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Today marks the 10-year birthday of today’s digital audio standard - MPEG Audio Layer-3. 40 engineers from Fraunhofer IIS in Germany started work in 1992 to create a compressible format of digital audio. On July 14th, 1995, the .mp3 extension was born. Happy Birthday MP3 - we don’t know what life would be like with out you.
We all knew it was coming, and today is the day that Verizon Wireless launched the LG VX8100 which takes the place of the VX8000. The phone supports EV-DO and V-CAST, MiniSD, and BlueTooth. It has a 1.3 megapixel camera, 176x220 262,000 color TFT screen, and a media player. Look for this one to be priced at about $150 USD after rebate with a two year agreement.
Read More 
| Verizon Wireless
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The 2005 Emmy Award Nominations were announced early Thursday morning by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences from the Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre in Hollywood, California. A total of 434 separate nominations covering 88 categories and areas were announced, with HBO taking an astounding 93 nominations, followed by CBS (59), NBC (54), and ABC (51). Desperate Housewives and Will & Grace topped the list with 15 nominations each, including Outstanding Comedy Series. Take a look at the nominees in the top categories, and a couple other categories that might be of interest.
Click to continue reading The Final Cut: 2005 Emmy Nominations
Latest Gear Live Videos
I must get this keyboard, by any means necessary. Check it out - the keyboard uses OLED to display the keys, and thusly, they are all configurable. As you can see in the image, a few smart keys have been programmed to start specific applications. You can also change the layout display to match that of a first-person shooter for example. Just awesome. Check out more pictures of this marvel after the jump.
Click to continue reading Optimus OLED Keyboard With Customizable Layout
SanDisk Announces 512 MB Transflash/MicroSD
Posted by Sparky Categories: Accessories, Corporate News,
SanDisk today announced their support of Transflash - although in a somewhat backwards way. They have announced a new product offering called MicroSD - which happens to be identical to and “backwards compatible” with Transflash. The big news here is that they have doubled the size of the thumbnail sized memory cards. A 512 MB card is expected to retail for less the $70 and be available next month. Perfect timing for the supposed iTunes phone from Apple and Motorola. A 1GB and 2GB version are both in the works and should be available in the next year.
Read More | Sandisk MicroSD Press Release
So I know that Japan is renowned for it’s zen mentality, and ninja hoards, but this is amazing. Some people in Japan have made an art form of carving pencils into various shapes and chains. These are all normal pencils that have been painstakingly carved. I can’t begin to imagine the tools used, or how steady a hand this takes!
Read More | Pencil carvings
Read More | More pencil carvings
For all Windows users out there that are jealous of the unique user interface offered by OS X’s dock, this one is for you. A brilliant little Windows application called RK Launcher is now in beta, and it adds a dock-like interface to Windows XP. With support for themes, PNG’s and ICO’s and with smooth amazing animations,RK Launcher is a versatile and great taskbar replacement.
Read More | RK Launcher
Recently VOIP technologies such as Skype, Vonage and Gizmo have really come to focus in the telecommunications marketplace. With this surge in VOIP traffic of course the question arises of how to get your voice into a computer in the clearest possible way. Companies like Vonage solve this problem by giving you a router which enables you to use a standard telephone with your VOIP service. Technologies like Skype and Gizmo get a bit more tricky. Most laptop computers come with built in speakers and a microphone, and most desktops feature the ability to plug in a microphone and speakers as well, but with that solution echo’s and poor sound quality can be a significant problem. Luckily headsets featuring high quality headphones and a boom mic such as the Sennheiser PC 150 enable you to get high quality audio for use in VOIP, Podcast creation, gaming, and other voice activated applications.
Unfortunately, upon purchasing my headset I discovered that my powerbook had only a line in,and lacked a microphone input - something a fair number of laptops suffer from. Enter the Griffin iMic USB sound card. The iMic is a great little accessory that enables you to use additional headsets and a variety of microphones or add an extra line in to your Mac or PC. Click through the jump for a full review.
Click to continue reading Griffin iMic Review
Gear Live Podcast: Gizmo, iPod Color, Opera, Netzero, Gender Detection
Posted by Edwin Soto Categories: Features, Misc. Tech, Podcasts,
Today, we invite you back to some of our staff babblings about:
- The iPod Color
- NetZero HiSpeed 3G
- Opera’s BitTorrent Support
- Baby Gender Dectection
- The Participatory Culture Foundation
Click here to download the MP3, or you can just subscribe to the Gear Live Podcast feed. Conversely, you can now subscribe to us directly from iTunes.
Voices: Andru Edwards, Edwin Soto, Sparky, Oscar Cantu.
Length: 58:39, 12.4 MB
Don’t forget to vote for us on Podcast Alley! Also, be sure to check out the Gear Live Odeo Channel, and subscribe there are well. You can even tag each episode with keywords.
Listen | Gear Live Podcast
In case you missed it, the Mozilla Foundation has released Firefox 1.0.5 from beta, and it is now available for download. Basically, this one patches a few security holes and improves browser stability.
Read More | Firefox
