Logitech has rolled out yet another two iPod speakers, the Rechargeable Speaker S315i and Portable Speaker S125i. The former is able to offer a full day’s worth of non-stop audio playback and can even spare some of its power to juice up your exhausted iPod or iPhone whenever it remains docked within. Not only does it pack a punch in terms of electrical power, the Rechargeable Speaker S315i also sounds great with its custom, full-range drivers that are able to reproduce the highs and lows of your favorite songs accurately. Measuring less than 2″ thin while featuring durable metal grills, the S315i is more than ready to travel with the road warrior. As for the Portable Speaker S125i, this model will target first-time iPod owners by offering additional bass at the press of a button. It can run on AC or battery power, making it useful indoors as well as when you’re traveling. Both speakers also play nice with a host of other compatible portable media players thanks to a standard 3.5mm. [Press Release]

Permalink: Logitech Rechargeable Speaker S315i and Logitech Portable Speaker S125i from Ubergizmo | Hot: Wii, PS3 and Natal Motion Sensing

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Logitech Rechargeable Speaker S315i and Logitech Portable Speaker S125i

Remember that totally snazzy iHome iP1 dock that we toyed with back in May? You know, the one with those boyish good looks and a curious Bongiovi Acoustics Digital Power Station chip built in? Yeah, that very iPod / iPhone dock is finally shipping to those willing to splurge, with a buck under $300 bringing you 100 watts of hair-raising rock through a pair of 4-inch woofers and 1-inch silk dome tweeters. Sure, it’s pretty swank for an iPod dock, but can you imagine the fanfare if this thing was Bon Jovi-approved? Bonus footage is after the break.

Excerpt from:
Bongiovi-equipped iHome iP1 iPod / iPhone dock finally ships

Adding a few high quality photos is a great way to improve a website, article or presentation – but be careful.

A search engine like Google Images will quickly locate just about any shot you could ever want, but using them will almost certainly violate someone’s copyright. What’s more, search tools like TinEye mean there’s a very real chance that the original photographer will find out what you’ve done. Which could be embarrassing, and maybe expensive, too.

Fortunately there’s a simple and safe alternative. Just look for your free images in a library of stock photos, where the photographer has already given away most, or all of their rights. There are plenty of online libraries just packed with excellent free images that you can use, even commercially, for no cost at all – and we’ve found 12 of the very best.

1. Stock.XCHNG
This fabulous site has a library of almost 400,000 images covering every topic, and is probably the best place to start your search for free images. Stock.XCHNG has a more complex image licence agreement than some of the competition, though, so read that carefully before you start.

2. Openphoto
It first appeared back in 1998, and so it’s no surprise that Openphoto has now built up a solid collection of stock photos. They’re neatly arranged into well-chosen categories, and clicking any of these leads on to a thumbnail gallery of related shots.

3. Stockvault.net
Stockvault has a small but very high quality collection of stock photos, as well as logo templates, clip arts, textures and backgrounds. It’s the perfect site to find graphics for your website, then, but beware – Stockvault‘s images are free for personal, non-commercial use only.

4. Unprofound
This site has some great photos, with no significant restrictions on their use. You don’t have to register to download images, and Unprofound is strictly non-profit, so you won’t be hassled by the usual collection of annoying ads. What’s not to like?

5. Free Media Goo
You can browse the tiny library at Free Media Goo in just a few minutes, and the images are relatively low resolution. There are some undeniably impressive photos, though, along with some handy textures and audio samples, and there’s no need to register – just download anything that appeals.

6. Morguefile
This site’s best feature is its excellent search tool. You can filter by categories, keywords, size, rating, even colour, so it’s easy to bypass irrelevant shots and zoom in on the photos you need. Morguefile‘s licence is generous and no registration is required.

7. Pixel Perfect Digital
This interesting site includes over 4,000 stock photos, neatly organised in categories from Abstract and Animals to Places and Transportation. The best part of Pixel Perfect Digital is the collection of digital art and illustrations, though; stylish images that are hard to find elsewhere.

8. Image*After
Image*After didn’t impress us with its conventional photos, but the more abstract efforts – everything from electronic components to brick walls and artistic blurs – are much more compelling, especially if you’re looking for an unusual background image.

9. Freerange
The Freerange site search has an annoying habit of returning photos that have nothing to do with your keywords. But keep trying, and whether you’re looking for animals or objects, people, places or arty, near abstract shots, you’ll find a suitable high resolution shot here.

10. Free Digital Photos
There are just a few images here – searching for “cat”, say, returns only 13 photos – and only the relatively low resolution (around 640 x 480) versions are free. Free Digital Photos requires a credit if you use one, too. It does have some excellent shots, though, and could be just what you need to spice up a personal website.

11. Free Photos Bank
The Free Photos Bank site provides a typical range of free photos – people, animals, landscapes and so on. They’re better at abstract shots, though, backgrounds and digital artwork, so this is a good place to start looking for those more unusual images. There’s no registration required so downloading is easy, whatever you’re after.

12. Flickr
As the biggest photo sharing site on the web, used by some of the world’s best photographers, your image search really isn’t complete without a quick check of what Flickr has to offer. Not everyone allows their photos to be used commercially, though, so visit the Advanced Search Page, then check “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content” and any other licence-related options you need before you begin. And when you find a photo you like, check on the right-hand side for a link like “Some rights reserved”, and click it for details on what you can – and can’t – do with the shot.

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In Depth: 12 best places to get free images for your site

Nokia recently announced their latest entrant into the touchscreen smartphone market, the Nokia 5530. The standout feature here is the cost, for around L170 unlocked, even less on PAYG, you too can join the swishy transition party and play the phone envy game on the train.

The Nokia 5530 XpressMusic, a music-focused, touchscreen phone running S60 5th Edition is available now from Carphone Warehouse, featuring a 2.9 inch (640 x 360) touchscreen, 3.2 megapixel camera, accelerometer, stereo speakers, 3.5 mm audio jack, FM radio, WiFi, Bluetooth and will include a 4 GB memory card.

The homescreen features a contact carousel with thumbnails of your favourite contacts, more large icons give you easy access to your favourite sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. A drop down menu called Media Bar allow fast access to the key phone functionality including music, photos, video, web and Ovi. Effectively the 5530 is a cut down version of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic with a smaller screen but in a sleeker form factor.

Power users may baulk at the lack or 3G and GPS but Edge and WiFi will suffice for most users and you can still take advantage of Google Maps and other location based services. 27 hours of audio and 7 hours of video playback will keep even the most hardened teenager entertained on long journeys and to sweeten the deal even further, Nokia is including 3 months free WiFi thanks to a deal with Boingo, which works with hotspot operators around the world.

The 5530 is no doubt aimed at younger users but will appeal equally to those who want a sleek phone that does the basics well including music, photos and web browsing. For a small extra fee you can even include the Comes With Music service from Nokia which gives unlimited music downloads for 18 months and you keep the tracks for life.

A pretty good deal for a fantastic device and its set to take the PAYG market by storm. Check out the vid for more eye candy.

Pixelpipe, a great service that allows its users to distribute documents and media files to over 100 social media services, just released over 50 new single-purpose applications through the Android Market. The company also submitted the same number of apps to the iPhone App Store and the Nokia Ovi Store. Why so many apps? As Pixelpipe’s CEO and founder Brett Butterfield tells us, the company realized that about half of Pixelpipe’s users only used the service to forward files to one service.

Sponsor

In order to serve this market better and to link its name closer to the brand names of the services it supports, the company decided to release co-branded versions of its mobile app for 50 of the 100 services it currently supports. Pixelpipe will sell these co-branded versions of its app for $0.99 and a pro version with support for all the 100 services that Pixelpipe currently works with will sell for $1.99.

The iPhone apps still have to go through Apple’s approval process, which can take a while, but the Android apps will be available today and the Nokia apps should be available in about one week.

Pixelpipe’s App Factory

As Butterfield told us, the company has automated most of the app development process, so whenever Pixelpipe adds a new service, a new mobile app can also be created with very little effort.

App Store SEO

Overall, this seems like a very smart move. The company started to experiment with co-branded Android apps for a few services like Facebook, Twitter, and Photobucket a few days ago. As these apps actually include the name of the service in their titles (“Twitter for Pixelpipe”), they are much easier to find for consumers who would otherwise never have heard of Pixelpipe. After all, as we pointed out earlier today, most users rely on Top 10 lists and browsing through categories to find interesting new mobile apps.

As Pixelpipe told us, these apps are already outselling the company’s own app by a significant margin and Pixelpipe has heard from a number of services who would like to partner with the company and promote the apps.

We think this is an interesting story, as it points out some of the problems developers face when trying to market their apps. Also, while social media mavens love the fact that Pixelpipe Pro can send documents, audio, video, and pictures to 100 other social media services, for most users, this is simply overkill and just generates confusion.

Discuss

Original post:
Pixelpipe Announces 50 New Mobile Apps for Android, iPhone, and Nokia

Monster is a company usually associated with its cabling, but it has announced news this week about a pair of earphones that certainly sound the business.

They may not have the celebrity backing that the company’s Beats headphones has – which were made in association with hip hop supremo Dr Dre – but their pedigree is impressive nonetheless.

Called Monster Turbine Headphones, the earbuds are being coined as “the world’s first high-performance in-ear headphones with specially engineered drivers that deliver impeccable audiophile-quality sound”.

Three years’ research

Usually audio nuts prefer to listen to their music though a set of cans – and for good reason, as the sound provided is usually more encompassing than with in-ear ‘phones. But Monster insists that its buds are “a new way to enjoy big speaker sound in a compact in-ear headphone design”.

Not only have the earphones been three years in the making but they feature precision-engineered 8mm drivers – which offer bigger bass and better clarity – and a cable that promises superb signal transfer.

And if you want to know how they get the audio so clear, it’s all down to a patented Magnetic FluxTube which delivers more accurate audio. So there you go.

Monster’s Turbine In-Ear Speakers are available now, and should cost around the L130 mark.

Go to www.monstercable.com for more details.

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Monster re-defines in-ear headphones

Let’s think about this, shall we? How did Sony’s ATRAC format do ? How did all those DRM-laced formats fare?

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Major labels show eagerness to fail with new CMX digital audio format

The paperless office may still be a distant dream for most people, but there’s a fair chance that the last piece of wood pulp to be banished from the desk will be the humble sticky note.

Despite all our progress, many great ideas are still birthed on the back of an envelope or beer mat, and birthdays remembered by attaching a piece of paper to a screen.

It shouldn’t be this way. There are hundreds of ways to jot down thoughts or timely pieces of information as a silicon scribble, the challenge is making them more useful than scraps of paper.

Good computerised notes can be created, accessed and edited as quickly as pulling a pen from your pocket and from wherever you are. Once that’s cracked, being able to note something down on your mobile or netbook while you’re out and have it instantly available on the desktop back home can change the way you work.

Here’s our run down of the seven best ways to do it no matter what device or platform you use.

1.Evernote (Free)
This incredible app puts to shame the likes of Microsoft (only works if you have access to Exchange), Apple (needs Mobile Me, yuk) and Google (Notebook has been discontinued). Whatever platform – Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, Blackberry, Pre, WinMob, Blackberry or just a browser – there’s an Evernote client that will take written, pictoral or audio notes and sort them into searchable notebooks.

All local clients stay in sync with the cloud, so you keep filling pages and reading filed copy when you’re offline, which makes it much more versatile than an online only option. The only thing it doesn’t do brilliantly is ToDo lists and syncing with clients like Thunderbird, but since the basic version is free and all you need for most tasks, we can forgive it that.

2. Luminotes (Free)
Underneath the straightforward and elegant interface Luminotes works by writing your notebooks and notes to a personal wiki page. It’s simple to use, though, and there’s no need to resort to markup language – you wouldn’t even know it’s a wiki if it weren’t mentioned on the homepage.

There’s an web-based version of Luminotes and there are clients for Windows and Linux (with an OSX one on the way) but frustratingly no way to sync between them. Which means if you’re working on an online notebook, it won’t be accessible if you’re out of data’s reach.

3. Celtx ($50 per year)
The renaissance app of notetaking, Celtx is a professional program designed for multimedia production, but its advanced interface for storyboarding and layering notes within notes can easily be abused to make it capable of organising everything about your life. There’s no Mac or mobile clients yet, and online syncing means subscribing to the five-user Studio service, so it’s overkill for most, but great for starting out on a creative project.

4. Toodledo (Free)
Primarily designed for to do lists rather than notes per se, Toodledo‘s integrated notebook still does the job admirably well, although it doesn’t have the clever audio note syncing and so on of Evernote. The only natively supported local client is an iPhone app, which costs L1.79, but there is a handy plug-in for Outlook available for Windows users and it uses iCal for publishing read only streams to the likes of Google Calendar and Mozilla’s Sunbird/Lighting and OmniFocus on the Mac.

5. Ubernote (Free)
A close rival to Evernote, the Ajax-based Ubernote is fast and flexible. New notes can be updated by email, Firefox add-on, iGoogle gadget or Twitter, but the only way of viewing them offline is to download the entire notebook as a large, uneditable HTML file. No good if you need your research notes on that secluded Spanish writers’ retreat, then.

6. Corkboard (Free)
Taking the traditional push pin and paper as its leitmotif, Corkboard is a hybrid between an online notebook and Delicious or Tumblr. It’s not the simplest way of keeping track of things and the web interface is noticeably slower than its rivals, but you can share any pertinent notes with the larger Corkboard community.

7. Zoho (Free)
Zoho is Google Apps with more muscle tone. It does everything Google doesn’t including an excellent Notebook with a brilliant filing system and sticky-type visuals, if you want them. The only reason Zoho isn’t among the finest here is that there’s no offline mode for the Notebook yet, and it’s not included in the pared down mobile interface either.

See more here: 
In Depth: 7 best cloud-based note-taking apps

Just over a year after Turtle Beach gave whining teenyboppers a decent Xbox 360 headset to annoy mature gamers with, the outfit is hitting back with the third-generation. We should caution you that these are far from a major upgrade, but those just now looking to take the plunge into cord-free bragging should find plenty to appreciate. The Ear Force X41 cans claim to handle Dolby 7.1 channel surround sound, but given that there are precisely two ear cups here, we’re somewhat (read: tremendously) skeptical of said claims.

Originally posted here: 
Turtle Beach keeps tweens boasting with Ear Force X41 Xbox 360 headset

We’d heard just under a month ago that Apple was mulling the possibility of adding matte display options to more than just its flagship 17-inch MacBook Pro, and lo and behold, it seems the anti-glare revolution has begun. Starting now (like, right now ), those in the market for a new unibody 15-inch MacBook Pro can order one directly from Apple with an anti-glare widescreen display, packing 1,440 x 900 pixels and a LED backlight

Read more from the original source: 
Apple reinstates matte display option on 15-inch MacBook Pro, charges $50 for it