New Gadgets

Thanks to a hefty $5 million that was collected for stimulus funding in Owensboro, Kentucky; public schools will be getting 2,200 MacBook Air notebooks for students between grades five and twelve, as well as teachers and staff in those schools. This means a MacBook Air for every student and teacher in the district. The notebooks are meant to help the teachers in teaching, and help the students with learning in classes.

As of now, it has been reported that teachers have already received their notebooks, but students will have to wait about a month or so into the school year before they get theirs. Regardless, it sounds like a nice break from having regular paper textbooks, not to mention the laptops can be used to other purposes during after school hours. Don’t you wish you were back in school and living in Kentucky now? I’d love owning a free MacBook Air without having to pay a dime.

The Xbox 360 has undeniably become much more than a game console, and with the recent announcement of Xbox TV in addition of the existing Hulu and Netflix support, it’s clear that Xbox 360 needed… a media remote, which will arrive on the market at $19.99 on November 2011.

Obviously, there is some overlap with the Xbox controller: directions and A,B,X,Y buttons are present to deal with basic user interface elements. After that, you will find the usual play+pause/rewind/forward buttons.The remote is fairly basic, but I’ve seen much worse for the price, and if you use the xbox to watch movies often, it should feel better than using the gamepad.

Incidentally, Microsoft has also announced a $60 Bluetooth wireless headset that should come out at the same time. It’s nice and shiny, but it’s just a BT headset, so if you want to save a buck or two, it’s possible to get something cheaper.

The Clear 4G-Apollo router did make an appearance at the FCC a while ago, and since it has leaked out on the Internet already, why not go ahead to make it official? That is exactly what Clear has done with their latest generation 4G hotspot device. The Spot 4G-Apollo is different from the other devices to date simply because it is touted to have its very own display that goes one up on all those LEDs on current routers. This display will show off metadata such as connection strength, battery life, and amount of data transferred amongst others – all without having to check out your browser. Being the good and obedient router that it is, it is capable of handling up to eight devices simultaneously via Wi-Fi with a six-hour battery life – now the latter is definitely not something you see every day.

Manufactured by Gemtek, this hotspot will not feature legacy 3G support that allows you to roam on Sprint’s network, but if you are on WiMAX, it ought to huddle around the typical 3Mbps to 6Mbps speeds as promised by Clear.

To purchase or hire? That is a question all households need to ask themselves, as purchasing the Spot 4G-Apollo will cost you $100, or you can always rent it at $6 per month. Expect to see stores stock the Clear 4G-Apollo router from the end of July onwards.

Just what is so special about the KDDI Mi-Look pedometer? For starters, this GPS-capable device will cater for the elderly, as it sports a waterproof body so that a drop into the toilet bowl or a trip to the puddle of water is not going to faze it, while a QVGA display ought to be good enough to let even the elderly check out information on it without having to squint, and three main buttons keep things simple. Oh yeah, one more important aspect – the Mi-Look is also handy in communicating with family members.

Apart from that, it doubles up as an emergency buzzer – all you need to do is pull the strap, and off it goes to draw attention to yourself. According to a KDDI executive, “Often, people worry about their parents being alone, but can’t visit them often, and don’t want to keep calling them up either. In fact, that’s how it is with my parents. So we’ve designed the Mi-Look to let people keep an eye on their parents’ situation unobtrusively. We think there’s a big market for it.”
The Mi-Look will arrive in the Japan market later this September, in case you are interested (and living there, of course).

Sure, these days nearly all digital cameras can shoot video, but only a small handful give you the power to manually select aperture and shutter speed while doing so. The Lumix FZ47 is Panasonic’s latest high-end point-and-shoot to sport this functionality, providing full control over both video and still photo capture with its Creative Control mode. The 12.1-megapixel superzoom can shoot 1080i HD at 30 fps, though it’s notably lacking in the 1080p department.

There’s also a 3-inch LCD, 24x Leica zoom lens with a 25mm wide-angle focal length, and an option to shoot 3.5-megapixel stills while recording video. For photographers wiling to settle for a good deal less power, Panasonic also just announced its entry-level Lumix LS5, which includes a 14.1-megapixel sensor, optical image stabilization, and 720p video, all powered by a pair of AA batteries. The $400 FZ47 will ship next month, while the LS5 hits stores in November, with pricing yet to be announced. Jump past the break for the complete rundown from Panasonic.

It looks like the rumors were correct: Sprint announced on Monday that the rugged Motorola Titanium phone will be available on July 24th for $149.99. The Motorola Titanium runs Android 2.1 (Eclair) and meets Mil-Spec 810G ratings for dust, shock, vibration, low pressure, solar radiation, high temperature and low temperature. The Titanium, which supports push-to-talk, is equipped with a full QWERTY keyboard, a 5-megapixel camera, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, a 2GB microSD card and a 1,820mAh battery. Read on for the full press release.

Motorola Titanium, First Android 2.1 Smartphone with Best-in-Class Nextel Direct Connect, Available Beginning July 24 for $149.99

Motorola Titanium™, America’s first Android 2.1 (Éclair) smartphone with best-in- class Nextel Direct Connect™ for Push-to-Talk, goes on sale in Sprint Stores, online at www.sprint.com, Telesales at 1-800-SPRINT1 and Sprint Business Sales beginning Sunday, July 24, for $149.99 with a new line or eligible upgrade and two-year
service agreement, after $100 mail-in rebate.

As the successor to the popular Motorola i1 launched by Sprint in 2010, Motorola Titanium is sleek and attractive, yet durable. It features a full QWERTY keyboard and 3.1-inch touchscreen display for a feature-rich, business-class experience. Built military-grade tough, Motorola Titanium is designed to meet Military Specification 810G for dust, shock, vibration, low pressure, solar radiation, high temperature and low temperature.

Additional key features of Motorola Titanium include:
• Support for Nextel Direct Connect Services, including Direct Connect, Group
Connect®, International Direct Connect®, DirectSendSM, Group Messaging and
NextMail®
• Android Market™ for access to more than 200,000 applications, widgets and
games available for download
• Google™ mobile services such as Google Search™, Gmail™, Google Talk™,
Google Maps™ with Navigation, syncing with Google Calendar™ and
YouTube™
• Corporate email (Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync®) and personal (POP3 &
IMAP) email, calendar and contacts
• 5-megapixel auto-focus camera with camcorder, 4x zoom and LED flash
• Wi-Fi b/g/n
• Stereo Bluetooth®
• GPS navigation
• microSD slot, with a 2GB memory card included, supporting up to 32GB
• 1820 mAh Lithium-ion battery

With more than 17 years of expertise, Sprint is the industry leader in Push-to-Talk, serving the world’s largest Push-to-Talk community with millions of Nextel Direct Connect subscribers on the fastest national Push-to-Talk network. Nextel Direct Connect has set the industry standard for Push-to-Talk worldwide. More U.S. workers communicate in less than a second with Nextel Direct Connect than with any other Push-to-Talk service.