As a follow up to the ARCHOS 7 and ARCHOS 8 Home Tablets, ARCHOS has launch five new Android tablets. The Internet tablets as they are called, consist of the: wide screen ARCHOS 70 and 100, multi media ARCHOS 43, and the ultra portable ARCHOS 28 and 32. The new range offers a combination of PC like web-browsing, social networking, games, eBooks and other apps alongside HD video and music in a very slim-line design.
Crestron is schedule to release a new connected home controller called the UFO-4X. Equip with touchscreen and control buttons the UFO wireless handheld controller is design to give you total control over your home automation systems, browse your media catalogue, the internet and manage media files within your integrated system. According to EH the UFO-4X will be available early 2011 at a retail price of about $2000.
Vodafone has added Greece to it list of countries using its residential Femtocell service. With this launch Vodafone now has Femtocell commercial services in four countries: Spain, UK, Qatar and now Greece – only the UK and Greece are residential. The service, which uses the Vodafone Access Gateway brand, rather than Sure Signal, is being provided for free or with a discount to postpaid subscribers.
The new Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra family of 2, 4, and 6-Bay NAS (Network Attach Storage) solutions are pushing the boundary of what can be done with a home NAS. This latest release is pack full of features: it is twice as fast as previous range of ReadyNAS, according to Netgear it is the first ever storage solution with media-shifting capabilities, it integrates with TiVo to store your streaming content; it also has Orb and Shifta embedded technology for easy access from other devices.
Below are some of this year’s winners of the Red Dot Design Award, an internationally recognise and coveted prize among designers. The ceremony was held in Essen Germany and covers seventeen categories. For this article I only picked those from the Bathrooms, spa and air-conditioning, Household and Kitchen, Entertainment Technology and Cameras and Living Rooms and Bedrooms categories.
Hitachi is changing the way we interact with our external storage devices, with the release of the LifeStudio Drive family. The LifeStudio drive does what the NuVo Music Port Server does, which is, it automatically pulls together and organizes your music, photos, videos and documents from your computer and any connected USB device or your social media outlets, but on a smaller scale. According to Hitachi, the Life Studio technology takes the frustration out of managing your digital content.
Duke Energy today announced it has signed an agreement with Cisco – a worldwide leader in networking technology -- to pilot and further develop a smart grid-enabled home energy management solution that will provide Duke Energy customers with secure and reliable energy information and a simple-to-use tool to help them reduce the amount of energy wasted in their homes.
The Carbon Design Group has collaborated with Artefact Group in what I called “cool design meets home energy management”. Both companies came together to create the Impact series of connected home appliances. The series consists of the Impact Clock, Impact Refrigerator and Impact Dish Washer. Project Impact has won a silver International Design Excellence Awards (IDEAs) for 2010 for Artefact.
With an $11 million equity injection lead by Craton Equity Partners Green Wave Reality has announced plans to start pushing its home energy management platform into Europe, North America and Asia. The platform, according to Green Wave Reality is easy to use, affordable, an open standards-based platform and will enhances utility companies' relationship with their customers and better balance energy on the Grid while helping consumers to conserve energy and save money in return.
Starting this week owners of the DNS-323 ShareCenter Network Attached Storage (NAS) solution can backup their data to an external storage solution provider online. That is because D-Link has updated the DNS-323 with support for online backup services by CTERA, to safeguard against data loss. The service is totally automated and does not require PC software installation and works automatically directly from the NAS appliance.