Sunman Kwon from Korea’s Hong-ik University has posted his new concept design phone - Finger Touching Wearable Mobile Phone under the Consumer Electronics/Telecommunications category.

This concept of mobile phone is a wearable mobile device for enhanced chatting. It introduces a new wearable device that anyone can communicate with that is easier and lighter in mobile circumstances corresponding to the 3.5G, 4G communication standard.

To communicate, human hand is the basic method for this wearable mobile device. It uses “finger joint” which is the instinctive input method. Each joint makes up a button, excluding the thumb, making up 12 buttons. Of course, this totally negates any possibility of handsfree yakking or picking your nose with your phone hand.

This one joins the league of extraordinary “hand” phones, with the idea of a wearable mobile glove that slips onto your hand, then like a Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard, projects a 3 x 4 mobile keypad onto your fingers.

Surprisingly, the signal bar quickly shoots up to full strength the moment I am half way up the staircase leading to the upper floor - the bedrooms. I can enjoy excellent signal in my bedroom and second living room upstairs. I can even surf the Internet using GPRS and EDGE. I am a little out dated in this department because I have not upgraded to 3G yet. My phone doesn’t support 3G.

I missed a lot of calls just because I left my hand phone upstairs. No point having my hand phone with me while I am downstairs because I can’t get a signal down there!

Oh, before I forgot. I am a Digi Prepaid user. So, you really need to help me here, otherwise I will have to say goodbye to the Yellow Man (Digi’s mascot).

I have heard of mobile phone boosters, but I am really skeptic about this device. The device is so simple and costs less than US$5. If it’s really effective in boosting mobile phone reception signal, then why phone manufacturers do not include them in their products? What do you think? Do you think I should give this booster a try?… not sure if I can get it from a local phone store though.

At its core is the carousel, used to navigate intuitively among the various Yahoo! Go widgets. The widgets include a search facility, e-mail, and features that deliver local information and maps, news, sports data, financial information, entertainment, weather, and Flickr photos. Simply use the carousel to scroll over to the widget you want.

Since Yahoo! Go uses advanced caching and background loading technology, your widget content is automatically and continuously “pushed” to your phone, so it’s always right there when you want it.

Although Yahoo! says it’s considering support for other OS such as BREW, Linux, or Palm OS, but according to PC Magazine, it works only on Java, Symbian, and Windows Mobile phones. The application will run on 175 different feature phones and smart phones.

If you are interested to install the application, please visit here and there are 5 steps to install the Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0.

The Cowon D2 has a sleek body wrapped in a brushed-metal border, where you can find some controls: a power/hold slider, volume buttons, and a menu key. There are 2 USB ports sit on the left edge, hidden beneath a flap. One standard mini for syncing with the computer and one proprietary for use with the included wallwart power adapter. At 3×2.2×0.6 inches, the player is pleasantly compact overall, though it feels a bit weighty at 2.1 ounces.

This player features 2GB or 4GB of internal memory, a built-in DMB tuner, FM tuner, voice recorder, an SD/MMC card slot, and up to 52-hours (audio) / 10-hours (video) battery life. Besides, it supports multiple audio codecs, including MP3, WMA, OGG, MPEG-4, WMV9, and FLAC.

Music playback options include shuffle and repeat modes, six EQ presets as well as a user-defined mode, and BBE sound effects (Mach3Bass, 3D Surround, and Stereo Enhance).

It’s a simple job to get started with the Cowon D2 on Windows XP and the player also works with previous Windows versions back to 98, as well as Mac and Linux operating systems.

Simply connect the player to computer using the USB cable and from here, you can start to transfer your content, via drag and drop in Windows Explorer or Using Windows Media Player.

Cowon comes with a software CD that includes JetShell for transferring files and JetAudio for media playback and conversion. COWON’s JetAudio VX software is used to create high-compression files for quality playback on COWON D2. Jetshell is capable of playing and managing of various multimedia allowing seamless integration of multimedia library.

You can also view photos and videos on the device. It supports WMV and AVI natively, and the aforementioned JetShell can help you with other formats, such as DiVX. There’s also voice and line-in recording, as well as an FM tuner with autoscan and a seemingly limitless number of preset slots.

With a built-in clock/alarm function, you can schedule play/recording of FM radio. The built-in microphone optimized for voice recording can be used to easily record meetings and lectures.

Line-in recording capability allows recording of sound output from CDP, MD, TV and other playback devices.

Cowon D2 MP3 player comes with 2 color, white and black. But the white is only offered in 4GB, whereas the black comes in either 2GB or 4GB.

Reviews from CNET.com:

The good: The Cowon D2 MP3 player offers a sleek and compact design dominated by a lovely, touch-sensitive screen. The deviceis packed with almost every feature in the book, including video playback, voice recording, and an FM tuner. The D2 comes with a handy stylus/kickstand, and the sound quality is great.

The bad: The Cowon D2 is pricier than similarly featured MP3 players, and it’s a bit heavy. The touch interface won’t appeal to all users, specifically active ones.

The bottom line: If you can get on board with the Cowon D2’s PDA-like touch-screen interface, the reward is great-sounding audio, a smorgasbord of features, and a fantastic battery life.

For Cowon D2’s specifications, please read here

With a quite low price of a mere $24, it’s not much better compare with the built-in webcam, which will only give you a basic VGA resolution with none of the fancy face-tracking or other features now common in non-robot webcams. You really can’t expect much more than a cutesy little USB robot to sit atop your monitor.

The actual VGA resolution is 350k pixels and it records in 24-bit true color. The frame rate is 30fps and it can record resolutions of 640 x 480, 320 x 240, and 160 x 120. The cam works with Win XP, 2000, ME and 98.

Here’s a suggestion, you can check out here for a webcam that performs better.

The 704 WiFi PMP weighs at 22 ounces, sports a 7-inch, 800×480 pixel touch screen display, 80GB hard drive storage and 802.11g WiFi.

It also support for playback of MPEG-4 ASP@L5 AVI, WMV video files, MP3 and WMA audio files, PlaysForSure support, an integrated PDF reader, built-in stereo speakers, Opera web browser, up to 5 hours of video playback. There’s also an optional DVR Station dock for recording TV shows directly to the player.

Archos has learnt from their mistakes by introducing the 704 WiFi, to overcome the lack of performance of Archos 604 WiFi. The ability to surf the Internet wirelessly is also a boon, as casual users no longer need to lug around a notebook just to check out the latest movie showtimes via WiFi. The player appears to use DDR2 memory, some flash memory, a DM420 CPU.

Hitachi Displays, Ltd. is launching a 800×480 (2.9″) LCD panel for their mobile phones. The company claims that this is the first in the industry.

You can view the entire image without side scrolling when browsing websites designed to match the size of a personal computer monitor or watching VGA (480 x 640) video. The panel employs the company’s proprietary liquid crystal technology called IPS that boasts wide viewing angle and high image quality.

The pixel count is five times that of QVGA (240 x 320), which has been the norm for mobile phone panels. If the resolution of an LCD panel is boosted by simply increasing the pixel count, areas through which no light from a backlight unit can pass, e.g. wiring, will also increase. In order to boost resolution while maintaining the brightness, the luminance of the backlight unit must also be enhanced, resulting in an increase in power consumption. To solve the problem, the company has focused on the improvement of the transmittance of light from the backlight unit by revamping the pixel structure and microfabricating the wiring.

IPS LCD works differently from the general TFT LCD in that a horizontal electric field causes liquid crystal molecules to rotate in a plane parallel to the TFT substrate. This simple movement allows a wider viewing angle, better color reproduction and faster grey-to-grey response time, claims the company. The new product is a transmissive LCD panel that boasts a viewing angle of over 170 degrees in both vertical and horizontal directions, contrast ratio of about 400:1 and luminance of 250 cd/m2.

pick from Tech-On

Weighing less than 1 ounce and featuring a built-in FM tuner with programmable presets, the Sony Walkman MP3 Player NW-E003PINK is a perfect MP3 player for the gym, the daily commute or traveling.

The built-in FM tuner provides accurate drift-free tuning of FM stereo stations. You can preset 10AM stations and 20FM stations with frequencies between 87.5-108MHz, and skip directly to the most listened to stations.

It features 1GB of on board memory and allows you to store up to 685 of your favorite songs. The MP3 player connects directly to your PC for charging and data transfers without the need to carry an additional cable or cord with it’s built-in USB connector.

A 3 minutes quick battery charge features gives you up to 3 hours of playback. Besides, with Rechargeable Embedded Battery, you can continuous playback tracks in MP3 player up to 28 hours.

With the 1-line Organic Electroluminescence display, you can view the song title, length, battery indicator, time, calendar and more. You’ll appreciate the wide viewing angle for at-a-glance viewing.

CONNECT™ Music provides an easy way for downloading personal music from inteernet. CONNECT™ Music offers access to an extensive online music library including many independent titles as well as featured artist and celebrity mixes.

5-Band Equalizer in the player offers 5 different modes including: Heavy, Pop, Jazz, Custom and Manual for enhanced sound. Comes with it, there is SonicStage® CP Music Management Software that allows users to manage their music, create playlists, burn CDs, import digital files and easily transfer music to your Walkman player.

If you already have extensive music libraries, you can use the included software and hardware to store and play back your collection of MP3s. Sony’s ATRAC format provides higher sound quality with smaller file sizes than competing formats, which enables you to store more music and listen for a longer amount of time.

This MP3 player has no moving parts. You’ll enjoy uninterrupted playback even while carrying the Walkman during active exercise.
This Walkman supports the playback of WMA and AAC audio files, so, it perfect if you have a large collection of audio on your PC that was ripped from personal CDs. This allows for transfer of audio downloads, imports and self recorded tracks, but only works on files that are not protected by DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Reviews from www.circuitcity.com:

I got one of these about 2 days after they came out. I like this because it holds a lot of songs, is very easy to use and the software is very easy to use. What i worry about is the screen it seems like it might crack the first time i drop it but i hope not. I think it is cost benefit because it holds 685 songs and has 28 hours of playback on one full charge. It is not 50 but who really needs 50 anyway… A case is coming out soon too so this is one player you can protect also. What I dont really like isthe earphones they start to hurt my ears after a while. The battery charging time is great, first time i plugged it in i came back after a half hour and was really surprised it was done charging.

The design of combination of mp3 player, FM tuner as well as a usb flash drive is a marvel. The sound quality of music is superb. The receiption of FM is stunning. I use it for excercise cause I use a much larger ipod for the normal use. The charging is aextremely easy thing.

The software which is needed for uploading and downloading music is difficult. I tried to install in my working computer at home, but I failed because it can only installed when you are logged on as the administrator of the computer. I then installed on my personal IBM laptop, but the whole windows runs error. So I still not loaded any music on the device except the only three fragements of musics installed by the manufacturer. Anyway, I use it as a FM tuner when I walk.

Transferring CDs on to my computer took forever but everything else was fast and great. Overall this is a great little product. The sound is fantastic. It’s easy to operate once you ‘get it.’ It’s little and cute. What more can I say.

For details of specifications, please refer to PriceGrabber.com

In addition to resisting smudges from fingerprints, the monitor also sports a wide viewing angle so folks anywhere in the vehicle can see the screen clearly. The NV-U70 is a highly intelligent brightness control system to overcome the rapid changes of light conditions in a car. In addition to the automatic functions, you can also easily control brightness manually. Yes, Sony thought of everything in the screen brightness department.

The Sony NV-U70’s controls are kept to a minimum. There are two buttons on top of the unit: one to power on/off the device and a voice/position button to repeat the last set of instructions. All other commands are entered via the responsive touch screen. On the right side, you have a mini USB port and a charger port, both of which are protected by an attached rubber cover.

Ready for use right out of the box, the NV-U70 contains a 12-channel GPS receiver with proprietary RF technology, a built in antenna, and 1 GB of imbedded flash memory, all in the palm of your hand. This convenient, user-friendly, compact system can be easily mounted on the windshield or dashboard of virtually any vehicle.

The device features an additional map data, which includes maps of Puerto Rico, Alaska, and Canada and it is provided on a DVD that ships with the NV-U70. Using your PC’s USB connection, you can upload this data to the device quickly and easily.

The NV-U70’s interface is straightforward and simple to use. From the main menu, you can choose from five options–New Destination, Search Nearby, Route, Muting, and Settings–and if you want to return to the main page, you can hit the Back button or any point on the screen.

Its imbedded rechargeable lithium-ion battery allows up to four hours of operation outside of the car. Switch on the cruise control and let the NV-U70 Portable Satellite Navigation System make your next trip a breeze.

Reviews from CNET Reviews

The good: The sleek and ultraportable Sony NV-U70 features a simple interface and an accurate receiver.

The bad: The Sony NV-U70 was a little slow to calculate routes, and it lacks some of the features found in similarly priced competitors, such as text-to-speech functionality and traffic services.

The bottom line: The Sony NV-U70 is a solid in-car nav system for the GPS newbie, offering ease of use and accurate directions, but you can get more for your money from competing products.

For NV-U70’s Specifications, please refer to MySimon.com

The Archos AV500 has a decidedly industrial look, with it’s brushed-metal exterior, sharp corners, and engraved silver buttons, and the casing is durable and well put together.

The AV500 has a 4 inches widescreen LCD display of 480 x272 pixels and capable of displaying over 262K colours. The Archos AV500 weighs 9 ounces and measures 3 x 4.9 x 0.7 inches, meaning you can pocket it with only a bit more bulge than you’d get from a full-size PDA.

This exciting media companion offers direct TV recording and the best of home cinema, gaming, digital music and more. As with other Archos PMPs, the AV500 supports a wide variety of media formats including MPEG4, WMV9, MP3, WMA, WMA DRM, WAV, JPEG, and BMP formats.

Music Player
The AV500 faeatures a Archos’ newly-designed music player application. You can easily organize songs with the enhanced ARCLibrary and customize your view by artist, album, type of music, title, year, and play lists without having to use a computer. The AV 500 also offers an audio recording application to record in high-quality WAV format, from almost all analog stereo sources.

Personal Video Player
The AV500 also a personal video player. You can play back your favourite programs on the widescreen or on any external screen with a near DVD quality. Used in conjunction with the included TV docking pod, you can record television programs, movies and home videos directly from your TV, VCR, DVD player, cable box or satellite receiver.

The AV 500 offers many functionalities such as slow motion(3 speeds), adjustable screen size (Auto, Maximized, or Full Picture), video editing as well as a bookmark option.

Photo Viewer
he AV500 is a great digital photo companion. It can transfer thousands of photos directly from your digital camera, or another mass storage device using the built-in USB connection. Then, organize your photos and watch them in slide shows on the unit’s screen or on any external display.

Connectivity
The AV 500 has a USB Host Port enabling you to copy, share, connect and transfer files directly from other powered mass storage devices. Additionally, the AV 500 is recognized as a mass storage drive on your PC or Mac enabling you to store any computer files using the high-speed USB 2.0 interface (backward USB 1.1 compatible at a lower speed).

PlaysForSure
The AV500 lets you purchase, download, subscribe to or rent protected video and music content from Microsoft PlaysForSure websites. The PlaysForSure designation ensures compatibility with Windows Media Player 10 and Windows XP. Using the USB 2.0 interface, the AV500 will easily auto-synchronize this content with Windows Media Player 10 each time you connect it to your PC, or convert your Windows Media Player 10 library content to one of many compatible formats (MP3, WMA, WAV, protected WMA, MPEG -4, WMV and protected Windows Media Video).

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Reviews from CNET Reviews:

The good: The Archos AV500 has a nice wide-screen LCD with great viewing angles yet is compact enough to fit in a pocket. It supports PlaysForSure audio and video and has superb audio quality, and with it, you can record audio and video from external sources, including TV at scheduled times. The AV500 also has excellent battery life and a good printed manual, and with the included plug-in, it will work within iTunes.

The bad: The Archos AV500 is one pricey beast, and the controls can take a little getting used to. We don’t like the fact that you can’t multitask and that it lacks a kickstand or carrying case. Although audio quality is top-notch, there is no equalizer, and the earbuds are uncomfortable. Also, it doesn’t have an iTunes-like source for video downloads, though it does record video.

The bottom line: The well-appointed Archos AV500 puts wide-screen video in your pocket, but we’re still waiting for a point-and-click way to get video into the device.