Monsoon Merchandise

Of ingenious inventions and cunning contraptions.

India's benefaction to human civilisation through the ages has ranged from bangle to bungalow, cashmere to cummerbund, juggernaut to jungle, pajamas to pariah, shampoo to shawl, sari to seersucker, and zaffran to zero... Be it ingenious invention or cunning contraption, this country has always made its presence felt somewhere.

Obscured by the hurly burly of time lies another little gem that emerged largely on our shores. In 1856, Sir William Herschell, a British magistrate in India, was made responsible for distributing pensions and grants. Soon he realised that a number of our illiterate yet wily countrymen were making a total mickey out of him by fraudulently (and repeatedly) collecting dole under false names on the pretext that they couldn’t sign acceptance acknowledgments. To check this duping, Herschell conceived fingerprinting. And this is how public fingerprinting came about in this world.

Keeping our fingers crossed for the Next Big Thing to be contrived in India, let’s give a thumb’s up to some gadgets the world bestowed upon us last month.

LG Chocolate
The Chocolate KG800 from LG is a slim, snazzy slider phone. Minimalistically designed, it has a 256,000 colour, 176x220 TFT screen. The triband GSM features feather touch buttons that are actually a hidden heat sensitive touchpad. It offers 128MB of memory and incorporates a 1.3 megapixel, 4X digital zoom camera and a flash that can snap up 1280x960 pictures and shoot video.
This 83-gramme, Bluetooth-enabled lifestyle phone has dedicated MP3/camera buttons for the music player mode. The music player supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, AAC++ and WMA file formats. The KG800 has 64 polyphonic ringtones and can also deploy MP3 files as tones. A USB cable for PC connectivity and stereo headphones are also bundled.
Price: Rs.16,000
www.chocolate.lgmobile.com

Altec Lansing iM9 Speakers
A high-decibel boombox acoustic enhancement that “carries” your iPod. The lunchbox-sized iM9 portable speaker set fits, syncs and charges all dockable iPods. It even links iPod video/photo players to a TV.
The AC or battery powered, 11 x 3 x 7.8 inch black device weighs four pounds and comprises dual 2¾-inch drivers, 1-inch tweeters and MaxxBass technology. You can also connect any other portable music player to it via the unit's auxiliary input. It has a durable shock-resistant design, a retractable dock, and comes with a backpack for easy transportation.
Price: Rs.10,900
www.alteclansing.com/product_details.asp?pID=IM9#

Intex MP3/FM Player
Finding the iPod too pricey? Go desi with this is an inexpensive portable mini MP3 and FM player with 512MB of memory. And it also doubles up a pen drive to carry your data. It features an inbuilt microphone and keys for the volume, play, forward, reverse, contrast, search, replay, repeat, and equalisation. Apart from your headphones, you can hook it up to a DVD drive. The USB port whisks your music and data to and fro. The black pocket-sized device has a green, yellow, orange and red screen display.
Rs. 2,999

Samsung 18X DVD writer
A high-speed SH-S182D 18X DVD writer from gizmo giant Samsung, it writes to DVD±R at 18X, DVD-RAM at 12X, DVD±R double layer at 8X, DVD+RW at 8X and DVD-RW at 6X speeds. This translates to notching up 4 minutes and 48 seconds for backing up 4.7GB data on a DVD±R disc—knocking about one minute off the speed of most 16x DVD writers. Burning a 4.7GB disc in DVD-RAM format takes about 17 minutes.
This LightScribe drive is available in internal/external form factors and comes with both ivory and black bezels. Free software for music, video, photo and data disc creation software is bundled.
Price: Rs. 4,700