omnitech gps review

Are you tempted to buy the irresistable deal for omnitech gps from staples? read on..

After checking the "Omnitech GPS" deal at staples, i was immediately tempted to buy looking its features like 4.3" screen, Text-To-Speech functionality, google-maps like UI and 170$ price tag when compared to hefty 350$ of garmin nuvi.

I almost decided to buy but staples has only one review. so, i googled to find more information/images in the web but of no use. After seraching it with the keyword "Destinator", i could finally crack down its details and the website of the product.

This is the website for the omnitech GPS, But in the website the word "omnitech" is mentioned nowhere ( Its there only in front page image, hidden from search engines.. )
http://www.navsupport.net/gps/15223/

Here is the link for the review of this GPS
http://www.redflagdeals.com/forums/showthread.php?s=bb3f4b04227a16cdaaae9872751ab182&t=521001&page=2

It took more than one hour to find out the information even with google, so i decided to share this at one place, which might be useful..

Here is the User manual, checkout the screenshots, you will immediately notice the poor UI compared to garmin and tom tom.
http://www.navsupport.net/gps/15223/download/OmnitechGPS_UM_S19510V2_English.pdf
The mapping data is from navteq, so if you dont mind the user interface much, this is worth the money for the features it provides.

Anyway i am very much impressed with garmin UI, i would better wait till garmin nuvi 200W price drop below $200

Lately i noticed even the pharos GPS sold by Dell also looks some thing like this, seems to be pharos also uses the same UI ( presumably from destinator technologies http://www.destinatortechnologies.com/)


Tags: Omnitech GPS review staples deal destinator Garmin nuvi Tom Tom

Wi-fi SD card Vs wireless digital camera

Just read the revolutionary SD card which has built-in wi-fi. I am really shocked to digest the new innovation of embedding the wi-fi into a already tiny SD card. Its amazing.





So, whats gonna change with our dialy life ? Once you have shot the photos, there is no need to upload the photos in to the computer/photo websites. The SD card can directly contact your online photo sharing account(provided your user name and pass word) and will transfer the photos. You just have to do one time configuration of your SD card for the available wireless networks.





This is so convinient for the elderly people otherwise a burden of uploading the photos. Even we also tend to forget uploading the photos, after friends marriage or some casual get together. With this SD card life is going to change just take the photos and leave the camera, it will silently do its job and with in less than a hour, photos will be published and shared with every one.

The starting price is around 99$, i feel this price is decent. With in a year this will be a commodity. So no more photos in the computer waiting to get uploaded to internet.



What we can expect to follow this revolution, eventually every gadget with SD slot can become wireless, so is this another revolution in the home networking ? Lets watch and see what are all new gadgets will follow..



checkout more at http://www.eye.fi/

But for the people who want to transfer the photos wirelessly, there is a another option of buying a digital camera which has built in wi-fi. Nikon has already these kind of cameras. If wi-fi chip can be integrated into the SD card, why can not these digital cameras can embed this by default. This is going to be a default option for most of the cameras with in a year.

So if you are holding the old camera and want wireless you can buy eye-fi, otherwise wait for the new digital camera models from canon, sony or nikon.

Tags: eye-fi, wireless SD card, wirelss USB, wireless digital camera

Turn your Mini DV camcorder into a Webcam

Are you fed up with the video quality of your webcam and looking for the alternative? I found this software from Orangeware, which provides the firewire driver to attach to the IM software. Most of the camcorder manufacturers provides the USB driver for turning the camcorder as webcam. But only the firewire video streaming gives the best video quality. But all the IM's relies on USB for the videoconferencing. So this software tricks the streaming firewire video to be available for the most of the available IM software.

Also this software provides the remote control of the camcorder for the remote viewers.

I spent lot of time researching the webcams for best video quality and zoom, but now i think i should buy affordable(below $250) miniDV camcorder and use it as a webcam.

http://www.orangeware.com/endusers/webcamdv.html

Tom's hardware also has the good article about this..

http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/10/08/trash_that_webcam/page4.html

New Panasonic Hybrid VoIP phone

VoIP is everywhere, now its there in cordless phones also, the new product from Panasonic BB-GT1540B combined the VoIP ATA into its range of cordless phones, This i think a really great move from the cordless product range.

You get the option to choose the free VoIP number for the selected countries ( For now in US, UK and some european countries) . This is part of the phone offering.

No need to buy the linksys or grandstream VoIP ATA and cord less phone seperately. But the only drawback is that VoIP service is tied with the VoIP provider Delta three.

I think similar products will hit the market soon from other cordless phone manufacturers.

checkout more details here http://www.joip.com/

Is samsung sync a IMS phone

Few months back, i have seen the at&t new offering for 3G based video sharing service. www.attvideoshare.com, Here is the new learning from this bloag that this is part of the move to IMS..

http://blogs.nmss.com/communications/2007/06/finally_an_ims_.html

Installing Ubuntu Linux

Recently i have installed Ubuntu linux on my Dell desktop. I am suprised to find out the installation user interface is comparable with windows XP/ Vista kind of installation. I am really impressed with this.

Downloaded the latest Ubauntu desktop edition from the website and burned the ISO image on the CD. Restarted the system by changing the BIOS booting preferences and ubuntu booted from the Live CD. The advantage with the Live CD kind of installation is, you can play with the system , before you want to really decide whether to install it on your hard disk. As i am impressed with the following features..

• Hibernate option
• Network configuration is much easier than windows, Lot of screens to resemble the Windows Control panel, So you really dont need to go to xterm/CLI.
• Sound Card, Network Interface detected automatically..
• Update manager to make sure your system is up-to-date with new fixes/patches.

I decided to install it.

After 15 minutes, asked for the the boot loader preferences and i am ready to using linux along with my windows vista . But the most annoying thing after installing the linux is the ability to choose the right screen resolution. By default the maximum screen resolution i have got is 800x600, So, i have to spend around 3 hours to download the latest nvidia drivers and install it.

The configuration i have used is

nvidia geforce 6150 Video card came with Dell Dimension C5221
Samsung 941BW screen resolution 1440x900

Actually, ubuntu is maintaining very good website http://packages.ubuntu.com/ to search for any kind of packages you might need.

I just downloaded nvidia-glx-new_1.0.9755+2.6.20.5-16.29_i386.deb and executed some of these steps.

installed this package like this
dpkg --install #pkg name#

enabled the new driver like this..
nvidia-xconfig -c /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Thats it, after restarting the system and i have got the beautiful screen resolution i was looking for..

New ways to control the browser

Ever wanted to control the browser easily while browsing internet on TV, This feature from firefox is interesting..

Mouse gestures to control the browser.. :-)

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/39

Internet on TV

Everybody will have different requirements for their in house living room experience. Some people like me want to watch all internet videos, internet radios on TV and home theater. Yes there are many upcoming products to address these like Apple TV, D-Link and neatgear's digital media receivers. But i can not get complete internet experience with these devices.

So, i ended up connecting my HP media center laptop to my TV + Home theater. The problem is i still have to depend on another laptop/desktop to control using VNC client. One more solution is buying Nokia N770 Internet Tablet to use as remote control. This sleek device entirely developed on linux and exciting thing is vnc viewer just works !! Even my favorite SIP client gizmo project also works, what else you need? it does not have phone.

Seems there is lot of development going on for these kind of devices..check out this open set top box..

http://www.last100.com/2007/06/28/neuros-open-set-top-box/

Future Video Phones

Recently i came across the intel's new media processor CE 2110, which will address the gap in the video conferencing experience in the living room. I am searching for this kind of solution from long time.

But i could not really find which companies are developing the set-top boxes using these processors.

http://www.intelconsumerelectronics.com/Vision/Family.aspx

Check out the video its interesting..