Devices Site

The ipod generation will probably suffer from tinnitus a few years down the road after having those signature white earbuds stuck inside for many a year now, but fret not - Neuromonics claims to have discovered a method that treats tinnitus by fighting music with…music. It uses a simple audio player that changes the way it plays music and accompanying sounds over time, where the ringing in your ears will slowly diminish over time.

For the first two months, the music mix includes a noise, which some describe as water in a shower, to cover the tinnitus. In the third month, the shower sound is removed and patients are instructed to turn up the music just loud enough so the tinnitus is audible only during the quiet parts. The idea is the brain will be gradually trained to ignore the tinnitus. After six months, patients use the device as needed.

Treatment isn’t cheap though, as initial fitting and counseling on tinnitus management ranges between $3,500 to $6,000 for the six-month treatment. One cheap way to avoid tinnitus? Take better care of your ears, and don’t turn the volume all the way up.

Posted Mar 5th 2008 8:56PM by Darren Murph
Filed under: cellphones
Well, would you look at this? Not quite a year after we got some pretty strong whiffs of the SGH-F110 fitness phone, the rumor has at long last become a reality. Heck, even the model name stayed the same. Slated to launch in the UK next month, the Samsung / Adidas F110 (miCoach) is out to take on the mighty Nike+ training system, and besides the obligatory heartbeat monitor and step counter, the handset also boasts a built-in mp3 player / FM tuner, two-inch LCD and a two-megapixel camera. Additionally, the currently unpriced phone will chime in when you’re not running hard enough, but feel free to drown it out with jams packed on the 1GB of internal memory.

[Via Pocket-lint]

Alongside decidedly flashier announcements, ASUS has also chosen CeBIT to debut its diminutive, modestly-specced P320, a Windows Mobile 6 Professional piece sans 3G that we first spied last month. It’s not going to turn any heads, but hey, that’s what the ZX1’s all about; the P320 is really here to get down in the trenches, get dirty, and get some work done, all while making sure it doesn’t dwarf the hand it’s in. We’d prefer, oh, any other color besides flesh tone, but thanks to a positively miniature 99 x 55 x 13.35mm outline, 2 megapixel camera, and WiFi, we might just be willing to overlook it. What’s more, there’s no mention of GPS on the spec sheet, but we’re going to venture a guess the necessary circuitry is on board thanks to a side button conveniently labeled — you guessed it — “GPS.” Check more pictures after the break, or just hold out for a release whenever ASUS gets around to it. Your call.
[Source]

The Compass 597 USB EV-DO Rev.A modem from Sierra Wireless might look simple from the outside, but it is very different from its rivals thanks to the inclusion of a GPS receiver and the ability to connect an external antenna in order to boost reception in poor reception areas. Features include a microSD memory card slot that makes it a snap when adding memory, turning it into an instant portable storage device as well. The Compass 597 will be launched in Q2 2008, with theoretical figures of 3.1Mbps and 1.8Mbps for download and upload speeds respectively being bandied about. There is no word on network availability nor pricing as at press time.

The silver lining in this statistic is obviously that it’s not hundreds of thousands of spammers responsible for all of those unwanted e-mails. The question now is why aren’t any governments going after these guys and shutting them down. Of course, another method would be to get computers cleaned up and protected from becoming zombies. To me, that’s a much more difficult proposition.

This report was generated by Marshal Security.

Most HDTV buyers know that to receive HD / HDTV channels you need to be able to receive HD programming. Simply owning an HDTV will not enable you to watch HD channels / programming, you can buy a blu-ray player or hd dvd player to watch HD content from discs, but it you want HDTV channels you need to be able to receive them, and apparently only 5% of European HDTV owners receive HD programming.

Just last month ProSieben HD and Sat.1 HD in Germany were shut down untill 2010 due to lack of interest in the HD service. Over here in England the only real way to get HD programming / channels is via Sky HD.

Sky HD box will cost you a one off cost of £199, and £10 a month for the HD programming plus the normal subscription charges. I have recently got Sky HD and am very impressed with the 1080i broadcasting quality.

The same report also suggests that 20% of European homes will have and be watching HD programming by 2012. If you own a HDTV and want to get real HD channels, I suggest you sign up to Sky HD.

The Motorola U9 offers a 2.0 megapixel, 8x zoom camera with multi-shot feature as well as the following features:

* Quad-Band (GPRS Class 12/EDGE Class 12)

* 2.0”, QVGA, 262K TFT interior display
* 1.45”, 128 x 160, 65K OLED exteriro diplay
* Touch sensitive music keys
* Music synchronization compatible with Windows Media® Player 11
* Integrated music player
* Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP)
* USB 2.0
* 25 MB on-board user memory
* optional microSD memory card for up to 4GB of media
* CrystalTalk technology
* Video capture and playback, MPEG 4 3GPP, h.263
* Airplane mode
* Messaging via MMS, SMS, WVIM, EMS 5.04

Posted Mar 5th 2008 6:54PM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Digital Cameras, Storage Toshiba’s A and K series Gigashot HD camcorders already boast 100GB and 80GB of built-in storage, respectively, but if you want to keep some of that space free, you’ll soon be able to do so with Toshiba’s new tailor-made DVD burner, which will apparently let you both off-load data or record directly to DVD-Rs. What’s more, the drive also boasts composite, component and HDMI outputs to let you hook it up to your TV, and it thankfully includes a handy remote control as well. Look for this one to set you back ¥17,800 (or about $165) when it hits Japan on March 17th.

[Via Slash Gear]

Getting sick of playing chess against your friends? Want better competition? Maybe the Automated Electronic Chess Game can be a good challenge.

As the name suggests, this isn’t your traditional chess game. It uses plenty of electronics, so you have 136 levels to play and analyze. Additionally, the “computer” has an auto-play function, that can play the game by itself.

The pieces make use of a magnetic system in order to move, and in case you have to interrupt a game, just save it in the memory and continue playing afterwards.

The Automated Electronic Chess Game costs $250.

Automated chess pieces move effortly across the board as the computer analyzes, then counters your moves.

Product Page

Our friends from UPMCPortal have a video of the Gigabyte M528 on YouTube, take a look: