This year the Pepcom – Digital Experience press event took place in New York City at the Metropolitan Pavilion and of course DragonSteelMods was in attendance. At the Pavilion were such companies as Kingston, Western Digital, Tivo, Samsung, Logitech, and many, many more. The theme for this year’s event was Welcome to the Jungle, as in the “tech jungle”. Many new products were demoed and I am going to discuss a few of the more exciting products that I encountered.
Pepcom – Digital Experience June 2008 Coverage
Author: Tom Ratas
Viewzi
One of the first booths I went to was for an online search engine called – Viewzi. Here is an explanation of the tech from the company. Viewzi uses proprietary intelligence that can source information from top online sites, providing users only the most relevant results. Viewzi then works behind the scenes to organize those results into views, uniquely designed to showcase different types of content such as music, video and photos as well as topics including news, weather, shopping, and gadgets – all in an a highly interactive and visual way.
Overall, Viewzi has appearance to Apple’s Coverflow technology, but for online searches. It looked pretty nice, especially when you are able to look at videos and photos in an easily viewable manner. The site is free and will work in a model similar to Google, where there will be strategically placed ads with an emphasis as to not distract the user from the overall experience.
M-Audio
Next up, M-Audio was displaying three of their newer products. The Session Music Producer is a PC or Mac enable microphone which can be used for vocals for music, videos and podcasts. It attaches via USB and has a front headphone jack which allows you to hear the audio in real time, great for podcasting!!! The Torq MixLab is a consumer level Digital DJ System for those who want to remix or mash up their music collections. Finally, they had their Studiophile AV speakers which come in 15 and 20 watts variations and are designed to provide high resolution professional audio optimized for home computer environments.
Zoombak
One of the more interesting products was found at the Zoombak booth, this company makes Universal A-GPS Locator or what the layperson would describe as a tracking device. Currently they feature two models – one for auto and another for pets. The Zoombak is about the size of a beeper and can be put in vehicles, bags, or carried on your person. The Zoombak uses Assisted GPS technology which means it is a combination of satellite and ground location databases. The device holds a charge for about five days and can alert you when it is running low. Zoombak works by sending text messages and/ or an email to you when the device is outside your preset safety zone. You can also pinpoint the exact location of the device on your computer.
I don’t know whether this is a great device or whether it scares me. I am an advocate of personal privacy, but I also believe this product has great utility. Especially as a parent, you wonder if this device is something that you will want to use to protect them. That being said, this is a great product for tracking your personal items and your pets. The service does require a service plan which ranges from $9.99 to $14.99 per month.
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Pepcom June 2008 Continued
Logitech
Over at the Logitech booth, I was able to see the new QuickCam Vision Pro webcam for Mac. This is a 2-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and RightLight 2 technology. Since Apple discontinued their iSight camera, those Mac users who want the highest quality webcam, can now turn to Logitech to fill that need.
Also on display was the Squeezebox Duet which looks terrific. As an owner of one of the original Squeezeboxes, it was nice to play around with this new version. While the features are similar to the Sonos, it does have some different capabilities that differentiate the Squeezebox Duet from its competition.
Kingston
Heading over to our good friends at Kingston, they were proudly displaying their newest microSDHC card which comes in 8GB. With the ability to store more than 1,500 songs, over 4000 images from a 5 MP camera and up to eight hours of video, this tiny package offers great storage capacity.
Monster
One of the booths with a slew of new products was Monster Cable. The company that is well known for their audio and video cables has branched out and is ready to enter some new technologic markets. Their featured item was the "beats by dr. dre" headphone. This headset was designed by the Dr. Dre, the world renowned producer and artist with the goal in allowing the listener to hear the music the way it was meant to be heard by the performer. I was able to try on this set of “cans” and they were quite comfortable. They had one wire coming of the left side earphone, as opposed to the two wire usually attached to headphones. The sound was rich and the bass was thumping. However, the demo only featured hip hop and R&B style music, so I was unable to determine how they sound with heavier rock music.
Monster Cable also unveiled the Blackout 650 and 900 Power Centers. These power centers were designed for the home theater user in mind. They feature a Patented HD Clean Power filter that removes electrical noise and interference for better picture and sound performance. In addition the Blackouts feature surge protection, illuminated colored outlets and a gloss black finish.
Another new product is the iCarPlay Wireless 250 which acts as a wireless transmitter for the iPod and iPhone and specifically rejects cell phone interference and features an Autoscan 3D system which triple scans the radio for the clearest FM frequency. In addition, the device doubles as a charger for any USB device. Plus the cable is detachable and can be hooked into any computer and used as an iPod/iPhone docking cable.
Rounding out the new items is the Monster ScreenClean which us designed to clean your fingerprint stained screens on your cameras, phones and GPS units. They even include an antibacterial cloth to kill those yucky germs. Finally, Monster Cable has the traveler’s best friend – Outlets To Go, which features three well spaced outlets and a USB port. You will never be wanting for outlets when you are on the road with this outlet.
Linksys
Linksys make some of the best routers on the planet. Their WRT54G series is legendary for its hackable firmware. Now Linksys has released the WRT54G2 which is housed in a sleek black case and the antennas are now located on the inside of the router. In addition they were showing the WRT110-R, is a 802.11G based MIMO router, WRT160N, which is a draft 802.11 n router, and the WRT310N, which is also a draft 802.11 n router, which includes Gigabit LAN ports for maximal network speed.
Diskeeper
http://www.diskeeper.com/defrag.asp
The Diskeeper Corporation was promoting their newest version of their defragmentation software – Diskeeper 2008. This version features InvisiTasking which allows the defragmenter to run on the background while not slowing down the PC by using needed resources. This is an excerpt from Diskeeper about the technology:
“Using Diskeeper’s proprietary InvisiTasking feature —defrag now takes place “on the fly” or as fragmentation occurs. And it does this using only idle resources to ensure no performance slowdowns. Diskeeper literally takes the headache and guess work out of defragmentation. All a user needs to do is install the software and their system will run faster and more stably—period”.
Memeo
Another new face at the Pepcom show was Memeo. They were demoing their Share software which is designed for the layperson to share photos and movies as easily as dragging and dropping a file. The beauty of share is the recipients get the full resolution image delivered to their desktop via Circles, which are basically groups that the sender predefines. The company is offering free licenses of the software to the first 1,000 people who sign up to use it. After that it will get capped off at 10,000 sign-up
SoundID
http://www.soundid.com/home.html
SoundID is a company known for their well regarded Bluetooth headset, the SM100, announced their newest version, the HD300. Their newest Bluetooth headset is tiny and light weight. It has outstanding audio and is enabled with the following features:
NoiseNavigation– The Sound ID 300 optimizes speech intelligibility at both ends of the conversation via dual microphones and the automatic reduction of wind and background noise.
PersonalSound– You can choose from 3 listening modes, tuned to the most common hearing preferences, to further enhance speech clarity without raising the volume.
Automatic Volume Control – Eliminates the need for constant volume adjustment in variable noise situations such as driving.
Weighing in at eight grams and having a battery life of 6 hours talk time, this headset looks to be a hot item in the cellphone stores.
Well, that wraps up a quick summation of the Pepcom – Digital Experience 2008. Once again, DragonSteelMods.com would like to thank Pepcom for inviting us and giving our readers a look at some of the newest tech toys coming down the pipeline. Welcome to the Jungle, baby!
