Ralph Lauren's Solar Backpack

So let’s say that you’re a hiking enthusiast how also has an array tech gadgets. What happens when your phone or iPod runs out of juice? All you would have to do is plug into nifty the Ralph Lauren RLX Solar Panel Backpack and you’d be good to go. Now this isn’t the first solar but it’s definitely the best looking one. It comes in both black and orange but will set you back up $795....

Read more »

Droid Bionic Delayed Until Summer

Even though the Motorola Droid Bionic was announced early this year at CES alongside Verizon’s HTC Thunderbolt and its AT &T counterpart the Motorola Atrix, it’s just be confirmed that its launch will be delayed until this summer. Even then, it’s been said that it will then later be available for purchase sometime during the third quarter (late summer). So basically we are looking at a release date of sometime between late September and early October, a far reach from the proposed quarter one – quarter two launch date. A Motorola spokesperson says that the reason for the delay was that the company is “incorporating several enhancements to make this an even better consumer experience.” This most likely due to feedback they received since...

Read more »

Your iPhone Is Secretly Tracking Your Location

With over 50 million units sold, chances are you have an Apple iPhone. If you do, you might want to start worrying as just last Wednesday, two security researchers discovered that the iPhone keeps a detailed record of everywhere you go and have gone since you first activated your phone. Yikes. The What It turns out that each iPhone periodically records your latitude and longitude coordinates along with the time, to the second, that you were there. These records are kept on the iPhone in a file called “consolidated.db” and are then synced to which ever computer you use to sync to iTunes each time you connect your iPhone. Even worse, anybody can easily access this file, either from your iPhone or computer, meaning that anyone who stole your...

Read more »

How To Torrent

Some of you are already wondering what Torrenting means. Torrenting is when you can share files with other peers through internet from one location to another, this is also known as P2P, or peer to peer sharing. So this means anything that anyone else wants to share you can download i.e. music, videos, programs, and pictures. If this sounds appealing to you then continue learning as I teach you how to torrent. First there are many torrenting clients you can use such as: utorrent, bitorrent, limewire, and vuze. Personally my favorite is utorrent because it is the lightest and most efficient. So you can go here and download the latest utorrent program. Now you don't need to use this at all until later. So utorrent will download torrent files...

Read more »

Top 5 iPod Apps

My top 5 favorite apps for the iPod touch and iPhone, in no certain order, are as follows: Palringo: This app is a messaging app that allows you to connect to most chatting clients such as: Facebook, Windows Live, Yahoo, Google talk, and Aim. This application can keep you online when you can’t find wifi with your iDevices. So when you log back on you can see all the messages you missed. Remote: This app is very useful because it allows you to control iTunes on the computer with you iPod and change the song and volume no matter where you are as long as you have internet. This saves money because apple sells remotes to control their computers and this is a sufficient replacement for that device. Peggle: This isn't a very useful app but...

Read more »

Android App of the Week

This week the Android app of the week is exclusive to the HTC Thunderrbolt. Earlier this week a Skype Mobile app was leaked and was found to have video confrencing. I was skeptical of this release and I went and downloaded it to test the video calling. It turns out, to my surprise, that it actually worked and it worked even on 3g (bad quality though). Skype has been anticipated on Android for quite a while now and I'm sure that it will be released for all phones with a front facing camera soon. If you are having trouble finding it you can download it here. Thanks you and thats all for this week stay tuned next week for the Android app of the we...

Read more »

The One Mile High Kingdom Tower

Saudi Arabia has just announced its plans to construct, the Kingdom Tower, a one mile tall building that take the crown for the world’s tallest structure. To give you some perspective the former tallest structure in the world was Dubai’s Burj Khalifa sitting at 2700 feet high. The Kingdom Tower, also known as the Mile-High Tower in Arabic, is set not only to break that record but shatter it by nearly doubling it with a standing of approximately 2500 feet (just in case you didn’t know how many feet were in a mile, not saying that you don’t). The Kingdom Tower was commissioned by Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal, the head of Kingdom Holding Company which is the largest company in Saudi Arabia. That’s a good thing as it’s billed to cost about 30...

Read more »

Navy Lasers Burn Ships

Once only things of science fiction, weaponized lasers are finally being shown to have real world potential. Only just a couple of weeks ago, off the coast of central California, the Office of Naval Research put their Maritime Laser Demonstrator (creative name I know), aboard decommissioned destroyer, the USS Paul. The solid-state laser (meaning it uses a solid medium to create the laser as opposed to a liquid or gas medium) fired a 15-killowat beam at an inflatable boat about a mile away with both ships bobbing out in the sea. Flames suddenly appeared on the boats outboard engines as the boat’s engines began to burst into flames. (Check out the video below for a better look.) This is a big step for laser development as before, laser testing...

Read more »

Railgun Round Punches Through Steel Plates At Mach 5

We’ve covered the sheer destruction that railguns can unleash before here on the Gizmo-Teched but they only have been firing what have been called “hypersonic bricks”. Although these bricks can already do a lot of damage, but defense contractor General Atomics is looking for something even better. They, with the help of Boeing, created a new “sabot” round that will be aerodynamic and can punch a hole in a steel plate and can still travel for another 4 miles. Now a sabot round is a military technical term for a device that used in a firearm (mainly tanks these days) to shoot a projectile that is a smaller diameter than the cannon itself. Specifically in today’s terms sabot rounds are used in tanks to penetrate targets with kinetic energy...

Read more »

HTC Not Upgrading Other Phones to Sense 3.0

HTC announced today that they will not ugrade older phone to sense 3.0 via twitter and that only their dual core phones and new tablets will be pre-installed with the software. They claim that older hardware wont be able to support it. Many developers will probably take it upon themselves to prove HTC wrong and build the own roms that use the 3.0 software. So the phones and devices that will recieve it are the HTC Sensation, EVO 3D, and the two tablets the HTC Flyer and the EVO VIEW from Sprint. Im suer in a short amount of time develpoers on xda forums will have working 3.0 roms for the Thunderbolt and Incredible S and other new but not too old phon...

Read more »

HTC Sensation

The HTC Sensation is one of the most anticipated phones. It was previously known as the Pyramid but was released April 12th as the Sensation. It is HTC's first dual core phone. It shows real promise to the growing Android phone selection. It will also have the 3.0 HTC Sense, this is the most advanced HTC Sense. It is an amazing UI and after watching videos I am very anxious to have it on the thunderbolt and test it out. HTC is quickly becoming an empire in the smartphone business I am excited to see what else they keep coming out with.&nb...

Read more »

Android App of the Week

Phones are becoming like computer more and more everyday. So why is it we haven't seen any virus protection on our phone? Now we have. Android and iOS have recently suggested that you install anti-virus programs such as Antivirus for android available for free in the Android market. This is because lately it has become popular and possible for a website to install a virus onto your phone without you noticing anything wrong until it's too late. They could look a your passwords or just break your phone causing you a lot of pain and time. So just by regularly scanning for viruses you can protect your phone from any type bad thing that could happ...

Read more »

Robotic Animals: The SmartBird

Watch the video above. Be honest, if you hadn’t known that it was a robot, you would of really thought that it was a really bird. The new nature inspired SmartBird can take off, fly, and land on it owns able to flap its wings in realistic and judging the video, even turn its head. The SmartBird was designed by German industrial control and automation company, Festo, for its Bionic Learning Network which already includes an elephant trunk like mechanical arm and robotic jellyfish (more on these in future posts). The Bionic Learning Network is a cooperation between Festo and several universities throughout the US and Europe whose goal use nature as a model for biomechatronics and automation technology. The robotic bird is about 6.5 feet from...

Read more »

HTC Locking Down For Good?

Usually, it’s been easy to root your HTC Android phone and do anything you wanted with it. Thus HTC Andriods have been generally regarded to being “hacker” friendly phones unlike, their Apple iPhone counter parts. However when experienced Andriod development team, AndIRC, reportedly spend their first 72 hours with the new HTC Thunderbolt trying to root it, HTC’s might not be as friendly after all. Many in the hacker community found difficulties in trying to prepare the Thunderbolt for custom ROMS as it had a variety of obstacles such as signed kernel, signed recovery image and a signed bootloader. As the folks at Androidpolice.com said, “HTC tried to stop us. They made signed images, a signed kernel, and a signed recovery. They locked the...

Read more »

Sony's New Mobile Gaming Beast

With the emergence of the Apple App Store an entire new market for mobile gaming opened up. Now with the multitude of Android phones and tablets in addition to Apple products, the opportunities are endless. Even though you can get everything from intense shooters like Call of Duty to simple arcade games like Tetris, there are still games that are just not playable on these devices because of the lack of pure muscle and input options. This next device I am going to talk about has no shortage of either...actually it has the most input options and is by far the most powerful of any mobile gaming system available. I am talking about Sony’s newest version of the PSP and it’s been dubbed the NGP (next generation portable). Sony says that the NGP...

Read more »

Jailbroken App of the Week: Activator

One of my favorite Jailbroken packages is Activator. What it is is an app that allows you change the functionality of all your iPhone buttons from the home button to volume switches in addition to add custom multi-touch gestures. For example, say you want to quickly change the current song that is playing on your iPod. Let’s say your driving as well. The only way to do test on the default iPhone is by first unlocking your iPhone, possibly putting in your passcode, and somehow hitting the next song button, that is if you already had Music open. That is pretty dangerous seeing how you would be forced to taking your eyes of the road. And only just recently had Apple added the Voice Control functionality. Voice Control is fine and all but you...

Read more »

Backup Your Jailbroken Apps

The main problem with jailbreaking your iPhone is that when you update to a new version of iOS or you restore or it, none of your jailbroken apps (aka packages) are kept. This can be pain since then you have to find and download them all over again, and eventually repeat the process when you need to upgrade again. Those days are over as there are apps that will back up all your packages and will then restore them again. Here today, I will be showcasing off two the best package backup apps: AptBackup and PkgBackup. AptBackup The first one is called AptBackup and you can get from Cydia simply by searching for “AptBackup”. The app is free and while it doesn’t actually save and backup all your apps, it saves the names of all your packages and...

Read more »

Android App of the Week

This week I was installing a new printer in my house and wirelessly connected it to all my computers. After doing this I realized I might be able to print from my Android powered phone. So I did a little bit of searching and I found the perfect app that lets you print to you printer using WiFi. The app is called PrinterShare and is $1.99 after a test page is applied to your printer to confirm that it works. So I tried it and it worked wonders and then I bought it and I can now print anything from my email, call logs, texts, and pictures. I would give this app a 5 out of 5 because how productive it ...

Read more »

How to Stop Facebook's Theater Mode

Are you tired of Fabook's theatirical mode when you try to view a picture? I am because it is slow and buggy. So that why I'm going to kill it. And I will guide you through how as well. First of all this whole guide will be made around Google Chromes web Browsers so if you dont have that I suggest you download it because it is the best browser out there. It is light and accessible to use and is supported by one of the fastest growing companies, Google. So if you have Google Chrome you can proceed to download the Facebook theater mode killer here. Basically what this does is take the "theater" part off the URL which makes Facebook change it back to normal.&nb...

Read more »

Too Much TV for Kids

Everyone knows that kids spend too much time watching TV but studies are now showing that this could lead to irrevocable damage. In the journal, "Pediatrics" they found that "kids who spend hours each day in front of the TV or game consoles have more psychological difficulties like problems relating to peers, emotional issues, hyperactivity or conduct challenges, than kids who don't." The study consisted of about 1000 10 to 11 year old kids who were asked to report their daily usage of the TV and the computer. For the duration of the study (a week), the kids wore an accelerometer around their waist. An accelerometer is the same thing that is inside a Wiimote that allows it to sense when it is moved. This allowed the researchers to monitor...

Read more »

Smartphone with one feature that nobody else has

Have you ever been stuck in the middle of the ocean and needed to call someone desperately but had no cell phone service? Or maybe you are one of the bad guys from the show 24? Most are probably are not one of those people but this new phone is pretty cool nonetheless.  It is called the TerreStar Genus and not only can it connect to AT&Ts cell phone network but it also has the capability to function as a satellite phone. This is quite an unnecessary feature for the average person but if you are a fisherman or a park ranger in the mountains then this could be the perfect phone for you that is, if you can afford it.  The phone itself costs about $800 and you are required to get a voice and data plan through AT&T but the upside...

Read more »

Qatar World Cup Will Have Artificial Clouds

If you haven’t heard already, Russia will host the 2018 World Cup and Qatar will host the 2022 World Cup. Wait, hold on, wasn’t the last World Cup held in South Africa just last year? I mean it seems kind of early to be thinking of the biggest event in soccer 11 years ahead. 2014 in Brazil seems a long ways away let alone Qatar and Russia. But seriously Russia and Qatar? One country is known for its chilling winters and the other for scorching deserts. I know soccer players are tough but come on! Well at least Qatar seems to have gotten a head start on preparation as they plan to counter one of the biggest challenges: the heat. You see, Qatar is located in the Middle East, a country that mainly consists of low, barren plains, covered with...

Read more »

April Fools!

Well today is April Fools and you know what that means, time to prank your friends. Woopie cushion? Nah, too old school. Here is a couple of cool computer related pranks that we have gathered up from the glorious internet to help scare your friends. Cracked Wallpaper Here is a quick and easy one; the classic cracked screen wallpaper. This is perfect if you are in a hurry and need to get a quick laugh. Here is a cracked wallpaper, perfect if you want to convince your friend that you accidentally drop his precious laptop. Aside from quickly setting it as their wallpaper, you can also go the extra mile and hide their desktop icons and set their taskbar to hide to give a more realistic feel. You could also to the classic, print screen their...

Read more »