Bluetooth speakers are a dime a dozen. It’s also pretty boring tech. So why are we covering it? Well, these particular speakers from Rocketfish (Best Buy’s house brand) feature a nice triangular design that makes it possible to insert them right into your iPad’s rolled up smart cover. It’s neat because that’s how you’d have it if you were watching a film, presumably, so the speakers integrate pretty seamlessly with your Apple tablet. Connection is of course through Bluetooth, which means they will work with other devices but not quite so elegantly.
There’s no word on power output or battery life, but we do know that they are currently on special for $50, down from the regular $70.
RIM, makers of the Blackberry phones, are slowly dying. We hope they find a way out, but the decline might have something to do with them pinning so much of their hopes on keeping the physical keyboard on their handsets. Sure, we’re going to get some flak for coming out so strongly in the anti-buttons camp, but life is the way it is and they’re going to go away eventually. Still, tons of people still like them and stay away from all-touch devices just for that reason. The Elecom alphabet-soup-name TK-MBD041 is a very small keyboard that’ll pair through Bluetooth to iPhones and Android devices and try to give you the best of both worlds. What’s more, you can use it to take calls!
It’s smallish, measuring 13.0mm X 141mm X 53.0mm. But you will never buy it, and here’s why: it’s $230!
Since accelerometer chips have become ubiquitous, we are finding them just about everywhere from cellphones to fitness tracking devices (like the Fitbit) and now you can add the Beam Brush to the list. We’re finding the idea behind this one rather interesting. The device will connect to your smartphone via Bluetooth and inform you of when and for how long you brushed. Perhaps the idea is to shame you in having better dental hygiene or to simply help you maintain your already good habits. The associated app will give you rewards for keeping your goals and even generate little graphs with your brushing history. The brush itself is not motorized. And despite it being pictured in awful CG rendering, the Beam Brush should be on the market next month for $50 with replaceable heads at $3 a pop.
If it’s too darn noisy for you to be able to speak in a phone or a hands-free unit, one solution has traditionally been to use bone conduction to isolate your voice. This is what the Jawbone headset does. But sometimes, like when you go skiing, it’s not that comfortable to wear. So Buhel’s Speakgoggle G33 skiing visor has bone conduction technology that lets it pick up your voice from the sound of your friend’s careening-down-the-mountain screams. It pairs with your cellphone through Bluetooth and you can hear through earbuds. It also connects with other G33 visors directly and lets you have intercom functionality up to 500 meters (1,640 feet) apart, so that you can chat it up with up to 6 of your friends while trying not to get killed.
There’s no word on price though the G33 does appear to be available.
We last wrote about Zomm two years ago when they were launching their wireless leash product. At CES this year, the company is releasing a new device called Lifestyle Connect. The idea behind it is to make it easier to stay safe, especially for those of fragile health. The small keychain-like device connects to your Bluetooth enabled phone and gives you one-touch access to a Personal Safety Concierge. This concierge will then assist you with what you need, be it to call your friends, an ambulance or the police. This functionality is also available on the Wireless Leash from two years ago, so the real innovation comes more from the fact that the Lifestyle Connect can also monitor your connected health sensors, like glucose meters, heart-rate sensors and fall detectors, and upload the data to the cloud. It is then available to your trusted friends, health practitioners or first responders in the case of emergency, any of which can be summoned, again, with just one touch.
The Lifestyle Connect is $199 and will ship in April. If you pre-order now, you also get 3 months of concierge service thrown in.
I’d love to know what they were ingesting at the meeting where company iLuv decided they were going to call their new Bluetooth speakers “Mo’Beats”. Funky name aside, these speakers stand out somewhat from the rest for a couple reasons. First their design, very fitting with the overall Apple aesthetic, although we assume they’d work just as fine with any Bluetooth streaming product. That said, the second feature compels you even more to use an iDevice, since that lip is made specifically to dock a Cupertino gadget. Again, you can put anything there, but if you do that, you’ll look as silly as me: I’m rocking Apple keyboards and a barely usable trackpad on a few PCs here in the “office”. I say barely usable because that little bugger’s drivers were made for a Mac and it just acts all kinds of strange on a PC.
Anyway, the Mo’Beats come with a Li-I rechargeable battery and should set you back $100, available soon.
Surviving by yourself in inhospitable conditions is really only fun on TV. There’s only so much of your own pee you can drink, so many camel testicles you can eat and so many carcases you can crawl into before you realize that you really should have packed something like DeLorme’s InReach two-way satellite hookup before leaving for a trek across the Sahara. For $250 and a $10 a month subscription, you can send distress SMSs to pre-designated recipients along with your GPS coordinates, with a delivery confirmation. If you happen to also be carrying an Android phone, you can pair through Bluetooth and actually send and receive messages. There’s an SOS button in case all you’re able to do before passing out is to press a button. Finally, the InReach is rugged, waterproof, shock-resistant and buoyant.
While this is an accident waiting to happen, Chinavision’s “Complete Car Bluetooth Rearview Mirror” certainly has managed to cram everything and the kitchen sink in there. Their replacement mirror features the following: GPS, wireless rear-view parking camera (camera kit included), Bluetooth calling, DVR and yes even a media player. The idea is that in DVR mode it will record what happens inside or out (presumably more than the rearview parking camera can be hooked up to it) while in other modes it can either give you GPS guidance or even play back videos for you. We’re guessing you have to be stopped with parking brake engaged for this particular feature to work, though we’re sure enterprising folk will quickly find a way around that. Everything is displayed on a 4.3 inch, 480 by 272 resolution screen and the internals are powered by a Centrality Atlas 4 Dual-Core 500 MHz processor and 64MB of RAM. Yeah, HD files might be out of the question.
Storage is handled via SD or Micro SD cards, of which two are included (4GB each). It’s $205 for one and prices go down with larger order numbers as this appears to be a wholesaler.
“Yo dawg… we heard you like phones. So we gave your phone a phone.” Yeah. That’s pretty much what’s going on here. See, the Blutooth Handset TK2 connects to your cellphone through Bluetooth and all it does is allow you to speak (and listen, duh). The thing is… you’re supposed to hold it in your hand. Like a phone! So in a way, it’s a smaller phone that you use… to use your phone. It has no other point. It doesn’t free your hands, it does the opposite.
Granted you can pair it with more than your cellphone, so perhaps this can be a tiny VoIP device… Or something. It does feature Bluetooth v2.1, which means you could pair it to your cellphone and something else simultaneously. So maybe you can eke out a use that way. Like if you’re at home and are taking Skype and cellular calls.
Related Tags: Bluetooth, speakers
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