Gadgetory

this week on the CNET tech review highlights from the 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show how to make your own iPad stylus Dyson's new gadget is full of hot air and step away from this blu-ray player it's all coming up right now hi everyone i'm brian tong and welcome to the CNET tech review where we collect our hottest videos of the week and tell you what's good and what's bad in the world of tech and offer our own unique tech wisdom in the form of the bottom line let's start off with the good moly maybe on vacation right now but Brian Cooley has been hard at work sending back reports from the Frankfurt Auto Show here's a look at some of the highlights including a new concept from Land Rover and a Mercedes that works with your iPad what's ironic that Land Rovers defender isn't sold in the US these days because it doesn't need us crash standards kind of strange for a vehicle that's always been so tough and rugged it's like a little vault on wheels they're ready to bring it back this is one of the DC 100 concepts the idea here is to bring this forward in two different ways one's kind of sporty Cabriolet like the other one more traditional defender like this among the high-tech features I'm looking at one right here supposedly self-cleaning paint I want to see that work after you go through a big old muddy gully full of rocks right now technologies in the front of the car that look forward are interesting they have two things once called terrain I get it terrain it's a scanning technology that builds a 3d virtual map of what the terrain is in front of you and the car can say you know what you're coming up on a lump or a gully that I can't deal with why don't you go this way or that way and there's one called Wade a to technology that will figure out how deep the water is you think you're about to forward without clunking the car and tell you if you can actually do that they say the car can get through 750 millimetres of depth that's what that's about six and a half long cigarettes whatever that comes out to what is that about a yard here's one right out of double-oh-seven there's apparently a button inside the car they envisioned as extending the spikes on the tires I mean they're not spikes to kill people but just to get some grip inside all kinds of interesting technology check out this pop-up display we've seen this in cars even in production right now but if this goes into production this would actually snap about it's like a tablet you carry with you to do navigation on foot to continue your journey after you run to something you can't drive over anymore 8-speed automatic transmission right here part of an efficiency message I don't want to put any big old horse ev8 3m v6 in these cars anymore they're talking about 2-liter hybrid motors or even plug-in hybrids and the drive line on this vehicle would physically disconnect when you're not using all-wheel drive to further cut losses no place to put a key on this car that I see and even went to production there wouldn't be because they envisioned an RFID adventure key which would obviously be a lot better to have in your pocket when you're out in the mud and the wet then one of those actual physical electronic keys now this is a vision for maybe 2015 it's not going to be in your Land Rover showroom anytime soon but it does bring back the defender brand which they love to have on the showroom floor in the US as well as around the world well if your Volkswagen you don't just lay there like a dumbass and let Fiat get all the headlines with the 500 you answer it with this the Volkswagen up now this is a car it's in roughly the same class size wise it's below a golf by a significant margin in terms of overall footprint as well as in price we'll get to that in a minute now right now it's only slotted for European introduction but you can just about bank on it come into the US sooner than later now under the hood here you've got a pretty scrawny three cylinder one liter engine not sure that would come to the US one and if this car ever does they might up rate that for the American market get it close to 100 horsepower right now it's a sixty or a seventy five horsepower mill give or take with really good efficiency really clean low emissions this car will come stock with a city collision technology one that will look forward with ultrasonic or radar whatever they use to keep the car from rear-ending someone at low speeds that's usually the kind of technology that was only reserved for much more expensive cars wherever they came from but now we're seeing a lot of the small cars offer that as a differentiator okay so here I am six two plus in this little guy and as is always the paradox with little cars there's some of the roomiest inside because they have very thin door panels not a lot of filigree and built up consoles that make a car seem tight this car is entirely spacious for everyday driving it's not something going to take on a 3,000 mile trip and lay back in very simple instrument panel you've got what do we got here a little tiny tack on the left that's interesting fuel gauge on the right big speedometer finally that makes some sense too many cars are giving too much real estate to tachometers I love gauges as much as anybody but you know what the tach it's time for it to go it doesn't make a lot of sense anymore often you'll find color-keyed dash panels here that go with the car body that's very Fiat 500 not saying they copied them but that's kind of the style right now here's the most interesting thing Navigon makes a snap off portable infotainment unit I'm pretty sure it won't snap off here oh look at well what trusting people our Volkswagen friends are and here are your choices information about the car again because it's connected to the cars data bus when you dock it you can't do that with a standalone pnd here's your media player pictures CD player control because this again connects to your optical disk and car radio control against something your stand alone won't do your Bluetooth phone controls and Technology are in here and of course your navigation and map all that in a nice slim unit that is actually a portable electronic sort of a bidding you get when you buy this car we're starting to see a lot of carmakers go this way now the pre-orders begin shortly in Europe for this car in Germany in particular and by top of 2012 these are going to be out but again in the European market where they're pricing it at below 10000 euros I've been in this business too long to say oh just convert that to dollars it never works that way currency conversion aside but it's a cheap little car it's bringing up the bottom of the VW line and it's going to answer one big question why don't they bring the Polo to the US which slots down below the golf they're going to do this one instead that's a big old going door isn't it this is one of the bells of the ball here at Frankfurt 2011 the mirsini is f1 25 concept by the way the end of the name has an exclamation mark on it and for pretty good reason there's an awful lot of tech going on here first of all the powertrain is an electric motor out at each wheel one on each corner that's not too exotic totals of 313 horsepower but the torque of course would be right now but it's a hydrogen fuel cell car so you can go a thousand kilometers what's at 600 and something miles on a belly of hydrogen except it wouldn't be a belly of hydrogen it would be a body of hydrogen you see they're going to store the hydrogen compressed in cavities around the body and I think I've heard of that before in any of the various hydrogen concepts that are out there now let's talk about some of the technology that's more consumer electronics you see these doors as they go up and down those are gesture control so you walk up to the door and just go huh the door goes up and then the door goes down you've also got gesture control on that nice big display for the passenger if they want to go to the next track on a DVD or a CD they just do this kind of thing menu all this sort of thing is very much like Kinect for example the display to the right of the driver in the central tunnel it's a curved display totally unfocused done by some interesting new rear projection with a sort of an arc algorithm to make sure that all stays in focus from one projector beam that's amazing and then look at that display in front of the driver that's actually 3d you can't see that in our 2d stream of course now what's behind all those systems one of the most interesting things to me is a hundred percent Internet streamed infotainment so anything from the media to the weather to the news all these sources coming in they're thinking 100% streaming at this point let me show you interesting way to configure it so what Mercedes says is as cars get so complex and so rich with their infotainment and settings and configurability you need a way to do all that when you're not just sitting in the car that's one place but other times you've got more time to sit down and think how do I want to set my car up not sitting here in the driveway like some dork so they give you this very rich app that they've envisioned for the f1 25 let's just go to one part of this the entertainment block here I have a whole variety of sources information and entertainment news weather music the music for example I can take and drag down to this timeline which roughly maps to my route in navigation so these things are going to happen in order of the trip what's in the music this is all Napster powered right now they could have any number of partners though and this is again part of that all streaming entertainment system here are playlists I've over here here are Napster channels and again you can imagine anybody being in here this could be also Pandora it could be Spotify anyone is software is software this stuff gets really interesting as you start to go to that level I can bring a weather report down here whatever I want along my route or directly access it in here and of course there are many other settings and configurability options in here to set up a car that now has arguably maybe a thousand different configurations no two cars will be the same it's as they say it's like a smart phone you can sit in and no two smart phones are the same so you start to see how we connect the dots here and need a different interface oh one more thing I want to show you if it's a smart phone you can sit in I do sit in it check out the rear seat lounge that's like a corner group I'm gonna see anything that cool since like a 68 Eldorado I'm in hopefully that iPad control will trickle down into some more accessible Mercedes models it looks like the perfect way to design a road trip playlist or maybe the folks of Mercedes will expand their technology to other tablet models if so they couldn't go wrong with either the Galaxy Tab 10.1 or Sony's tablet s but if you're trying to pick which one to go with yourself hopefully this week's prize fight will help you decide what's up prize fight fans i'm brian tong and we're bringing you a nasty bloodbath between two duels for tops and tinny tablets it's a prize v punch-out with Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 Wi-Fi versus Sony's tablet s now our judges for this fight are senior at McDonald tablet tinkerbell senior editor Erik take it to the bank Franklin and myself Brian Tom now we'll take all three judges blind scores and adds them outs in the nearest tenth each round the final prize five score will be an average of all rounds using the same decimal system it's six rounds to the finish round one is designed Samsung brings the cookie-cutter tablet design we're used to seeing it has an amazing screen that pops and if you want one of the thinnest tablets on the market you'll be a happy camper here now Sony's tablet s is a bold design that strays from convention with its rolled back magazine design and it works although we wish it was thinner it's light easy to hold and stands out from the crowd Sony's tablet s takes round one with the four and the galaxy 10.1 gets a 3.3 next round as controls and user interface Samsung brings the TouchWiz interface here and it adds some cool new features like a screen capture button directly accessible on-screen a redesigned for Android services and quick access to a few utility apps but it's bright and bubbly feel takes away from the elegance and TouchWiz feels a little cartoonish at times now Sony brings a few customizations of their own on Android with a favorites drop-down to quickly access content you can customize moving apps to the top for quick access creates more space and it brings a more sleep grown-up design to Honeycomb Sony takes round two with the four and Samsung gets a 3.3 so after two rounds Sony leads by seven tenths of a point round three is features both tablets have front facing and rear cameras but the Galaxy Tab is so thin that there's not much room for anything else there's additional adapters for HDMI out and media cards but it's screen is arguably its best hardware feature the Sony Tablet S has a thicker design and you'll get a full size SD card slot and a USB port but its killer feature is its built-in universal remote functionality and it's DLNA compatibility for media streaming Sony takes another round with 3.7 and the tab gets a 2.7 next round is web browsing and multimedia Samsung's larger 10.1 inch screen really enhances the overall web and multimedia experience and you'll also have access to their media hubs for music movies and TV shows plus its rear camera is 8 megapixels and it takes excellent quality images now Sony's 9.4 screen is still great it has a 5 megapixel rear camera and it brings innovation to the web browser with its quick new option for faster page rendering it has a clever keyboard of its own plus Sony's suite of media apps for TV shows movies and music and gaming with their PlayStation brand brings content that will support the platform so guess who takes around four yup it's Sony again with the four and Samsung gets a three point seven so for averaging four rounds Sony still has a solid lead next round is performance bow tablets are snapping performers running one gigahertz dual-core ARM Cortex a9 processors and you won't feel a speed advantage between one or the other the Galaxy Tab brings its vibrant screen and a battery life around nine hours compared to Sony's solid screen with about an eight hour battery life the differences aren't huge here but Samsung finally takes this round with the four and Sony gets a 3.7 now we have one round left and the final round that decides it all is value these two tablets start with 16 gig models at $4.99 and we all think these are sold devices but that price tag just doesn't make sense in the current market if they want to gain any traction Samsung has proven their commitment to the Android platform so you'll get support from them Sony's the underdog but their killer remote control feature and PlayStation Sport shows they're more serious to use their content muscle if they want to keep this platform alive $4.99 is still a hard pill to swallow but Sony just gets the edge in value with the 3.7 and Samsung gets at 3.3 so let's average out all six rounds and this was a battle where Sony just kept getting the edge over Samsung in five of the six rounds taking this prize fight three point nine two three point four and is your prize fight winner your little surprise so are we but Sony's innovations showed in its design interface and unique features that is bringing to the tablet war i'm brian tom thanks for watching catch you guys next time on another prize fight like I said I was a little surprised to see the tablet as take the wind but with so many Android tablets out there Sony clearly found some ways to distinguish theirs from the rest of the pack next up it's arts and crafts time here at the tech review Donal Bell has a handy DIY project for all you who would prefer a way to control your iPad that's a little more precise than just using this touchscreens offer an awesome and simple way to navigate and interact their tablet or smartphone except when they don't when it comes to detailed control something like drawing or writing it can be really useful to have a pen but not just any pen will work since it's not a matter of pressure but an issue of electric conduction you can buy a compatible stylus for as little as $5 but what if you need something right now well in this scene at how-to I'm going to show you how to make a touchscreen pen that's essentially free assuming that your boss will look the other way if you raid the supply closet so here's what you'll need you'll need a pen a paper clip and a sponge now make sure that the pen is one of those that you can pull apart you also need three tools pliers scissors and a drill first step pull the pen apart and remove the ink cartridge keep it around though you'll need it later next slice a little rectangular wedge off of the sponge you're going to be squeezing a chunk of this through the barrel of the pen so make sure it's small enough to get in but thick enough to stay put any sponge should do as long as it has a little moisture in it and you can always test it out by using it directly on your screen next step drill a hole into the pen barrel the hole needs to be big enough for the paper clip to get through now shove the sponge through the barrel so that pokes out of the tip then put the pen back together and finally flatten out that paper clip and poke one end of it into the hole that you made just so that is jabbing the sponge and then wrap the rest around the barrel so long as your hand is in contact with the metal it'll carry an electric charge through the sponge and to the screen now won't work of the sponges completely dried out though but a few drops of water should get you back in business so there you go Oh a DIY capacitive stylus you can use with any tablet or smartphone it's not pretty but the price is right it's easy to customize and you can make one in just a few minutes for cnet.com time too although don't worry about a little bit of moisture on your iPad screen just don't soak your stylus too much I know sounds weird alright let's just go ahead and take a quick break but stick around there's a lot more tech review coming up right after this welcome back to the sina tech review our weekly video digest of all things good and bad we've seen here at Sina TV now continuing on in the good if you find that you're working with multiple computers at any given time and it found that using multiple keyboards and mice is a big hassle today is your lucky day here's rich brown to tell you why hi I'm rich brown senior editor for CNET today we're going to take a look at a new app from Microsoft called Mouse Without Borders so the idea behind mass Without Borders is that it lets you use one mouse and keyboard to control multiple Windows PCs so we've downloaded the software in the system over here and it's really easy to set up we'll install the app and it gets you this let's get started screen it asks first if you've installed Mouse without borders on other systems so we're going to say no here and that generates a security code and the name of this computer which we then plug in to another PC where we've also installed the same program so we've already installed Mouse without borders on this other PC over here and you can see the same startup screen but this time we're going to say yes and it brings us to a screen where we can enter in the security code and the system name from the other computer so we'll just punch that in and then you can see the systems are connected so we'll set up both computers so you can see the program that your control up to four systems on the same network we're only going to use two here for the sake of simplicity but that said earlier we were able to connect to Windows 7 pcs and a Windows XP machine on the same network and things worked flawlessly we had no problems so take a look over here you can see this option screen gives you a few more settings to play around with now with the default setting we can simply drag the mouse cursor over to the other display here you can see there's a setting that lets you use a key tab of a switch between systems the software also lets you drag and drop screens here to kind of help you make sense of the order in which you're going to move the mouse between systems so with the wireless mouse you can see has no problem tracking the cursor between the PCs so the mouse works seamlessly pretty much there's no noticeable input lag you can right-click you can move windows around you can launch applications it works exactly as you would expect a mouse that was connected to the system now despite its name you can also use it to type on the other PC now on top of letting you control multiple pcs you can also use mouse Without Borders to drag-and-drop files between computers see we've picked one up we brought it to the other system so as you can see the software is really easy to use and works pretty much as you expect we also found it did some things we didn't expect for example it recognizes hardware volume keys on the keyboard to control volume on the other PC now it has some limitations brightness keys on the keyboard won't change that display over there for example we also had problems with games the mouse sensitive is just way too high and we couldn't adjust it even using the in-game menu overall though we can see plays scenarios where mouse without borders would be amazingly useful from education scenarios in a dorm in a support environment at home pretty much anywhere you have multiple windows pcs that want to talk to each other and one of the other great parts about the software is that it's freely available for download from Microsoft so much Brown this has been a quick demo of Microsoft's maps without borders as cool as it is the mouse without borders utility only works with Windows so if you want to control pcs running Windows and Mac's across your network check out a program called synergy a lot of our producers and editors work with a Mac and a Windows PC sitting side by side and it works great and no synergy did not pay me to say that all right now let's see what we can find out in the bad do not buy this blu-ray player was the headline but Mathieu Muscovy I posted his review for the Philips BDP 5506 now here's your chance to find out why this player can't stand up to the competition hey I'm Matthew moscovia Katzie Netcom and we're going to take a look at the Philips BDP 5506 blu-ray player which is currently selling for about a hundred and sixty-five dollars a Philips usually has some pretty unique designs on its products but this is a generic looking blu-ray player the front panel buttons are all touch sensitive there's a glossy black finish and the USB port on the front we like the main user interface which is simple and straightforward but once you access the streaming media features it gets more cluttered the icons are relatively small and there are plenty of filler services that just kind of get in the way you'll also notice that while there are some important services that we care about like Netflix Vudu and Pandora loop's doesn't have many of the premium content sources that competitors do like Hulu Plus Amazon Instant and MLB TV on the plus side the BDP 5506 does have built-in Wi-Fi so you don't need a thern ette in your living room to use the streaming services the standout feature of this player is supposed to be Philips Media Connect which allows you to stream whatever is displayed on your laptop directly to the blu-ray player it's an interesting idea but we found it difficult to set up and overall it wasn't that useful especially when competing blu-ray players have so many streaming media services built right into the player we also put the player through our image quality test and we were surprised to find that the Philips failed quite a few of our basic tests we saw artifacts and jaggies on standard film based movies like Mission Impossible and sunshine and it's the first player we've tested this year to fail these tests the same kind of issues showed up on DVD playback so if you care about image quality at all we'd go with a different player overall with all of its competitors offering better image quality and more streaming media services there's just not a good reason to pick the BD p55 over better alternatives I'm Matthew moscovia and this is the Philips BDP 5506 I guess it doesn't get much clearer than that so let's just move right along to this week's bottom line we're all familiar with the commercials for Dyson vacuums with that weird guy who's obsessed with suction then the company turned its attention from sucking to blowing with their introduction of their hand dryers and swiveling fans now the heat is on as David Carr Noyes shows us in this first look at the dyson hot I'm David Cardo a executive editor for cnn.com and a lot of times in the tech world we like to describe products as hot and new but this is the first time that the word hot has actually been incorporated into the product name this is the dyson hot fan heater it is really a heater it looks like a space heater but it's actually more of a space-age heater it works with Dyson's bladeless fan technology before the company had something called the Dyson Air Multiplier fan that fan comes in multiple models now we have the Dyson hot which basically pushes hot air through that bladeless fan there's a thermostat that goes from 32 degrees all the way up to 99 degrees that's a little bit deceptive because this isn't an air conditioner actually what you do is you set the thermostat to say if the room was around 40 degrees and you want it to be 50 degrees you set it at 50 degrees and every time the thermostat would drop below 50 degrees the heater would kick in a couple of cool features like the air multiplier models this one has a tilt mechanism in it this one also comes with a remote control it's actually magnetic and you can stick it to the top of the fan that remote control allows you to set the thermostat also the power of the fan and you can set it to oscillate like Dyson Air Multiplier models this is a fairly quiet fan it does kick up the sound when you do put it on the higher power levels it's also designed not to get too hot there's no exposed heating elements and Dyson's making a big deal about how it's a safer fan if you tip it over it turns off automatically and there's nothing to in theory start a fire in case you're wondering this can also be used as a standard fan it is a little bit confusing at first but you have to set the thermostat all the way down to 32 degrees and then the power button on the front goes from red to blue and you are in standard fan mode the fan comes in two colors this is the iron and blue color and there's also a white and silver model we like this color a little bit better it does look a little bit more futuristic with the blue on the inside for the one downside here is that like most Dyson products this is a fairly pricey heater at $399 a lot of people are going to balk at that price but by the same token it is a really a showpiece product and Dyson has managed to sell a lot of those air multiplier fans so we also expect the company to sell a lot of these heaters I'm David Connelly and that's the Dyson hot fan heater the bottom line this week this is why i'm hot this is why i'm hot you know at 399 it may seem expensive because it is but i can really use one of those on a nice sunny summer or san francisco day like today if i got a raise of course alright that's it for this time but come back next week for an all-new CNET tech review until then there's tons of great videos available every day at cena tv.com see you next time thanks for watching