Tech, electronic, gadget Discussion

Getting ready to go shopping for the latest tech gadget for your car? Perhaps it’s one of those hands-free phone kits, or maybe a GPS unit. But where do you start? What information is the most important when you’re buying car tech? We’ve listed a few things we think are the most important for you to remember as you head to the store:

1. Not all vehicles are created equal. This is one of the most important things to keep in mind when buying any car accessory, especially with tech gadgets. When it comes to stereos, amplifiers, equalizers and other components, you want to make sure there is an installation kit for your vehicle. This will ensure that the wiring harnesses match up and you won’t have to splice into any factory wiring.

Another thing to consider is where you will mount accessories. Take, for example, a cell phone holder or GPS holder. You want to make sure you have enough real estate on your dashboard for the device in question, or at least have an alternate site picked out where you will mount the device. Most cradles of this type that hold tech devices are fairly easy to install, especially when compared to the aforementioned stereo unit.

2. Location, location, location: It’s everything. When you purchase a GPS unit, the idea is that you will be able to find out what your location is. There are several factors that affect how accurate a GPS unit is and how fast it can pull up location information. All of this is key to the decision to buy a new unit. One thing you don’t want is a pretty unit with bells and whistles that fails to work fast enough or precisely enough for your needs. Keeping this in mind, here are the key features to look for when buying a new GPS unit:

• Accuracy is determined by how many satellites the receiver can pick up. The average unit will be accurate to within 15 meters. If you need greater accuracy, you will need more satellite coverage.
• Maps are half of the reason for getting a GPS. Make sure you’re satisfied with the map software included and that it features the things you will be looking for while on the road, such as gas stations, restaurants, and hotel locations.
• If you’re considering a portable unit that can be carried out of the car, look for weather-resistant features.
• If you plan to go hands-free, make sure your GPS has a touchscreen. This makes it much easier to use while driving. Even better is a unit with voice recognition for certain commands. What you don’t want is anything that will distract you from the task of driving.

3. Accessories come in all different shapes and sizes. There is no real “one size fits all” when it comes to accessories for your tech gadgets. You will find generic items for sale that claim to be universal, but usually they don’t match up as nicely as accessories made for a specific brand or model of equipment. Gadget manufacturers usually have their own line of accessories that you can purchase when you get your new device. However, just because it’s made by the manufacturer doesn’t mean it’s the best option available.

Shop around and make sure that the accessory you want isn’t available at a cheaper price somewhere else. In fact, you just might find a better quality product on the market than the one the manufacturer is offering for sale.

4. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Not everyone will want to tackle such a daunting task as car stereo installation, but it’s also important that you have the right tools if you do. Some dashboards require special screwdrivers in order to get to the mounting brackets for the factory stereo unit. Check your gadget or accessory to make sure you have the proper tools for the installation job. When in doubt, visit a professional car audio shop and get some advice. After all, they are the professionals, and they do it for a living.

More stories from Tecca:

• Recommended accessories for GPS and car tech
• Buyer’s guide to car tech / GPS
• The right digital camera package for your budget

— You know that shiny smartphone you bought six months ago? There’s an even better one hitting the market right about now. Or how about that flat-panel TV you bought last year? Now it comes in 3-D.

With the ever-quickening pace of technological advances, you can be left in the digital dust.

Retailers have a solution for consumers — and for themselves. They will buy back your old gadget in hopes that you turn around and purchase the next best gadget on their shelves.

Under these buyback programs, big-box retailers and online merchants give cash or credit for a piece of used electronics. Best Buy, the world’s largest consumer electronics retailer, launched its program this year.

“Technology is changing so fast that the consumer a lot of times feels they’re being left behind, so they’ll postpone buying,” said Cynthia Jasper, an expert in buying behavior and head of the consumer science department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “So it’s a way to make the consumer feel at ease.”

For retailers, buyback programs are another way to lure customers into stores to spend on pricey gadgets such as smartphones, laptops, tablet computers and televisions. Retailers also see buyback programs as an alternative revenue stream because they can sell used products through online outlet sites.

One California startup, ecoATM, has put its own twist on the concept in an automated kiosk that accepts used gadgets and pays the consumer in cash or gift cards. The company behind the Redbox movie rental kiosks, Coinstar Inc., has invested in ecoATM, which has deployed some of the machines in California.

Retail industry experts say the consumer electronics market is evolving the way markets in used cars or textbooks did. And if consumers believe their gadgets will retain some value, they might be more willing to upgrade sooner rather than risk the device becoming outdated and worthless, industry experts said.

For years, early adopters of gadgets have used eBay and other online outlets to sell their devices and used the cash to defray the cost of the latest models. With the new buyback programs, that kind of electronics consumerism could become the norm.

Many consumers already trade in, and up, their cell phones, as those who lock into contracts are often given credit to upgrade to newer models. Sprint, ATT and Verizon have introduced their own buyback programs, some of which aim to lure customers from other carriers.

“The electronics business is built on people upgrading their products,” said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD Group, a technology research firm. “Anything to increase the turnover is a benefit to the industry.”

Consumer electronics retailers typically have thin profit margins, but some are finding a lucrative market in buying and reselling lightly used gadgets.

Dale Rogers, a logistics and supply chain expert and a professor at Rutgers University, estimates that the secondary market for consumer electronics is worth about $13 billion in annual sales, or about 10 percent of the total consumer electronics market in the United States.

Rogers said that brick-and-mortar retailers increasingly feel threatened by online commerce and are strategizing ways to keep consumers coming through the doors. Best Buy’s program, for one, requires customers to come into the store to sell back products.

“The brick-and-mortar, big-box retail store is experiencing some difficulty these days,” Rogers said. “It’s real easy to buy online, so these buyback programs are really a great way to get you into the store.”

Under Best Buy’s program, the consumer who buys a gadget pays an upfront fee, which varies on the type of product, to participate and is guaranteed a resale price of 10 percent to 50 percent of the item’s original price. Most gadgets, except for TVs, have to be sold back within two years to qualify for a resale. Televisions have a four-year window for resale.

Best Buy then resells the products through its outlet center or other online channels, or recycles them. Best Buy officials say that with the fee, consumers are guaranteed a minimum return. The company also promotes the convenience of in-store resales as a key benefit.

TechForward, a startup company in California, has been offering this guaranteed-buyback model for several years, partnering with such clients as Radio Shack and CompUSA, which offer the option to consumers. The terms of TechForward’s program are similar to Best Buy’s. The two companies are in litigation over Best Buy’s creation of its buyback program.

Some consumer advocates say there are other options for selling used electronics without paying an upfront fee.

Gazelle.com, a Boston-based company founded in 2006, gives consumers the going market price for a gadget, whether it’s a smartphone or a tablet.

It also has developed its own technologies for quickly assessing the worldwide market for electronics. Gazelle users can get an online price quote for their equipment, ship the product for free to the company and get paid within two weeks.

Some of Gazelle’s retail partners include Walmart, Costco and Kmart. Consumers can trade in electronics through these retailers’ websites and get store credit, or they can opt for cash back.

Kristina Kennedy, a Gazelle spokeswoman, said the company calls the nascent industry “recommerce.” The March 2 unveiling of Apple Inc.’s iPad 2 led to a watershed moment for the online service. Owners of the original iPad flocked to the website and sold 2,400 units on the day that Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the second version.

“That became the biggest day of business for us in the company’s history,” Kennedy said.

“What’s really spurred our business is the pace of innovation. The last couple years have seen some very exciting products to come out in consumer electronics.”

gsentementes2@tribune.com

BALTIMORE —
You know that shiny smart phone you bought six months ago? There’s a better one hitting the market right about now. Or how about that flat-panel TV you bought last year? Now they come in 3-D.

With the ever-quickening pace of technological advances, you can be left in the digital dust.

Retailers now have a solution for consumers — and for themselves. They will buy back your old gadget in hopes that you turn around and buy the next best gadget on their shelves.

Under these “buyback” programs, big-box retailers and online merchants give cash or credit for a piece of used electronics. Best Buy, the world’s largest consumer electronics retailer, launched its program earlier this year.

“Technology is changing so fast that the consumer a lot of times feels they’re being left behind, so they’ll postpone buying,” said Cynthia Jasper, an expert in buying behavior and chair of the consumer science department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “So it’s a way to make the consumer feel at ease.”

For retailers, buyback programs are another way to lure customers into stores to spend on pricey gadgets such as smart phones, laptops, tablet computers and televisions. Retailers also see buyback programs as an alternative revenue stream because they can sell used products through online outlet sites.

One California start-up has put its own twist on the concept. Its vending machine model, called the “ecoATM,” is an automated kiosk that accepts used gadgets and pays the consumer in cash or gift cards. The company behind the Redbox movie rental kiosks, Coinstar, has invested in ecoATM, which has already deployed some of the machines in California.

Retail industry experts say the consumer electronics market is evolving the way markets in used cars or used textbooks did. And if consumers believe their gadgets will retain some value, they might be more willing to upgrade sooner rather than risk the device becoming outdated and worthless, industry experts said.

For years, early adopters of gadgets have used eBay and other online outlets to eventually sell them and use the cash to defray the cost of the latest models. With the new buyback programs, that kind of electronics consumerism could become the norm.

Many consumers already trade in — and up — their cell phones, as those who lock into contracts are often given credit to upgrade to newer models. Sprint, ATT and Verizon have introduced their own buyback programs, some of which aim to lure customers from other carriers.

“The electronics business is built on people upgrading their products,” said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD Group, a technology research firm. “Anything to increase the turnover is a benefit to the industry.”

The ongoing disasters in Japan could lead to shortages of tech gadgets for American consumers — and headaches for Silicon Valley companies.

Japan is a key producer — and in some cases the dominant one — of many components at the heart of high-tech items such as PCs, smartphones and Apple’s iPad. Production and distribution of many of those parts has been disrupted by the earthquake, tsunami, nuclear crisis and electrical blackouts that have roiled Japan since last week.

Just how significant those disruptions will prove to be is still a matter of educated guesswork. But they probably will affect a broad swath of the tech industry, some industry analysts said, and will grow worse the longer the crisis goes on.

“We’ve never had this much of the electronics supply chain impacted in our history,” said Dale Ford, an analyst who covers the semiconductor industry and supply chain for market research firm IHS iSuppli. “There’s nothing even to compare it to.”

One problem local tech companies face is uncertainty over which factories and industries are affected and to what degree.

“A lot of (valley) companies are trying to assess what’s going on” in Japan, said James Brehm, senior consultant for the mobile industry at consulting firm Frost Sullivan. “They’re trying to get in contact with organizations that are disrupted over there.”

‘Too early to tell’

Early indications have been mixed.

Some production facilities were badly damaged by the earthquake or subsequent tsunami. Others survived those events unscathed but have been hampered by the rolling blackouts that have been imposed to compensate for the loss of the nuclear power stations.

Shin-Etsu, which makes the silicon wafers underlying many of the latest microchips, reportedly has at least two factories offline because of the quake. Texas Instruments said earlier this week that one of its chip factories north of Tokyo suffered severe damages in the earthquake and wouldn’t be able to return to full capacity until September.

In contrast, Toshiba, a key producer of the flash memory found in many smartphones, tablets and other devices, reportedly brought its flash factories — which it jointly owns with SanDisk — back online soon after the quake.

“It’s still too early to tell. It’s probably going to be another week before we have a clear picture of where everything is and where everything is headed,” said Jim Handy, principal analyst and director at Objective Analysis.

But there are reasons for tech companies and customers to be concerned. For example, many parts for the iPad 2 — including its battery, storage, memory and the glass for its touchscreen — are made in Japan, according to iSuppli.

Little excess capacity

It’s not just the iPad that could be affected. About 23 percent to 24 percent of all the semiconductors produced globally are made in Japan, according to iSuppli. And the country’s manufacturing base is even more important when it comes to certain semiconductor parts or materials used to make chips.

About 50 percent of the 300-millimeter silicon wafers — the raw material for the most advanced computer chips — is produced in Japan, according to Gartner, a technology research firm. The country also produces more than half of some key materials used in photolithography, the process that makes chips out of silicon.

Japan also manufactures about 90 percent of an obscure chemical called bismaleimide triazine, which is crucial to the production of the latest microchips used in devices such as smartphones and laptops, said Klaus Rinnen, an analyst who covers semiconductor manufacturing at Gartner.

The risk is not that those parts will not be completely unavailable, Rinnen said. Rather, it’s that shortages will be hard to replace by ramping up manufacturing elsewhere because there’s not much excess capacity to tap into.

“Silicon prices will likely go up,” he said. “And I’m not even talking about (what happens if there’s) a longer-term shortage.”

Larger companies such as Apple should be somewhat protected, although they may experience spot shortages. They typically lock in long-term contracts with multiple suppliers of components, protecting them from price spikes and shortages. But smaller tech manufacturers, who tend to have slim profit margins, could be unable to acquire key components or be forced to pay high prices for them, some analysts said.

Other analysts and tech companies played down the risks. Representatives for Cypress Semiconductor and Nvidia both said they didn’t expect the situation in Japan to have much of an impact in the near term. Meanwhile, Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said, “There is nothing in the supply chain to say we can’t meet all of our commitments to our customers. We think our first-line suppliers came through (the quake) in reasonably good shape.”

Mercury News staff writer Steve Johnson contributed to this report. Contact Troy Wolverton at 408-920-5021. Follow him at Twitter.com/troywolv.

A Derbyshire manufacturer has assisted Channel 5 technology programme The Gadget Show in creating a carbon fibre luge. Epm: technology created the product as the programme makers attempted to set a new street luge land-speed record.

Epm: technology manufactures components and parts for vehicles, including Formula 1 cars.

Show presenter Jason Bradbury attempted the record lying on his back on a carbon fibre luge built by epm:technology in Draycott, which was powered by two mini jet engines.

The project allowed epm:technology work with Joel King, who was the first person to use jet engines on a street luge and set a world record average speed of 112.7mph in 2007.

Graham Mulholland, epm:technology’s managing director, said: “The street luge was a great project to be involved in, not least because it will showcase on prime-time TV how composite components are made and will act as an advert for high tech engineering, which is never a bad thing.

“I can’t reveal what happened on the day, but the craft performed well, Jason stayed safe and for us it represented a job well done.”

Contact Information Gustavo Salazar Spokesperson Gizmoshub.com 281 854 9183 contact@gizmoshub.com

Online gadget review and news site GizmosHub.com is helping technology fans keep up to date with the latest product launches, breakthroughs and developments from the world of consumer electronics, covering a full scope of the coolest gadgets and gizmos on the market.

(14 March 2011) – Online gadgets and gizmos news site GizmosHub.com is helping tech fans the world over keep up to date with the latest hi-tech gadgets, by constantly reviewing the latest launches, news and developments from the world of consumer electronics.

From new product launches through to newly invented gadgets and gizmos, GizmosHub.com provides gadget enthusiasts with a central focus for learning more about the gadget market, with fresh views and opinions accompanying news and updates from across the world.

Gustavo Salazar, a spokesperson for GizmosHub.com said that the website represented a one-stop-shop for gadgets fans and techies looking for the low-down on the latest cool gadgets to hit the market.

“Gadget fans, like us, are constantly looking for updates on the latest gadgets and gizmos, and we’re always eager to be one step ahead in learning what’s new on the market, or what’s just around the corner. With the pace of change in technology now faster than ever, keeping up to date with new developments is both exciting and fascinating for gadget fans. That’s why we’re dedicated to keeping GizmosHub.com on top of the latest trends and releases”

“At GizmosHub.com, we’re passionate about technology, and we’re absolutely devoted to bringing you the latest news and information from the world of gadgets and gizmos. Whether it’s the latest hardware or software reviews, tips and tricks on how to get the most out of your gadgets or simply news about the latest forthcoming gadget releases, we’ve got it all at GizmosHub.com.”

GizmosHub.com is an online blog and resource site dedicated to hi-tech gadgets and gizmos, at the cutting edge of new product development and technology releases.

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GizmosHub.com is an online gadget review and news site, keeping a constant eye on the latest hi-tech gadgets and gizmos from around the globe. From news and updates about the latest iPad and the hottest hardware through to the Internet, social networking and quirky gadgets and gizmos, GizmosHub.com is the ideal place to keep up to date with goings on.

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Apple iPhone 5 May Drop NFC Support

Posted on 15 March 2011. Tags: apple, iphone

There’s always been huge speculation regarding the next generation iPhone – people are very much curious to know whether the next gen iPhone will include this or that. Will it flaunt a larger display screen or have an improved camera etc.
According to a source the upcoming iPhone will not attach NFC chip which is quite contradictory to what we have heard previously. NFC is a useful feature that permits the device to make really-short distance transactions just by signaling it in front of an NFC reader.
The transactions may be of different types – you can pay your bus fair, or buy a meal at McDonalds. Hence the usability of the advanced NFC technology is immense and when a device is combined with such programmable NFC chip it becomes a revolutionary gadget. But why this feature has been eliminated from Apple’s upcoming iPhone is not clear. May be Apple is in planning of making its own NFC-driven technology. Untill then NFC won’t be available in the iPhone 5.

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