| Hot Shots: Tech That Keeps You on the Move
Even in the dog days of summer there's always some new tech tool to help a small business run more efficiently. Here's a quick look at a few of the latest products that can help keep you rolling along. Fresh Batteries for Old Laptops
Unleash your laptop you know, the older model that hasn't been further than three feet from a wall socket since its battery went to lithium ion heaven back in 2003. Even a thorough search on eBay failed to find a replacement for it. FreshBattery.com wants to get you mobile again, and so it recently launched its Legacy Power line of batteries designed for more than 1,500 models of aging laptops including those from HP, Compaq, IBM/Lenovo, Apple, Toshiba, Sony and Dell. Most batteries start to lose their full charge capability at about two years.
Digital music stand
A digital music display stand includes an operating unit containing processing structure, memory and a display.
Patent Agent: Nixon & Vanderhye, PC - Arlington, VA, US
Patent Inventor: Myra Gabbasovna Kumarova
Applicaton #: 20070175316 Class: 084609000 (USPTO)
Related Patents: Music, Instruments, Electrical Musical Tone Generation, Data Storage, Digital Memory Circuit (e.g., Ram, Rom, Etc.), Note Sequence
Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims
BACKGROUND AND SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
[0001] The musician's music stand is a popular device used by the novice and experienced musician. It is a simple concept that allows the musician a place for his or her music.
Yet another Toshiba battery recall
Toshiba has been forced to issue yet another battery recall due to safety fears, its fourth in barely a year. The recall, issued through the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, recalls some of Toshiba's Satellite A100, Satellite A105 and Tecra A7 ranges that are powered by batteries manufactured by Sony. Some 1,400 laptops are thought to be affected. "Over a relatively short period, certain incidents occurred where certain battery packs installed in Toshiba portable computers caught fire," said the company in a statement. "Based on its investigation, Sony Corporation, supplier of the subject batteries, concluded that certain battery cells manufactured in a specific manufacturing lot could be affected by a certain issue that could potentially lead to a safety issue." It's been a bad year for Toshiba and other laptop manufacturers that use batteries manufactured by Sony.
Dollar remittances $1.1B in June
Dollar remittances from Filipinos working overseas totaled $1.1 billion in June, bringing the level in the first six months of the year to $7.03 billion, up 18 percent from a year earlier. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas deputy governor Diwa Guinigundo raised the forecast on remittance level this year to $15 billion from earlier target of $14 billion. Guinigundo said the new forecast was equivalent to about 11 percent of GDP and more than 50 percent of forex reserves. .
Holidays mean time in the gym, not the Hard Rock Cafe
Nowadays pre-season is all bleep tests, pliametrics and heart-rate monitors; in short, a million light years away from what it used to be. Pre-season used to be a dreaded phrase. It meant fines for overweight players and a brutal blow-out-the-cobwebs training regime to blast the summer holiday excess out of you. You'd come back from Tenerife, Spain or Dublin - having stuffed your face full with burgers and ice creams - and the first thing the gaffer would say was: 'Right. Five-mile cross country run.' I don't think I ever ran a whole cross country. I dreaded it. I just couldn't do it. Anything over 10 minutes and I was knackered. .
Cowon Throws 16 Gigs of Multimedia in Your Pocket
The crazy kooks at Cowon are prepared to release not one, but two portable multimedia devices that grant you access to a full 16GB of music and videos while on the go. First up, we have the iAudio7, which comes with 16GB of internal memory. We can't say for certain, but we think that they're doing the flash thing here and not a spinning around the clock kind of hard drive. The second device is the Cowon D2. It only has 8GB of (flash?) memory under the hood, but you can effectively double that storage through the provided SDHC expansion card slot, bringing the total memory capacity to -- you guessed it -- 16 gigabytes. The Cowon D2 is also available in a DMB-touting variant. The Cowon iAudio7 16Go has been priced at 299000 KRW (US$320), whereas the D2 8Go+8Go receives an MSRP of 419000 KRW (US$449).
PSP2? Not quite
FOR months, rumors of the PSPs second coming have been circulating around the net, finally we get some answers. And although it isnt quite the successor to Sonys portable gaming console, youve been expecting, Sony has made some pretty interesting changes to its design. The first rumors came from a UK event to launch the PSP in Education initiative, where Sony Computer Entertainment Europe managing director Ray Maguire called the current version of the PSP the first iteration of the hardware and that a smaller, lighter version would be coming in the future. Sony, however, made a quick turnaround saying that the comments regarding decreasing the size of the PSP were made in the general context that almost all consumer electronics shrink over time as advances are made. In June, Sony updated a patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, which showed a diagram of a possible new PSP model that featured a swivel screen and a way to switch between using it as a games machine and a mobile phone.
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