This is a sponsored post by LOPOO UK who've asked me to review their Oittm Bluetooth Realsound Speaker. Let's get one thing out of the way first, this is not the Amazon Echo! It's about the same size, shape, and design - but it has a very different purpose What's it for? This is a big Bluetooth speaker with integrated LEDs and microphone. At a basic level, you pair your phone with it and the Realsound acts as a speaker and microphone - so you can hold telephone conversations with it. But …
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This is a sponsored post by LOPOO UK who've asked me to review their Oittm Bluetooth Headphones. There's a lot of technology packed in for £19.99. Bluetooth 4.1 - compatible with Android and iPhone. cVc noise cancellation - for improved call quality. A physically tiny 70 mAh battery - good for around 3-6 hours of use. I found it fully charged in around 2 hours. Flat cable which feels rubber coated and is sweat-proof. All this weighs just 16.5 grams. So, what's inside …
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Is it the end-of-days for the humble headphone jack? As Apple prepare to remove it from their next iPhone - with Android manufacturers no-doubt following suit - I thought now would be a good time to look at the previous occasions when smartphone makers have tried to kill the headphone jack. This is a non-exhaustive history, mostly drawing from my industry experience and drawers full of old phones! Firstly (although not chronologically) special mention must go to… The original iPhone! Yup, i…
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A couple of months ago I was giving a talk in Romania - the organisers had set up a technology expo showing off some great local start-ups. One which caught my eye was TinTag. Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentTintag is pretty clever. BLE beacon but has built in Qi recharging. Very useful. thetintag.com#DevTalks pic.x.com/sjizdew274❤️ 3💬 2🔁 010:29 - Wed 11 May 2016 I've previously reviewed the Chipolo - which is a similar beacon/tracker. So I thought I'd give this one a go. At the airport…
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I love my keyboards. I mean, I have an unhealthy obsession with them. I spend a lot of time typing and the cramped keyboards which come with most laptops and MacBooks just don't cut it for me. Their poor ergonomics leave my wrists in pain. For years I was a devotee of the Microsoft 4000 Keyboard. It's a big old beast - and that's its main drawback; it's just too large to carry around. It could also do with an integrated USB hub if it's going to take up one of my precious laptop ports. So…
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This is a quick unboxing / set-up / review of the Chipolo. This was a nifty piece of schwag from the Twitter Developer Relations team, to whom I'm grateful. The Chipolo is a multi-purpose Bluetooth Low Energy tag. It's like a high-tech version of one of those things which you attach to your keyring which will beep when whistled at. As the box says, it will work up to 60 meters away. It'll beep when you lose it, and it can make your phone beep if someone moves it out of range - handy if…
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As regular readers know, I've turned a BLE Beacon into a wireless business card. Physical Web used the Bluetooth beacon standard to continually broadcast not an ID number, but a URL. If you're in my proximity, you can grab my contact details. The one problem with the beacon I have is that it has an exposed button. Every time it got bumped in my pocket, the token would emit a couple of shrill beeps and set itself into config mode. After a couple of months, the CR2032 battery died. …
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Selfie sticks - like most modern inventions - are utter tosh. But they've rapidly brought down the price of Bluetooth buttons. So who am I to complain? Let's take the venerable AB Shutter 3 - You can find it on Amazon for around £2 including postage - or around $2 on AliExpress. Frankly, that's stupidly cheap. OK, let's put this to work as something other than a vanity clicker! There are no instructions which come with this, it's delivered in a little plastic bag and that's it. Time to …
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Four years ago, I wrote an article for Moo.com about using QR Codes on business cards. At the time, it was the easiest way to get VCARD information from a physical card and onto a phone. I notice that Moo are now selling NFC enabled business cards. As regular readers know, I'm not a great fan of NFC - mostly because it's so expensive. The NFC cards are £1.20 each - the regular cards cost just 26p each! What if we change the idea of what a business card is? Why do I need to hand over a …
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This is a necropost - resurrected from the now defunct blog of a previous employer. Sadly, most of the photos have fallen down the memory hole. So use your imagination. Energy efficiency is the next battleground for electronics. As the price of electricity soars, people will become less and less enamoured with charging their devices every single day. Even if cold-fusion brings us unlimited free energy - plugging your gadgets into a wall just seems so primitive! That's where BlueTooth Low…
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This has been a really tough NaBloPoMo for me. Work has been frantic - meaning that my lunchtime blogging has been restricted to a quick bit of copy editing. I've also had some wonderful new toys to play with - which has distracted my attention. But the biggest problem? My Android phone. Don't get me wrong, I love Android - but for typing, it's nowhere nearly as good as my BlackBerry was. I spend a lot of my time on trains, so I'm used to being able to bash out a fairly lengthy post or…
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Those delightful coves at Jabra and Wildfire PR have kindly sent me a Jabra Clipper review unit. Could this be the BlueTooth headset to replace my beloved Jabra BT3030 which had an unfortunate encounter with a washing machine last week? Model Not Included How does it stack up against my wishlist? (more…) …
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