We just got a nice look at the beastly Brother Quattro 6000D sewing machine here at CES. We've done a fair amount of embroidery in our day, and we have to say, seeing this machine in action is pretty impressive. Disappointing Disney branding aside (yup, that's Mickey Mouse beneath the giant 4.5 x 7-inch Sharp HD LCD), the Quattro boasts a 50 square inch workspace that is probably any quilter's dream, and it's also got 3 USB ports. Sadly, the purchase price ("about $9,000") is probably prohibitive for most of us casual stitchers. No word yet on availability, but check the gallery and video after the break.

Gallery: Brother Quattro 6000D

Continue reading Brother Quattro 6000D hands-on

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Brother Quattro 6000D hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The relationship with Mobiles (as far as it pertains to the Baby) hasn’t been great so far – the tech just hasn’t been up to the job. But what if the baby is using the tech?

Don’t worry – my Baby isn’t making calls, or doing long WiFi browsing sessions – but she is a VERY quick learner about what does what on the device. This actually started with the TV remote, which apparently is a source of wonderment (!), and has since progressed on to a Toy phone – which was soon rejected in favour of the real thing!

Again – we don’t let her play with a real Mobile device, but my wife and I make a fair few calls, and so our baby has picked up on this and will now hold anything phone-sized up to her ear and say “hello” or “hiya” down it! Extremely comical when you see it happening

I heard the other day also now that 3 and 4 year olds are taught on video whiteboards at school, and those just a few years older use a popular Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) product to do their class presentations – wow, how tech-savvy are our kids becoming?

If you combine the natural inquisitiveness and fast-learning of a child, with the plethora of tech given to them at an early age, we are going to find a generation of uber-tech-capable teenagers that will be many times more capable than us “old” folk!!!

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The savings only work with inductive electric motors, which are one of the major power consumers in many homes (washing machines, air conditioning units, driers, etc).

The domestic unit retails for $399 and can be fitted by a qualified electrician, return on investment is rapid (12 months) and along with the saved energy costs it also increases the life of the motors and appliances.

The demonstration did look impressive and if it really does what it says then the technology will save people a fair amount of money but it did seem a bit too good to be true.

Further information can be found on kvarnrg.com.

We still don’t have a show floor proper to peruse, but the press day definitely gave the big names a chance to blast out their big announcements. Panasonic (NYSE: PC), Sharp, Microsoft, and others took their fair share of the day, but Samsung and LG were the ones that the phone-lovers in the house really wanted to hear about. LG kicked off the morning bright and early at 8 AM, packing the room shoulder-to-shoulder, and then some. I was half-expecting the majority to be hungover and sleeping in, but all the press had perked ears and pens ready. I had heard the night before from some LG guys that a watch phone for Europe was going to be announced,  which turned out to be pleasantly accurate.

Remember, if you want to stay up-to-date with what’s going on at the Consumer Electronics Show, be sure to follow us on Twitter, or scope out the CES 2009 category on Viigo for a variety of great front-line sources. 

Starting off, LG was big on TVs (along with just about everyone else at the show, as it turns out). 3D displays, high refresh (240 Hz), wireless connectivity, software tie-ins with Yahoo! Widgets, YouTube, Pandora, Netflix, slim profiles and high contrast screens with blacks blacker than the blackest black night were some common features that we would also see later in the afternoon with Samsung. Mobile did get some love from LG, including a demo of some noise cancellation technology that they were trying out using two microphones, which should be ready to roll in the second half of 2009. They also mentioned their SkyCharge project, which would let users plug their phones into tiny boxes and lock ‘em up for later pickup. The big box could handle upwards of 140 phones simultaneously. Yowza. More notably was their watch phone, which promised to have 3G video conferencing, stereo Bluetooth, voice dialling, and text to voice, all in a surprisingly sleek package. Unfortunately, it looks like that was the biggest mobile announcement for the day. 

I didn’t think Sharp or or Panasonic would have much in the way of phone news, so after skipping them, I got in line for the Samsung press conference. And what a line it was. It was like the Nile, only it moved a lot slower, had more SLR cameras in it. In short, the Samsung show was a gigantic flop for anyone looking for phones. Lots of cool TVs, sure (although at first glance, I couldn’t see what set them apart from the competition), but only a brief mention of their involvement with mobile WiMAX and intuitive UI development really had anything to do with cellphones. Boo-urns.

Sufficiently jaded by the Samsung show, I settled into the early line for the Ballmer keynote, a solid 3 hours beforehand. Daddy was going to get a good seat, and all the waiting paid off with fine spot right behind the first three reservation rows, dab smack in the centre. Unfortunately, I overlooked Sony in my earlier hastiness, and they actually announced two phones: the W508 Walkman flip phone and C510 Cyber-shot (A.K.A Kate) both made their official introductions. 

Alas, by the time I had found out, I was sitting in the Microsoft keynote, enjoying some beatboxers trying to convince me Windows was cool. The keynote itself centred primarily on Windows 7 launching their beta, and how Windows Live will be following suit. There was a marginal inclusion of Windows Mobile when they talked about a Verizon (NYSE: VZ) partnership to preinstall Live Search on a bunch of devices, and using a little something called Total Access which would monitor your XBox’s Netflix subscriptions, but the coolest mobile product out of Microsoft was a demo which showed the Omnia taking multiple pictures for a panoramic shot and having it automatically stitch them together, as well as steering the shots with some guide lines. Very cool. They also demoed mobile devices on the Surface table for sharing some richly-textualized documents - colour-coding relevence of information is very slick.

The keynote wasn’t quite as disappointing as Samsung’s, primarily because I could see myself trying out Windows 7, or at very least the new Windows Live package. Not a problem, the Digital Experience was coming up, and was bound to have a lot of mobile news. Unfortunately, we had some logisitical issues, and didn’t get there until 45 minutes before the show was scheduled to be closing. Will and I split up and covered as much ground as we could before things closed up.

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The device is essentially a pair of somewhat-large headphones with a built in heart-rate monitor, music and voice prompts to continuously keep you in the “right” zone for your workout. Users enter in the type of workout and their age and then start exercising. The voice inside the headset guides you through the rest.

SETUP
Setting up the FiTrainer is pretty straightforward and some good directions were included to guide me through the setup and use. One side of the headphones is used to store the battery and the electronics for the heart rate monitor (but does not have a speaker). The device runs on a single AAA battery that provides around 15 hours of use. They other side of the headset has a small display and buttons to enter in your age, the type of workout desired and also if you want to hear rhythm, narration and music, or just the rhythm and narration, and a speaker. It also has a jack to plug in your own music to pipe through the device. A few quick steps of entering information was quickly followed by a woman’s voice encouraging me to exercise “much harder”.

USE
Wearing and using the FiTrainer was incredibly simple. The headset was surprisingly comfortable and stayed put very well during walking, running and biking. Based on the wearers heart rate (gathered through a clip on the earlobe) a cadence, narrator and optional music frequently encourages you to increase or decrease your level of exercise in order to keep your heart rate at an ideal level, based on the Karvonen Method from a measured resting heart rate.

Optionally you can also pipe your own music into the FiTrainer and the voice and cadence continue in the background. The only noticeable downside to this is that you miss out on any stereo sounds since the music only comes out of one side. The device will bring you through timed workout and cool down, which can be different for the type of work out you select, and the time can be extended in 5-minute increments by pressing the “Next” button.

SUMMARY
The downsides I found to the FiTrainer were 1) piped in music only comes out of one ear, stereo would have been nice, and 2) it would be neat to have the ability to record and display the workouts compared to each other. This device will remember the previously entered age but does not track any workout data.

But, overall I found the FiTrainer to be a good, solid device to help with maintaining an ideal level during a workout. It saved mefrom having to continually keep my eye on a heart rate monitor to maintain the right heart rate and provided both voice direction and a rhythm to encourage harder or more gentle exertion. It was also comfortable and stayed on my ears, which is sometimes pretty hard to come by with headphones in general. iTami has the FiTrainer available now for just under $40.

FiTrainer (Mind your speaker volume before hitting the link.)

The device is essentially a pair of somewhat-large headphones with a built in heart-rate monitor, music and voice prompts to continuously keep you in the “right” zone for your workout. Users enter in the type of workout and their age and then start exercising. The voice inside the headset guides you through the rest.

SETUP
Setting up the FiTrainer is pretty straightforward and some good directions were included to guide me through the setup and use. One side of the headphones is used to store the battery and the electronics for the heart rate monitor (but does not have a speaker). The device runs on a single AAA battery that provides around 15 hours of use. They other side of the headset has a small display and buttons to enter in your age, the type of workout desired and also if you want to hear rhythm, narration and music, or just the rhythm and narration, and a speaker. It also has a jack to plug in your own music to pipe through the device. A few quick steps of entering information was quickly followed by a woman’s voice encouraging me to exercise “much harder”.

USE
Wearing and using the FiTrainer was incredibly simple. The headset was surprisingly comfortable and stayed put very well during walking, running and biking. Based on the wearers heart rate (gathered through a clip on the earlobe) a cadence, narrator and optional music frequently encourages you to increase or decrease your level of exercise in order to keep your heart rate at an ideal level, based on the Karvonen Method from a measured resting heart rate.

Optionally you can also pipe your own music into the FiTrainer and the voice and cadence continue in the background. The only noticeable downside to this is that you miss out on any stereo sounds since the music only comes out of one side. The device will bring you through timed workout and cool down, which can be different for the type of work out you select, and the time can be extended in 5-minute increments by pressing the “Next” button.

SUMMARY
The downsides I found to the FiTrainer were 1) piped in music only comes out of one ear, stereo would have been nice, and 2) it would be neat to have the ability to record and display the workouts compared to each other. This device will remember the previously entered age but does not track any workout data.

But, overall I found the FiTrainer to be a good, solid device to help with maintaining an ideal level during a workout. It saved mefrom having to continually keep my eye on a heart rate monitor to maintain the right heart rate and provided both voice direction and a rhythm to encourage harder or more gentle exertion. It was also comfortable and stayed on my ears, which is sometimes pretty hard to come by with headphones in general. iTami has the FiTrainer available now for just under $40.

FiTrainer (Mind your speaker volume before hitting the link.)

Gallery: Microsoft CES ninja booth tour

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Microsoft CES ninja booth tour: hello Windows 7 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Filed under: GPS

Garmin rolls out nuvi 865T, ditches 8x0 series originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Jan 2009 17:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Few days ago, we talked about that nasty bug called “Curse of Silence” that affects Symbian S60 devices running S60 version 2.6, 2.8, 3.0 and 3.1. Some malware-protection software developers have already released solutions for the problem, but it’s fair to argue not many people will end up installing these apps on their smartphones. Hence, something needs to be done.

According to the dutch IT news site, Tweakers.net, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) is contacting mobile operators to block text messages with long email addresses that could make Nokia smartphones unable to receive other SMS or MMS until a full factory reset. The Finnish giant hasn’t disclosed which operators they are talking to, but apparently providers are happy to cooperate, which was kinda expected. After all, it’s the carrier support staff that is contacted/bugged by the end users in most cases.

Dutch T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) has reportedly already started filtering messages and we guess other carriers will follow as well.

Nokia is also thinking to solve the bug through a firmware update, although they admit it’s not the perfect solution as many users don’t keep their devices up to date…

We’ll keep watching this space and let you know as soon as we hear something new. Stay tuned…

[Via: Darla Mack, image from HarperCollins]

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