hands-free

Pump up the...soap

Sensor activated soap pumps are a nice tool in the kitchen. When you're working with raw meat, you want to limit the chances for contaminating the various surfaces in your home. When you're managing multiple pots on the stove, it's nice to streamline one part of the cleaning process.

With simplehuman's newest sensor soap pump, just place your hand underneath the spout to dispense your soap. You can easily refill the pump via the wide opening pop-up lid, and you can adjust the dispensing volume to determine exactly how much soap comes out. If you have … Read more

Put down that phone, cries elbow

While the link between cell phone use and brain damage is still debatable (personally, I don't want to believe it), another body part may be paying the price for constant connectedness: the elbow.

According to health reports, doctors have identified a condition called "cell phone elbow," also known as cubital tunnel syndrome.

It's basically pain in your elbow that results from compression of the ulnar nerve. This nerve problem can come from spending too much time folding the elbow in an unnatural stance, such as when you use the computer in a nonergonomic position or, most commonly, when you hold the phone to your ear. I often do both at the same time.

Doctors say this is an increasingly common issue among those who are reliant on technology, especially cell phones. The syndrome leads to chronic or periodic pain in the elbow, tingling along the fingers, and even loss of strength and control in your hands.

When talking on a cell phone without a hands-free device, the elbow is usually held in an unnatural, flexed position, at an angle greater than 90 degrees. Generally, doctors caution that the elbow is not naturally designed to be hyperflexed for longer than 10 minutes at a time, but many of us regularly talk for hours on end. … Read more

Yada YD-V1 Bluetooth headset misses the point

The Yada YD-V1 is a smartly designed little Bluetooth headset. Packaged as part of two hands-free calling bundles, one that has 12-volt and USB direct chargers and another that adds a mobile phone cradle to the mix, the YD-V1 is billed as a "car-centric" headset.

Its design and control scheme all but eliminate button presses beyond the initial pairing, so we can see how the YD-V1 could be easy to use in a vehicle in motion. Simply lift the headset from the cradle to take a call and replace it to end the call.

However, none of that … Read more

Abt has the Parrot 3200 LS-Color Hand Free Car Kit - CK3200 for $226, after $36 savings, plus free shipping.

Save $36 on the Parrot 3200 LS-Color Hand Free Car Kit - CK3200 from Abt >> Regular price is $262 >> Sale price is $226 >> Savings $36 (13.74%) >> Click here for deal

ShoutOUT that SMS with a new iPhone app

Tired of fumbling around the iPhone's onscreen keyboard to send a text message? Soon you can skip that altogether, as long as you can speak English properly.

This is thanks to a new iPhone application that Promptu, a talk-and-type mobile phone application developer, introduced Monday called ShoutOUT. The application is going to be the first voice-to-SMS application for iPhone users in the United States.

The application lets you dictate text messages instead of typing on the iPhone's touch-screen keypad. It also allows for checking the transcribed messages for errors and make corrections if necessary before sending them out … Read more

MyCaption app for BlackBerry: free your thumbs

MyCaption, a member of the BlackBerry Alliance, introduced on Tuesday a new way BlackBerry users can work with e-mails on their smartphones: by speaking.

Actually, this is not exactly a breakthrough, as voice recognition technology has been out there for a long time and can be found in the Voice Command or Voice Dialing features of many smartphones. However, this seems to be the first time you can use it for more than simple sentences, such as, "Call Johnny at the office."

MyCaption claims that its new application is sophisticated enough that people can compose, forward, or reply … Read more

California hands-free law sparks Bluetooth boon

The numbers are in for Bluetooth headset sales in California, and the retail hype around the new hands-free-driving law seems to have paid off. The law boosted device sales to four times the national average, according to a report by retail market researcher The NPD Group.

NPD said California's four largest markets--San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and San Diego--saw a major Bluetooth boost in the months before the law went into effect effect July 1.

In March, San Francisco sold two times more Bluetooth headsets than the national average. By May that number had risen to four times the … Read more

The downside of hands-free calling

At first, I thought California's new hands-free calling law was a great idea. Though it's debatable whether cell phones in the car can ever be safe, I took a lot of comfort in knowing that holding your phone to your ear while driving was now illegal. True, there's no guarantee that both hands will now be on the steering wheel, but I thought my chances of being run down by a yakking driver were just a bit smaller.

But, only a few days after the law went into effect I realized that it had one unfortunate consequence: … Read more

Get a ticket, get a free gadget

Break the law, get a free headset?

It might sound a little odd, but online retailer Headsets.com has decided to make that idea the focus of a new marketing and educational campaign related to the new hands-free legislation that takes hold Tuesday in California and Washington.

In effect, if you get ticketed for talking on your cell phone without a headset while driving, pony up the $20 or $50 (depending on how many times you've been caught), then send documentation of your offense to Headsets.com.

The most surprising part? You'll be making a hefty profit by … Read more