Gadgets Blog

Most people love teddy bears - who can actually resist the power of a super cute bear anyways? Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, the humble teddy bear can now be infused with MP3 playback capability, allowing you to record your favorite songs to go to bed with it as a comfort toy. Alternatively, you can always gift this bear to someone else and use the built-in voice recorder to record your own audio message. The 2GB internal memory is more than enough for you to fit in a presidential speech even if you want to, in addition to a whole bunch of other songs. The asking price for this Lovely Bear MP3 player is $35.

This is one calculator that will definitely be banned in any classroom or exam hall - the USB 12-Digits Bilingual Talking Calculator. It will speak out the numbers that you have just pressed so that you will be able to know whether all your numbers have been input correctly. All figures are reproduced in a clear and loud voice, ruling this calculator out of the local library as well as any other educational institution where peace and quiet is much preferred. Both English and Mandarin languages are supported, and you can also turn this $23 calculator into a 12/24 hour alarm clock as well. We don’t think seasoned accountants will find this useful as their lightning fast fingers will probably punch numbers in faster than the voice part could keep up with.

Portable ECG systems aren’t exactly something that we cover on a daily basis, but this one looks pretty interesting that we guess it deserves some airtime on Coolest Gadgets. The nice people at the FDA have recently given their collective nod of approval for GE Healthcare’s MAC 800 portable ECG system. What seems to come in a relatively lightweight package, the MAC 800 is able to save further space thanks to the keyboard that is styled after that of a cell phone instead of the standard, full size variety. It is interesting to note that the MAC 800 was originally developed for the Chinese market, but has been adapted and will now be marketed in the US.

A full size ECG device will generally tip the scales at 65 pounds thereabouts, but thanks to the wonders and miracles of modern technology as well as miniaturization techniques, GE Healthcare has managed to cram all the features found in the aforementioned ECG device into the MAC 800 that weighs slightly below seven pounds - at that is with the battery, to boot! The MAC 800 itself comes with an integrated carrying handle that allows clinicians to carry it like a briefcase, virtually enabling an expanding access to care without the patient’s location being a hindrance. The built-in lithium ion battery will keep the MAC 800 going for around 2 hours, while a four hour charging time makes downtime a minimal bone of contention.

Being connected to a physician’s work environment is essential in order to maximize the use of the MAC 800, which is why it comes with a wide range of connectivity options including a LAN port, a built-in modem, an SD memory card reader and a serial port which allows one to store and send ECG data from any location. You can also output data in either PDF or XML formats for universally recognized storing and data sharing purposes.

Source: Medgadget

Time and time again, we’ve seen technology progress forward more and more with plenty of improvements made along the way. One of those areas in life is the electronic paper, or e-paper for short. While we’ve seen plenty of such e-paper technology in the past as well as a fair number of e-book readers in the market (With the Amazon Kindle 2 being the most famous among the recent releases), there is always room for a new one in this fledgling niche market. Brother Industries Ltd. will be at the helm by releasing its “Brother Document Viewer SV-100B” - what is basically an information terminal equipped with an electronic paper module from June 1 onwards in Japan later this year. According to Brother, this product is meant to “allow users to carry around information equivalent to 10,000 sheets of A4-size documents.” With such a huge weight trade off, I’ll gladly tote one around.

Brother is not targeting the average Joe on the street with the SV-100B e-book reader - no sir, it will actually cater more towards folks like home visit nurses, lawyers and text accountants as it makes it a snap to function as a display manuals for field maintenance services. Since corporate users will make up the bulk of the targeted user base, it won’t come cheap (no matter how bad times are, it seems as though corporate companies will be milked by virtually any party to get that extra bit of income in their pockets) as Brother’s direct shopping website will list it at a whopping Â¥139,800 (around $1,423).

Measuring 15.5mm thick, the SV-100B tips the scales at around 600 grams and comes with a microSD memory card slot that is able to hold a maximum capacity of 2GB. As for its battery life, it is able to power the SV-100B for approximately 83 hours (that equals to roughly 5,000 pages assuming you turn the page at every minute). As for the display size itself, it comes with a rather generous 9.7″ electronic paper module that has a maximum resolution of 1,200 x 825. Just like most other black-and-white displays, the SV-100B is capable of four shades of gray, and takes less than one second to replace displayed content thanks to the type of e-ink technology applied.

Source: Tech On!