Gadgets

A life insurance company is offering the Apple watch for just $25 to customers. The catch is that they will have to meet health goals as tracked by the watch to be eligible for the discount. The smart watch connects wirelessly to an iPhone and has ... two main uses (besides telling the time): displaying information so that users don't have to retrieve their phone, and tracking activity for fitness apps. Normally the latest model costs at least $329, so the offer from John Hancock insurance is a significant discount. It's only eligible for people who take out life insurance and sign up for ... (view more)

Burger King has cheekily used a Google gadget to advertise its products. But the way it did so is pretty risky and could easily backfire. The stunt came in a television advert that contained a command for Google's Home device. That's a voice ... activated speaker that lets the user ask questions, control home devices, set alarms and other useful (and sometimes purely trivial) activities. While similar technology exists on many Android phones, those are usually set to recognize and respond only to the user's voice, including listening out for the trigger phrase "Okay Google" ... (view more)

It's the week of the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, and this year smart home gadgets seem to be attracting attention - rather than the latest TV technology. Everything from fridges to hairbrushes is getting some form of upgrade ... from gadget makers. One big story is the attempts by firms such as Google and Amazon to get their voice-operated "virtual assistants" connected to home devices. While gadgets such as Google Home and the Amazon Echo already control of some more common smart tech such as automated lighting and thermostats, several manufacturers showed ... (view more)

Amazon has released a luxury version of the Kindle e-Reader, with a price tag to match. It's drawn comparisons to Apple's high-priced iPads, despite being a single-purpose device. New Kindle editions over the past few years have mainly involved very ... small tweaks to an established design. The new Kindle Oasis has been redesigned to be easier to hold. The most notable difference is that the device is no longer a perfectly flat device. One side of it is the thinnest a Kindle has ever been, at barely an eighth of an inch. However, the other side has a tapered bump that takes it up to a ... (view more)

Owners of older Kindle eReaders have been warned to update their devices today or temporarily lose Internet connectivity. The loss won't be irreversible, but will cause added hassle. The issue affects all Kindle eReader models released before 2013. ... That includes the Keyboard, Touch and DX versions, along with the 5th generation and earlier of both the standard Kindle and Paperwhite editions. (Source: amazon.com ) The only unaffected models are those released from 2013 onwards, specifically the Paperwhite 6th and 7th generation, the 7th generation standard Kindle and the Voyage model. The ... (view more)

Legendary singer-songwriter and musician Neil Young believes his "Pono" digital music player is the next 'must-have' gadget. Young says that people who use the iPod and most other digital music players aren't hearing music the way it was intended to ... be heard. That's also why he firmly believes there will be great demand for Pono. Unlike the iPod and similar devices, Pono is built with audiophiles in mind. The major difference is that Pono is able to play music using a high-resolution "lossless" audio format, called FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec). By ... (view more)