Eyewear tunes in to the iPod
Before coughing up the $10 you'll need to download ``Flightplan" from the iTunes Store, think about how your arm will feel after holding your iPod to your face for 90-plus minutes. And how will you hide the film's violent scenes from the nosey kid in the airplane seat next to you?
Westwood-based MicroOptical Corp. (www.microopticalcorp.com) today is disclosing plans to release a version of its Myvu personal media viewer for the iPod. The viewer, which you wear like eyeglasses, resembles Geordi LaForge's thin wraparound frames in ``Star Trek: The Next Generation." You can look over and under the frames fairly easily, so you don't miss a friend passing you by, for example. But I wouldn't try driving with these things.
Through the Myvu Made for iPod (which uses the iPod's dock connector) you see a picture that appears to be a 27-inch screen about 6 feet away. Noise reduction stereo earbuds hang from the arms of the eyewear.
The Myvu iPod package may seem a bit pricey at about $400 (its expected price when it comes out in the late fall), but it comes with many iPod accessories you'd eventually buy individually anyway. The package includes an ultra-thin lithium battery that adds six hours to your viewing time. Both the battery and your iPod fit inside a hard protective case through which you can access the player's controls. It also includes AC and car adapters and a pendant video controller that clips to your shirt.
By the way: If you already wear eyeglasses, you'll need a pair of very small pince-nez looking lenses (available through MicroOptical), which clip inside the Myvu frames.
Smartphones
High-end features at a much lower price
They're great for reading e-mail on the road, syncing your calendars and contact lists, and even listening to music. But smartphones have always had one, nearly universal drawback: the cost. But the Cingular 3125 Smartphone, a Windows Mobile device that can access your Outlook mail and Word and Excel documents, costs about $150 with a two-year contract, about what you'd pay for a decent camera phone.
The 3125 looks like an ordinary flip phone, and weighs only a half-ounce more than a RAZR. It has some great extras, though, such as a music player with play/pause, forward, and reverse controls on the lid. You can control the phone's 1.3-megapixel camera with buttons on the lid's edge.
Inside, the 3125 serves as a worthy business companion: You can sync your data wirelessly to a nearby PC or your organization's Microsoft Exchange server. The phone uses data push technology to keep your information constantly updated.
Digital cameras
Nokia's new N93 may rival both your current camera and camcorder
I have a love-hate relationship with my camera phone. I love the phone, and hate the camera. I've taken too many shots that don't come close to what I saw on my phone's screen when I took the picture. And then there are those jarring ``memory full" messages I get only after attempting to capture that once-in-a-lifetime moment.
You shouldn't experience these problems with the Nokia N93, however, a smartphone that rivals the features of a digital camera. If you can swing its estimated $600 to $700 price tag, you may find yourself using the N93 all the time, while your current camera (even your camcorder) is back home gathering dust.
The N93, due out in the United States this month, is a 3.2-megapixel camera with built-in flash and 3x optical zoom, plus some useful, in-camera image-editing features. It also captures high-quality video that is worth importing into your PC's editing software for post-production. The N93 looks like a mini camcorder when you open and unfold the smartphone to capture still and moving images.
With an optional 2 gigabyte miniSD card, you can shoot 90 minutes of VGA video at 30 frames per second. The N93 also includes image stabilization for use in the camcorder mode.
You can use the cellular networks or the N93's built-in WiFi capability to connect to your Flickr account or your photoblog. You can also play your videos directly on your television through the N93's TV-out connection.
