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Old desktops get Bluetooth boost

Contrary to popular belief, we at Crave don't buy a new computer every month. In fact, our desktop is so old that it doesn't even work with Bluetooth. (It may have been made before we'd even heard of Bluetooth, come to think of it.)

So we read with great delight on Crunchgear about a simple USB device that can magically bring our ancient PC into the modern wireless world, finally allowing us to get a Bluetooth mouse or other peripherals of the 21st century. The best part of all about Trendnet's compact adapter is the price: $… Read more

'Mogo Dapter' a tasty little treat

There's both bad and good in the fingernail size of the "Mogo Dapter": It could easily get lost (bad), but it's so small that you may never need to unplug it (good). The Lilliputian Bluetooth adapter is tinier than any USB storage key we've seen, yet the Red Ferret says it promises to provide faster connections and enhanced multimedia quality. Just be careful with it around toddlers, especially at Halloween--it could be mistaken for a half-eaten peanut butter cup.

An adapter for all kinds of media

At CES 2007, Zyxel announced the DMA-1000, a digital media adapter for serving up multimedia files from the PCs in your home to your home entertainment system. The small adapter resembles a wireless router and, in fact, supports both wired and wireless connections via Ethernet and 802.11g Wi-Fi. In addition, it offers a USB port so that you can play files from any USB-based storage device, such as a flash thumbdrive or an MP3 player.

The DMA-1000 supports high-def streaming (1080i) and includes an HDMI connector, as well as S-Video. Unfortunately, 802.11g throughput is insufficient for HD streams, … Read more

Linksys delivers a PowerLine network

It's a little ironic, don't you think, that with all the push for wireless this and wireless that, we're suddenly awash in PowerLine Ethernet adapters? One of Linksys' announcements at CES yesterday was for the HomePlug AV-compliant PowerLine AV Ethernet Kit (PLK200), which includes two Linksys PowerLine AV Ethernet Adapters (PLE200).

Setting up a PowerLine Ethernet network is one of the simplest ways to create a network capable of throughput fast enough to transfer high-definition data--such as video--smoothly. Simply plug in your first adapter to your router via an Ethernet cable and then plug it into an … Read more

A telescope for your phone

As we've noted frequently in the past, ill-advised tampering can make some technological experiments go terribly awry. But sometimes, the need for certain functions supersedes all in the evolution of the handset.

That, at least, is how we view the mobile phone telescope from Brando. In fact, Shiny Shiny (a closet birder--who knew?) even admits to lusting after this gadget "possibly more than I've ever wanted anything in my life." Wow.

With such strong convictions, we find it difficult to fault this latest genetic permutation--even if it does make a perfectly decent phone look like the … Read more