TransferJet Wireless Data Gadgets Coming Next Year

TransferJet, a data transfer technology that allows information to be exchanged between gadgets by simply bringing them close to each other, should begin appearing in products next year. Both Sony and Toshiba are demonstrating the technology at this week’s IFA electronics fair in Berlin and said products should be available in early 2010. TransferJet works [...]

Toshiba Unveils Blu-ray Player

Toshiba, which once led the charge against Sony’s Blu-ray with a competing high-definition format, introduced its first Blu-ray disc player on Thursday. The BDX2000 provides 1080p digital outputand supports Blu-ray Disc Profile 2.0, which Sony calls BD-Live, to take advantage of interactive features through an Ethernet connection. BD-Live enables movie studios to offer a variety of downloadable [...]

E-Reader Prices Need To Drop To Reach Mass Market

According to a survey released Wednesday, e-readers will not become true mass-market devices until pricing falls steeply from the $199 to $489 range of today’s products. And even then, e-readers aren’t expected to become as big a market as MP3 players, which 110 million U.S. consumers now own, said Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps. [...]

Prototype Uses Gestures to Control Appliances

Thumbs up, lights on. Thumbs down, lights off. That’s all a user would need to do with the GestureID project from Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology. After more than a year of intensive research, the group presented its project at the IFA consumer electronics trade show in Berlin.[ama:electronics,1,new] Dr. Frank Klefenz, the head [...]

Sony Breathes New Life Into the Clock Radio

If you listen to conventional wisdom you might think the traditional bedside clock radio was on its way out, since in many homes cell phones now rouse the sleeping from their beds. But a new gadget from Sony seeks to keep alarm clocks on the night table while bringing convenience to cell phone users. The [...]