Android Bluetooth Speaker / Handsfree [review]

September 26, 2011 by

Android Bluetooth Speaker / HandsfreeOne of the things I love about my iPhone is that, as well as doing the obvious telephone stuff, it allows me to play games and listen to a good chunk of my music collection. There are plenty of accessories to make music listening more enjoyable, such as sound docks and the like, but Mobile Fun, those purveyors of mobile phone accessories, recently sent me an Android Bluetooth Sound Box to play with. Now, novelty technology doesn’t usually get me excited, but how did the Android Sound Box fare?

Firstly, while it looks very much like the Google Android logo, I don’t think it is affiliated with Google in any way. It’s just a green android, which happens to look like the Android. That aside, the looks are fun and it’s something of a conversation piece. Great, but it should actually serve a purpose too, so how does it do as a sound system?

The short answer is “alright”. It’s not going to bring the roof down or anything, but it does a better job of projecting your music than, say, the iPhone’s built-in speaker. The nice thing is that, since the Android broadcasts itself as a set of bluetooth headphones, it will connect to any mobile that offers that capability. The sound clarity is pretty good, although the small speaker does mean there’s not much bass response. It also limits the volume (which is controlled by twisting the Android’s head) but it’s still good enough to listen to while doing the housework, hanging out in a school break room, or any other situation where playing music out loud isn’t going to get on someone’s nerves.

There’s another element to this little guy, though. Not only is he a Bluetooth sound system, he’s a hands-free kit. By pressing his head down you send the signal that you would like to use voice dialling. I found this to be a bit flaky, with incorrectly recognised names much of the time but, to be fair, I have always found that with the iPhone and suspect the problem lies there rather than with the Android. When I did get it to dial the right person they told me the sound was fine, and I could hear them perfectly well. It’s a bit funny, too, having a conversation with this little green robot :)

All in all, the Android Bluetooth Speaker and Handsfree is a fun little gadget that moves away from the standard, functional mobile phone accessory. It does its job pretty well, and in situations where you know you will want to listen to music but don’t want to lug a sound dock around with you, it will come in handy. It’s a novelty, but it’s a fun novelty and with Christmas just around the corner it might make a good stocking filler for the smartphone-toting geek in your life.

This little green guy is available from Mobile Fun, priced £19.95.

Filed Under: Fun, Tech Tagged With: , , ,

Polaroid PoGo Instant Photo Printer [Review]

April 1, 2010 by

I still remember seeing my first Polaroid photo. It was on a school trip to a place called “Happy Valley”. The teacher took a class photo and we all crowded round to see this miraculous image appear there and then. This was the time of waiting several days to get your photos back from the chemist, so seeing them in a few minutes was just revolutionary.

Polaroid eventually stopped making those particular instant photos (although The Impossible Project has succeeded in resurrecting them again) and moved on to pastures new. Now the more likely thing is to want to print digital photos, and I recently got hold of the Polaroid PoGo mobile printer. So what’s it like?

Zero Ink

The first thing to note is that the PoGo uses no ink. I have no idea how that works, but you do have to use Polaroid’s own paper. The little 2x3cm cards come in packs of various sizes, but take the pack of 30, for instance, and you’ll be paying around 17 pence per photo. That’s not silly money, but it is enough to make you think twice before printing out all your holiday photos. Add to that the fact that the photos are about the size of a business card and you’ll realise this is a somewhat specialised setup.

The photos do have a peel-off back that allows you to use them as stickers, so I can see these being good for putting on a photo board, in a scrapbook, or maybe in your wallet given their miniature size.

Direct Printing

The PoGo is meant to be portable, and it’s light, small, and battery powered. That’s no good if you have to plug it into a computer to print, though. Fortunately you can bluetooth your images from your mobile phone or, if your camera supports PictBridge you can plug that into the built-in USB port. iPhone users, we can’t bluetooth our images because the iPhone can’t do that, which is annoying, but my camera did work perfectly with the PoGo.

The procedure for printing will vary depending on your camera, but I had my first photo about a minute after hitting print. That’s great – it means I don’t have my daughter pestering me about how long it’s taking to get the photo done!

But do they look good?

The real test is whether my digital photos make the transition from camera to paper in a decent state. The printed photos have a slightly cold tone to them, and when I printed out a monochrome image the very bottom looked obviously blue. Not enough to ruin the image, but noticeable. There is also some light banding across the image that may annoy. Other than that I’m actually quite pleased with how they turned out given the price of the unit, and I’m wondering if I can compensate for the cold look by altering the white balance in the camera’s settings.

Conclusion

I’d say the PoGo will find a place in our family as a way of creating fun keepsakes, images for the children’s journals and scrapbooks, and if we’re out with friends and snap a particularly cool image they want there and then. It’s a great little piece of kit, with a few tonal aberrations in the final images but, and I want to make this clear, it’s never going to replace getting your photos professionally printed. If you’re just looking for a way to produce little mementos, the PoGo is a pretty good option.

The Polaroid PoGo is available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

Filed Under: Fun, Tech Tagged With: , ,

Papershow: Surviving Meetings

July 30, 2008 by

Papershow: making interactive meetings easier.

I’ve been trialling a new product over the last few weeks called Papershow. The Papershow website proudly proclaims that it will help you survive meetings, which is a pretty bold claim. I have to say that, while my meeting survival rate is up for debate, I’ve been pretty impressed with what I’ve seen.

Papershow is a bluetooth pen and USB dongle: the dongle plugs into your Windows PC and contains all the drivers and software needed to operate the pen. This, in combination with special paper, means that anything you draw or write in your notebook happens on-screen as well. It’s basically a smartboard that you control by drawing on paper rather than on the board itself. If you choose, your scrawls could then be projected for everyone to see in real-time.

But why not use a proper smartboard instead? Well, if that’s what you really want to do there’s no reason not to, but Papershow gives you another option. Choice is good, remember :) I find that the constant tapping on a smartboard is a little annoying, so it’s good not to have that. It’s also good to be able to pass the pen and notebook to someone else if they want to contribute to a diagram without having to wait for them to make their way to the board. The downside, though, is that it’s a bit odd not to have the person “presenting” actually standing at the front of the room, and if you are presenting yourself it’s a bit strange not being able to simply point to something on the board that you want to emphasise.

Having said that, this is a great piece of kit. The pen is thicker than normal but still easy to write with. The icons on the notebook take a bit of getting used to, but once you’re up to speed you can be changing colour, line thickness, and so on as if there’s no tomorrow. The pen and software are nice and responsive, and even managed to keep up with the hieroglyphs I laughingly call my handwriting.

The only thing that comes to mind as needing improvement is the manual; the booklet you get with the Papershow tells you how to get up and running, but it’s not particularly in-depth. Whilst Papershow is quite intuitive, I did spend quite a bit of time trying to work out how to wipe my documents off the dongle again. Perhaps a comprehensive manual would be a good idea for people who don’t want to play around with the software, or are afraid to do so in case they break something.

Oh, and one more nice feature to finish up with: you can import powerpoint slides and draw all over them. You have to use the special paper again, and this means printing your powerpoint out beforehand, but it is a good way of getting interaction in meetings by letting people write on your presentation. What this does mean, though, is that using Papershow isn’t quite as spontaneous as it looks in the promotional videos: you can’t just wander into a meeting, randomly pull your pen out, and start doodling away… but with a bit of forethought I can see this being a useful tool to have available.

For more information on Papershow, visit their site at www.survivingmeetings.com.

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