H2O Audio iPod Nano case turns your player into an underwater video camera

by Scott Carmichael on

As the first iPod with a camera, the new Apple iPod Nano is surprisingly fun to play with. But until now, it wasn’t the kind of gadget you’d take to the beach, as iPods and water don’t tend to mix. H2O Audio can change that, thanks to their new “Capture” case.

This $79.99 case turns your iPod Nano (5th generation) into a full underwater sports camera. Plus, its waterproof headphone jack lets you listen to music without the risk of damaging your iPod. Best of all, all controls on the iPod can be fully accessed.

The integrated polycarbonate lens lets you take the case down to 12 feet of water. The package includes a sports armband and beltclip. The case is available for purchase right now, directly from the site of the manufacturer.

(Via: Gizmodo)

Rolling luggage / portable scooter guarantees you’ll hurt yourself at the airport

by Scott Carmichael on

How many times have you walked from gate B2 to B78 wondering whether there could possibly be a quicker way to make your connecting flight? Well, the folks at German company Micro Mobility obviously had that same question – because they invented the Trolley Scooter. The scooter combines one of those lightweight folding scooters with a piece of Samsonite luggage.

End result is a bag that can be pulled through the airport and turn into a personal mobility scooter. Sadly, it isn’t powered (other than human power), but with enough momentum, you may be able to plow down a couple of fellow passengers on your way to the gate.

The bag itself looks rather small, but in the photo, they do show a laptop, shoes and some clothes, so it may be just right for a quick overnight trip.

What do you think? Sheer brilliance or sheer stupidity awaiting a personal injury lawsuit?

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(Crunchgear via Gizmodo)

Gadling’s ultimate guide to powering your gadgets on a plane

by Scott Carmichael on

Welcome to the Gadling “ultimate inflight power guide”. After reading this guide, you’ll know everything you need to know in order to power your gadgets, and keep them going during any flight. I’ll explain what all terms mean, and give you some handy tips that will make you a real pro at inflight power.

The basics

The inflight basics really are simple – there are 4 scenarios when it comes to powering technology on a plane:

  • Powering your laptop on flights with seat power
  • Powering your laptop on flights without seat power
  • Powering your gadgets on flights with seat power
  • Powering your gadgets on flights without seat power

To make the whole thing more complicated, airlines offer seat power through four different systems:

  • EmPower
  • DC power
  • AC power
  • USB power

Finding what your airline and seat have to offer

Before you know what you’ll need to purchase in order to power your equipment, you’ll need to know what your airline has to offer.

The easiest way to find this, is to head on over to Seatguru or Seatexpert. These sites specialize in displaying very accurate seat maps, along with all the amenities you can expect in your specific seat. For those of you that fly coach, only a handful of US domestic flights will provide power in the back. Newer airlines like Virgin America understand the need for power, and offer an outlet at every seat, including Coach.

The various seat power systems

EmPower

The EmPower system was the first airline seat power product – it offers 15 volts DC through a special (EmPower) plug. In order to plug your gadget into this outlet, you’ll of course need a compatible cable/charger.

The EmPower system has a limit of 75 watts – which means it can power and charge most laptop computers and low power gadgets. EmPower is becoming a rarity, but there are still some major carriers that installed it back in the early 2000’s and have not yet upgraded their cabin to something more common.

DC Power

Airlines with DC power offer the same kind of outlet you’ll find in your car (often referred to as a cigarette lighter outlet). The advantage of these is that they offer a higher current, the disadvantage is that they only supply 12 volts. Many laptop computers need 19 volts to charge.

DC power can easily be converted into AC power, which means you can invest in a cheap converter, and use your own laptop power supply. These converters do tend to get hot, and many require some additional cooling, so don’t keep them in your bag when you use them. The disadvantage of a DC converter is of course the bulk – using one of them along with your own laptop charger makes for a rather messy pile of cables.

AC Power

AC power is the easiest of all the inflight power solutions. The plane simply offers a regular AC jack by your seat, just like you find back home. These outlets are also limited to about 75 watts – so don’t expect to be able to power your hair dryer from your seat. The AC power comes from the same kind of jack you’ll find at home or your office, and most of them accept US and European plugs.

USB Power

The addition of USB power ports on some airlines has to be in the top 5 of great things they have done for geeks. A powered USB port means you can bring your usb cable with you, and charge your device, without having to invest in special chargers or cables. USB power ports are still pretty rare, but on longhaul flights with an up to date entertainment system, you’ll have a good chance at finding one.

Laptop power on flights with seat power

Lets start with the first scenario – powering your laptop on a flight with seat power. In an ideal world, this would be really simple to accomplish, but the airlines have (as usual) decided to make things complicated by using the different systems mentioned above:

EmPower – Use a DC/Air laptop charger from your manufacturer, or a third party version
DC Power – Use a DC/Air laptop charger from your manufacturer, or a third party version
AC Power – Use your regular laptop charger
USB Power – N/A, won’t charge your laptop

For virtually every laptop brand, you’ll be able to find an affordable and compact DC/Air charger. Pay attention when you pick one – some third party chargers only power off AC, others only do AC/DC (no EmPower). If you want to be 100% certain your investment will work in any scenario, go for a good AC/DC/Air charger. Some good examples of these chargers are

The Kensignton wall/air ultra thin notebook power adapter ($129.99)

Mobility Electronics iGo everywhereMAX ($119.99)

Innergie myCube90 ($99.95)

To make matters worse, because of the power restrictions on each outlet, some laptops may only charge – they can’t actually be powered. This means a dead battery will have to be recharged before you can use it again. Thankfully, most recent laptops have low power requirements, which means your charger will power and charge at the same time.


Laptop power on flights without seat power

So, you’ve booked your flight, and the seat map site show no power outlets anywhere near your seat. You’ll have to make a decision – is keeping your laptop working for the duration of the flight that important? Before you invest in any accessories, there are several things you can do to keep that machine running longer:

Turn things down or off

How long is your flight? How long will your laptop work off its battery pack? If you have a five hour flight, and your laptop only works for four hours, you’ll probably be fine – the first and last 30 minutes of the flight won’t allow you to have it turned on anyway. If the flight is longer, or your battery won’t last that long, you’ll need to start saving some power.

Turn your display brightness down as far as you can, without losing the ability to read what is on the screen. Enable as many power saving features as possible, turn off WiFi (unless you are on a WiFi enabled flight). Disable Bluetooth, and unplug any accessories you won’t be needing during the flight. A really conservative power setting can easily add about 30% more run time on your machine. Of course, the harder you make it work, the quicker it’ll burn through your battery – basic word processing will use a lot less than watching an HD Movie off your hard drive.

A second battery

If your battery and flight time really don’t go together, you’ll need to go shopping for something that will keep it working longer. The easiest solution may appear to be a second battery, but these have a couple of disadvantages you’ll need to keep in mind:

  • You’ll need to turn your computer off to do a battery swap
  • An original second battery is very expensive
  • Third party/OEM batteries can be very cheap, but also poorly built
  • Your battery investment will usually only work on this machine

You’ll also need to find a good way to carry the second battery, as they almost never come with a case or other protection method.

An external laptop battery pack

I’m a huge fan of external notebook battery packs – they are usually a bit more expensive than a second battery, but they are future proof – most of them come with power tips that can be used on a variety of brands. If you switch from one model to another, you simply swap out the power tip. Some external battery packs also include a USB charging port, and many of them come with a carrying case. Recently, we reviewed the Tekkeon myPower on Gadling, this battery pack doubles the run time of most computers, and comes with power tips that will allow it to work on almost any brand of laptop.

Powering your gadgets with seat power

Let’s assume you loaded your iPod/iPhone/Zune or other device with some cool movies for the long haul flight. You’ve already burned through 3 hours of battery power on the trip to the airport, and chances are, you’ll only make it through the first of your movies before the “low battery” message appears. There are simple and affordable ways to keep your gadgets going.

EmPower – Find a dedicated EmPower charger cord for your device or an EmPower to AC converter
DC Power – Use a regular car charger cord
AC Power – Bring your AC adapter
USB Power – Use the USB cable included with your device

Powering your gadgets without seat power

If you are not flying an airline that provided seat power, you’ll need to carry your own power source. Just like with the laptop solution, you are going to need a battery pack. Of course, for gadgets, these are much smaller than what you need for a laptop. Many of these devices have an internal battery pack sufficient for 2 or 3 full charges of your mobile device. On an iPhone or iPod, this means you’ll be able to watch movies for up to 12 or 13 hours. There are countless options on the market, and a decent quality battery pack will cost you about $40.

Gadling visits Aircell – the company behind Gogo Inflight Internet

by Scott Carmichael on

There is no denying it – Gadling loves Gogo Inflight. So much in fact, that we begged to take a look behind the scenes at what makes this inflight Internet service run, and grill their executives on when we can finally have Internet on every single flight we take. It was a fascinating day, spent with people that really love what they are doing.
The geeky side of Aircell

The Aircell network consists of 92 ground stations. Think of them as the same kind of cell tower you have in your back yard, but looking up at the skies. The technology is very similar to what you use on Sprint and Verizon (EVDO Rev.A). Thankfully for Aircell, looking up at the skies requires a hell of a lot less towers than looking towards the horizon (like cellphone companies need to do). For starters, there are no trees and buildings blocking your view, and when you look up, there is no curvature of the earth to deal with.

Some other background information for the geeks – their network uses cellular equipment from Chinese manufacturer ZTE (their first major network sale in the US. The rest of it runs pretty much the same way any major network operates – a lot of Cisco and IBM equipment, and a backbone powered by AT&T. At the moment, each airplane gets 3.1mbit of bandwidth.

Their network operations center was surprisingly boring – a handful of people keep a close eye on the ground based network, and one guy watches the planes. The reason for this is actually great for Aircell – their equipment has proven to be extremely reliable, and they really can keep the entire network running with just a couple of guys.

In their network operations center, the wall has the screens you’d expect from any NOC – a couple of network status screens and a large plasma TV with 100’s of planes. The planes are all color coded to show their status. Thankfully all but one or two planes were green which may have explained the serenity in their room.

Aircell equipment installations

At the moment, Aircell has gear installed on just under 700 aircraft (this does not include installations on private planes). When you realize that just 12 months ago it was only on 23 planes, you’ll understand what an amazing accomplishment this has been.

The really amazing number is that the Aircell team can install the entire system on a plane in just 8 hours. Airlines hate taking a plane out of operation, and obviously, Aircell can’t ask the airline to hand them a plane for a couple of days. So at the moment, the Aircell team arrives at the airport, gets access to a plane at 10pm, and by sunrise, the plane has been equipped with everything it needs to offer Internet access in the skies.

The company

During the day, Aircell opened up every office in the building for me – nothing was off limits. I spent some time chatting with their CEO, their VP of airline operations and even spent some time in their mock airplane cabin complete with coach and first class seating. This cabin-in-an-office is where Aircell did some real hands-on testing of how people work on their computer, and probably realized like the rest of us that using a large laptop in a coach seat is a major hassle.

The future

As Aircell adds more aircraft to its network, and more users learn the joy of inflight Internet, you obviously run the risk of towers becoming too crowded, and the speed grinding to a halt. Thankfully the company is fully prepared to deal with that. When they showed me their current base station map, they showed how easy it is to just add new towers. So easy in fact, that they can even add towers for one specific high-traffic route. So, if too many people start using it between LA and San Francisco, keeping speeds acceptable involves nothing more than a new tower looking up to the skies on that route.

In addition to this, Aircell already has a future plan laid out for a migration to 4G technology. They have picked LTE as their next generation system, and as the market evolves, they’ll be able to beam as much as 100mbit to a single aircraft.

Of course, when I asked which airlines we can expect to join the ranks of the current Aircell customers, the room got rather quiet. But it is safe to say that pretty soon, almost every major US carrier will have committed to offering Internet in the air. There is only one competitor for domestic US inflight Internet access, and they have yet to see a major rollout to any aircraft.

One big topic at the Aircell HQ is video – video is big on the ground, and if it is up to them, it’ll be big in the skies as well. There were very few details about their plans, but if you picture turning your laptop into an inflight entertainment system with content coming from equipment on the plane, you’ll get an idea of how Aircell envisions the future of flying.

Wrap-up

I’d like to thank Aircell and everyone that took the time to speak to me. It was fun to see so many people speak so passionately about what they are doing. Despite some grumblings from the media wondering how they’ll ever make money, the company has a pretty solid outlook on the future. Usage is up month after month, they just reached the one million user mark, and are going to hit two million within the next month.

Obviously most passengers would prefer the service to be free, but when you look at the amount of money that has been pumped into building this network, it is pretty amazing they can offer it at this current price point.

Gadling gear review – Epson Artisan 810 printer

by Scott Carmichael on

Last year, we took the time to review the Epson Artisan 700 printer. Just like in that article, I’ll explain why I feel a good printer deserves some attention here on Gadling. Photos are an essential part of traveling – virtually ever traveler has made the switch to digital, so having access to a professional quality printer is a must in my opinion. If you are going to invest in a photo printer, it really does pay to pick the best you can get.

The Epson Artisan 810 is the newest member of the Artisan lineup, and it offers an amazing array of features.

The Artisan 810 combines a pro-grade printer with a very impressive scanner/copier and a fax machine. Inside the device is WiFi, ethernet and USB connectivity as well as a multifunction card reader and a USB port for camera connectivity and device charging.

Unlike most printers, the Artisan 810 offers the print sources – it can hold regular paper and photo paper at the same time. In addition to this, it also offers a built in CD printing tray. And to top it all off, the Artisan 810 even features a duplex unit, for double sided printing.

The Artisan 810 uses the same print cartridges as the Artisan 700 we reviewed, and as with that one, the quality is simply astounding. With the right color settings, I can’t see a difference between prints made on the Artisan 810, and those printed at my local warehouse store.

The scanner portion of the Artisan 810 is better than anything I’ve ever seen on any all-in-one device. Normally, these scanners feel like a cheap afterthought, and really only work for the occasional scan. The scanning unit in the 810 is brilliant – not only does it make fantastic scans, it also offers professional options like dust removal, color correction and back light settings. The Epson Easy Photo Fix feature can help restore old photos and make them look like new again. For the first time in my life, I actually had fun playing with a scanner. The scanner works using the USB connection on the printer, or the ethernet / WiFi networking connection.

You can scan to your PC or directly to an inserted memory card. The scanner can also produce PDF files without the need to convert anything.

Controlling the Artisan 810 is a real treat – on the front of the unit is a massive tilting touch panel. All the various features of the unit can be controlled through this panel. There are even various functions you can perform without the need for your computer. One of the neatest features is the “coloring book” setting – this scans a photo, and actually turns it into a coloring page for your kid(s). I went through about 30 photos making a personalized coloring book for my daughter.

The included software package includes a CD printing application, scanning application, printer driver update manager, settings application and a printer networking tool.

The Epson Artisan 810 retails for $299.99, but you can sometimes find it on sale at your electronics store for under $200, making it a real bargain. Especially this holiday season, I can highly recommend finding one as a gift for the photographer in your life.

Of course, as with most inkjet printers, the Artisan 810 has a real appetite for ink. The included cartridges are starter size, so you’ll need to invest in more ink after about 500 pages. These cartridges don’t come cheap – you need 5 colors and a black, and a total set will cost about $65 (or $85 for a high capacity set). This is in line with the ink cost of most printers nowadays.

PROS: Outstanding print quality, built in networking, double paper source, duplex unit, large touch screen
CONS: Hungry for ink, pricey

All in all, anyone who makes a lot of photos will get really good quality prints out of the Artisan 810. The scanner, copier and fax functions are outstanding, and its ability to connect over USB, WiFi and Ethernet make it a real all-rounder.