Krator is a relatively new player to the market and wants to shake things up with striking designs, decent quality at a reasonable price.

The Krator Neso 4 is a 2.0 channel speaker on the lower end of the Krator speakers and the features include:

• USB speakers deliver brilliant sound performance
• 5 watts R.M.S. output
• Easy-to-Go. Tiny size with wonderful sound
• Detachable Satellite Design
• An 3.5mm Stereo phone jack for audio output
• Adjustable Volume and Bass control provide maximum convenience
• Elegant design best fits for your living room and personal space
• Specifications:
• Power output: 5 Watts RMS output
• Frequency Response: 80~18Khz
• Connector: 3.5mm Stereo Audio Cable
• Controller: Volume, Bass controller
• Headphones Jack: Stereo 3.5mm Audio Jack
• Speaker Unit Driver: 2.75 inch paper dome unit driver
• Size of Satellite: W95 x H132 x D75 mm
• Power Requirement: USB Power

When we opened the box we were quite pleased with the looks of the Neso 4s which are based around a rain drop, though they are a tad light and plasticy. the rest of the contents were pretty basic, but lets face it the only thing you need are the speakers!

The speakers use USB for power and then a 3.5mm port for the sound, which is good or bad depending on how you look at it, you are restricted to a device with USB, but at the same time you didn’t have to faff around with another plug. Alternatively some speakers use USB for everything, which is convenient for a laptop but not so convenient if you want to use you iPod or whatever.

The sound quality of the sound quality of the speakers was a little tinny and certainly lacking base, they also didn’t go very loud. However for £15 you will always have questionable sound quality and for the price these speakers are a great upgrade for a laptop.

For occasional use, and mainly for laptops these are great speakers, however if you want some speakers for your desktop and have a bit more money we would suggest something with a little more oomph and possibly 2.1 for example the  Neso 4 Avante Garde 26Watt 2.1ch Speakers.

Thanks to Bitmore for providing the speakers to review.

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Krator Neso 4 5Watt 2.0ch ‘Droplet’ USB Speaker Review

Thumb drives maybe going out of fashion for some people but they still are very handy, especially if you carry one with you all the time, allowing you to easily share files (legally), and backup work date without worrying about an internet connection.

Unfortunately it is too easy to lose drives, we have lost hundreds of promo usbs (we do love a free things though) and drives such as the LaCie iamaKey is too easy to damage as the connection part isn’t protected very well. Verbatim’s Store ‘n Go Plus drives avoid all these issues with a handy rubber cover protecting your drive from anything it may encounter in your bag/pocket.

These thumb drives range from 4GB on up to 32 GB and should be released this quater starting from about £15

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Verbatim Store ‘n Go Plus: Rugged keychain thumbdrive

Looking at Apple’s education announcement and the later statements by McGraw-Hill CEO Terry McGraw that; 1.  school boards would have to pay the $14.99USD “pilot pricing” per year per student and. 2.a paper text book costs $75.00USD per book and is replaced once every five years or so, and that Mr. McGraw expected to make money on “volume”, I had to wonder how Apple was going to knife the publishers? There has to be a plan to take out the publishers, because it is in Apple’s corporate DNA to screw the old school content providers. They almost have to, because the scheme as presented has absolutely no cost savings to cash strapped American school boards, and the prospect of a huge investment into the Apple ecosystem.Here is how I think it is going to play out.  In the US, publicly funded schools are generally overseen by the various states and each county and or city has its own school board that is for the most part funded by local taxes. Apple is going to point out to the state oversight school boards (if the states don’t figure it out on their own) that they can create their OWN textbooks using their own state university resources (ie graduate students) Essentially, once the primary texts are done, its just  a mater of updating and revisions.  For example, the American State of Tennessee has 971,524 students enrolled in K-12. (Think of it as Grades 1-13) The cost of one Apple iTextbook at say $15.00 USD would be $14,572,680. Admittedly, the number includes the entire group of K-12, but, I could see using iPads in kindergarten even if they were not issued to students below 3rd or 4th grade. Assuming 6 courses per student per year and figure 6 textbooks (at least-don’t forget lab books in upper forms)per student, per year, doing the  iMath comes to at least $90USD a year. per student, not counting the cost of the iPads.  However, if the schools create their own content, even at market cost there is about a five year break even for the cost of an iPad. Over, $14 million  US dollars would pay for a lot of work study time to do the basic research and writing of the texts All that has really stopped many state school boards from doing their own textbooks was the economies of scale for for publication.Take out the printing costs and its a whole new match. One the textbook publishers are likely to lose.

Commentators have mentioned that nothing was said about university level textbooks. I suspect not only that was deliberate on Apple’s part, it is where textbook publishers will start feeling the heat. Uni professors love to inset their own spin on the texts they use, even to almost writing their own. In the US, college textbooks are hitting $200USD a book in many subjects. Whilst UK textbook costs are usually 20-50% lower in the US, everyone is looking to cut costs.  Not to mention the potential savings on classes where you get a lecturer who almost never uses the book, but often has other material to read.  In the college setting, an iPad based textbook ecosystem could pay for itself in the FIRST TERM.  The idea of updated content is particularly appealing for technical subjects. From  the university’s perspective, there would not be any real need to issue iPads, students would be expected to buy them.

Where is Apple in all this? Selling a lot of iPads. Where are the textbook publishers? Trying to steal the pudding of the record companies at the home for obsolete business models.

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Is this Apple’s plan for the textbook market?

Thursday, Apple announced the release of iBooks2  and iBooks Author; new and free textbook reading  and authoring tools.  Apple also revealed a partnership to create and sell low cost interactive textbooks with the big three textbook publishers that account for 90% of the sales of textbooks to the first 13 grades of American schools, known as K-12. Finally, Apple expanded its iTunes U uni lecture series to the K-12 market.   Missing from the announcement was any price break for the beleaguered American school system and that it was a closed Apple hardware only system. Also absent was the fact that if you create content with iBooks Author, you have to sell it in the Apple store.

Apple has not indicated any similar arrangement with UK publishers, but as I mention here, that may not be Apple’s scheme in any case. Stay tuned, there may be a bit more to this story as it plays out.

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Apple announces iBook 2 for US schools. Will the UK follow?

What could possibly be one of the bigger announcements at CES this year Intel and Lenevo have announced the first Intel Medfield powered smartphone the Lenovo K800. While details of the specification are slim right now we know that the phone has a 4.5-inch 720p display and rear 8 megapixel camera with dual-LED flash. There is also the usual 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS connectivity. The phone will be running a modified version of Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich.

The Medfield platform uses a 32nm fabrication process and the K800 uses the Penwell SoC that has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z2460 CPU with 512KB L2 cache. On the GPU side it has the tried and tested PowerVR SGX 540 which has been clocked at a slightly higher than usual 400MHz and dual-channel LPDDR2 memory. The CPU in Penwell is only a single-core right now but Intel plans to come up with dual-core versions later, along with a faster GPU.

While a single core CPU does sound a bit poor compared to todays dual core smartphones (and quad core tablets), Intel have released some impressive benchmarks for the CPU

The Lenovo K800 is set to launch in China by Q2 this year, and it is believed Motorola will also be releasing a Medfield powered phone by the end of the year

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First Intel Medfield Smartphone revealed, the Lenovo K800

Wanting to hook up Netflix to the new flatscreen? Well the job just got easier with the announcement of the debut of the Roku box in the UK and Ireland today.  Currently available for preorder only through Amazon, the little box that has allowed so many in the US to cut  cable or satellite bills by streaming content over the internet, can now spread its lie in inducing goodness here as well.

Roku LT

Roku will initially offer two models from its current lineup, the Roku LT at £49.99  and the upmarket Roku 2 XS at £99.99. Other than price, the main difference between the two products is that the LT does not have external storage options and is limited to 720p. Nor is it Bluetooth capable. The Roku 2 XS supports, true HD 1080p, has a slot for an miniSD card, Bluetooth, and both Ethernet and USB ports.The XS also has an enhanced game controller to get your Angry Birds on.  Because you don’t have enough addictive time wasters in your life, each set also has a free copy of Angry Birds. Both devices support b/g/n Wi-Fi.

Anyone familiar with the history of Roku would not be surprised by the introduction of the tiny player  following hot on the heels of the Netflix rollout. Roku started out as a division of Netflix, tasked to create a simple and easy to use device to stream video content over the internet to subscribers TVs, which was released in 2008. The group was quickly spun off as Netflix realized the need to be on as many products as possible and the creators of the Rouku box realized there was a lot more content out there than Netflix. The result was a win-win, with Netflix applications on the Sony Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360, not to mention many of the newer SMART TVs and Rouku becoming the streaming device of choice for over 2.5 million users, with access to over four hundred channels in the US, including HBO GO, Crackle, the Wall Street Journal, the TWIT tech network, and many music and international interest channels.

The press release issued today showcased Netflix the Wall Street Journal, Ultimate Fighting Championship, MLB.com, and  games such as Angry Birds.  The movie service Crackle will be available in the UK but not in Ireland. Music is also a bit thin on the ground, with Tunein and Classical TV on offer. In fact only forty channels were announced, although Roku officials were quick to add that they expect more channels to be added prior to the expected launch date in late January.

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Roku Players set to land in United Kingdom and Ireland in late January

Tech blog site Know Your Mobile recently reported that Amazon is getting ready to roll out the Kindle Flame in the UK according to the inevitable “source close to the launch”. The 7 inch tablet has been taking the US by storm, selling for about half the price of the Apple iPad. In fact, the American tech pundits speculate that Amazon takes a loss on every tablet sold.  The reason for this is that the Kindle Fire is really nothing more than a device to read books and watch videos with that just happens to be a tablet as well. Like game console makers, any loss on the hardware is more than made up by inducing customers to buy into the Amazon ecosystem of Kindle format books, Amazon movie and video rentals and even Audible audiobooks.

In all likelihood, the Fire has not been released in the UK as yet because Amazon needed more time to strike the UK content deals required to make the new tablet viable in the UK market and to beef up their UK data center. While Amazon has Loveflims, the licensing  for the Fire would require additional arrangements. Further, compared to what Amazon has on offer for US customers and especially US Amazon Prime customers, Amazon would have to line up far more content to compete with say, Netflix.   For example, I would be quite curious if the Fire supports the Android version of the BBC iApp player or BBC content will somehow be folded into the Amazon player.  Much of the Fire’s content is optimized via use of cached copies of internet pages that are located in Amazon’s data centers, all of which are reported to be in the US.  For the Fire to work effectively it would follow that location based services be served in the UK.

One thing is for sure, the advent of Nexflix in the UK should get Amazon to move things along for the Fire.

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Kindle Fire about to light up in the UK?

2012 looks to be the year we finally start seeing some decent size OLED TVs, 3 years after the launch of the ridiculous Sony XEL-1 OLED TV which had a meagre 11” screen and a giant £3,489 price tag!

At CES it looks like both Samsung and LG will be announcing a 55” OLED TV, and while there is not much information on either Engadget report that the Samsung is expected to be launched in the latter half of 2012 and:

There’s no colour filter needed here, either, as the self-emitting RGB sub-pixels take care of themselves; since light output on the Super OLED is controlled on a pixel-to-pixel basis, you can rest assured that your blacks will be deep and your whites bright. Other specs include a dual-core processor and 3D support.

Samsung 55-inch Super OLED. Image from Engadget

While Sony don’t appear to be joining the OLED party they are releasing their own technology called Crystal LED that relies on “ultrafine" LEDs mounted to each RGB colour, equivalent to the number of pixels, which is all affixed directly to the front of the display.

Sony are claiming 3.5 times contrast, 1.4 times the colour gamut and 10 times faster response time than LCDs.

Sony Crystal LED Prototype

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Large Screen OLED TVs finally on their way

Recently Three lent us a Sony Ericsson Xperia Play to review, which ironically isn’t even available on Three anymore, but anyway we decided to review it as the phone is excellently priced at around £150 – £200 sim free at the moment.

When his was this was released Sony were asking for iPhone-esque prices so for such a big price drop is fantastic for the end user (unless you paid full price in the first place).

The phone itself is a decent size with a 4-inch capacitive multi-touch LCD touch screen with a 480×854 pixel resolution and 16.7 million colours, and a 5.1-megapixel camera recorder with autofocus, flash, image stabilizer and geotagging. It is obviously rather chubby due to the built in controller (119 x 62 x 16mm) and it weighs 175 grams.

It currently runs Gingerbread 2.3.4 and we found it to be very snappy with no obvious lag at all. There is 400MB of internal memory, but an 8GB microSD card is included and this can be expanded up to 32GB. The internal space is an issue if you want to install a lot of games/applications, but with the microSD you have plenty of space for media.

Obviously the major selling point of this phone is the fact it is the “PlayStation Phone” and comes with a slide out controller, and there is no question about it, this is the best way to control games. It is by no means perfect, but comparing it to controlling games via the screen it is infinitely better.

Where the Xperia truely shines, and makes it well worth the investment, in my opinion, is gaming emulation. Sony have released a few games themselves, which have been good, but they are few and far between. However there is a full range of emulators for most old games systems giving you thousands of games to choose from and a phone that can be used to play them properly!

I was also quite surprised with the battery life of the Xperia. I currently use a Galaxy S2 as my main phone, and the battery has been well reviewed, but I have found it hit and miss, however I found the Xperia would often outlast my S2 on daily tasks. Thinking about it, it is not surprising really the S2 has a 1650mAh batter and the Xperia has a 1500mAh batter, but the Xperia has a smaller screen, and a single core processor. It is still nice for your phone to last a good day though!

Overall I found the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play to be a great phone (at its current pricing) and would make a wonderful Christmas present for someone. It is no iPhone, and 3 don’t even do it anymore with the only Sony on 3 at the moment being the Sony Xperia arc S.

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Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Review

Conference calling is booming in the business world, such is its versatility and efficiency in keeping operations running smoothly. This is exactly why there are so many conference call providers out there putting everything into make everyday business that little bit easier.

The efficient business function has now arrived in the world of mobile technology, too, so running a business has never been easier. Businesspeople can now schedule, make and join a conference call in the palms of their hands and most services are completely free. Applications like PowWowNow and PGi can be downloaded to your iPhone or Android from the iTunes Store or the Android Market for free.

Conference calling on your mobile adds a whole new dimension to running a business. It allows you to manage your time much more efficiently and, inevitably, fit more into your day. You won’t have to waste time travelling to and from meetings and, if you do need to go to a face-to-face meeting, you can hold another conference on the way.

Perhaps the best thing about mobile conference calling is the fact that you can record every meeting you hold or attend, so there is no need to frantically scrawl the most important points down during the call – the app will do it for you so you never miss a thing.

Similar applications are available via the internet, downloadable to desktops and laptops, and these go some way to improving the efficiency of the business world. Skype, for instance, is a great web app through which you can make free voice calls and chargeable video and group calls to your employees and business partners. This is great if you are sat in your office or at home, but it is not quite as portable as the applications you can get for your phone. In fact, that is exactly why Skype introduced a smartphone and iPhone app of its own.

PowWowNow is free so the caller only pays for the cost of their local call, which makes it both a time and cost efficient business tool. With this app, you can send reminders to all the participants of your calls and even choose the music that plays when you put users on hold. It’s the little things that matter. So, if you’re looking to make a free conference call UK providers are where you need to turn.

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The benefits of mobile conference calling