Brother Industries has recently displayed an alternative to standard batteries; a vibration harvesting generator. The company who are generally better known for it’s line of printers, scanners and fax machines are hoping this technology will replace toxic rechargeable batteries and disposable alkaline and lithium batteries.

The Vibration Energy Cell batteries can deliver power to low power consumption devices such as TV remotes after a vigorous shake. This was displayed recently at an event in Tokyo, where Brother showed the new technology powering a TV remote control, an LED flashlight and a remote switch for a lamp.

Initial prototypes have been used to produce a voltage of 3.2V or lower, ideal for lower power consumption devices that don’t constantly use power, such as remotes or LED devices. Due to their small and compact form, these cells will be directly compatible with existing power sources.

The internal mechanism is designed to work in much the same way as a bicycle light dynamo, except in the case of these cells it is shaking that provides the energy to power a device. The Vibration Energy Cells are able to generate electricity using a coil, magnet and a condenser to charge electricity, all housed within the casing of the battery. Brother have said that “Walking around with a device in your pocket would vibrate with a frequency of around 2Hz.” This would provide a small constant charge to a device using this technology in your pocket.

The Gadget Helpline are proud to announce that they are working in partnership with the newly unveiled Times Online website to offer its readers free help and advice live from Gadget Helpline’s team of experts on Friday afternoons at 4pm.

Customers can log on and sign up to take part in the Live chat with the Gadget Helpline team via the Times website and will be able to ask all those nagging technical questions putting them directly to a team of dedicated tech heads.

The Times Online is one of the UK’s premier newspapers and along with its sister publication the Sunday Times is one of the longest standing publications in Britain.

Last week the Times and the Sunday Times launched a new paywall subscription service to the Times Online websites, which will charge readers to access the new websites for a small fee of £1 per day or £2 for a full week’s subscription.

For now, customers can sign up for a free trial period to test out the Times Online service and can use this to take part in the Times and Gadget Helpline’s Gadget clinic tomorrow completely free of charge. The trial period will allow user’s full access to the Times and the Sunday Times for the coming weeks so users can check out the some of the exciting new features for themselves.

Click the image to register for the Gadget Clinic

The Gadget Helpline is seeing a constant growth in its customer base and is really proving that users want jargon free and comprehensive technical support for all their household gadgets. The Gadget Helpline’s CEO, Crispin Thomas, stated: “I am delighted to be working with a brand such as the Times and am looking forward to assisting it’s readers with their Gadget related queries” and he added: “we are excited about new media initiatives such as the Gadget Clinic and are looking forward to introducing the Times customers to our growing gadget club of satisfied customers”

So if your mobile’s had a meltdown, PC is paralysed, or you just want basic advice, join us on the Times online website on Friday at 4pm for the Live Gadget Clinic.

To visit the Times Technology section and to register for the Gadget Helpline’s Gadget Clinic sign up click here or to watch last weeks Gadget Clinic click here.

The Gadget Helpline are proud to announce that they are working in partnership with the newly unveiled Times Online website to offer its readers free help and advice live from Gadget Helpline’s team of experts on Friday afternoons at 4pm.

Customers can log on and sign up to take part in the Live chat with the Gadget Helpline team via the Times website and will be able to ask all those nagging technical questions putting them directly to a team of dedicated tech heads.

The Times Online is one of the UK’s premier newspapers and along with its sister publication the Sunday Times is one of the longest standing publications in Britain.

Last week the Times and the Sunday Times launched a new paywall subscription service to the Times Online websites, which will charge readers to access the new websites for a small fee of £1 per day or £2 for a full week’s subscription.

For now, customers can sign up for a free trial period to test out the Times Online service and can use this to take part in the Times and Gadget Helpline’s Gadget clinic tomorrow completely free of charge. The trial period will allow user’s full access to the Times and the Sunday Times for the coming weeks so users can check out the some of the exciting new features for themselves.

Click the image to register for the Gadget Clinic

The Gadget Helpline is seeing a constant growth in its customer base and is really proving that users want jargon free and comprehensive technical support for all their household gadgets. The Gadget Helpline’s CEO, Crispin Thomas, stated: “I am delighted to be working with a brand such as the Times and am looking forward to assisting it’s readers with their Gadget related queries” and he added: “we are excited about new media initiatives such as the Gadget Clinic and are looking forward to introducing the Times customers to our growing gadget club of satisfied customers”

So if your mobile’s had a meltdown, PC is paralysed, or you just want basic advice, join us on the Times online website on Friday at 4pm for the Live Gadget Clinic.

To visit the Times Technology section and to register for the Gadget Helpline’s Gadget Clinic sign up click Here.

Skype; to some a free and convenient way to talk to others, and to others, a pretty decent text based messenger but to most its just another internet tool that they don’t use and don’t understand. Skype has been around since 2003 and uses a technology called VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) to provide free audio, video and text based chats over the internet. Whether you have just a headset for calling or a webcam you can communicate with anyone anywhere in the world, all completely free of charge.

Until recently, PCs have pretty much been the only use for Skype, but now it seems that the company is heading for greater things.

The VOIP which is most commonly used by PC and console gamers to quickly communicate with each other, has now been commercially adapted for a consumer call market.

Once Skype has been installed on a PC the software augments the PC with the ability to make phone calls to land line or mobile telephones at a small cost, and now, the program is being incorporated in many more mobile devices, most prominently the iPhone and Mobile phone handsets on the 3 (three) network.

The question Is this; Is Skype this going to kill telephone calls?

Well the biggest downfall of Skype is the need for a full on broadband connection for it to work, but now-a-days it’s very easy to find free wi-fi, all you have to do is go to a coffee shop or internet cafe with a wi-fi enabled device, such as a phone, Sony PSP, Nintendo DS, Blackberry or other similar device, grab the WEP code from the staff and you’re connected.

As technology evolves, these devices and others are being equipped with inbuilt or attachable microphones, enabling them to use Skype software. Pretty soon most devices could be equipped with such technology, meaning that more and more users will have the ability to make free calls, a major threat to phone network companies.

However, there have been cases where the phone companies work their hardest to make sure the Skype-like VOIP applications are not compatible or available for their phones, but with the advent of various ‘app stores’ making the program available at any time, could this be the end for regular phone calls?

Will Skype take over the voice call market, or will regular phone calls remain strong? What do you think? If you have the answer, leave your response below.

As the GadgetHelpline is gearing up for a busy Christmas, these interesting stats highlight the difference in support between the sexes  and means we can offer any support unbiased of gender.

Click the link below to vie the full BBC news article or to see the original GagdgetHelpline article click Here.

www.news.BBC.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8346810

The Sansa Clip+, which was previously only available in the USA, is a tiny wearable MP3. As you would expect from the name the Sansa Clip+ comes with a clip so you can wear it anywhere and also includes a microSD memory card slot, FM radio, microphone, rechargeable battery and a bright (OLED) screen with a simple user interface.

But on top of all this the SanDisk Sansa Clip+ is the world’s ‘first Windows 7 certified MP3 player’.

“We made a great product – the Sansa Clip – even better,” said Eric Bone, vice president, retail product marketing, SanDisk. “This small player packs big features, including a new microSD memory card slot that gives music lovers the ability to listen to thousands of additional songs in seconds. It’s the perfect player for travellers, busy mums, fitness buffs or anyone looking to enjoy music without the hassle of loading songs from their computer or updating playlists.”

The SanDisk Sansa Clip+ is priced at around £38, £45 and £63 for the 2GB, 4GB and 8GB capacity versions respectively.

The not so neatly named ‘Kindle U.S. & International Wireless’ can be ordered now for just $279 (which is about £175) from the American Amazon website and will ship internationally to over 100 countries (of course including the UK) from October 19th. It is likely that buyers will need to pay an import tax (as it costs more than £145) which will probably push the price to around £200.

Included in each international version of the Kindle is a 3G sim card that lets you download books right to your Kindle; no annual contracts, no monthly fees, and no hunting for Wi-Fi hotspots. However some astute readers have noticed that the small print for the 3G roaming does mention that “when traveling abroad, you can download books wirelessly from the Kindle Store or your Archived Items for a fee of $1.99.” Here, being abroad means not in the USA, so UK customers will need to pay the extra £1.25 per book.

“We have millions of customers in countries all over the world who read English-language books,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO.  “Kindle enables these customers to think of a book and download it wirelessly in less than 60 seconds.”

The Kindle is less than 1 cm think and weighs just 284 grams . It comes with 2GB of memory allowing up to 1500 books to be stored internally. To get books users pay for and download them at the Kindle Store which contains over 250,000 books and includes UK newspapers such as The Times and The Telegraph.

Amazon has future plans to release a UK specific version of the Kindle enabling UK owners to purchase the Kindle and Kindle books in sterling from our Amazon.co.uk site.

The fan less, rubber-clad Freecom XS 3.0 HDD comes in three sizes 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB and is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 which means that even if you don’t have a 3.0 port, it will still work, but at 2.0 speeds.

It is almost certain that your PC doesn’t have USB 3.0 capabilities, but Freecom also has USB cards for your desktop and your laptop. The desktop card costs £22.99 and £25.99 will get you an ExpressCard for your laptop.

For the more technically minded out there, the theoretical speed of the XS 3.0 is 130 MB/s which is twice as fast as the theoretical top speed of USB 2.0. This isn’t a 10 times speed increase. The problem here isn’t with the speed of USB 3.0 but rather that of the hard drive. At the end of the day hard drives are still mechanical devices and their speed is limited compared to pure digital devices like flash drives. What will be interesting is to see a range of Solid State Drives (SSD) using the USB 3.0 standard or even a pair running in parallel (using something like RAID 1 mirroring).

In the mean time, this hard drive will start shipping in November from around £100.

For those who missed the Palm Pre launch in January of this year, the ‘Pre’ is a multimedia smartphone aimed squarely at the iPhone market. It has a 3.1-inch touch screen (320×480) display. The phone can slide open to reveal a QWERTY keyboard used to make messaging much easier. Similar to the iPhone, the touch screen is used with your fingers and not with a stylus.

The Pre will be free to customers signing up to a 2 year contract at £34.26 per month. It will also be free with an 18 month contract but with the higher monthly subscription of £44.05. For all other plans you will need to pay £96.89 when you start the subscription. For your £44.05 you get 1200 UK minute included and 500 messages. All of the Palm Pre plans include ‘unlimited’ data and WiFi hotspot access through The Cloud and BT Openzone.

Interesting the the Palm Pre plans are exactly the same as the iPhone. Admittedly this is for  the older iPhone 3G 8GB and not the 16GB or 32GB iPhone 3GS, but still it is clear that O2 consider the Palm Pre, which has 8GB of storage, to be equivalent to the iPhone.

“There’s a lot of excitement about Palm Pre in Europe as we continue to expand Palm webOS products across new carriers and countries,” said Jon Rubinstein chairman and chief executive officer, Palm, Inc. “We look forward to launching Palm Pre with O2 so people in the UK can see firsthand how Palm webOS offers a new and better smartphone experience.”

It will be interesting to see how the Palm Pre competes head to head against the iPhone in the UK. Which is the better phone? It looks like the consumers will decide.