From BlueAnt comes the S4, a hands-free voice-controlled Bluetooth car speakerphone. For the first time, drivers can communicate on the road without the need to touch the phone or car speakerphone at all, making and receiving calls and accessing information using only voice commands. All a driver has to do is say the hands-free trigger phrase “BlueAnt Speak to Me” at any time and the S4 will be ready to take voice commands. Simple commands such as “answer” or “ignore,” let the speakerphone know how to handle calls.
To reduce distracted driving, the S4 offers Vlingo’s SafeReader application for use with BlackBerry smartphones and Android 2.0+ devices. Users simply press one button on the phone and say “Start SafeReader” and the feature is activated so all incoming messages and emails are delivered audibly through the S4. The S4 includes Simply Connect technology which allows the S4’s embedded audio quick start guide to talk users through the setup and Bluetooth pairing process without the need to read the manual. Plus there’s no installation cost for this speakerphone because the S4 attaches to the car’s sun visor.
Yahoo! is bringing football fans comprehensive coverage of the FIFA World Cup through sports.yahoo.com/soccer/world-cup/. The site features on-the-ground reporting from South Africa by Dan Wetzel, Martin Rogers and Les Carpenter. There’s also a daily video news show that will recap top football stories and give information on upcoming World Cup events. And don’t miss “Dirty Tackle,” a leading football blog from editor Brooks Peck, and contributors Richard Whittall and Ryan Bailey. In June make sure you try Predictalot (predictalot.yahoo.com) from Yahoo! Labs, a fun experiment that tests the “wisdom of the crowd” about the World Cup. Predictalot lets fans in every country make millions of interesting predictions including “How many teams from Europe will advance to the quarterfinals? or “Will a country that has never won before win it all this year?”
ZOMM (zomm.com) is the world’s first wireless leash for mobile phones that also features call notification and personal security capabilities. Never lose a phone again. Using Bluetooth, ZOMM detects when its wirelessly connected mobile phone is beyond a specified distance and alerts the owner via vibration, flashing lights and an alarm.
ZOMM is also a fully functioning speakerphone. ZOMM will sound the alert for incoming calls. One push of the center Z-button and ZOMM answers the call. Pressing the Z-button twice sends the call to voicemail. If the user holds the center Z-button for 9 seconds, ZOMM sounds a loud panic alarm and then will automatically dial emergency assistance from anywhere in the world. In a situation where the user cannot speak, a pre-recorded message will tell the operator to send help immediately.
Toshiba’s StorE TV is a 2 TB external hard disk drive (HDD) optimized for multimedia applications. The StorE TV also serves as a multimedia player that can connect to various entertainment and multimedia devices and screens. The StorE TV decodes videos in standard definition quality (up to 720 x 576). It can upscale stored SD content to HD quality (1080i) and display it via HDMI on a TV set. It works with various music formats such as MP3, WMA, WAV and AAC, as a video player decoding MPEG2, AVI and MP4, or as photo album compatible with JPEG format. Other interfaces of the StorE TV are component video, standard audio and video, and USB. Additionally, StorE TV supports specifications for USB client and host. This enables users to connect an external storage device to the StoreE TV and playback multimedia content directly to the screen.
