by Xavier Voigt-Hill

Victorinox announce 1TB USB 3.0 Swiss army knife, flash drives just became awesome

Just before CES, Victorinox Swiss Army, makers of world famous Swiss army knives, announced a new device in their range of USB flash drives. The Victorinox SSD has the first ever USB 2.0/3.0 and eSATA II/III combination port which results in maximum read speeds of 220MB/s and write speeds of 150MB/s. The SSD comes with a built-in nail file, scissors, blade, 96 x 48 monochrome LCD display and a weaponless flight case so you can keep your 256-bit encrypted data with you on the plane. Did I mention the fact that it comes with up to 1TB of storage? The 1TB model may cost up to $3000 but that is the price you have to pay for pure awesome. A 64GB version will be as little as $400 though…

What do you think? Cool or stupid? Let us know below while we hunt for every penny we can find.

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

CES time!

The annual Consumer Electronics show, or CES, takes place this week in Las Vegas and we will have daily roundups of the new products announced at the show. We sadly won’t be there this year but we will still get you all the news. Expect to see:

  • Nokia Lumia 900
  • Victorinox 1TB USB flash drive
  • HP Envy 14 Spectre
  • Ultrabooks
  • Tablets
  • Smartphones
  • Stupid high-resolution TVs
  • More…

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Enjoy the articles coming up,

Xavier

by Henry Hunt

Nokia Lumia 900 for AT&T confirmed by New York Times

The New York Times has quoted sources that confirm that the Nokia Lumia 900 is to be officially announced at CES on Monday. Apparently AT&T will be carrying the phone in America but there is no news about anywhere else in the world, except for an earlier tweet from 3 and an O2 representative telling us that he does not expect the 900 to be stocked there as they already have the 800. There has been no confirmation on the specs but what we [sort of] know is that it will have a 4.3 inch WVGA screen with 512MB of RAM, LTE in eligible territories and an 8MP rear and front-facing camera. All in all, we at the Digixav team are very excited for Monday.

Bring on CES!

 

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

The incompetence in tech retail

Let’s face it. We all buy technology of one form or another. Many of us buy our gadgets online for savings and sheer convenience, but sometimes you need to actually try something before you buy. High street stores are everywhere these days, complete with friendly and ‘knowledgable’ salespeople to guide you to the right products and decisions, but not all is as it seems.

Circulating around Digixav are numerous stories of employees at leading British retailers not having a clue about the products and services that they are trying to sell to the public. Here I have compiled a list of some of the worst of our experiences for your entertainment and warning. Remember that all of these stories are true and have been witnessed by the Digixav team.

  • A hand scribbled description note for the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc in a Carphone Warehouse store stated that the phone was sporting an ‘8.1 mega pixle’ rear camera.
  • Advertising material in a Carphone Warehouse store shows BlackBerry Curve specifications with a dummy model of an HTC Salsa, thus confusing two smartphones that could hardly be more different.20120107-213406.jpg
  • After his chain had been featured in an advert for the new Motorola RAZR, a Phones4U employee had no knowledge of the device other than its name despite the fact that people had come in requesting it.
  • A label for a Lenovo desktop PC in Currys states that its 2nd generation Intel Core i3 CPU is 2.7x faster than your old PC. This is very misleading as the i3 chip is in fact slower than many processors that have been available for a number of years.20120107-213452.jpg
  • The entire sales team of one Currys store had no idea of how the Kindle 4 lighted covers worked as the contact points had changed from those of the Kindle Keyboard. How can they try and sell a case for £50 if they have no idea how it works?
  • A dummy Samsung Wave II is on display in the Carphone Warehouse with no explanation as to what it was.
  • A Currys employee was left confused as he had no knowledge of what a flash drive was. He had to be reminded that it was the correct term for a memory stick.
  • Another upside-down price tag in Currys. I see these whenever I visit my local branch.
  • In December 2011, a Carphone Warehouse employee said that he did not expect the Lumia 900 to launch in the UK as, in his words, ‘it has been out in America for ages’. I played along with this, and he stated that it was just the 800 with a ‘4G’ LTE radio inside and at the exact same size of 3.7″. This is clearly incorrect as Nokia and AT&T are set to unveil this device at CES at Las Vegas on Monday. Another Carphone Warehouse employee since informed us that the database confirmed an 8MP rear shooter, a 4.3″ screen and 512MB RAM, but we cannot be certain if these specifications are genuine.

In conclusion, don’t believe everything you hear in tech shops. If you are in such an emporium and you hear an incompetent buffoon misleading a fellow consumer, don’t be afraid to butt in and steer them on the right path. Not all salespeople are terrible but the retail industry lacks people with a passion for technology and this is a sorry state for it.

If you have your own high street tale of woe, leave it in the comments or email it to us here.

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

Android AOTW: Launcher 7

For our first Android app of the week, I have chosen Launcher 7 by Timo Kujala.

This app is a perfect cure for those of us that have #droidrage and crave a Windows Phone. It replaces whatever launcher you have, in my case HTC Sense 1.0 for Android, with a smooth interface that looks just like that of Windows Phone 7. While you don’t get the full OS, you do get a live tile for your contacts and some bitmap images to use as app icons such as a smiley face for the messaging app and the IE logo for the browser. The status bar takes on a WP7 look when you are on the home screen and widgets are supported by being embedded in tiles. Most noticeably for me, however, Launcher 7 is less processor intensive than HTC Sense and other OEM skins and the phone therefore runs much faster in everything and multitasking actually works. While I struggle by with an HTC Wildfire, I assume that a slight performance improvement will be noticed on almost any Android device, be it a phone or tablet.

If you have an Android phone, download the free version of this. (You have to put up with 1 ad in the app list but it’s not obstructive or distracting.) You WILL love the Metro UI and then you will almost certainly want to get a Windows Phone at the earliest opportunity.

Launcher 7, Android, Free or £1.28

Download from the Android Market

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

iOS AOTW: Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint

2012’s first iOS app of the week is Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint.

This game is incredibly addictive. Based on the game of billiards, this game is pretty simple. You use your finger as a cue to connect discs of the same colour while creating shapes out of them and scoring bonus points from combos. 20 standard levels come with the game and the rest, along with 3 arcade modes and more to come in future updates, can be purchased with a ‘Skeleton Key’ at £2.49, which the developers say will soon increase in price due to the sheer amount of content that they have planned. Watch the first trailer below and hit the link to get the app if you have nothing planned for the next week as you try to get an ‘S’ in every level.

Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint, iOS, £0.69

Download here or visit the website

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

Deal: Grab a Dell Streak 7 for less than £100 at PC World

The Dell Streak 7 was recently discontinued and, like a certain other tablet, this action is a cue for price cuts. It has now hit the low low price of £99.97 at PC World which will get you a Tegra 2 powered slab with an 800 x 480 resolution and, while sporting Froyo out of the box, an official update to Android 3.2 ie. Honeycomb is available over the air. It is unlikely that you will ever see Ice Cream Sandwich officially on this but, at this price, you may as well give it a go. The deal is in store only so head on over to your local PC World to grab this bargain.

by assortedletters

Mix Your Meme: Arrow to the Nyan

Welcome to Mix Your Meme, a new feature where I mix memes.

I used to be a flying space cat like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.

by Henry Hunt

WP7 AOTW: Ask Ziggy

The first WP7 AOTW of 2012 is Ask Ziggy by Averotek.

This app is (to quote the description on the Marketplace) ‘your personal assistant that goes beyond Siri functionality’. It is basically Windows Phone’s answer to Apple’s Siri.

To use this app all you need to do is ask it a question and it will give you an answer, rather like Siri. This app however goes into a great deal more detail than its iOS counterpart. An example of this is when I asked Ziggy how old the American President Barack Obama was. The reply was this:

“Barack Obama was born on August 4th, 1961 and therefore he is fifty years old. He is the 44th President of the United States. He is the first African American to be appointed to office.”

As you can see, Ziggy goes into a great amount of detail which cannot always be said for Siri.

If you have a Windows Phone and want to talk to your phone like those iPhone guys do, Ask Ziggy is the app for you.

Ask Ziggy, Windows Phone, Free

Download on the Marketplace or visit the website