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This blog covers watches, phones, tablets, media players, GPS navigation devices, and any combination thereof. Hope you enjoy!

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Friday, November 30, 2007

His and Hers Watches by Rado

 
The very elegant 50th Anniversary Rado Ceramica Chronograph watches' trio of chrono dials come in a choice of five colors of gold from white to deep pink. Three are shown above. They come in a very limited edition of ten pieces!

[Source: Rado via Gizmodo, The Gadget Blog]

These his and hers Rado watches are more easily found:

 

The Rado Men's DiaStar Integral watch has a two tone bracelet and a polished 18kt plated titanium case with black dial. The bezel is made of ceramic and it’s water resistant to 30 meters. There’s a matching DiaStar Integral watch for women too.
 
The Rado Women's Cerix Watch has a futuristic look that won design awards and it features the cutting-edge technology to match its looks. The case, crown, and bracelet are made of high-tech ceramics that are scratchproof. The dial window and display back are both made of scratchproof sapphire crystal. The silver dial lacks any indexes, and two thin black stick hands tell the time. The watch is water-resistant to 30 meters. There’s a Cerix watch for men too.




Check out other Rado watches in the webstore.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Bluetooth MP3 Watch

*** 12/17/07 - Updated Links ***

The eClipse Ntren combines the functionality of an mp3 player into a watch! In addition to looking great, the watch transmits MP3 music via Bluetooth to a Bluetooth compatible headset (included). The headset will also interact with a Bluetooth compatible cell phone to signal the user when an incoming call has arrived.

The eClipse Bluetooth mp3 watch comes in just one style.

The Hi Li-ion rechargeable battery is recharged through a built-in USB connection to a computer or through the provided a/c adapter (which is also used to charge the headset). On a full charge, the watch can provide approximately 6 hours of continuous playing time.



The 1GB (expandable in 128MB up to 2 GB) flash disk memory holds approximately 500 songs. The Ntren plays mp3 and wma formats and features a built-in Digital Voice Recorder that can record hours of dictation. It is compatible with Windows and Mac operating systems and is water resistant to 100 meters.

Sadly, the second watch is no longer available.

miShare: iPod to iPod Data Transfer

Remember yesterday I mentioned that you could transfer songs wirelessly from Zune to Zune? Well you can transfer songs from iPod to iPod although not wirelessly.
miShare is a pocket Linux box that allows you to connect two iPods to copy songs, photos, videos and any other data you might want to share.

The miShare sees both iPods as USB flash drives. Any standard iPod generation 5 (5G) or older and 1st and 2nd generation Nanos are compatible as long as they have 30-pin connectors. The newest old-style iPods, the classic and nano with Cover Flow in the interface, still work with the device, but a song is saved in the USB disk portion of the iPod, and not in the live song library, so you have to take it home and fiddle with it to get it to play. This problem may be fixed soon though.

[Source: miShare via Gizmodo, The Gadget Blog]

Yahee Solar MP4 with Speakers

The Yahee Solar MP4 charges up with solar power or with a DC adapter. It supports 8-bit Nintendo FC/NES, and 16-bit GB/GBC games by third party simulator. It also supports male and female real-person reading of text books (TXT) with 8 effect options. The drive-free U disc function allows recording through the microphone and storing of unfinished articles onto the disc for later reading.

 

It supports the following music formats: MP1, MP2, MP3, WMA, WAV, ADPCM, AMR etc, It supports AVI format film playing, achieving QVGA@25f/s fluent MPEG4 video playing effect. The Yahee Solar Power mp4 has a SD card slot for up to 2GB maximum capacity. A power-off time can be set to automatically turn the unit off. The firmware is upgradable so the latest software can be downloaded from the company’s website to expand its functions.

[Source: Yahee]

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Zune 30 GB Digital Media Player

When I first saw the Zune, I thought it was a knockoff of the iPod. Well it's definitely meant to compete with the iPod but I'm not so sure it's a knockoff. I absolutely love the wireless transfer of songs, pics, etc, and the screen landscape capability for viewing video. And they come in black, brown, white, pink and red.Cool!

The Zune plays music and videos, displays images, and unlike the iPod, it even receives FM radio so you can stay on top of local news or sports.

The Zune is a 30 GB digital media player, but there's a twist. You can wirelessly share selected full-length sample tracks, playlists, pictures, or your own home-grown tunes directly from Zune to Zune (within 30 feet). You can listen to the full-length songs that you receive up to three times in three days, flag the ones you love, and easily buy them the next time you sync up — it’s like test-driving songs before you purchase an album.

Whether you're walking down the street, in a room with a bunch of friends, at a concert, at the airport, or on the bus, you can whip out your Zune and see all the other Zune devices that surround you. But if you don’t want to be seen, you can turn off the wireless function, or adjust the privacy settings to control whether people can see you are online.

The Zune's navigation is simple and intuitive with a scroll wheel and basic buttons. The 30GB device stores up to 7,500 songs, 25,000 pictures, or 100 hours of video. Playlists can be created on the go. You can watch slide shows while you're listening. And the landscape mode allows you to get the most out of the vivid display during video playback.

The Zune comes pre-loaded with a variety of songs and videos from hot, new artists, as well as some fun films and images. From your PC, you can browse millions of songs at the Zune Marketplace where you can purchase individual tracks. You can also read over 100,000 artist biographies and features from leading magazines including XLR8R, NME, and FADED, and you'll have easy access to Billboard Charts, including Billboard 200, Hot 100 Songs, and more. You'll even be able to browse what people in the Zune community are listening to by checking out the Zune Charts.

Marvel Comics Superhero Watches

I admit that I have a soft spot for superheroes.

Marvel Comics, The Punisher, villainous vigilante hero, is depicted in name and logo on the red degrade dial of this bold Technomarine watch. Set in a large black steel case, the dial sports the trademark black skull along with luminous red arrow skeleton hands and large fitted Arabic numerals. A sixty-second sub-dial is at the six o'clock hour. Furiously fun, this collectible watch is outfitted on a black alligator strap with red contrast stitching and comes with an additional black rubber strap. It is water resistant to 100 meters.




Technomarine Limited Edition Marvel Super Heroes watches feature hour, minute, second, and date. They are water resistant to 200 m. Superheroes include Silver Surfer , Hulk, and The Thing .

GPS Devices for the Fitness Conscious

I must admit, when I first saw these wrist-mounted GPS devices, I thought they were only GPS navigational devices. While they do have some GPS navigational features, they do a whole lot more.

The Garmin Forerunner 205 (and 305) features an integrated, high-sensitivity SiRFstar III GPS receiver. The super-sensitive GPS tracks your every move, even working on tree-covered trails and near tall buildings. While the 205 doesn't offer heart rate monitoring, or connectivity with Garmin's wireless speed and cadence sensor -- for that, there’s the Forerunner 305 -- it's a great way to get basic GPS location and performance data.

The Garmin Forerunner 305 - Speed and Distance Monitor & Heart Rate Monitor features a high-sensitivity GPS receiver, new courses feature, and robust ANT wireless heart rate monitor for optimal performance. The heart device monitors your heart rate, speed, distance, pace and calories burned. The courses feature lets you download recorded courses and compete against previous workouts.

Both devices integrate seamlessly with the Training Center(*) software and a workout history is quickly uploaded and stored on the PC. The Training Center also lets you define courses on your PC that you can upload to the device. When course information is combined with uploaded workout information, the Forerunner becomes a complete guide, telling you where to go, when to make a turn, and what kind of workout to do when you're on the road or path.

While the 205/305 aren’t billed as GPS navigation devices, they do have some rudimentary mapping, waypoint marking, and routing capabilities. In addition to marking locations along your journey, you can zoom in or out of a simple map that displays your current direction and path. There's also a "go to location" feature that routes you back to your starting location, or to any location you have defined. Once you have defined several locations, you can save this information as a route, allowing you to travel the same path in the future.

Check out other Garmin Forerunner watches in the webstore.

(*) Training Center is not Mac-compatible

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

iPods for U2 Fans

How neat is this? It’s an U2 Special Edition Apple iPod. It’s jet black with prominent red wheel, color display and laser-engraved signatures of all U2 members on the back!

There are two U2 SE models available: the Apple 20 GB iPod Photo U2 Special Edition (4th Generation) and the Apple 30 GB iPod Video U2 Special Edition AAC/MP3 Player Black (5.5 Generation).




The 20 GB Photo U2 SE iPod has a 2” screen and stores up to 5,000 songs or 20,000 photos. It supports AAC Protected AAC, MP3, MP3 VBR, Audible, Apple Lossless, WAV, AIFF audio formats and is podcast ready.

The 30GB U2 SE iPod has a 2.5” screen and holds 7500 songs, hours of video, thousands of photos, and more on 30 GB of storage.

Watches for the Outdoorsman

I must admit to not knowing too much about the desirable features of outdoors watches but these seem to do it all.

The Casio Men's Green Pathfinder Triple Sensor Watch includes a built-in digital compass, altimeter, barometer, and thermometer. The digital compass displays 16 directions and has a 5-set memory capacity that captures direction, month, date, and measurements time data. The altimeter measures up to 10,000 meters in 5-meter increments, and can store 50 sets of altitude memory with date and temperature. It also provides a target altitude alarm and graphing capability for target and altitude tendency. It has a 1/100th-second stopwatch with a 60-minute measuring capacity and elapsed time, split time, and 1st/2nd place time modes. It also includes a daily alarm. It’s water resistant to 100 meters.

The Casio Protrek Outdoor Twin Sensor Digital Watch is designed for operation at very low temperatures. It’s solar powered and features barometric pressure measurement, temperature, 10,000 m altimeter, a 1/100th-sec stopwatch, a countdown timer, 5 daily alarms, battery indicator, auto calendar. It is water resistant to 100 meters.

The Highgear Summit Altiware Altimeter watchfeatures digital altimeter that measures in 1ft increments with a working range from -700 m to 9000 m. It stores 20 altimeter data readings, and accumulated and maximum altitude reading. Additional features include a digital barometer, a sea level barometer reading, barometer pressure graph, weather forecast and digital compass with 1 degree resolution and 16 direction pointers and adjustable declination. It also features a digital thermometer with 0.1 degree resolution and working range from -4 degrees F to 158 degrees F. And a chronograph with lap/split time measurement, a 50-lap memory capacity in a maximum of 20 runs. It’s water resistant to 30 meters. Wow.

The Mosquito Repelling Digital Watch is ideal for camping, picnicking, traveling, hunting, fishing, jogging, hiking and gardening. This is the ideal watch for the poor individual who is a mosquito magnet. You know... the one person that mosquitoes gravitate to (me!). This watch features advanced harmonics circuitry to emulate and emit the ultra sonic high frequency to ward off pregnant female mosquitoes, the type most likely to feed on human blood. The frequency reproduces the presence of male mosquitoes, which keeps the pregnant females away.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Watches for the Hockey Fan

This is a great idea for the hockey fan. Hockey watches by Whimsical Watches.


The Hockey Gold watch is a hand-made, hand-crafted watch. It is professionally designed using hand-crafted miniatures. It can even be personalized or customized upon request.



The Hockey Coach Gold watch, like the one above, is made by a team of professional graphic designers and artists using hand-crafted miniatures – perfect for the hockey coach! It comes in silver too.

Watches for the Formula One Fan


The New Tag Heuer Formula 1 (F1) watch displays hours, minutes, small second, and date (between 3 and 4 o'clock positions). It features the following chronograph functions: 1/10th of a second, seconds and minutes. It’s water resistant to 200 meters. The face comes in white, black, orange and red. I'm partial to the orange.


The Poljot Formula 1 Mechanical Chronograph Watch 25 Jewels 24 hr Dial watch is a manual wind-up watch which is water resistant to 10 ATM. It has a minute counter at the 3-o'clock position, a date window between 4-and-5 o'clock, a second counter at 9-o'clock, a 24-hour dial at 6-o'clock; and a chronograph sweep-type second hand. It comes in red too.


The Seiko Men's F1 Honda Team Limited Edition Chronograph watch is a stylish men's watch with Japanese quartz movement, stainless steel case and band, blue dial, chronograph (stopwatch), Tachymeter, and date calendar. It is water resistant to 100 meters. It also comes with a white dial.



The Jacques Lemans Men's Formula 1 Race-Chrono Collection watch features a tachymeter, a chronometer and date. It is water resistant to 100 meters. Very nice.

Check out other Formula One watches in the webstore.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Lego Watches

How cool is this? Lego watches... and Starwars Lego watches! They are analog quartz watches with interchangeable bezels, water resistant to 165 feet and made of Lego.
 
This is LEGO Kids' Watch #5900100

 



This is the Darth Vader watch. 'Nuff said.




And this is the Stormtrooper Watch.



There's also a Luke Skywalker Watch and a R2D2 Watch. Each comes with corresponding lego character.

Check out the other Lego watches at the webstore.

Batman Watches

Here are a number of Batman watches from different manufacturers. Hey, you can't go wrong with Batman!



The Fossil Batman Rotor Style Automatic Limited Edition watch is a limited edition of 2000. It's a men's watch. The case is made of stainless steel.

This is a men's casual Batman collectible watch by Fossil. It is made of stainless steel case and bracelet. It features a dial that is accented with a polished black Batman emblem and glow in the dark hands and indexes. It's limited to 2000 pieces and comes in a collectible Batman themed case. Model # Fossil LL1006.

[Source: Fossil]

This is the New Batman rotor watch by Fossil. It features a stainless steel bracelet and dial casing. The dial showcases a silver embossed Batman logo outlined in yellow and has a three hand automatic movement. The case back is clear so you can see the Batman Logo rotor. It's limited to 2000 pieces.

[Source: Fossil]



This is the Detective Comics Batman Black Leather watch by armitron. There isn't too much information on this one. I believe it's a kids' watch.

Check out the other Batman watches in the webstore.

Friday, November 23, 2007

USB Watches

How practical is this? USB Watches incorporate a USB flash memory drive. This means you'll always have your flash drive with you (unless you forget your watch).

The Xonix USB watch has a built-in USB cable. It’s compatible with Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, Linux 2.4 and up, and Mac OS 8.1 and up. The watch comes with 128 MB, 256 MB, 512 MB, 1 GB or 2 GB storage.

This watch is the XX series USB watch made for women by Xonix. It comes with a Toshiba high speed storage flash drive. It comes either with 256 MB or 512 MB storage and is compatible with Windows 98 SE, ME, 2000, and XP, Linux 2.4 or higher or Mac OS 9.0 or higher.




[Source: USBWatches.com]

iPod Remote Control Watch

 
The Timex Midsize Ironman Sleek iControl Watch transmits signals to your iPod or iPhone. Gone is the fumbling around to control your iPod while you're walking/jogging. Connect the included receiver to the iPod and the iControl can adjust the volume, skip backward/forward through tracks, and play or pause the music. It doesn't, however, tell you which track is currently playing.

 The iControl watch is compatible with iPod 5th generation (video); iPod Nano 2nd generation (aluminum) 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB; iPod 5th generation (video) 60GB and 80GB; iPod Nano 1st generation 1GB, 2GB, 4GB; and the iPhone (in airplane mode).

The watch also has a a day-date-and-month and can be adjusted for three time zones. It has a 50-lap memory, three alarms, a countdown timer, two interval timers, and a chronograph function. The watch is water resistant to 330 feet although your iPod/iPhone probably isn't. It comes in black, black/silver, gray, green, and orange.

Check out other Ironman iControl watches in the webstore.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

For the Geek in All of Us: Tokyoflash Watches

For the geek in all of us there's Tokyoflash! Their watches are all little works of art (or science). I can't choose a favorite.

 
The Equalizer High Frequency watch display pushes the top row of lights up then they all float down in a neat equalizer effect till two lights remain to indicate the time. After 5 seconds, the two remaining lights float down.



Tokyo Flash BarCode SS watch 


The Barcode SS LED watch is a bracelet-type watch that features larger LED lights. The strap is made of stainless steel. The watch displays time, date and day of the week.




 The Shinshoku watch is another bracelet-style watch of continuous stainless steel with a matrix of punched holes. Beneath the surface are 29 LEDs which indicate the time. On the multicolor model, the red LEDs (12) indicate the hour, the green LEDs (3) indicate 15 minute intervals, and the yellow (14) LEDs indicate 1 minute intervals. Beautiful!

[Source: Tokyoflash Japan]

 The JLr7 watch is named after the watch's top row. The watch is brushed in dark gunmetal with an all black crystal face. Stunning. The geometric L patterns on the face light up to reveal the time. When a button is pressed, the watch starts a random light show then displays the time. During 6:00 PM and midnight the watch animates randomly every 15 minutes.

[Source: Tokyoflash Japan]


Check out other Tokyoflash watches in the webstore.

Original Clocks

 

The Backwards Wall Clock turns back the hands of time (well, sort of)! It's a wall clock that runs counterclockwise. The clock's hands (hour, minute, second) all move backwards giving the impression of gained time. Probably what ends up happening though is more time is needed to decipher the current time.

[Source: The Backward Time Clock]

 

I saw this on a colleague's desk - it's a Binary Desk clock. How cute is that! It tells time in either BCD (Binary Coded Decimal) or binary. Computers store time in binary. So how does one read a BCD clock? Very carefully :)

Okay bad joke. Each two columns represents a digit on the clock. So the left two columns are the hours, the next two are the minutes, and the last two are the seconds. Each row is a power of 2. So the rows are (from bottom to top) 2^0 = 1; 2^1 = 2; 2^2 = 4; and 2^3 = 8. Adding the rows results in the corresponding time digit. So the blue clock in the image shows 10 hours 48 minutes and 36 seconds!

Check out the Binary Clock on the right.

[Source: ThinkGeek]

Unique Watches: Gerald Genta

In today's Montreal Gazette is an advertisement for a Gerald Genta watch show. I was intrigued as I couldn't figure out how to read the time on the watch. The watch is the Octo Biretro by Gerald Genta pictured on the right.

Well I headed to the site to figure it out. The digit display in the top center of the watch are the hours. The minutes are indicated by the hand pointing at 0-60. So in the image on the right, the date is the time is 08:14. The date is indicated by the hand pointing at 1-31. In the image it is the 28th. Cool!



 I continued my investigation and found other unique watches by the same designer. The Octo 48-Month MP watch has a “phases of the moon” indicator at 12 o'clock. At 3 o'clock is the 48 month leap year indicator. At 9 o'clock is the weekday indicator and at 6 o'clock is the date indicator. Oh, yeah, a regular watch face with hour and minute hand gives the time. Okay so the watch on the left reads Monday the 28th of May at 10:10.

 The Octo Chrono Quattro watch features "jumping hours" displayed as digits at 12 o'clock. The minutes are displayed in the top half of the watch. A 12-hour chronograph is displayed at 9 o'clock and a 30-minute chronograph is at the 3 o'clock position. Finally the date is displayed at 6 o'clock. So the time on the image on the right is 08:10 on the 25th of the month. The chronograph is at 4 hours 25 minutes. Whew! That's a lot of functionality in one watch.

 
Finally the pièce de résistance – the Octo Tourbillon Perpetual Calendar Moon Phase World Wide Timer watch. That’s quite a mouthful! It has a “phases of the moon” indicator at 12 o'clock; a month/leap year indicator at 3 o'clock; a week day indicator at 9 o'clock; and a date indicator at 6 o'clock. It also features global time on the outer rotating bezel and a night/day indicator on the inner rotating bezel. The watch above reads 10:10 on Saturday April 17th.

[Source: Gerald Genta]

Check out the Gerald Genta watches in the webstore.


Unusual Watches

Here are four unusual/fun watches.

 
The Free Time watch by Laurinda Spear consists of three rings or circles, one inside the other. Each ring has a small opening (gap). The gap in each circle points to the current seconds (inside circle), minutes (middle circle), and hours (outside circle), respectively. What a unique idea!

 


The Past, Present, Future watch by Daniel Will Harris provides a conceptual look at the past, present and future. We live in the present, the past is gone and the future hasn’t happened yet. The watch shows the present time like a digital watch but in analog form. Cool!

 
The Equilibrium watch is an "ever changing kinetic mobile" for the wrist. It consists of three half black/half white circles superimposed on each other. The watch was hard to read at first. The large outside circle represents the hours with the large red circle pointing to the actual time. The middle circle represents the minutes with the small red circle pointing to the time. And the ever turning small circle in the center represents the seconds. Neat.

 


The Time Flies watch pairs modern technology with Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphs were used by the Egyptians for nearly 3500 years. Some of the glyphs resembled the objects they depicted like, for example, wavy lines for water. Other glyphs represented phonetic sounds of the language. Strung together, the sounds would make words. An English example would be the word "before" represented by "bee" and "4". Very nice.




[Source: PROJECTS]