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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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StickR TrackR Helps You Track and Find Your Lost Stuff at CES

CES 2014, Gadgets, Home

stickr-trackr-keysChris Montera, the Geekymedic, checked out some of the products and services at CES Unveiled including the StickR TrackR from Button-Trackr.com. If you lose things around your house or office frequently the Stickr Trackr might just be the perfect gadget for you.

StickR TrackR enables users to locate any lost item in seconds using their iPhone or Android smartphone. Attach the coin-sized StickR TrackR device to any commonly misplaced item such as keys, purses, wallets, and more. The app automatically tracks where your items are so you can stop stressing about staying organized and stop wasting time looking for lost items.

Best of all, you can home in using the app and cause the TrackR on the device to chirp so it’s easier to find. The app will also tag the last known location on a map and notify you if it is moved. And, lost or stolen items can be found even more quickly because the lost item will show up on other’s smartphones with the app installed, notifying them that the object has been reported lost.

You can find more at Button-Trackr.com and get your own StickR TrackR for your valuable stuff!

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Find more segments from CES 2014 both here and at Health Tech Weekly with host Jamie Davis, the Podmedic.

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Full Featured Pinball For the Home from Stern Pinball at CES

CES 2014, Home, Toys & Gaming, , , , , , ,

StarTrekPro_pinballPinball machines are making a huge resurgence in both arcades and home game rooms. They are also a great example of a healthier gaming experience since you play them standing up. Health Tech Weekly host Jamie Davis, the Podmedic got the chance to stop by the Stern Pinball booth and chat with founder Gary Stern about the latest offerings from his company.

Pinball games associated with popular entertainment properties like the Avengers, Star Trek, and Spiderman make the gaming experience more fun for the player. For the home enthusiast, the Stern Pinball company now offers not only a full line of commercially operated pinball games for arcades, bars and other businesses, they also have a full line of home-based machines. These large sized home pinball games offer many of the features from the larger machines including a full-sized playing area, professional bumpers, flippers, sling-shots, and more!

Find out more about how you can get one of these awesome machines for your home game room or entertainment center. Visit the folks at SternPinball.com for more information and pricing.

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Find more segments from the Digital Health Pavilion at CES 2014 both here and at the Health Tech Weekly podcast site with host Jamie Davis, the Podmedic.

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Nest Protect Remakes the Venerable Smoke Detector at CES

CES 2014, Health, Home, , , , , , ,
Nest Protect CO Smoke Alarm
Nest Protect CO Smoke Alarm

Nest, known for its groundbreaking interactive thermostat and mobile device app for controlling your home heating and air-conditioning, is now following up this success with a new device called the Nest Protect. The nest protect is a high-end combination smoke detector and carbon monoxide (CO) detector. But, as we expect from Nest, this home safety and wellness device is also connected to the Nest mobile app, sending you an alert when the device is activated and what kind of emergency is detected.

There are other user friendly features built in to the Nest Protect. The Nest site says it all – “Safety shouldn’t be annoying.” When alerting to a potential emergency Nest Protect gives you an early Heads-Up telling you what the danger is and where it is. If the problem is that you just burned something on the stove, no problem. No need to swing towels or get up on chairs. Silence nuisance alarms, like burning toast or bacon, with a wave of your hand. And the typical annoying battery-low chirps of other smoke detectors is a thing of the past. Nest Protect will send a message to your smartphone if the alarm goes off or if the batteries need replacing.

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Find more segments from the Digital Health Pavilion at CES 2014 both here and at the Health Tech Weekly podcast site with host Jamie Davis, the Podmedic.

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HD HomeRun for All Your Screens in the Home

CES 2013, Home, ,

HDHomeRunLogoThe distribution of HD content within the home has been a problem – if you want to preserve video quality. HD Home Run is an established product that permits you to have the output of up to three tuners converted to broadcast quality MPEG-2, and then distributing it through the wired home network. However, as soon as you add a device like a smartphone or tablet, you will find that the on-board devices are just not able to keep up with the decoding task. Plus, the bandwidth on the home WiFi network is not going to be able to keep up. Networking of video in the home, using Conditional Access you are able to stream video to any connected device – wired, or wireless Android or iOs.  The new HD Home Run system takes up to four separate video streams and does a real time transcode of the MPEG-2 to H.264 that can be carried over WiFi, and easily decoded by the processor in the tablet or smartphone. The new system is fully compatible with Windows8. TPN Interview by Andy McCaskey, SDRNews .

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More Mileage From Your Old iPad

CES 2013, Home, ,

d-red logoMounting an older iPad in a customized frame is a great way to extend the life of the device and at the same time provide a toddler with a unique toy that builds all sorts of skills. Building skills in numbers and letters, learning to draw, or just having fun, this is a sure fire way to keep little kids engaged for hours of constructive play. d-Redshop has developed an entire family of custom apps for the iPad that can be built into the frame, and then connected via Bluetooth. The company has a number of iOS based products. The toy applications are found at MyLearnToys.com.
TPN Interview by Andy McCaskey, SDRNews and Daniel J. Lewis, The Audacity To Podcast.

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Beatpower Speakers

CES 2013, Home

Beat-Power If you start looking for portable speakers for your iPhone or iPod you quickly notice that most companies have a one-size fits all policy. Fortunately there is a company that thinks differently, beatpower. beatpower policy is to create speakers for different types of people. They have a category of speakers that are made for people who are more fashion conscious. Another category for those who like things to look more traditional. A third category for those who want their speakers to have the same design quality as their iPad or iPod and a fourth category for the audiophile. All speakers no matter what the category are bluetooth enabled and most have a microphone installed.

The final category that was shown was the beatbox which is a hi-fi system for the home. The beatbox is covered with hand-stitch leather in various colors. It has optical wireless and bluetooth capability. It also has two USB charging ports which you can use to charge your iPhone or iPod. The Beat Block comes with a remote control that allows you to control the treble and bass that is coming out of your iPhone or iPod.

You can take a look at the various speakers available at the beatpower website. The prices for the various speakers will run from $29.99 up to $199.00. For more information about availability you can send an email to sales@beat-power.com. They are also working on an e-shop, which should be coming soon.

Interview by Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central for the TechPodcast Network and by Nick DiMeo of F5 Live.

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The Ford Developer Program

CES 2013, Home, Mobile

Developer Program Ford Motor Company opened up their app program to all developers at CES 2013 The new platform is called Uplink it is a suite of technology that works with Connect to Sync. This program has gone through two years of beta testing using such apps as Pandora however now it is open to all developers. It should be opened to North America, Europe and China by the end of the year. Ford has hired people from the mobile industries work previously done some development so they are ready for the volume. They’ve have told developers there are certain categories they will not permit including games videos anything with a lot of texts involved. Ford has developed a multiple number of test that the developer’s app must pass before it is even submitted. These standards are available at the Ford Developer Program website. Ford would like developers to concentrate on using voice commands or if that’s not available quick touch. Right now Ford is concentrating on the driver and they want to make sure that the apps are distraction free.

Developers can work on either the iOS platform or the Android platform. The IOS platform works with the Xcode package in Objective C. The Android platform uses the Eclipse package in . Is it a Json library with an API call. The head unit software accepts and manage the information. The head unit software is being open to the industry. Ford is trying to work with competitors so that developers don’t have to develop a different package for each car company.

The apps once developed or tweaked for the environment will be available directly through iTunes and the Google Play Store. Ford is also continuing to work on opening up their diagnostic platform or OpenXC Platform to produce more data for research. If you are developer and interested in developing for the Ford platform you can find more information at the Ford developer website.

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

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The Neat Digital Filing System

CES 2013, Home

Neat The Neat digital filing system helps you organize your receipts and documents. It is a full system including both software and a hardware scanner. There are a number of ways you can get the information into the Neat system. You can scan the information in. You can email digital receipts using your Neat email address. You can use the Neat app on your iPhone or android phone and take a picture of the receipt and upload it to the Neat Cloud. If you want you can send a box of receipts to Neat and they will process them for you. The Neat system allows you to categorize and organize the information for tax purposes. It is fully searchable and with extended search it will also search such apps as Evernote and Dropbox. You can export the information and save it to PDF and you can also share the information.

The Neat mobile scanner is $199.95 and the desktop scanner is $399.95. There is a monthly fee for the service which starts at $5.99 for the basic service. If you are trying to go paperless and get organizer Neat maybe exactly what you need.

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

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EnerGenie Saving Money and Energy

CES 2013, Home

Power EnerGenie makes products that helps you keep track of how much electricity you are using in your home and ways to control that usage. The basic product is a socket that plugs into the wall. You can then control any device that is plugged into it by your iPad or iPhone; turning the device on or off, setting a timer for either reoccurring or single phase. It can measures how much electricity is being used by individual devices. You can use it to do a cost relationship analysis. You can also compare how much is being used in the daytime and nighttime.

They also sell a Power Management System which you can set up either via USB or wirelessly. You can program it so each plug turns off and on different times. You can also group plugs together, so for example when you turn on your TV, your blu-ray player would come on. They are also going to be selling a portable charger which handles up to 40,000 mAh. The charger will be available at the end of Q2 for $250.00. The socket and power management systems are $50.00 and $150 respectively and are available now through Amazon and the Energenie website.

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

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