Livescribe Echo, UnityRemote & Weather Station
We look at our top three favourite gadgets of the year, the amazing Echo dictation pen, the Gear4 UnityRemote controller for iPhone, and our wireless USB weatherstation. Pete and Carl's favourite toys of the last twelve months
Top Three Gadgets reviewed by Pete and Carl - Show 70 |
Our Top Three Gadgets:
Here's a transcript of our look at some festive gadgets, from FrequencyCast Show 70:
Pete:
As our loyal listeners know, we did an update a few weeks ago, looking at some of the gadgets and gizmos to buy for Christmas. We've got three more to add to that list.
Carl:
Yes, and the one I'm really intrigued by is the pen you're holding - haven't we done something like that before?
Pete:
Well remembered - yes, in Show 40 we first featured this pen. It's the Livescribe Pulse Pen. Now, the one we've got here is the newer model, the Echo, which is stunning. Now, this is the cleverest piece of technology out, and if you missed it, have a listen to Show 40 to find out what it does.
Carl:
Well, unlike the original one that I saw, which was, I think, grey if I remember rightly, this is about the same size, but it's rubberised - it's got a nicer feel to it. It doesn't feel like it's going to slip out of your hand. It's got a lovely little screen on it. It's got a speaker.
Pete:
So this is the Echo, but basically this has eight gigabytes of memory on it. It can hold up to 800 hours of audio from its built-in mike.
Carl:
800 hours? - that's tiny! It holds all that?
Pete:
And what it does, if you look at the bottom of it, it's got an infra-red camera, and it writes on this special paper, so you can write something down on it, and as you're writing, it takes an image of what you're writing. The paper has little dots to indicate - it's too clever to go into. The practical upshot, though, I used it on the Plusnet session that we were talking about earlier. I can now go to my paper notepad, and select any part of the note, so here I've written the word "fibre", and I tap on it with my pen ...
... and effectively I'm listening to what I was writing at the time I did it. So for putting together the notes for this show, absolutely superb - a nice bit of kit.
Carl:
It's wonderful. I don't know whether people can actually hear what that's saying, but it's a little bit indistinct, unless you're actually here, and it's as clear as a bell. You can actually hear a meeting, and that wasn't actually directed at the speaker, was it? That's just in a boardroom?
Pete:
Absolutely correct - brilliant for taking notes. The other advantage is, when you get back to base, dock it up to your computer, and you can download it as a pdf. You can also convert it to text, which you can search - very clever. And of course, your favourite toy?
Carl:
Oh yeah - I like this bit.
Pete:
You can draw on your piece of paper a piano. Go on then - give us a demo. Excellent - all done with a pen on a piece of paper, how cool!
| The Echo Smartpen, from Livescribe is available from Amazon.co.uk, priced £91 at time of recording. |
Carl:
Oh, good grief! You've written down here, weather station. What is it? - ham radio weather stations? What are you - tedium?
Pete:
I had to mention this. A few shows ago, we talked about these weather stations that you can get for home. The one that we highly recommend is now available at half price, which is why we mentioned it again. So for £70, you get yourself this lovely bit of technology. It's got a touchscreen unit that you have in your home, and a unit that you fix to your shed or to your fence, which measures the rain, wind direction, wind speed, temperature and pressure.
Carl:
And aesthetically, it's not very pleasing either.
Pete:
Yeah, you do have to stick some gadgets on top of your shed to make it work. The beauty, though, is it streams the information from the weather station onto your computer, and you can upload it to the internet, so I have my back garden streaming on the internet with all its live weather data, and history going back about a year or so. If you're going to get one of these, I would recommend you bin the free Easy Weather software that comes with it, and go for Cumulus, which is brill and free. There you go - link on our show notes.
| Wireless USB Weather Station available from Maplin, discounted down to £70 at time of recording. |
Carl:
Now, there's only one other thing I need to do in my life, and that's remote control my TV with my iPhone, which I don't have.
Pete:
Hold this and describe, please.
Carl:
Well, it looks like a black pot, about the size of a face cream pot, to be honest with you, but I can't take the lid off.
Pete:
What you do with this, it's a cylindrical device. You hide it somewhere in your lounge, and using your iPhone or iPod's Bluetooth, you can control all of your audio-video equipment.
Carl:
To me, this sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. This is awesome. How many families have three or four people with an iPhone? They're all going to be sitting there, trying to control the TV all at once. There's going to be that whole war over what channel you watch, which is brilliant!
Pete:
Okay, here's the free application that comes with it for the iPhone. A very quick description of what you see on the screen here?
Carl:
Okay, right, so you've got like a scrolly bar thing that you can flick up and down. It has TV, Blu-Ray, Receiver, Satellite ... it's got loads of options; your hi-fi, watch movies ... it's got all sorts of settings, so basically this thing can control anything with an infra-red receiver on it.
Pete:
And look at all the manufacturers it's got built in.
Carl:
AC Ryan, ABS, Saxon ... As alone, good grief! - there's like 150 As alone! Cs, we've only just got there ... Bose, you name it, it's there.
Pete:
You've been able to control your equipment before, but you've had to have a little dongle plugged into the bottom of your iPhone. Now this thing uses Bluetooth, so you don't have to muck about with any extra dongles. It's incredibly clever and it supports macros, so you can turn on multiple devices.
Carl:
Why, what?
Pete:
So you can wander into your home, switch the lights on, turn on the TV, switch it to satellite, tune it to channel 503, and mute it and you're off and running, all with one button.
Carl:
How much do I have to pay for that luxury?
Pete:
Normally, 80 of your pounds, discounted down to 60.
| The Gear4 Unity Remote is available at Amazon.co.uk priced £63 at the time of recording. |
Carl:
Yep, and we have links to all three of these items, plus others we covered in our November update, at frequencycast.co.uk/gadgets.
Top Three Gadgets reviewed by Pete and Carl - Show 70 |
More information:
- FrequencyCast Gadget Special
- FrequencyCast Show 70 - Covering our top three gadgets
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