Valentine’s Day is next week, and already I’m sick of all the emails from various hotels about ‘getaway offers’ and special romantic meals. It’s like they want to torture me into admitting how unnecessary I think this day is. If you’re single you can’t go out anywhere without bumping into couples crowding out your favorite eatery.

So rather than partake in this ridiculously public show of affection, we’ve come up with five gadgets that will certainly show you more affection than a real person. Well, at least we’re hoping.

Jawbone Jambox – AED 800
This speaker certainly packs a punch despite its small size. With easy Bluetooth connectivity, you can connect your iPod or any other device and have a little dance party of your own – just don’t wake the neighbors.

ASUS Transformer Prime – AED 2,100
This sleek device sports an awesome design and impressive visuals, not to mention an optional dock that masquerades the device as a high-end netbook. If you’re not one to jump into the iPad bandwagon, then this tablet is a sure crowd-pleaser.

Pleo – AED 1,400
If you really do crave a bit of companionship on V-day, then Pleo is here to help. The robotic pet dinosaur reacts to being stroked and played with, and will never stain your carpet or complain. Sure at times it may be a bit weird having a conversation with a robot, but isn’t that what everyone is doing anyway with Siri?

Western Digital Live TV – AED 780
So you’ve got a gigantic collection of videos and movies, and you’re still watching them on your crummy laptop. Break out of your box with the Western Digital Live TV, which you can connect your USB storage drive and enjoy your media collection on a proper TV.

Kinect – AED 799
If you’re rather not spend time curled up in bed or on your couch, then grab a Kinect sensor for your Xbox and bag a couple of games to get you going. With everything from fitness, sport, and dance being available, there’s no excuse to turn into a couch potato on V-day.

Honorable mention: Blackberry Curve 9360 - AED 1,300
With a sleek design and snappy navigation, the Blackberry Curve 9360 is a great and lightweight phone for anyone looking to get their first Blackberry device. Throw in a reliable battery life and NFC capabilities, and you have yourself a keeper.

This weekend Sony kicked off a week-long promotion for its much anticipated Sony Tablet S. With a consumer stand set up in Mall of the Emirates, Dubai, onlookers were able to get to grips with the sleek new Android-powered tablet from Sony.

The venue was also host to a 28-hour radio broadcast by The Kris Fade Show on 104.4 Virgin Radio, as well as other road shows and performances including a high-energy dance troupe. The highlight was the performance of ‘Tash’, the first artist signed by Sony Music Middle East, who sang his hit single “Habibi Leh” to an enthralled audience.

Mathew Mathai, General Manager, Marketing Communications Sony Gulf, commented “The Sony Tablet S is a unique combination of the best technology and features from Sony’s portfolio of devices. This launch event signifies the ability of the device to double as an MP4 player, a viewing device, an e-reader and even a mobile gaming device, in the most compact format. We are excited about the new gadget and look forward to providing a wonderful new experience to our customers.”

Sporting a rather unique design, the Sony Tablet S boasts a range of unique features such as TruBlack technology to reduce screen glare, as well as the ability to stream content to DLNA-compatible devices such as TVs and speakers. The Sony Tablet S can also function as a remote for devices such as Sony TVs, and also has the ability to learn commands from non-Sony remote controls. The Tablet S is also Playstation certified, which means that it will be able to play select Playstation games with full touch controls and the future ability to connect a Playstation controller to the device. Speaking to some of the people who were trying out the Tablet S, the overall reaction to was quite encouraging. “I really like how it can control TVs and other devices” said one consumer, while another user was having far too much fun playing Crash Bandicoot to comment.

We’ve got our hands on the Sony Tablet S, so look out for our in-depth review later this week.

BMW was present at the Arab Health exhibition held at the Dubai World Trade Center last week and I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Stephan Rauscher, Safety Engineer for BMW Global who explained how BMW is actively involved with passenger safety in their vehicles. Besides the passive features such as your seat belt, there are many electronic features in today’s BMW cars that, through sensors, detect a possibility of collision and accordingly inform the driver or make adjustments to your vehicle. Examples of such situations include your car moving out of the car tracks or detection of an object ahead of you at a slower speed.

Other than these safety features, Stefan also explained about BMW’s call center which is currently not available in the UAE, but is in Kuwait. The call center sends a crash report to an agent informing them of all passengers in the car, the area where the car was hit as well as other data such as the location of the accident. Again, the video below explains how it works by emulating a crash.

As you can see, BMW is really focusing on the safety aspect of their vehicles and considering how fast people tend to drive in the UAE, this is a good thing.

As I walk through the parking lot of Dubai Academic City towards the massive HP truck that’s now drawing a crowd of people to it, I can’t help but play a Transformers-type tune in my head. This massive truck has come all the way from Europe, and is part of an exciting initiative by HP to showcase some of their latest product offerings as well as promote their plans for revolutionizing both the corporate and educational environment.

I’m guided around the inside of the truck by Afroz Nawaf, Marketing Specialist PSG Commercial and Value from HP, and my first audience is with HP’s consumer line. From petite netbooks to sleek notebooks and desktops, HP had an impressive range of consumer tech to show off. I noticed that a good number of their laptops now come equipped with ‘Beats by Dr. Dre’ audio technology built in, so regardless of what kind of headphones you plug in you still get amazing sound quality and crisp audio.

Further down the consumer line was the HP 2311gt, a PC monitor capable of displaying both 2D and 3D content seamlessly. The monitor and combined software are able to instantly transform movies and even photos into 3D, and when paired with the supplied 3D glasses makes for an affordable 3D experience for home users. There was also the HP TouchSmart 520 PC, which was a much sleeker looking version of the TouchSmart 610 PC that we have in the office. The bundled TouchSmart software also sported better navigation as I swiped through the various screens, and I loved how the background wallpaper had elements in it that move around as I swiped. With wireless keyboard and mouse, integrated webcam and Beats technology, this would be the perfect all-in-one PC for those interested in a slightly different computing experience.

My tour then shifted gears to their corporate offerings, with the likes of the HP Elitebook 8760W leading the pack for mobile workstation computing. With a gorgeous display and plenty of power under the hood, this little beast would be a no-brainer for anyone looking for power computing on the go. I then turned my attention to a video demo of the HP Z800 workstation – an absolute behemoth of a machine capable of handling some serious computing challenges. Nawaf casually comments that the machine is used by the likes of Dreamworks to handle complex rendering projects, and can be fitted with up to 192Gb of RAM and 10TB of disk space. I quiver a bit and resist the urge to hug him when he says that he’ll try to send over one of these machines to our office.

My final stop is with Ziyad Al Rayes, Education Sector Manager for Middle East. I cannot help but smile when I talk to Al Rayes, simply because he’s so passionate when he describes HP’s latest initiative to streamline the IT infrastructure in both the corporate and education sectors. Al Rayes explains that with HP’s refresh initiative, even older PCs are able to power up and run the latest version of Windows and other software that would otherwise require a PC upgrade. Through its thin client series HP hopes that larger organizations will realize the benefit of introducing such technologies, as they are much easier to deploy and administer than traditional PC environments. Al Rayes also talks about how the education sector can stand to benefits from HP’s Virtualised Classroom environment – a central HP server can deliver a desktop experience anywhere on campus through client virtualisation, while the HP Multiseat Computing model allows one PC to be shared with up to ten students, expanding and simplifying as required for a truly plug and play experience. This kind of classroom model is perfect for areas or institutions that don’t necessarily have the resources to fit an entire computer lab with PCs, given that for the most part PC computing in schools or universities aren’t very demanding (with the exception of specialty apps such as CAD etc.). A recent success story was with SABIS in Lebanon, which turned to HP for a flexible and cost-effective thin client solution for its labs and exam halls.

Clearly HP has some very focused goals for the year ahead, so we’re keen to see how the company plays out the rest of 2012.  Check out some images from the event below:

At their press event today, Seagate officially launched their second generation Momentus XT hybrid drive. Technically the drives are already available to retail partners being sold as standalone OEM drives. Soon, though, major electronic street retailers such as Jumbo, Sharaf DG, Emax, etc. will be selling packaged retail version of the new Momentus XT.

The 2nd generation hybrid drives improve on the original Momentus XT in three key areas as far as impact on performance is concerned. Firstly, they will have increased capacity from 500GB to 750GB. The NAND Flash also gets a bump from 4GB to 8GB. And finally the new Fast Boot algorithm allows for a smarter and faster learning process resulting in regularly used data being loaded almost as quick as an SSD.

At the event we had a chance to quickly catch up with Mr. Sofocles Socratous, who is the Sales Director for Turkey, Greece and the MEA region.

When asked about whether we will be seeing the Momentus XT hybrid format in 3.5″ form factors, he said that as per their roadmap, in the next 5 years 80% of Seagate’s drives will be hybrid hard drives, so a 3.5″ hybrid drive is definitely in the works.

Another question was why don’t other hard drive manufacturers also make hybrid hard drives. According to Mr. Socratous Seagate has made a lot of investments in this segment. He probably means R&D costs in developing a hybrid hard drive. Now that the acquisition of Samsung’s hard drive division is complete, Seagate expects to make further roadways into developing better hybrid drives as their understanding of working with SSDs deepens even further, not to mention the benefits of having low cost NAND Flash directly from Samsung. It’s just not as easy as it looks to develop a hybrid drive, so other companies haven’t been able to provide a hybrid solution yet. That said, Mr. Socratous believes we’ll be seeing hybrid drives from other hard drive manufacturers just a few short years.

Our final question was focused on the improvements of the second generation Momentus XT compared to the original hybrid hard drive. Specifically people complained that the 4GB of NAND Flash got filled up pretty quickly, and users were reporting slowdowns from near-SSD speeds to regular 7,200 rpm HDD speeds within months.

To tackle this issue, Segate has come up with a better learning algorithm, which also works by writing boot files directly onto the NAND Flash for instantaneous access to keep Windows boot times fast. Furthermore, doubling the NAND Flash to 8GB means that there will be ample space for regularly used programs to cache data, resulting in an always efficient hybrid drive.

Check out our review in the coming days as we put Seagate’s claims to the test and thoroughly test the new Seagate Momentus XT 750GB hybrid hard drive.

The Porsche Designed BlackBerry P’9981 has officially landed in our office and like any fashion product, it has it’s share of fans and critics. It will take us a few days to properly use the device and give our honest opinion but until then, enjoy the unboxing of this deluxe item designed by Porsche Design and RIM.

Please note that the onboard memory on the P’9981 is 8GB and not 4GB as mentioned in the video.

Summers are usually very long in the UAE and thus, everyone tries to be as creative as they can to make the most of outdoors during the few “winter” months. I too, came up with an idea when I moved into my villa last year which has some garden space- to set up an outdoor theatre. While this idea is more for folks that have a bit of a backyard, I see no reason for it not working with people with rather large balconies that some of the older buildings in the UAE sport. So grab some popcorn while I detail the components I selected, why I selected them, and what you can expect as an end result.

In order to build a list of components, I had to take into consideration the extremely humid weather conditions in the UAE that last pretty much all year long. What this means is that you cannot leave most electronic devices outdoors- unless they are specifically certified for outdoor usage. Thus, portability became a part of the planning process. In total, I chose four components, three of which are required while the fourth one is up to you to decide upon.

The first thing you need is a projector and considering that you’ll be using it outdoors, you would want one that has a high Lumens rating so the brightly lit sky during a full moon doesn’t take too much away from your experience. To project, you also need a good screen, however, you can easily use your boundary wall to project upon, so the screen isn’t necessarily required. With the picture all set, you need a sound system- something that is quick and easy to setup and sounds decent. Finally, you need a media streamer to connect to your projector and sound system to feed movies or TV shows to.

It’s that time of the year folks, when we take a look back at all the new gadgets and components and tech released this year. Go through the entire laundry list and see what captured our hearts and hollowed our wallets.

Many of these products we have reviewed already, but there one or two in there that we unfortunately just got hands on with; still they were amazing enough to enter our list.

These awards are a collective decision of our entire editorial team that lavishes in technology in every aspect of their life. Thankfully there weren’t any serious arguments as we all agreed on what deserves to go on this list.

And if you have everything on this list, then you truly are…

...The One!

There are various categories we’ve covered; some you will not agree with, and maybe some that we have overlooked, so do let us know about them. And with that, let’s get started.