Polaroid is abandoning instant film, but if you’re going to miss the feel of getting a small print in your hand a minute after snapping a picture, the company has a solution: A battery-powered printer that fits in your pocket. I got a chance to test out the new pocket printer and I am not disappointed.

Called the PoGo, the printer spits out 2-by-3-inch color photos that can be peeled apart to reveal a sticky back. It can receive photos wirelessly from some cell phones, or via a cable from a digital camera. However, I will warn you now: Do not expect great picture quality from the $149 PoGo. The colors are strange at times, which is especially noticeable in the skin tones. There are faint lines across the print; artifacts from the printing process.

That is besides the point. Sometimes you have to scrafice something to get something else better, right? So why not sacrifice a little picture quality to make it as portable as possible. And to be honest, none of the Polaroid portable printer I have tried have been up to pare. If you have seen the “instant” prints from the Polaroid portable printer family, then you know a little about the technology about the prints. However, the PoGo prints a little differently. The printer uses paper with billions of embedded dye crystals. It selectively heats them up to produce different colors. There is no ink, toner, or liquid chemical in the process. The prints come out dry. That explains the accuracy of colors.

With no ink to buy, the only cost of using the printer is the paper, which it eats in packs of 10. They have to make up the money somehow so these paper packs cost $3.99 each, or $9.99 for three. That’s a little steep compared to regular photo printers, but cheap compared to instant film, which costs around $15 for a 10-pack.

For a cell phone to connect to the PoGo, it needs, first of all, a Bluetooth chip. However, not all Bluetooth-equipped cell phones work with the PoGo. My iPhone didn’t work unfortunately, however, and old Blackberry that I had did the job perfectly. Compatibility is probably going to be an issue and if you are buying it to print strictly from your phone, I suggest you make sure it is compatible.

Another thing I did not like is the fact that the printer has no LCD screen or memory card slot. Most printers have these features, and I am sure again, they had to sacrifice portability for a LCD and a memory card slot, but that would have been oh-so-convenient. Both way, I enjoyed it and if you are looking to print on the fly for fun (not professionally of course) then I recommend this printer. If I were in high school or middle school, this would be the perfect gift. I think middle or high schoolers would love being able to pull out their cellphones (that most teens have these days), take a picture, peel off the back and put it on their lockers or something.

Turbolinux’s wizpy is a new generation device which attempts to rewrite the definition, “PC2.0″ by unbundling the OS from the hardware.

With wizpy, the OS is no longer tied to the hardware and you can carry your Mail, Bookmarks, OS settings and History with you and and access them through any PC. According to the makers. “Important data such as passwords and credit card information may now need not be left on the PC but can be stored on wizpy, thus preventing your personal information from being compromised,” although if you lose your wizpy, it’s just as compromised.

The whole idea of a portable operating system is intriguing and the tiny wizpy also provides multimedia features such as an audio player, video player and FM radio. The current release holds only 4 GB which may or may not prove sufficient; no doubt there are larger versions in the pipeline, but it seems one of their goals is to have you store your data at their online facility, and speaking personally, I am not a big fan of this idea. If you take a look at the issues being created by Flickr selling off peoples photos, you have to question the safety of entrusting all your data to a third party.

Turbolinux are calling it an e-book as well, but with a screen size of a matchbox, I don’t think that’s a valid claim. Unfortunately, the entire concept is very poorly explained, but full details of this little device can be found here and there’s an good detailed write up here.

Technology has changed the way we do things. Emails are sent more often than letters; people visit movie theaters more often than drama theatres; text messages replace short phone calls. Even books have tried to make the change, with audio books, e-books, and services such as Book Glutton. But when it comes down to it, physical books are still the most preferred way to read. The Amazon Kindle aims to change that.

The Amazon Kindle, which has been on the drawing board for several years now, is finally ready to go. Essentially, the Kindle is a handheld e-book reader. Users purchase books and read them on the Kindle, and can also pay to access their favorite blogs on it. But at $400, $10 per book, and $1 per blog, is the Kindle really worth it?

Considering that most people don’t mind carrying a book or two around, and staring at a digital screen too long is a surefire way to get a headache, there are probably few people who really need it. Yes, with the Kindle you can carry fifty books with you at once if you’d like, but who reads fifty books at once? In addition to that, it’s UI has gotten less than positive reviews and, technically, one can get a good PDA or phone that can hold readable content, has better uses (and, most likely, a better interface) for a comparable price.

Not to mention, the Kindle is not the first gadget of its type. The Sony Reader may have fewer features, but it’s cheaper, you don’t have to pay for media you already get free (such as blogs), and it can actually open PDFs. But people still want the Kindle. My book crazy, non tech-savvy mom is one of them. But until it’s dropped in price and worked a few bugs out, Amazon can keep it. Learn more about the Kindle at amazon.com.

Check out more info at amazon.com:

I have been noticing many ads on the internet about TakeTV. I decided to take a look at it and discovered a neat little device that might interest me, or you for that matter.

At CES back in January SanDisk showed off a USB media player device that has just now made it to market. The system is called the Sansa TakeTV. The system is somewhat similar to the Apple TV product in that it records content from your PC to play on your TV. Whereas the Apple TV uses wireless connectivity to connect to your TV, the Sansa TakeTV uses a USB drive that plugs into a cradle connected to your TV.

Unfortunately, I cannot give you a full product review, because I have not been able to get my hands on one, but here are some details for you. The full kit comes with the video player, docking station, power adapter, remote control and AV cables. There are two models – 4GB and 10GB capacity for consumers’ selection. Priced at priced only $99.99 and $149.99 respectively, I am sure this is a good deal for beginners that would like to switch its PC contents to the living room.

TakeTV supports DivX, Xvid, and MPEG-4 video files. The device is Vista and XP compatible, so sorry Mac users. In addition, TakeTV lacks support for High Def and 2.1 channel audio.

TakeTV is an easy way to grab the tons of BitTorrent files and other video content from your PC to watch on your TV. Sure, the exclusion of 2.1 audio connections might disappoint you. Nevertheless, the lack of wireless streaming is not that much of a bummer. You and I both know that network hiccups and bandwidth issues can affect wireless video streaming sometimes. In addition, transferring files wirelessly isn’t always speedy. Moreover, the device is affordable, and that alone, is good enough for some people, and worth checking out.

Let me know how you like it.

Get either model from amazon.com:

• Sansa TakeTV 4 GB Video Player
• Sansa TakeTV 8 GB Video Player

Everyone loves free stuff! I looked at the free top five useful services that anyone can access with their phone. You will see below a list of web services where your phone plays a main part in the service. Whether you need someone to wake you up in the morning, or even detailed driving directions, even to make free overseas call, it’s all here and accessible from your phone; Your mobile phone, or your landline phone. Enjoy!

1. Yak4ever – This is nice. This service offers astounding free, unlimited overseas calling directly from your phone. Now if only I had overseas friends to call…There are a few other services that work the same way in other areas too.
   1. AllFreeCalls.co.uk – UK and supports O2 Peak/Off-Peak, Orange/T-Mobile both Peak and Off-Peak
   2. AllFreeCalls.ie – Ireland
2. Bringo – This practical service lets you bypass annoying phone support waiting lines and get to the company representative you need in a matter of seconds. You can: (1) Find the company you’d like to call by category (credit cards, mortgages, health care, etc), Press (2) Enter your phone number. (3) Wait for your phone to ring.
3. Tellme – I use to use Tellme all the time. This is yet another free directory service for local businesses, maps, and directions. To use Tellme, you can either Dial (1-800-555-TELL), send text message (to 83556) or download TellMe software to your mobile.
4. Call-in-Sick – Don’t like calling in yourself? Or you know you are going to have a late night and don’t want to call your boss in the morning. This evil but rather handy service lets you record ‘i am sick’ type message and schedule it to be delivered to your Boss early in the morning. I have not used the service yet, but I am pretty sure that that would not fly with my boss.
5. GoogleSMS – Google just keeps getting better and better. You are now able to get instant info about local restaurants, weather, flight information, movies, translations, driving directions, currency conversions, etc. via SMS.

I hope you find most, if not all these services to be useful. I sure have. There are so many more out there and probably requires a whole other blog to talk about each service available today. However, be sure to check back as I may list some more services that you may want to check out.

What services do you use on your phone and cannot live without?