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Handy travel mates
By Seth Porges |
January 25, 2009, Sunday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
IT'S becoming almost a cliche to say that, thanks to advances in technology, anybody can bring the office with them anywhere they go. But the mobile devices that have given us this freedom are still often plagued by problems such as limited battery life, small screens, and a lack of connectivity options.
Of course, one product's weakness is another's opportunity. Here are four gadgets that make our mobile devices work better, and consequently make life easier, more fun, and more productive for frequent fliers and road warriors.
Callpod Fueltank
US$70 www.callpod.com
WHEN you're on the road, wall power outlets aren't always handy. The Callpod Fueltank, from Chicago-based Callpod Inc, is a portable lithium-ion battery that acts like a mobile wall outlet. When your phone or MP3 player begins to run out of power, plugging it in to this device will allow it to soak up a new charge.
This certainly isn't the only portable battery charger on the market, but it has three key advantages over the competition: It holds a lot of juice (the manufacturer claims it stores enough for seven full phone charges, allowing you to go off the grid for days at a time), it can charge two gadgets at a time, and it works with virtually every mobile device on the market (with adaptors that the company sells for US$10 each).
In practice, it worked very well, and is adequately portable, being just a bit bigger than a Blackberry. It provides more than enough power for a portable game system, bluetooth headset, or cell phone, but it can't quite handle a power-hungry laptop.
3M Micro Professional Projector MPro110
US$359 www.3mmpro.com
LAST year was one for the shrunken gadget, with pint-size camcorders and notebooks turning into the consumer-electronics world's biggest hits. Next up under the gadget shrink ray: the projector.
Although manufacturers have been showing off prototypes of portable projectors for about a year, the first models have only come to market in the past few months. This battery-powered projector from St Paul, Minnesota-based 3M Co is one of the first. It weighs less than 0.45 kilograms and is about a 1.27 centimeters thick, making it quite literally pocket-sized. The projector easily hooks up to mobile devices such as laptops and portable media players, allowing users to blow up movies and PowerPoint presentations without a full-size projector.
Its performance is impressive, but it's still obviously a first-generation product (expect a severely warped and low-quality image if you try to blow it up to anywhere near the stated maximum of 127 centimeters.) But that's okay, because the best is yet to come. Manufacturers have made no secret of their desire to build future projectors directly into mobile devices. I can't wait.
Sling Media Slingplayer Mobile
US$30 www.slingmedia.com
Since its debut in 2005, the Sling Media Slingbox has become synonymous with "place-shifting," or the ability to watch content from your home TV, DVD player, or digital video recorder, anywhere in the world. While newer versions of the Slingbox have since added bells and whistles such as high-definition streaming, the most important update has been the recent release of the SlingPlayer Mobile software, which allows you to watch any content from your home TV, live on your cell phone screen.
Today, the software is available for most Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and Symbian phones. The company, a unit of Englewood, Colorado-based EchoStar Corp, said last week it would soon release a version for the iPhone.
It's easy to use, and the video quality is actually pretty decent, depending on the quality of your phone's connection. And the best part: Once you buy the software, it's completely free to use (assuming you have an all-you-can-eat mobile data plan).
Eye-Fi Explore WiFi SD Memory Card
US$130 www.eye.fi
My phone's camera may produce grainy, low-resolution photos, but I find myself using it frequently for one simple reason: Its wireless capabilities make it incredibly easy to e-mail and upload pictures.
Stand-alone cameras have been somewhat slow to the wireless game, with only a handful of models currently sporting built-in WiFi. Where wireless functionality is present, it is often crippled, allowing users to do little more than send their photos on a one-way trip to a PC.
The Eye-Fi Explore is a 2-gigabyte SD memory card that also gives your camera WiFi for easy uploading to a PC and to photo-sharing sites. As it's the same size and shape as a regular SD card, there's no added bulk and it works with just about any camera with an SD card slot.
More Fun
THE card is easy to use - it automatically uploads your photos as soon as it senses an authorized hot spot. After a few weeks of usage, I noticed a remarkable shift in my photographic habits: Without the need to connect my camera to my computer, I found myself taking and sharing more photos, and viewing photography as less like work and more fun. While it would be great if cameras had the always-on high-speed wireless capabilities of a 3G phone, the Eye-Fi is the next best thing. Eye-Fi Inc, based in California, says future products will allow easy uploads directly to YouTube.
(Seth Porges is an editor and writer for Popular Mechanics and Bloomberg News.)
Of course, one product's weakness is another's opportunity. Here are four gadgets that make our mobile devices work better, and consequently make life easier, more fun, and more productive for frequent fliers and road warriors.
Callpod Fueltank
US$70 www.callpod.com
WHEN you're on the road, wall power outlets aren't always handy. The Callpod Fueltank, from Chicago-based Callpod Inc, is a portable lithium-ion battery that acts like a mobile wall outlet. When your phone or MP3 player begins to run out of power, plugging it in to this device will allow it to soak up a new charge.
This certainly isn't the only portable battery charger on the market, but it has three key advantages over the competition: It holds a lot of juice (the manufacturer claims it stores enough for seven full phone charges, allowing you to go off the grid for days at a time), it can charge two gadgets at a time, and it works with virtually every mobile device on the market (with adaptors that the company sells for US$10 each).
In practice, it worked very well, and is adequately portable, being just a bit bigger than a Blackberry. It provides more than enough power for a portable game system, bluetooth headset, or cell phone, but it can't quite handle a power-hungry laptop.
3M Micro Professional Projector MPro110
US$359 www.3mmpro.com
LAST year was one for the shrunken gadget, with pint-size camcorders and notebooks turning into the consumer-electronics world's biggest hits. Next up under the gadget shrink ray: the projector.
Although manufacturers have been showing off prototypes of portable projectors for about a year, the first models have only come to market in the past few months. This battery-powered projector from St Paul, Minnesota-based 3M Co is one of the first. It weighs less than 0.45 kilograms and is about a 1.27 centimeters thick, making it quite literally pocket-sized. The projector easily hooks up to mobile devices such as laptops and portable media players, allowing users to blow up movies and PowerPoint presentations without a full-size projector.
Its performance is impressive, but it's still obviously a first-generation product (expect a severely warped and low-quality image if you try to blow it up to anywhere near the stated maximum of 127 centimeters.) But that's okay, because the best is yet to come. Manufacturers have made no secret of their desire to build future projectors directly into mobile devices. I can't wait.
Sling Media Slingplayer Mobile
US$30 www.slingmedia.com
Since its debut in 2005, the Sling Media Slingbox has become synonymous with "place-shifting," or the ability to watch content from your home TV, DVD player, or digital video recorder, anywhere in the world. While newer versions of the Slingbox have since added bells and whistles such as high-definition streaming, the most important update has been the recent release of the SlingPlayer Mobile software, which allows you to watch any content from your home TV, live on your cell phone screen.
Today, the software is available for most Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and Symbian phones. The company, a unit of Englewood, Colorado-based EchoStar Corp, said last week it would soon release a version for the iPhone.
It's easy to use, and the video quality is actually pretty decent, depending on the quality of your phone's connection. And the best part: Once you buy the software, it's completely free to use (assuming you have an all-you-can-eat mobile data plan).
Eye-Fi Explore WiFi SD Memory Card
US$130 www.eye.fi
My phone's camera may produce grainy, low-resolution photos, but I find myself using it frequently for one simple reason: Its wireless capabilities make it incredibly easy to e-mail and upload pictures.
Stand-alone cameras have been somewhat slow to the wireless game, with only a handful of models currently sporting built-in WiFi. Where wireless functionality is present, it is often crippled, allowing users to do little more than send their photos on a one-way trip to a PC.
The Eye-Fi Explore is a 2-gigabyte SD memory card that also gives your camera WiFi for easy uploading to a PC and to photo-sharing sites. As it's the same size and shape as a regular SD card, there's no added bulk and it works with just about any camera with an SD card slot.
More Fun
THE card is easy to use - it automatically uploads your photos as soon as it senses an authorized hot spot. After a few weeks of usage, I noticed a remarkable shift in my photographic habits: Without the need to connect my camera to my computer, I found myself taking and sharing more photos, and viewing photography as less like work and more fun. While it would be great if cameras had the always-on high-speed wireless capabilities of a 3G phone, the Eye-Fi is the next best thing. Eye-Fi Inc, based in California, says future products will allow easy uploads directly to YouTube.
(Seth Porges is an editor and writer for Popular Mechanics and Bloomberg News.)
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