What’s not to love about the latest technology and the hottest trendy products? Our Cutting Edge section keeps you on the vanguard of electronic wizardry with our featured gallery of gadgets that are newly launched or coming soon to a store or website near you.
SOCIAL MOUSE
The HP X7000 Wi-Fi Touch Mouse ($48) is just another sign that social networks are truly taking over the world—a dedicated Facebook button takes you right to the social media site with a single click. You can also create other timesaving shortcuts with the additional six buttons and quickly scroll through the Web with a flick of your finger using the touch-sensitive scrolling. The mouse can work on almost any surface, and it should have twice the battery life of a Bluetooth mouse, since it connects via Wi-Fi.
DROID DOES WORK AND PLAY
The Droid Xyboard is available from Verizon Wireless in two models. The 10.1-inch version ($530 for 16GB and $630 for 32GB) is for the businessperson on the go, with its stylus pen capability for faster and more accurate on-screen writing and editing. Meanwhile, the 8.2-inch model ($430) is great for those who love to consume media with adaptive 3D surround-sound and a built-in digital subwoofer. Both have a dual-core 1.2 GHz processor, run on Verizon’s 4G LTE network, and are built to last with Corning Gorilla Glass to resist scratches and nano-coating to repel water.
While not quite Dick Tracy’s watch phone, the inPulse smartwatch ($149-$199) does mirror your smartphone in many ways…meaning that it literally pushes emails, text messages, calendar alerts, and caller ID right from your phone to your wrist. The inPulse has been around a little while, but this revamped model features a new design as well as the addition of apps—including Presenter, which lets you control PowerPoint presentations from the watch. The smartwatch is compatible with all Blackberry OS 5, 6, and 7 phones; Google Nexus One and Nexus S; all Motorola Android phones; and Android phones running Cyanogenmod.
MUSIC IN THE AIR
The Klipsch Gallery G-17 Air ($550) speaker utilizes Apple Airplay technology to let you listen to your iTunes library from anywhere in your house. The Gallery G-17 Air connects to your Wi-Fi network so that it can wirelessly stream music from your Apple devices such as the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. This little 17-inch speaker also packs a booming, dynamic sound (while also promising a lack of distortion) thanks to the proprietary Tractrix Horns.
EXPANDING CLOUD
Pogoplug already offers 5GB of free online cloud storage through the Pogoplug Cloud service, but with the Pogoplug Series 4 ($100) users can add unlimited cloud capacity to their Pogoplug account. Sign up for Pogoplug right on your phone and automatically upload photos, videos, etc., from your phone to your Pogoplug Cloud—no sync required. You can also instantly share anything in your cloud through email, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ as well as collaborate with family and colleagues on shared folders. The Pogoplug Series 4 allows you to add larger files to your cloud from compatible SD cards, external hard drives, flash drives, or e-state drives.
