Skyblaster USB skype friendly speakerphone rocks

I impulse bought this gadget in Homebase last week for £29, that’s only about $3000 these days , and it rocks. I’ve always had trouble with skype voice calls – I’ve got a really powerful top of the range PC with just about everything imaginable plugged into it and yet even after replacing the onboard soundcard with a top of the range games soundcard the microphone input (front or back) has always been just rubbish. I’ve tweaked all the tweakable settings to no avail, microphone’s just don’t work on my system.

So I bought this USB speakerphone. It doesn’t use my soundcard and all of a sudden people can hear my dulcit tones over the ewaves It’s simple, cheap and works. It’s got buttons to call, hang up, navigate around skype etc. It’s also got inputs for plugging in your super stylish headset with microphone that makes you look like a bad 80s pop act.

Setup was trivial and well documented, and the best bit is that I can just use it whenever I want without unplugging/replugging speakers, microphones, headsets etc. My music still plays through my main speakers, but skype calls come through the speaker phone/attached headset. I’d buy it just to be a headset hub even if I didn’t want an answerphone!

SkyBlaster USB skype friendly speakerphone

Now I can finally use it I’m a skypeout convert!

9/10 Mac Daddy points for this great little (about 3in diameter) gadget.

Oooh… Mobile Blogging

I’m blogging from my new HTC phone courtesy of a little Windows Mobile app called moblog Although writing html tags manually isn’t that great!

Unfortunately my gadgets can’t lower the temperature on this packed train. Or provide a seat :s

Meh, what’s a little comfort compared to gadgetry?

Posted from moBlog – mobile blogging tool for Windows Mobile

Life without computers!

This weekend I’ve spent changing rooms around in my house so the office space has swapped with the baby space. As a result my trusty main computer and numerous gadgets have been in parts and unplugged. I’ve just about coped by accessing my mail via my new funky phone the HTC Touch Dual:

This thing is great I’ve used a SPV M2000 for a few years, which was a great PDA but a rubbish phone that felt like you were holding a brick if you had a conversation over 2 minutes. However, my new HTC Touch Dual combines the best of a stylus operated Window Mobile PDA (which means after downloading a Visual Studio patch my home grown apps like my train timetable checker etc. all work) with the ease of use and simplicity of a phone. It’s got a quite cool touch screen interface on top of the normal Windows Mobile interface which is extremely reminiscent of the iPhone/iPod Touch. My only complaint is that it doesn’t have WiFi just HSDPA, 3G, EDGE & GPRS. But that’s ok because I’ve got an iPod Touch anyway

Anyway, now my main computers back again I feel complete once more. I must admit to using my son’s laptop a few times. Just to track my latest gadget order you understand…