If you start looking for portable speakers for your iPhone or iPod you quickly notice that most companies have a one-size fits all policy. Fortunately there is a company that thinks differently, beatpower. beatpower policy is to create speakers for different types of people. They have a category of speakers that are made for people who are more fashion conscious. Another category for those who like things to look more traditional. A third category for those who want their speakers to have the same design quality as their iPad or iPod and a fourth category for the audiophile. All speakers no matter what the category are bluetooth enabled and most have a microphone installed.

The final category that was shown was the beatbox which is a hi-fi system for the home. The beatbox is covered with hand-stitch leather in various colors. It has optical wireless and bluetooth capability. It also has two USB charging ports which you can use to charge your iPhone or iPod. The Beat Block comes with a remote control that allows you to control the treble and bass that is coming out of your iPhone or iPod.

You can take a look at the various speakers available at the beatpower website. The prices for the various speakers will run from $29.99 up to $199.00. For more information about availability you can send an email to sales@beat-power.com. They are also working on an e-shop, which should be coming soon.

Interview by Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central for the TechPodcast Network and by Nick DiMeo of F5 Live.

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The Neat digital filing system helps you organize your receipts and documents. It is a full system including both software and a hardware scanner. There are a number of ways you can get the information into the Neat system. You can scan the information in. You can email digital receipts using your Neat email address. You can use the Neat app on your iPhone or android phone and take a picture of the receipt and upload it to the Neat Cloud. If you want you can send a box of receipts to Neat and they will process them for you. The Neat system allows you to categorize and organize the information for tax purposes. It is fully searchable and with extended search it will also search such apps as Evernote and Dropbox. You can export the information and save it to PDF and you can also share the information.

The Neat mobile scanner is $199.95 and the desktop scanner is $399.95. There is a monthly fee for the service which starts at $5.99 for the basic service. If you are trying to go paperless and get organizer Neat maybe exactly what you need.

Interview by Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central for the TechPodcast Network and by Don Baine, the Gadget Professor.

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EnerGenie makes products that helps you keep track of how much electricity you are using in your home and ways to control that usage. The basic product is a socket that plugs into the wall. You can then control any device that is plugged into it by your iPad or iPhone; turning the device on or off, setting a timer for either reoccurring or single phase. It can measures how much electricity is being used by individual devices. You can use it to do a cost relationship analysis. You can also compare how much is being used in the daytime and nighttime.

They also sell a Power Management System which you can set up either via USB or wirelessly. You can program it so each plug turns off and on different times. You can also group plugs together, so for example when you turn on your TV, your blu-ray player would come on. They are also going to be selling a portable charger which handles up to 40,000 mAh. The charger will be available at the end of Q2 for $250.00. The socket and power management systems are $50.00 and $150 respectively and are available now through Amazon and the Energenie website.

Interview by Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central for the TechPodcast Network.

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IOGear makes some pretty cool hardware, some of which I use in my own home. Most recently the company made a trip to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada to show off one of its newest offerings — the Wireless 5×2 HD Matrix.

The name may be a bit cryptic, so an explanation is required here. Perhaps you have heard rumors of wireless HDMI? Well, it is here now and this device has five ports and a receiver to prove it — that is four inputs and one output. There is full switching capability and it has a claimed range of one hundred feet. Plug in all of your devices and then place the receiver with a TV in another room and control everything wirelessly, even when two TV’s are displaying content from different devices. For instance, one can be using the Blu-Ray player while another plays DVR content. No more need for two boxes.

A two TV setup will run you $399 and the device will be available at the end of March. But honestly, you need to watch the demo posted below to really appreciate this technology.

Interview by Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central for the TechPodcast Network

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At this year’s CES, Pure launched Jongo, the world’s most affordable (and colourful) multi-room music system. Vicky tells Todd all about it.

The Jongo range will shortly include a couple of wireless speakers and a hi-fi adaptor, all with both Bluetooth and wi-fi built-in. Music can be streamed using the Pure Connect app via wi-fi to any speaker in range or else smartphones and tablets can stream music directly to the speakers using Bluetooth. Both Apple iOs and Android devices are supported and it uses the existing wi-fi infrastructure: there’s no need for special transmitters.

The S340B speaker will be available soon and can be pre-ordered on Amazon. Price is listed as $229.
The stereo speaker (T640B) and the hi-fi adaptor (A140B) will be on-sale in the summer with MSRPs of $329 and $119, respectively.

Interview by Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central for the TechPodcast Network.

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Emergency Food Prep or Hiking Off the Grid

If you need to prepare a hot meal and find yourself a long way from a source of power, here’s an ideal product. By adding a liquid to the container along with a chemical fuel packet, within sixty seconds you have boiling heat to cook all sorts of mealtime treats. Combining 16 different chemicals, it provides up to sixty minutes of heat for baby food, lunch, or dinner.

Snow, soft drinks or water are just enough to activate the chemical pouch in the system.With a shelf life of five years, the system is ideal for off road, camping or boating use. The small set is $35, including ten heating pouches. including the container. Replacement is $15 for a pack of ten.
TPN Interview by Andy McCaskey of SDRNews.com

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