I bet there are a lot of you starting to get jealous of those other people that can listen to their tunes from their Bluetooth device, such as a smartphone, right on their car stereo without every plugging in a wire to anything. With rumors of the iPhone update supporting full Bluetooth stereo, the doors may just be blown open wide real soon with Bluetooth audio.

Now if you’re one that spent all their cash on such a device and can’t yet afford the upgrade to a nice slick Alpine or Pioneer that supports Bluetooth connectivity, then maybe you should take out that old mix tape and throw in the Flexii Bluetooth Cassette Adapter. With this sweet adapter, you’ll be able to do what those other cassette adapters for portable CD players did and play music from a really cool high tech gadget! Cheap. For $40, you’ll get to play jams from your PDA, smartphone, or laptop all without a single wire. In fact, the Bluetooth Cassette Adapter has a built-in rechargeable lithium battery that will give you up to 5 hours of play time. The included USB cable lets you charge that bad boy in not time!

So now enjoy your high tech gadget on your “low” tech radio. Bring your car into the future, baby!

When the Klipsch® industrial design team set out to create the flagship Palladium™ P-39F floorstanding loudspeaker, their goal was to have it resemble a premium piece of handcrafted furniture. And, by looking at its striking boat-tail silhouette and exotic zebra-striped finish, it’s quite obvious they hit the mark. But, less apparent is the team’s environmentally friendly approach.

According to Paul Jacobs, president and COO of Klipsch Group, Inc., often, when building luxury goods, manufacturers will use a zebrawood veneer because their affluent target market is awed by its dramatic color banding of light and dark stripes. However, it’s a resource that is considered threatened in its native habitat, meaning it’s vulnerable to extinction in the near future. “With the P-39F, we too are trying to reach upper-echelon customers using a distinct, zebra-striped veneer, but we’ve found a way to lessen the impact it has on our mother Earth,” he said.

The Palladium P-39F features what the company calls a “Linia” veneer, which is available in three different finish stains: natural, merlot and espresso. According to Glen Fuller, Klipsch director of design, Linia is a very close match to zebrawood. It is a hand-selected zebra-grain veneer produced from real wood; tree sources include the Ayous, Obeche and Italian Poplar. These trees are part of a government-sanctioned controlled harvest, so they are a renewable wood resource. “By using the Linia zebra-grain veneer, we’re proving that the essence of nature can still be enjoyed without harming the environment,” noted Fuller.

There are several other advantages that Linia has over zebrawood. Five times as much zebrawood needs to be used to find an acceptable product finish, resulting in an incredible amount of waste material. Worse yet, it is wasting a natural resource that is not easily renewable. The non-threatened Linia is a more eco-friendly choice, in that its repeatable pattern/grain is consistent and offers graphic uniformity, leaving hardly any waste material behind. Fuller also mentioned that Linia’s stain and color consistency from model-to-model is good for manufacturing and matching models from run-to-run and year-to-year.

“Because we want to be an environmentally responsible company, while still setting the highest production standards, we decided to go with a zebra-grain Linia version rather than a zebrawood veneer on the P-39F,” said Jacobs.
Palladium P-39F speakers will begin shipping to select U.S. specialty retailers this summer. More information on this luxury product can be found at http://www.klipsch.com/palladium.

SvenOnTech first saw the little Ladybug at Macworld in the West Hall and even with all the background noise rising to the rafters, we could still tell how well these speakers produced sound from an attached iPod. Later when SvenOnTech received its gift copy, we were even more surprised just how good this little cute thing produced sound! Heck, we even slapped our iPhone onto the ‘bug which it isn’t “authorized” to do and that sounds just as good as the iPod.

If you’re looking for a small but nice sounding speaker for your iPod that will fit perfectly into a kids room, kitchen, or even a bathroom, this is your ticket folks. And now its even easier to get since Best Buy has signed on for selling these little devices. So see why the Ladybug won “Best of Show” title from Mac experts iLounge and an Innovations Award from CES and maybe buy a couple of the cute little bugs for your home this weekend.

Verizon Wireless, builder and operator of the nation’s most reliable wireless network, today announced the enV2™ by LG will be available on April 30 at Verizon Wireless Communications Stores across the nation. The new phone, revealed at CTIA WIRELESS 2008, features a sophisticated, slim redesign of the original enV by LG and will also be sold at Circuit City and online at www.verizonwireless.com.

The enV2 is the perfect handset for on-the-go texters and music and video fans. In addition to its pocket-sized good looks, the phone is available in two sleek finishes – black and maroon. The following features and capabilities are available on the enV2:

• V CAST Music – access more than three million songs from both well-known and independent artists to download over-the-air and play on the phone
• V CAST Video – download or stream video clips from the best names in news, sports and entertainment
• VZ NavigatorSM – visual and audible directions to a destination, locate businesses and other places in an area, get a map of a location, bookmark favorites and recent searches, and even share locations with others
• Mobile Web-capable – customizable, enhanced wireless access to the latest in news, sports, weather and more
• Media Center-capable – download games, ringtones, wallpapers and more
  Instant Messaging using AIM®, WL Messenger®, and Yahoo!®
• Mobile Email-capable – access to e-mail services including Yahoo! Mail, Windows Live Mail, AOL, AIM, and Verizon.net accounts; or configure POP3 and IMAP accounts
• Full QWERTY keypad with large-sized external keys
• 2.4” internal screen
• 2.0 megapixel camera and camcorder:

Read the rest of this entry »

Parliant Corporation is now offering professionally recorded messages for all of Parliant’s multi-award-winning Mac telephony products for small businesses, homes, and home offices.

“While Apple Mac OS X is a great environment for audio recording, many business owners have neither the time nor the interest in doing it themselves. Parliant provides an alternative,” said Parliant President Kevin Ford. “Parliant has teamed with one of the industry’s best recording studios, Holdcom, to provide professional quality voice talent for voice-prompts, on-hold messages, and outbound message production.”

Direct from Parliant’s web site, you can enter your message(s), receive a quote, approve the order and then download your recordings 2 days later, professionally produced in an optimal format for PhoneValet and PhoneHerald. Simply import the files into your mailboxes and you are done! Over 30 professional voice talents are offered, in a wide range of languages and dialects.

For many callers, the first impression of your company is made through your automated attendant system. Your recorded announcements present you to the world. These professionally recorded voices become your image, used to present your products and services.

USA Business Today said it best: 94% of marketing budgets are spent to induce a customer to call, and only 6% to handle the call once the call is received. Using crisp, clear, professional Voice Menu & Voice Greeting production delivers:
* that unmistakable studio sound instead of recording through a handset or
headset.
* clear pronunciation, enunciation, and pacing of your voice prompts.
* your messages with confident and credible sound, and neutral accents
* a surprisingly inexpensive option
* Simple to order. Simple to install. Fast turnaround.
* fewer dropped calls while boosting customer satisfaction by delivering
pertinent messages.
* educated customers about your products and services with message-on-hold
recordings.

“Our clients are demanding, innovative, and constantly seeking better ways to promote their organization. Parliant helps these small organizations present a professional image to the outside world and a big-business phone presence.” said Mr. Ford, “Adding professional talent to record message announcements is a natural step along that road.”

We here at SvenOnTech appreciate the finer things in life, hence the reason you haven’t found things that suck in our Review section. One finer thing we like is good, rich, quality sounding music. We like our bass deep and highs shattering just like those old Memorex commercials (which is kinda ironic since Memorex weren’t that good of tapes anyway.) So of course we really were excited when we reviewed the Axiom Audio M3 v2s last year. Now Axiom is bring those very same speakers to your garage. Or your game room or what ever other room dad “owns”.

In its gray cross hatch look, you’ll be able to mount these bad boys on the wall right next to that big elk head in your garage (’cause we know the wife won’t let us put it in the living room.) We warn you, though, be careful. With the great sound you’ll get out of these little speakers, that elk may start twitchin’ its head to the groove if it’s nice and smooth. Ya, lame joke, but great speakers.

Look for them in time for Father’s Day at a suggested price of $375 for the pair.

Yes, the Skullcandy is back in our head and we have spoiled ourselves again.

In just one week, SvenOnTech has brought you two reviews of iPhone earbuds. Now you can decide which is the right fit for you. But we’ll warn you, it’ll be tough because the Skullcandy FMJs are mighty fine earbuds. You’ll find yourself playing with the EQ a lot more, too, but hey, that’s what Apple put it in the Settings panel for anyway, right? (BTW, Apple, lets get some quick access to that from within the iPod program.)

Anyway, we think you’ll enjoy the FMJs as much as we did but a word of caution, they are pricey at $80 a pop. Read the review and then decide for yourself.

If you’re looking to replace the less than desirable earbuds that came with your iPhone, then you’ll want to read our review on Maximo’s iP-HS1. With its easy to grasp switch at the base of the V in the cord, Maximo has gone a different direction than Apple and all the copycats with it’s earbuds for the iPhone. With true Maximo dynamic sound and fitted at a reasonable price, we think you’ll like these offerings from Maximo. Take a read and see if the iP-HS1 will fit your ears just right.

Warner Bros. Records’ R.E.M. and leading social music discovery service iLike announced today that Accelerate, the best-selling rock band’s 14th studio album, will stream in its entirety exclusively on iLike and its syndicates beginning March 24th. A first for the company, the iLike Worldwide Listening Party will continue through March 26th, six days before the album’s North American release on April 1st, 2008. Additionally, R.E.M. will record an exclusive video message introducing and discussing the album that will be available via iLike for distribution across the Web.

“Collaborating with iLike, and debuting Accelerate across the Web is in keeping with the spirit and immediacy of the album.” says the band’s frontman Michael Stipe. “We wanted to do something superfast and super real. Music, art, and pop culture are about right now, and nothing else matters. Accelerate is our turbo-charged response to the times we live in.”

In addition to being available on iLike’s website (www.ilike.com), the iLike Worldwide Accelerate Listening Party and exclusive R.E.M. video message will debut through the iLike Sidebar desktop plugin for iTunes and Windows Media Player (www.iLike.com/download), as well as across the Web via iLike’s leading applications on Facebook, Bebo, hi5, and for the iPhone. R.E.M. have already been using the iLike Universal Artist Dashboard to post content, reaching their fans across multiple syndication channels via iLike’s “Post Once, Publish Everywhere” platform. The album will also be available for pre-order via iLike’s retail links to iTunes and Amazon.com.

“With 11 songs clocking in at just 34 minutes, Accelerate is intense and relevant, with songs inspired by the WTO riots in Seattle, the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and other topical themes,” said Ali Partovi, CEO of iLike. “We are honored to play a role in helping R.E.M. introduce this album to their fans across the Web. This is our first-ever Worldwide Listening Party and R.E.M. has set a very high bar.”

In many ways, Accelerate marks a break from R.E.M.’s recent albums, 1998’s Up, 2001’s Reveal, and 2004’s Around The Sun — all finely crafted works exploring the textures and possibilities of the recording studio. Accelerate ties together the band’s entire canon as part of the vision for the new album turning old dreams into a new reality.

To listen to R.E.M’s Accelerate and watch the band’s exclusive video message, please visit: www.iLike.com/R.E.M. To learn more about iLike’s multimedia blogging tools and other free services for artists, please visit: www.iLike.com/forartists.

One of the first things I had hoped to see come the iPhone accessory line was a boombox. It mattered not to me, just as long as something would play the music from my iPhone while avoiding any artifacts from the GSM phone radio in the iPhone. You know, that really annoying buzz sound that happens when near any speaker. Sadly, it took nearly a year for that to happen. Happily, Altec Lansing was the first one to do it. Read our joy.