The DIR-505 All-in-One Mobile Companion by D-Link, which just came fresh out of the oven here at CES, is essentially a mini wireless router with a host of additional extras any traveling smartphone or tablet user would find useful.

In addition to being able to plug into any existing wired network using its integrated 10/100 Ethernet port and create a wireless access point, the DIR-505 can charge your device via its USB interface. Read more »

When the Compact Flash association made those XQD memory cards official, you really wanted to give them a try right? We mean, the speed promised was so impressive that you wouldn’t be a proper geek if you didn’t.

It appears that Sony will be the first company to actually give you the chance to do so, as the Japanese just unveiled the first two XQD cards. Sony also announced a card reader for connecting the 16GB and 32GB units to your computer and an ExpressCard adapter. Read more »

Remember those creepily realistic Steve Jobs action figures that we saw the other day? Well they may not happen if Apple has its way. The Cupertino-based company has already sent its team of legal sharks to deal with the manufacturer.

Apple says that it owns the likeness of its late founder and releasing the 12-inch action figure on the market would be a criminal offense. However In Icon (the manufacturer of the toy) seems unfazed, saying that it won’t stop production. Read more »

China is finally done with the development of its own geo-positioning system. Named Beidou, the new GPS alternative promises to provide your location with accuracy of up to 10 meters, your speed without erring by more than 0.2 m/s and give you the exact time plus minus 0.02 millionth of a second.

To put things into perspective, the American GPS has a margin of error of 20 meters when finding your location. Read more »

Apple Stores are pretty recognizable, whether they’re built from scratch, such as the recent Pudong, China store or designed to fit into their existing surrounds, such as the Covent Garden store in London.

But now we’ve caught word of a new prototype store appearing in Jobs’ hometown of Palo Alto, set to appear downtown at 340 University Avenue, around a block away from one of the earliest Apple retail stores, built a decade ago. Read more »

Have you ever been in the middle of a phone call and had the need to quick switch applications, perhaps to check an address or a location on the map, well unless your using an iPhone, this handy feature might not be around for long.

We’re only half way through the week and Apple have already blocked HTC (and by extension Google) from utilizing a feature already implemented within Android (at least in the US), but now it appears that another such instance could disappear from any smartphone not touched by the hand of Apple. Read more »

Touchscreen is cool, but touchless is even cooler. And if a small company XTR3D has its way, we might be getting more of the touchless experience from our TVs and smartphones really soon. XTR3D has developed a Kinect-like system that recognizes your gestures and uses them to control various devices.

There’s no need for remote controls or touching the actual device, you just wave your hand and, for example, the next channel comes up or the volume increases. The XTR3D technology also allows hands-free operation of your smartphone, which sounds really convenient for use while driving. Read more »

We don’t often do accessory reviews, but this one is too interesting to miss. You see, one of the problems with touchscreen smartphones is that you cannot use them with gloves, so you have to pick your priorities in the winter – operate your phone or save your fingers from the freezing cold.

Enter the Isotoner SmarTouch gloves – compatible with your touchscreen phone, those will keep your fingers nicely warm in those cold months. Read more »

The Compact Flash Association announced a new high-performance memory card format, called XQD. Based on the PCI Express specification, the new cards will measure 38.5×29.8×3.8mm at launch, which is slightly larger than SD cards (32x24x2.1mm) and tangibly more compact than CF cards (43x36x5 mm).

The XQD cards should allow write speeds of 125MB/s at launch, but they have a theoretical maximum transfer speed of 5Gbps (that’s 625MB/s), so there’s plenty of room for improvement in the future. Read more »

With Christmas fast approaching, the cheerful holiday spirit is all around us, even in places you don’t even expect to find it. One of those places is… your Android keyboard.

Thanks to the developer team at A.I.type, the Android keyboard can now be dressed for Christmas. But it doesn’t stop there because if you can type fast enough, it plays music, too. Read more »

We as humans have this great gift of being aware what surrounds us by our vision and hearing, but we are also blessed with the ability to touch and feel everything around us. Soon enough we’ll be able to use our smartphones and tablets in a whole different way thanks to a company called Senseg and their revolutionary touchscreen technology.

What Senseg have manufactured is a new type of touchscreen that allows you to feel the virtual surface, texture or pattern that’s on your device’s screen. Read more »

It looks like our privacy doesn’t really exist in today’s world of modern technology with the recent Carrier IQ logging scandal and the one with the iPhone 4 tracking every movement you make a while back.

Scary, indeed. And to make matters worse, in a recent press conference Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has made a statement about iPhone, Blackberry and Gmail users saying they are simply “screwed”. Read more »

After the releasing its controversial video on the web mocking Apple’s iPhone 4S and its fans waiting for its launch alike, Samsung has now stick its finger deeper in the wound and has decided to continue pouring salt in it by launching yet another clip.

This time the Korean manufacturer targets more at the missing 4G LTE feature of the iPhone 4S rather than its size or brand-obsessed fans. This doesn’t mean Apple fans are going to like it though. Read more »

Google has just announced the dates for the next year I/O conference. The search giant’s largest developer-oriented event will be held from June 27 to June 29 in San Francisco. This is a departure from the norm – all previous I/O conferences took place in May.

To make up for that Google will add an extra day to the event. Many of the attendees last year complained that the two-day conference didn’t allow enough time to attend all the sessions and meet all the people they wanted, but that shouldn’t be an issue in 2012. Read more »

BestBuy has officially announced that it will be closing its retail stores in the UK and its UK website by January 15. The US retailer, which came to UK just two years ago never really managed to get its business off the ground and at the start of this month decided to give up trying. Now, we also have a time frame for its market exit.

Over the past two years Best Buy UK opened 11 stores in the UK in cooperation with Carphone Warehouse and was planning to expand that number rapidly over the following years. However, the disappointing results forced the company to rethink and it’s now going to focus on its business in its homeland. Read more »