Right On Technology

Introducing the “Little Buddy Child Tracker” an interesting device to be sold by Best Buy. This compact device can be placed in a backpack or pinned to a child’s clothes and then transmits data back to parents using global satellites to track the whereabouts of the child.

While devices like this have been around for a while, they have typically been rather expensive, anywhere from $200-500 dollars. The Little Buddy will sale for only $100, so it is a real alternative to obsessive parents who want to track their children’s every move.

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Want your own nuclear reactor? That might be as far off as you think (well, maybe it is, but regardless . . .). Apparently Toshiba has begun developing what it calls a small nuclear reactor designed for both developed and emerging countries.

This nuclear reactor, called the Toshiba 4S has some big advantages over the traditional nuclear reactor. Namely, it is very compact, it has minimal monitoring and maintenance requirements and comes with an automatic shutdown feature for safety purposes (always a good thing).

Reportedly both Mitsubishi and Hitachi have also developed similar concept reactors that output anywhere from 350,000-600,000 kilowatts. Not to shabby.

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One of the best times of the year for the tech enthusiast (read geek) can be the Christmas season and specifically Black Friday. We often see new product releases, new operating system upgrades and all sorts of fun new gadgets, video games and DVDs released just in time for the shopping holiday.

One of the best days for shopping (if you are looking for deals) of course is Black Friday. Black Friday, the first shopping day after Thanksgiving is usually chalk-full of great deals just to get customers in the door. Of course, you usually have to put up with thousands of other clamoring customers who also all want that same deal. Last year I got up at 3:00 in the morning (in Branson MO no less) and drove to the local Wal-mart and stood in line to get an $80 dollar Blu-Ray player and a sub-$100 GPS system. I felt that it was worth the pain, but often the key is coordinating where the best deals are so you can make sure you get the most of your crowd-packed Black Friday.

To that end, I’ve compiled a list of some of the top web-pages that track which stores are offering great deals on various products. So, in no particular order:

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Look out Kindle, Barnes and Noble is set to introduce their new “Nook” e-Reader! So far the e-book industry has been dominated pretty much by a single player, Amazon. The Kindle is far and away the best device for reading e-books and the selection of books is also hard to beat. The biggest downfall of the Kindle so far is the price point. While they have recently dropped the price of the Kindle to $279, which is a good start, the initial $400 price point was such that only the true early adopters could really even think of purchasing the device. Also, the device is good, and e-ink is a great concept, but it’s pretty much a proprietary device that allows very little outside of reading books and newspapers (for instance you can’t even surf the Internet with it).

So, enter the new Barnes & Noble “Nook” (the supposed name, all though this is unofficial so far). You can see pictures of the beauty here. The Nook will feature two separate screens, a top e-ink screen and a separate bottom screen which should feature multi-touch very similar to the iPhone. Best of all, the price point is rumored to respectable $259. True, it’s only $20 cheaper then the Kindle, but it features both multi-touch and, presumably, Internet access.

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A few days ago a Techcrunch reader alerted the site that he had found a “chromeos” folder on their Chromium build site. Google quickly removed the folder, but not before Jonathan Fredrickson could snatch the files and download them. The initial impressions so far are pretty positive. The OS itself looks and feels very similar to the Chrome browser, which makes sense.

One must wonder how happy Google is about this revelation, they can’t be too happy that details and actual builds of the OS are already getting out. On the other hand, that was pretty careless of them to place the entire OS on a publicly accessible folder. Also, it’s open source, so what can they really do? Not much.

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This is somewhat speculation at this point, but there are heavy rumors indicating that T-mobile is going to make a big push at rivals Sprint, Verizon and AT&T. Rumors turn around a 3 prong attack that could turn the best little cell phone company into a monster cell-company.

The first part of the attack of “Project Dark” or “Black” (depending on who you ask) comes from their heavy push of Android based phones such as the Motorola CLIQ and the Samsung Behold II. These beautiful, feature rich smart phones will be able to compete with the iPhone and the Palm Pre, Google is out to control the world through Android. T-Mobile was the first to offer a G-Phone, and while it wasn’t perfect (in fact there were many flaws) we got our first taste at the open, Android based platform, and it was impressive.

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Whoopee! Today is the day that my Windows 7 Party Pack arrived! So many goodies that I don’t know where to start. I’ll list some of the goodies and show you some pictures:

-Poster with the Windows 7 Design
- Deck of playing cards with the Windows 7 design
- One Windows 7 puzzle
- Bag of streamers
- Bag of balloons
- Table top centerpiece
- Pack of Windows 7 napkins
- 10 tote bags to give to guests (woot, love tote bags!)

It’s Christmas in October baby. Click below for the pictures.
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Rumors have abounded for weeks or months now with blurry pictures of supposed Android phones coming to Verizon. This has set the rumor mill in full motion dreaming up scenarios whereby Verizon might finally get off their duffs and decide to get in the smart phone game. It appears that this might finally come to pass as Google and Verizon are set to announce a strategic partnership today.

I’ve been a Verizon customer for about 5 years mostly due to the fact that they have/had the best network in America, especially when roaming and stuff used to really matter to me. However, their phones stink. When given the chance to have the iPhone on their network they told Apple to take off. Worst. Mistake. Ever. In fact, just last week I finally left Verizon and switched to AT&T so that I could get my wife an iPhone. We tried to hold out for a Gphone/Android based phone to show up Verizon, but we just couldn’t take it any longer.

So, it appears that Verizon will be offering the Android phone very soon. What remains to be determined is whether or not they are going to gimp the features that make the Android phones really cool. Verizon has a history of gimping phones on their network so you can’t take full advantage of them (like the GPS ability in the Blackberry I had from Verizon). With Verizon nothing is beyond imagination, if they gimp them though, really there is no point to get an Android phone. The whole point of Android is openness and accessibility. Here is one of the phones rumored to be offered by Motorola, looks promising.

Lifecasting! A strange word to some of us, but many folks think it’s the next big thing since the Truman Show. What is lifecasting you ask? Essentially it is 24/7 recordings of what you are doing and where you are. Sounds kind of creepy to some folks, but it is an intriguing idea to others, especially those who want to chronicle their lives or have very large egos.

There are many different products coming that fullfill some aspect of this lifecasting future, but one that is ready now, and at least does some of this is the new Fitbit, and high-tech pedometer that does more then just count your steps. This $99 device is about as small as a credit card and you can clip it to your pocket or your wallet and it tracks your daily . . . and nightly activities, then sends all that information to the cloud wirelessly.

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