadgets, Home, Video

PeoplePowerLogo

Todd and Don interviewed Gene Wang, from PeoplePower, at CES about their iOS app called Presence 2.0.  Presence turns your spare iPhone or iPad into a free remote camera to monitor your home or office from anywhere in the world (Wi-Fi or cellular).  Select Presence Motion Detection to receive free Presence Video Alerts and see what happened just moments ago. Or select Video and Audio Streaming to enable convenient 2-way conversations, and even the ability to remotely control robotic viewing stands. Supervise and control your energy consumption before your eyes with Presence, too. Turn lights and appliances on and off from your smartphone with Presence-controlled smart plugs. Automate your system with simple and powerful Presence Rules, helping you design an automated motion detection and energy plan for home or office.

Presence is available now from the iOS App Store for FREE!  (hardware accessories are extra)  See peoplepowerco.com/products/ for more information.

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Interview by Don Baine, the Gadget Professor and Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central for the TechPodcast Network

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Korus Portable Wireless Speakers

CES 2014, Gadgets, Home, Wireless

a href=”https://geeknewscentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/korus-logo.png”>Korus LogoTodd and Don interview Nortek‘s Rob Halligan about the new wireless speaker system called Korus, which instead of using wifi or Bluetooth, uses SKAA, a wireless hi-fi audio standard that won CES Innovation awards in 2010 and 2011. The benefit of SKAA is low latency and greater range, but the downside is that it’s not built-in to any smartphone, tablet or media player. This is solved via a dongle, the Korus Baton, a SKAA transceiver which comes in USB, Apple Lightning and Apple 30 pin variants. Plug it in to the PC, Mac or Apple device and you are good to go. An Android version is expected later in the year.

Using SKAA rather than wifi or Bluetooth also means that there’s no faffing around with SSIDs or pairing with PINs; it’s simply a case of pressing a button on the wireless speaker and the speaker locks onto the nearest Baton. Press the button again and it moves onto the next.

Korus currently have two speaker units for sale, the V400 and V600, priced at a penny shy of US$350 and $450 respectively on the Korus shop at www.korussound.com.

Interview by Don Baine, the Gadget Professor and Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central for the TechPodcast Network.

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