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Motorola’s ROKR E8 is a head-turning phone with many built-in advances that give it a smarter interface than basic cellphones. Its standout feature is its keyboard, which dynamically changes to accommodate whatever you’re doing.
Polaroid’s new PoGo is an inkless printer that churns out photos sent to it via Bluetooth devices. The print quality of photos from a digital camera is sharp, but its awkward size, bad battery life and small prints make it a no-go.
The once-frustrating process of sharing digital photos and videos has improved over the past year, thanks to seamless Web-based programs. One such application, shwup, serves as a neat, artistic way to share photos quickly — when it works.
The Flip Video Mino changes the way people capture and share videos, and that’s a great thing. And if you really want a sleek, hip-looking gadget, you’ll learn to overlook and adjust to the touch-sensitive buttons that aren’t as functional as they needed to be.
If you’re looking for a fun way to get in shape, the Balance Board will do the trick. Like the Wii, its activities encourage all sorts of people to use it, marking yet another smart move from Nintendo.
It’s not always easy to learn from the information you find online, and how-to videos can be a big help–especially when they’re well-made and discoverable using sites featuring instructional clips.
A free Web site called Mint.com hopes to help users get a better handle on where their money is going, how much is in each account, and what can be done to budget that money more efficiently.
Most people forget their digital cameras have a settings dial that can be adjusted to take pictures in specific circumstances, or don’t know how to use them. Three new digital cameras claim to do the thinking for you, but how are the results?
Video-sharing service SeeToo lets users watch videos along with the people with whom they’re sharing it and type comments to each other in real time. But SeeToo sounds too good to be true, and in many tests, it was.
TiVo has a few tricks up its sleeve that might surprise longtime users and new owners alike. This column includes just a handful of those tricks and highlights some features that may make TiVo more useful.
Edited by Walt and written by Katie Boehret, this is a guide to gadgets, web services and other consumer technologies.
Ethics Statement
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.