Gadgets

Plans to outfit a suburban Atlanta school district with Apple Computer iBooks have hit a legal snag.

Butch Thompson, a former Cobb County, Ga., commissioner has filed suit to stop the school board's laptop plan, according to the Associated Press. Cobb County Superior Court Judge S. Lark Ingram has set a July 8 hearing date, reports the Atlanta Journal Constitution (subscription required).

Apple announced in May that it will sell as many as 63,000 iBooks to the Georgia school district in one of the company's largest education deals ever.

But Thompson says voters weren't sufficiently informed … Read more

Orbit Baby is giving new meaning to next-generation technology.

The small Newark, Calif.-based company, made up of new dads and uncles, has developed the futuristic Orbit Infant System, sure to please even the most techie of babies (and their parents).

Three years in the making (and seven patents filed along the way), the Orbit car seat, car base and stroller are designed to be safe, simple, secure, lightweight and super easy to use. The car seat snaps into the base and stroller from any direction, eliminating the need for parents to contort their bodies and strain their backs. And … Read more

Consumers who sued Apple Computer over battery problems with older versions of the iPod will get $50 vouchers and extended service warranties under a tentative settlement in the class action case, the Associated Press reported on Thursday.

Lawyers representing consumers in the state court case against Apple said the settlement could affect as many as 2 million buyers nationwide who purchased first-, second- and third-generation iPods through May 2004.

Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple confirmed the settlement but did not provide immediate comment.

In 2003, eight customers sued the company, claiming the popular digital-music player failed to live up to advertised … Read more

Gamers, gear-heads and PC aficionados alike are agog over the latest designs coming out of Computex in Taipei, Taiwan, this week.

More than 1,300 exhibitors are showing their latest wares for more than 120,000 visitors expected to attend the annual event.

With the recent release of dual-core processors such as Intel's Pentium D and AMD's Athlon X2, computer makers are debating new combinations of speed and style to attract the more than 202 million PCs that analysts with Gartner are estimating will ship worldwide in 2005.

One company that's taking advantage right off the bat … Read more

The day may come when kids don't ask their parents if they can watch more TV--they ask their shoes.

Gillian Swan, a 22-year-old student at London's Brunel University School of Design, has created a children's insole aimed at kick-starting a healthier, more active lifestyle. The product, embedded with sensors and dubbed "Square-eyes," records the number of daily steps taken, then transmits the tally to a base station using a radio signal.

The station, which is connected to the television, calculates the TV time the child has earned and displays it on an LCD screen. Once … Read more

Toshiba and Canon say they will produce surface-conduction electron emission display (SED) TVs out of a refurbished plant once used to produce old-fashioned tube TVs in Himeji. SED TVs and others similar in concept promise to be thinner than LCD TVs or plasmas but provide better picture clarity.

Early units are expected toward the end of next year, but volume production at Himeji won't start until 2007.

Touchy-feely peripheral maker Immersion introduced a new technology to help put some life into next-generation touch screens.

At the Society for Information Display Symposium in Boston this week, the company introduced its TouchSense technology for flat panel displays. The effect called haptic feedback gives the screen a little give and take when pushed. Haptic technology can be as simple as the feel of a computer keyboard or as sophisticated as those in virtual-reality systems.

As the San Jose, Calif.-based company describes it... "Instead of just feeling the hard, unresponsive touch screen surface, users perceive that buttons depress and … Read more

Many people choose their iPod case to reveal a little bit of who they are. But Speck Products introduced an iPod case on Thursday that has a personality of its own.

The company's $35 iGuy is a silicone case, similar to other iPod jackets, but it adds bendable arms and legs to the typical design. For now it comes in a version for fourth-generation iPods, though an iPod Mini version is slated for a June arrival

For those who lack creativity, Speck even has a page on its Web site with suggested poses for the iGuy, including sitting down … Read more

Love your iPod but hate getting tangled up with headphone wires? San Francisco start up Wi-Gear is coming out with a Bluetooth adaptor called iMuffs that helps cut the cord.

The wraparound headset uses Bluetooth 1.2 and Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) to extend an iPod's reach to about 30 feet (10 meters). The stereo headphones also have a three-button controller so you don't have to race back to the iPod to skip to the next song.

And if you have a Bluetooth phone, iMuffs is tweaked to automatically pause the iPod and let you take the … Read more