Vertical Technology Blog

NetBlender has BD Touch technology that will work directly with BD Live and allow your iPhone or iPod Touch to interact with your Blu-ray player.  BD Touch would utilize the geo location features of your iPhone, the 3D sensors and easy to use QWERTY keyboard to enhance your experience.  This opens doors for you to enjoy a large amount of data trading between your gadgets.

You could keep detailed lists of your Blu-ray collection and get movie suggestions that match your taste.  While the movie is playing, trivia and extra information about the movie can be displayed.  Games and other features could definitely enhance things for you as well.  All of these things can happen as the Blu-ray is playing.

Also, your iPhone can be morphed into a lovely remote control for your Blu-ray player and keep things easily controlled from afar as you enjoy your collection.  It works over a WiFi connection, so no matter where you are located, if you have that, you can enjoy BD Touch technology fairly easily.

For such a company as Apple, with a name that so many are familiar with, it’s still a great claim to be on top of the “brand” pile.  You can be known as a brand for good or bad things, and overall, people are saying they put Apple in the number one spot even though they have had a few things try to slow them down.

Brandjunkie.com claims that with six out of ten questions, Apple stays on top of the rest as a name that people believe in when buying products.

They point out that innovation is of huge value to those surveyed, along with reliability and simplicity.  Read up on the results over on the site and you’ll see other brands mentioned like Microsoft and Nike.  I enjoyed reading this article and seeing how brand names impact our society so much.

The Price Point office desks are a good quality product that offer more than just a pretty new desk for your offices.  They will show you that they surpass their competitors with durable and strong models that will last longer.  With 25mm thick desk tops, compared to the standard 18mm thickness, you will have less chance of the desk bowing.  Buying quality office furniture can be one of your first steps in running a quality company.

They also improve their desks with 2mm thick edging, another great upgrade in comparison to the usual 0.6mm thick models that are offered elsewhere, and they top it off with an 8-year guarantee for their customers. 

Check out the pricing on the Price Point site and don’t forget to view their office storage options with tons of filing cabinets, shelves and other quality items to choose from.  They even have artificial plants to brighten up your spaces once you’re done with the basic design!

A company called Reactrix has taken mall floors to a new level.  I noticed a neat setup at our mall while holiday shopping.  On the floor was a mat or pad with a projected video game on it.

If you placed your foot near an asteroid on the mat, it would explode.  Then after playing the game a bit it showed a few commercial ads but they were interactive, too.

Coca-Cola, Visa and Sprint have already grabbed this idea up and are utilizing it in their marketing plans.  This interactive advertising is a great idea and I can see it in more widespread use in the future.  Reactrix claims measured recall is very high with an average of 55% and a high of 72%.  Aided recall was averaged at 86% with a high of 99%.  Nice job, Reactrix!

You can see video demos on the site of what I experienced.

Today is the day that Hulu, which is an up and coming popular online video site, shows us the new HD video offerings. The most recent release of Adobe Flash Player added support for streaming HD, using H.264 encoding.

On Hulu, you’ll now find a new HD Gallery that offers movie trailers and upcoming content for those that love the better video format. Right now, you cannot imbed HD video onto other sites, but we’ll assume they’ll add this feature later on and watch for it.

Today the trailers featured are Alvin and the Chipmunks, Horton Hears a Who!, Definitely, Maybe and a few other choice movies. All of them are available in 1280×720 resolutions and all you need is a 2.5 Mbps connection to get your hands, or eyes, on them. I’ve always enjoyed the ability to embed videos into sites and allow others to see your favorite shows,and Hulu offers this service to its users.

Here is what Hulu says about what they offer:

Hulu’s ambitious and never-ending mission is to help you find and enjoy the world’s premium content when, where and how you want it. We hope to provide you with the web’s most comprehensive selection of premium programming across all genres and formats – television shows, feature films, clips, and more.

If you want to experience a bit of Hulu, you can visit partners sites like AOL, Comcast, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo, where you are able to view the same programming that you’d get if you were on the Hulu site.

This website and the creations within really grabbed my attention and spoke to the art lover side of my brain. Steampunk has this as the tagline for the site, and what it means:

“Wherein the craftsman demonstrates the construction of artifacts from an age of steam and brass.”

What does all this mean? Just browse the site and take a look at how this crafter makes a flat panel monitor look fabulously aged and yet…it still holds it’s gadget-factor. The Steampunk Workshop site has so many great things to look at, with photos of the projects as they go and video of some of them working.

My favorites were the keyboard and monitor, of course, but he also features a salt water iPod etch, Altoids Tins and other creative crafts that really will have your mind going. Jake’s ultimate goal is to create a steam car, just for fun!

Not only does this Symbaloo site make me feel more organized, but it uses Google as the chosen search engine and links to sites like Gmail if you choose the default desktop. If you’re tired of text bookmarks and you want to add a little spark to your browsing, this site will have you organizing until the sun goes down.

Good thing is, you can wake up feeling like you’ve accomplished tons! Once you visit the site for the first time, it shows you have 1 mail message. Click on it and it will welcome you to the service. Now all you need to do is register for it and set up your favorite links. The date and time are posted at the top and this might just replace my start page (currently iGoogle).

I love that you can move the icons in “real-time” and organize your screen quickly and easily, grouping your bookmarked or linked sites together how YOU want them. Try it out, it’s absolutely fun. The registration was quick and easy and I was greeted with a neat welcome message (and followed up with an email verification) that said:

You have just created you own account: great! You can now use your personalized desktop from every computer in the world: at home, school the office or in an internet cafe.

CompuTech Direct has always been reaching upwards when it comes to learning about new technology. If you’re looking for the newest gadgets, most useful sites, competitive priced services or even just some good advice about electronics, you can look here on the Vertical Technology blog.

We’re reaching new heights with our research and hope to bring you only the best.