By Andrew Liszewski

Whipping your smartphone out every time it vibrates at an incoming email, text message or app notification is not always considered proper etiquette, particularly when you’re with a group of people. But the fear of missing even one hilarious tweet, or being out of the loop on the next internet meme, keeps us compelled to keep checking our phones at every opportunity. One solution to this so-called ‘problem’ is to simply realize that somehow life went on before the advent of social media and wireless communications, and to just leave our phones hidden away. But the more realistic solution, at least according to Sony Ericsson, is to find a more subtle way to stay on top of things.

Their LiveView is like having a secondary display for your Android-based smartphone, but one that’s considerably smaller, subtler, and easier to pass off as a high-tech wristwatch. What looks to friends or family like you’re checking the time, is actually you staying on top of calls, RSS feeds, tweets and a seemingly never ending list of info you can probably survive an evening without knowing. But you know you can’t. So does the LiveView serve as an adequate alternative to keeping your smartphone in hand all hours of the day? For that answer and more check out our full review after the jump.

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By Andrew Liszewski

I’m as big a fan of streaming/downloading content online, or watching TV on demand, as anyone these days. But I also have to admit that at times I still enjoy the randomness of broadcast television, and just flipping on the TV and taking what I get. The feeling is hard to describe. But it’s like The Simpsons. While I own every season on DVD (up to season 10 of course) and can watch a given episode whenever I want. There’s still some appeal to randomly stumbling across a classic episode on TV.

But for most people, enjoying broadcast TV is limited to sitting at home on the couch in front of the flat screen. It’s not always easy to take it with you. Portable TVs are always an option, but who wants to bother when you probably already have a laptop with you while traveling? So most of the time you’ll settle for a show or movie you’ve ‘purchased’ online. But with Elgato’s EyeTV Hybrid dongle you don’t have to settle. If you’re sitting in an airport and want to see what’s going on with the local news, you can just plug it in to your laptop and enjoy broadcast TV right in your lap. It can even turn your laptop into a portable DVR, stream a live broadcast to your iPhone or iPad and best of all, the hardware is smaller than some flash drives. Check out our full review after the jump.

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By Chris Scott Barr

The great thing about smartphones these days is that they can effectively eliminate the need to carry around a bunch of extra devices. Calculators, PDAs, MP3 players and even personal recorders are all obsolete when you have the latest technology. I personally use my iPhone for all of the above, and then some. I never thought that I had a need to record voice memos, but now that I have a phone that can do it, I use the feature quite often. The audio quality isn’t bad, but it’s not the best in the world. Thus, having an external microphone to attach could prove rather useful.

I’ve had a chance to take a look at the i-Microphone, which is a tiny mic designed specifically for Apple devices. If you own an iPhone, you’ll quickly find out that just plugging in an ordinary mic won’t work. This is because it uses the same jack for audio input and output. So how well does this little device perform?

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By Andrew Liszewski

The reason I hear most often from people who don’t have or want a touchscreen based smartphone is that they can’t get used to typing out messages with just an on-screen keyboard. They prefer the tactile feedback of a real keyboard or a thumbpad, which I can understand. On the iPhone, where my typing never really goes longer than the 140 character limit of a tweet, I never have any issues. But on the iPad, which I occasionally use as a laptop replacement for taking notes, the on-screen keyboard can get a little annoying. So much so that I usually always bring along Apple’s own wireless keyboard for long typing sessions, which unfortunately really isn’t designed for traveling.

But the only way you can make a full-sized keyboard travel-friendly is to introduce some sort of folding mechanism, and that’s exactly what Verbatim has done with their new Wireless Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard. It folds in half making it easier to transport, and while it doesn’t necessarily get small enough to carry in your pocket, it’s certainly compact enough to stash away in a bag or briefcase. But does it work as well as the keyboard permanently fused to your laptop or tethered to your PC? Check out our full review after the jump to find out.

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By Paul McCollum

Following Kingston, PQI and Super Talent, LaCie has also jumped onto the USB 3.0 bandwagon with its FastKey. Bearing a strong resemblance to the IronKey drive, the $499 FastKey USB 3.0 flash drive keeps with the company’s tradition of devices that are easy on the eyes (and pricey). A smooth metallic exterior and a slim form factor make the FastKey a nice conversation starter. The cap and body are lightweight and metallic, giving the feel of a smaller drive. However, the above average width may cause problems blocking adjacent USB ports.

While the FastKey is slightly larger than most flash drives, it packs a whopping 120GB of storage. With this amount of storage, speed is a necessity. What good is 120GB of space if it takes an hour to fill it up? For FastKey’s real world performance, you can expect a read rate of 125MB/s and write of 85MB/s, provided you have a fast internal drive to match the speed. So, it will take about 16 minutes or so to copy everything from this thumbdrive to your PC.

Not all flash drives are built the same, even those as bold to call themselves an Express or Blaze are deceptively slow. When selecting a flash drive, pay close attention to the actual speed rating of the memory as opposed to the version of USB that they support. Full details on how well the LaCie FastKey lives up to its name can be found at Everything USB.

[ LaCie FastKey Review @ Everything USB ]

By Andrew Liszewski

I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that most people with even a moderately capable smartphone already use it as a replacement for their alarm clock. And I’d love to count myself among those who do, but unfortunately I usually require a decibel level on par with a passing commercial airliner to wake me up in the morning. So unfortuntely the speaker on my iPhone doesn’t quite cut it.

Thankfully alarm clock dock accessories for the iPhone are just about as plentiful as cases these days, and I recently had the chance to try out the compact 3 in 1 Microdock from XtremeMac. Its small footprint not only makes it ideal for home use since it won’t take up a lot of space on your nightstand, but it’s easy to travel with as well. That compact form factor does come with a few trade-offs though, which I’ll go into detail about in my full review found after the jump.

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By Paul McCollum

Portable hard drives have been an indispensable tool for data backup on the go. Seagate has stayed in the forefront of this market for a number of years and the company has recently outfitted their drives with the GoFlex interchangeable interface adapter to make their drives future-proof. The latest 2.5″ GoFlex model has 1.5TB storage, and the choose-your-own connector drive now comes with the USB 3.0 adapter and includes a standard mini-USB 3.0 cable. Other connection kits including eSATA and Firewire 800 which can be purchased separately for maximum performance based on your available connections.

The 1.5TB FreeAgent GoFlex is vast and fast but gives up some of its svelte form to pack on the extra gigabytes. The extra bulk is only noticeable in comparison to other drives of the same ilk but under most circumstances, you will never notice the 0.25″ or so of extra thickness. Performance metrics put this drive well above USB 2.0 drives and significantly above previous USB 3.0 drives. Performance data and other details are all covered in an in depth review at Everything USB.

[ Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1.5TB Portable Drive Review @ Everything USB ]

By Andrew Liszewski

In my 5 or 6 years of blogging about gadgets and gizmos, the Keyport Slide stands out as one product that had a bit of a rough time making its way to the marketplace. We first wrote about the Keyport back in 2007 which we thought was a great concept, with not so great pricing and execution. $300 for a fancy key holder was expensive, no doubt about that, and users were asked to physically mail in the keys they wanted converted, which a lot of people thought was a little sketchy.

In 2009 when customers who had originally ordered the Slide still hadn’t received their product, we were pretty sure the product was DOA. But it turns out that wasn’t the end of the saga. By 2010 the company behind the Keyport had not only sorted out and vastly improved the logistics of the ordering process, but the price had been slashed to $79.99. And customers (finally!) started receiving their orders, which turned out to work just as promised. So when we were offered the chance to try out the latest version of the Keyport Slide we jumped at the opportunity. Both because we still think it’s a great idea and product, and also for some much needed closure. Check out our full review after the jump.

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By Andrew Liszewski

Wireless Bluetooth speakers are particularly popular these days, and we’ve had the chance to try out a few different options including offerings from Jawbone and SuperTooth. But one thing that’s common among them, at least when used with mobile devices, is that streaming your tunes over a Bluetooth A2DP connection takes a real toll on your device’s battery life. And since devices like smartphones aren’t exactly known for their amazing battery life to begin with, it’s an unfortunate trade-off you have to make.

That’s not the case with Sony’s MS430 Media Speaker Stand though. It doesn’t connect to your mobile device via Bluetooth or any kind of wireless connection, it’s just a simple and literal plug-and-play affair. So while your device remains tethered, it’s still an effective way of boosting its wimpy built-in speaker without killing its battery. And even though it foregoes a heavy built-in rechargeable battery for a compact and light triumvirate of AAAs, meaning it doesn’t pack quite the same level of oomph and sound quality as the alternatives mentioned above, it’s probably still going to impress people with a slick design, decent functionality and affordable price tag. Check out my full review after the jump.

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