Military Technology, military gear, military gadgets - Military Times

High tech holiday

There you are, roaming the local shopping mall. Cell phone stuffed in your britches, some suave-looking Bluetooth latched to your skull.

Your honey’s on the line. She politely takes notes as you browse the store windows and kiosks. “I want this one and that one, and that one and this one,” you announce, smearing your grubby digits all over those luminous display cases.

You pause outside Gary’s Gadget Emporium. The sight of one item steals your next breath, and a single tear briefly wells in each eye. “Baby, I’ve got to let you go,” you whisper, ending the call abruptly.

A choir of angels begins to chant, faintly at first. As their incantation swells, a beam of golden sunlight descends from the heavens and envelops the object of your gaze: an iLuv i222 wireless stereo headset complete with — oh yeah — a spare ear cushion.

Hallelujah, Gadget Guy. The holidays are here. And even though the old saying suggests that it’s better to give than to receive, you’ve never had a lick of use for old sayings — no, ’tis the season to treat yourself.

And there’s no shortage of newfangled wizardry with which to stuff your own stocking this year. Here’s a look at some of the season’s coolest contraptions:

Wires are for suckers

If Bluetooth be thy name — and rump-shaking be thy game — iLuv wants to wrap its collective arms around your neck and give you a big slobbering kiss. The i222 Stereo Backphone Headset lets you listen to your tunes wirelessly and take or make phone calls — minus the burden of holding a cell phone against your face.

The headset, which sells for about $130, rests behind your neck and features a digital processor that’s designed to reduce echoes and other disruptive noise. Listen to music continuously for up to eight hours or talk on the phone for up to 10 while standing (or grooving) up to 33 feet away from your sound source or cell phone.

It comes with a USB power adapter, a wireless audio transmitter and, yes, a spare ear cushion.

http://www.i-luv.com

Run for the hills — for real

You’re three miles into a five-mile run over hill and over dale. As you sail down Maple Street, Digital Underground’s “Underwater Rhymes” streams into your auditory canals courtesy of the Apple iPod nano strapped to your upper arm.

A sensor tucked beneath the sock liner in your Nike Zooms measures your pace, distance, elapsed time — even the number of calories you’ve shed — and transmits the data, wirelessly, to a receiver plugged into your nano. Then, get this, your nano recites those stats to you. The information is stored on the device and can be uploaded via iTunes to Nikeplus.com, an online community where runners network and compare each other’s numbers.

The Nike+iPod Sport Kit costs about $30. (Shoes and iPod sold separately, of course.) For about $300 more, you can get the Nike+ Runners Gift Pack, which includes the sport kit, an 8-gigabyte iPod nano (with video capability) and a $100 Nike gift card, which you can throw at a new pair of Zooms (men’s and women’s Jasari+ models sell for about $90).

Oh, and Nike offers a 10 percent discount to active and retired service members — and their families, according to the company’s Web site. It’s available at any Nike-owned store; all you need is a valid military ID card.

http://www.nikeplus.com

http://nike.com

http://www.apple.com

Seeing fit

Fitness columns are a great way to stay current on new trends, but how many times have you been at the base gym struggling to visualize the exercise you read about over a bowl of Corn Flakes just 30 minutes earlier? It’s frustrating, not to mention unsafe.

With PumpOne Video Trainer software, you can view workout routines on any handheld device that can play MPEG-4 video. The workouts include a mix of images, audio tips and video clips that demonstrate proper form during routines. And as you advance through the program, the workouts become more challenging. Priced at $19, each title in the series includes 12 workouts.

http://www.pumpone.com

Zune fine tuned

Sick of all things iPod? Fed up with Apple CEO Steve Jobs — and his black turtleneck? There’s hope for you yet: Microsoft has updated its line of Zune portable media players. New features provide easier access to TV shows recorded with Windows Media Center for Vista Home Premium or Ultimate.

“Desperate Housewives,” anyone?

Plus, its wireless tool now lets you sync a docked Zune through your wireless network.

A black model with a 3.2-inch color screen and an 80 GB hard drive costs $250. An 8 GB version in pink, green, black or red costs $200, while a 4 GB model is $150.

http://www.zune.net

Why wait for reruns?

Speaking of TV shows, did you miss one of your favorites recently? If you can download it to your computer, you can watch it on your TV via the Sansa TakeTV, a slim video player that plugs into a USB port.

The transfer is simple: Drag compatible video files to the player, put the player in its TV cradle and plug the TV cradle into the audio/video jacks on your TV. An on-screen guide will display the shows stored on the player.

The player works with a variety of formats and will also be compatible with Fanfare.com, a new SanDisk site that will provide access to various TV shows.

A 4 GB model costs $100, while an 8 GB version is $150.

http://www.take.tv

Snap it & map it

The expeditionary nature of your job will take you all over the world — the Far East, the Middle East, Europe, South America, Africa. Got a good camera?

You can give your photos the big-screen treatment with Sony’s Cyber-shot W-series cameras, which can capture photos in a widescreen format and display the images via a direct connection to a high-definition widescreen TV. Each camera features a traditional eye-level viewfinder, a 2.5-inch liquid crystal display and a 3x optical zoom.

The 12.1-megapixel DSC-W200 costs about $400. The 8.1-megapixel DSC-W90 sells for about $300. The 7.2-megapixel DSC-W80 model costs $250.

And frequent travelers who have trouble remembering which shots go with which deployment will appreciate the thinking behind Sony’s GPS-CS1 Global Positioning System device. With a 12-channel GPS unit, this portable gadget records the time, longitude and latitude of your locale.

These data can then be downloaded to your PC, along with any digital images you snapped. The gadget’s GPS Image Tracker software will synchronize the images with the tracker data. Using this information, the program can create a virtual map that lets you locate and view your photos by geography. Small enough to clip to a belt or a camera bag, the image tracker costs $150.

http://www.sonystyle.com

Sensitivity framing

The Smartparts SyncPix Digital Picture Frame likes an audience (hey, who doesn’t?). With its built-in motion detector, the frame automatically starts working when someone walks into the room.

Then, when you insert a memory card into the frame, it will copy, resize and adjust the images for optimal viewing. Plus, it can play video and audio files, and includes folders that allow you to sort and view images by categories.

The 8-inch SPX8 model has 256 megabytes of memory, slots for popular media cards, a power adapter, a USB cable and a remote control. Cost: $180.

http://www.smartpartsproducts.com

Juice bars

Say you’re TDY to Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash., for survival-skills training — really roughing it out in the boonies. The battery in your cell phone is just about kaput, and there aren’t any outlets around to charge it. Voxred’s TC2 Turbo Charge will give you the juice you need. Simply connect the reusable TC2 to your phone, and you’re good to go.

How does it work, you wonder? With just two AA batteries, buddy. The device even regulates the flow of energy to prevent overcharging.

The company also makes a portable charger for the iPod (of course) and one that works with portable video game systems. Priced up to about $30, each charger ships with two batteries, which can deliver up to three complete recharges, according to the company’s Web site.

That’s convenient, huh?

But maybe you just watched Al Gore’s envirodrama “An Inconvenient Truth” and have resolved to pursue a greener lifestyle (as in grass, oak leaves and pine needles, not woodland camo). Well check this out: Solio, from Better Energy Systems, lets you “plug into the sun” and charge your handheld gizmos — to include cell phones, PDAs, MP3 players, digital cameras and video games — using solar energy.

It can take up to 10 hours of direct sunlight to fill Solio’s internal battery, according to the company’s Web site, but that will charge a typical cell phone at least twice. And it works in extreme temperatures, anything from 130 degrees to minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Take it with you to Iraq — or Antarctica.

Solio sells for about $100.

http://www.turbocellcharge.com

http://www.solio.com

iPhone go home

You could call it the poor man’s iPhone, but even for $100 (when you ink a two-year service commitment with Sprint), the Palm Centro is a treasure trove of multimedia riches.

Yeah, you can make calls with it, but that’s just what’s on the ground floor. You can watch more than 50 TV channels (even the NFL Network) or strum air guitar while headbanging to Korn’s latest release. Centro also lets you chat with friends or colleagues using one of three instant messaging services. It snaps photos, shoots video and connects you to YouTube, MySpace and Google Maps, not to mention popular Web-based e-mail such as AOL, Gmail and Yahoo.

Centro even supports Microsoft Office documents and PDFs, and its full — yet compact — keyboard lets you type with reasonable ease.

Though slightly thicker than Apple’s latest showstopper, it’s shorter and narrower. And at 4.2 ounces, the Centro even weighs a morsel or two less.

http://www.palm.com/centro

Time, tide & temp

Members of the sea services, even ground-pounders and flyboys who enjoy spending downtime out on the open water, are gonna love this one: This Timex can take a licking and keep on ... predicting tidal information. Part of the company’s e-Instruments series, the E-Tide-Temp-Compass is unassuming with its analog display, but you’ll be surprised at all the science they managed to stuff inside this $160 wristwatch.

Water resistant to 100 meters, it’s got four hands for telling time, tide level, air and water temperature, and direction. Four buttons positioned around its face allow you to establish, adjust and calibrate the watch’s settings, or employ Timex’s signature Indiglo nightlight.

http://keepon.timex.com/e%2Dinstruments/?timexBrand=core

———

Staff writer Andrew deGrandpré and Gannett News Service writer Deborah Porterfield contributed to this report.