A digital picture frame, that does more than just shows your photos!

The new Pandigital with PanTouch 8 inch digital photo frame has a decent resolution of 800-by-600 pixels with a 4:3 aspect ratio. The PanTouch screen lets you access photos and control the display using the touch screen or the included remote control. There’s also a limited set of controls located directly on the back of the frame. So you don’t misplace the remote control it has a metal back and there’s a place for it to “stick” on the back of frame. Kind of clever, I think. You can view photos like pages in a photo album with a page turn effect by using a forward or backward swipe motion on the touch matte. You can also set up a slide show with various fades and wipes. You can store your JPEG photos, MP3 audio, and AVI videos on the internal 1 GB flash memory. Intelligent compression software allows the frame to hold up to 3,200 images without any distortion or cropping done. For even more photos, the frame has a built-in card reader that supports CF I, CF II, SD, MS, MS Pro, MMC, xD, Micro Drive memory cards and USB memory drives. It also features stereo speakers, single picture display, clock and calendar. The older model has 512MB of memory, but the link below is for the new 1GB unit. For all these features, the price is really good. Under $100 at BH Photo.  There are optional Bluetooth & WiFi add-ons.

BH Photo sell its for $99.99:  http://tinyurl.com/lk5t79

 Company website: www.pandigital.net

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It's new from Microsoft, and it's pretty neat! Yeah, for real.

I like the new Zune HD. It’s easily the best Zune Microsoft has come out with. Rather than update the old Zune, it seems they wisely threw it out and started over. The high tech-look black metal back, and 3.3” vivid 16:9 OLED display is bright and attention getting. It weights just 2.6 ounces and is only 8.9 mm thick. A press-once on/off button on the top and a home button at the bottom of the screen are the only controls on the front. Once on, use the touch screen to slide your screen-saver up and the navigation screen choices are revealed. You can wirelessly buy, stream, and update your music and games via a WiFi connection. You also can stream songs over WiFi directly to your Zune HD. With my so-so eyesight websites seemed small, but you can tap the screen to zoom in and make things bigger. You type via a QWERTY touch-screen keyboard. It took a few minutes for me to get the hang of where to hit the screen to type the letter I wanted. A unique feature is the built HD Radio. You get better sound, a lot of choices and it’s free. There are two models right now. The Zune HD 32 GB ($220)holds up to 10 hours of high definition video; 48 hours of standard definition video; 8,000 songs; or 25,000 pictures. Double that for the 64GB (Platinum) model ($290). You can use your Zune to watch 720p HD movies on your HDTV. To do that you’ll need the optional (About $90) Zune HD & AV Dock. (It’s video out only, you can’t use the dock to record shows to the Zune.) The Zune HD also plays your HD videos on the go on its own bright OLED screen. But on the player videos are downscaled to 480 x 272.  Music wise, Leo loves Zune pass. You pay $14.95 a month to play all the music you want. Like other play & pay systems when you stop paying, you lose your music. But, Zune Pass has a nice difference! You get to own 10 songs you downloaded forever! So it’s more like paying $4.95 a month assuming you buy a lot of songs monthly. There is a ton more features, which you can read about here:

 www.zune.com

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Charge 4 gadgets with just one AC plug.

Charge4All is a new portable charging mat that makes it easy to charge four handheld device at one time for a single AC power source. True to form, as soon as I started to describe this device Leo was on the web buying one! It’s really simple to use. You unroll the soft, silicon mat, which is used as a secure place to lay out the small electronics you want to charge. The AC adapter plug goes into the wall socket and the other end plugs into the multi-charger, which has four charging ports. The Charge4All ships with the mat, the multi-charger and five of the most popular smart charging plugs, including: iPod/iPhone, Mini USB, Micro USB, Samsung SCH, and LG Chocolate. Even though they say LG Chocolate it works with other models. I used it earlier today to charge my new LG EnV3. This is an easy way to recharge all of your electronic devices, including iPhones/iPods, cell phones, mp3 players, Bluetooth devices, PDA’s, digital cameras, portable GPS's, and more. The company will offer up to 29 different additional smart plugs via its website that adapt to almost all handheld devices on the market today. You get the five smart plugs mentioned above with the kit, and can buy additional plugs for $4.95 each. A car adaptor is also available for charging devices on the road. (I believe Leo bought that too!) Remember that this is for charging small devices only. The company wants reporters to make sure people understand that the Charge4All Portable Charging Mat is not designed for charging laptop computers or other high-current devices. (But you knew that!!) Price is $29.95. (I was originally told $39.95, so the new price is really good to my mind.)

For additional information, please visit www.charge4all.net.

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The latest version of the popular LG EnV line, the EnV3

The EnV3 is the third in a series of very successful EnV phones from LG. Each new version updates the camera and other features. I’ve had all 3 versions. The newest version uses Verizon’s high speedEV-DOnetwork. It features a nicely redesigned keyboard and an updated 3 megapixel camera with LED flash. TheEnV3 has a small, easy-to-read  (1.6”) external display. The numeric keypad is now much larger, with easier to push keys. When you flip the phone open, there’s larger 2.6” internal display and full QWERTY keyboard. Push the dedicated button if you want to compose and send a text message quickly. When I travel, I use that a lot. Unlike the earlier models, this one includes a single charge/data cable. The USB end of the cable goes into the AC plug adapter to charge the phonevia a wall socket. It still uses microSD cards, and it still has a 2.5mm headphone jack. I wish that had changed to the 3.5mm standard. Since the EnV3 supports Bluetooth stereo, having a 3.5mm headphone jack may not be that important. As with all 3 of the LG phones, it has what I consider remarkable sound from stereo speakers which must be tiny, because the phone is so compact! The only strange thing about the keyboard is that the space bar is very small, but it didn’t turn out to be a problem when texting.  A 950mAh battery powers the phone, and I was surprised how many texts and emails I could read and send on a single charge. The earlier version had just 9 speed dial locations; this one has 998. Now I need to get more friends! It’s $79.95 with 2 year contact, and of course that'safter therebate. It’s available in Slate Blue & Maroon. I have the Slate Blue, but it sort of looks like black to me. The maroon does look maroon! Either color, I think this is a great value in a cell phone. Verizon only.

www.verizonwireless.com

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Buy songs for 4 cents each! Yes 4 cents!

The Sansa slotRadio is a strange concept, that you just might like. It’s an MP3 player that ships preloaded with 1,000 songs! And there’s an onboard radio, all housed in a tiny techie clip-on package. This could be just the thing for the person who is too lazy to upload new music, or doesn’t have the time to download music to their computer & then upload it to their player. Or maybe they don’t know how. Or how about, they don’t even have a computer! Well adding new music to slotRadio couldn’t be easier. Take out one micro SD card and put in another, and you’ve added 1,000 new songs! Of course this sometimes takes a bit of time because those micro SD cards are ridiculously small, so don't lose it! One 1,000 song slotRadio cards (about 50 hours of music) comes with the player. New slotRadio cards are $40 each for 1,000 songs. Right now there’s a small selection, but SanDisk says more albums are on the way. Categories include Rock, Hip-Hop, Country, 80s/90s music, etc. Something else you should know. SlotRadio cards have their own proprietary digital rights management system which means you can’t copy them. If you lose the slotRadio music card, you won’t have a back up. But again, look at the per-song cost. 1,000 songs $40 – that’s 4 cents a song! Other things to be aware of. You can’t go back to repeat a song. You have to wait until it comes around again 999 songs later! You can however, skip forward. The title shows on the player’s screen, along with the title of the next song in the cue. I found the headphones had pretty good sound considering they’re included in the price. Also some of the older songs sounded a bit distorted if you crank up the volume, but hey they weren’t made in the digital age. If you like the 1,000 songs for $40 idea and you own a Sansa Fuze, you’re in luck! If you download the latest software at the SanDisk website, your Fuze will be able to play slotRadio cards. So you won’t have to buy the $99.99 slotRadio to be able to buy and play those 4 cents a song albums.

http://www.slotradio.org/

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