Long long ago, we use mini cassettes when we record something into our tape deck. But now, this is now replaced with a faster and easier device that can record high quality audio and it is rather cheap.

This new record device produces no unnecessary noise and has fewer moving parts. It can also store huge amounts of audio and it is smaller and durable than tape recorders. In standard formatting, those audio that are recorded can easily be edited, shared, stored, managed and searched.

When you plan to find a device that records digital sound, you need to think first about what audio quality you want. If it is compressed audio, then that would be good for voicemail, memos or informal recordings. For less compressed audio like the stereo, it can be used for shared audio like podcasts. High quality audio can be fit for recordings of music.

Aside from recording medium format and the device, here are some factors that would affect the quality of your recording:

1.      The first place used in the recording will have better quality. A recording done in a studio would sound much better in the start than something you shot on a busy road.

2.      The microphone: its quality and connection to the device for audio. Higher quality is equal to higher payment. So an expensive microphone would get higher quality sound pick-up than a cheap karaoke mic.

The mic is only an audio input device. Digital recorders that can record using an external mic will accept line-in audio recording from any audio device.

Among the world of gadgets are some that are functional and essential – the mobile cell phone, for instant – and some that are equally functional but not so necessary – the digital camcorder, say – and there also some that are simply fun, and have no purpose other than to amuse and give you something to enjoy.

One such gadget is the FlyTech Dragonfly, one of many items of its ilk that is simply a grown up toy, and in another time – the yuppie dominated 1980’s, for example – would likely have been given the more excusable title ‘executive toy’ in order that its very existence is seemingly justified.

The truth is that the Dragonfly is simply a toy, and it is simply a dragonfly, too. But it must be said, it’s also great fun for old and young, and no doubt if bought for Dad, he’ll have troubling wrestling it from the kids!

A radio controlled flying dragonfly, with a sixteen inch wingspan and wings that move in an authentic insect-like flapping motion, there can be few more fun gadgets than this, and with a few minutes flying time from a 20 minute charge via the supplied base centre, the dragonfly will be used again and again and never bore the user, while achieving absolutely nothing of worth at all. It can soar and hover, just like a real dragonfly, and is sure to create mayhem among the family pets!

On amore practical level, storing your information away from the computer is a vital action these days, and nothing can do it more stylishly than another seriously top gadget, the Omega eGo Portable Hard Drive.

Never has a gadget intended solely for functional use been made to look so good, and with a 160 GB capability the eGo is a must for those with serious storage needs. That’s room fro well over half a million digital photos, or almost 3,000 hours of music, and all on a beautiful and stylish piece of kit, adorned with effective shock absorbing qualities, that will undoubtedly send your friends and colleague sin to a frenzy when they first catch a glimpse.

Gadgets, as the two above demonstrate, can be either fun or function, and often both, and that is why the market for gadgets is an ever-developing area that attracts people the world over, all the time.

Think of gadgets and we think small, electronic, attractive and something that makes a statement. Everybody, after all, likes to be seen with the latest ‘must have’ item, so what are the top gadgets on the market at the moment? Here we look at three of the best items, ones that consumers are voting for with exceptional sales across the world.

Starting with the obvious, lets look at the mobile cell phone. Small, functional and considered essential for both business and pleasure, but the top gadget?

The best phone

Yes, it must be, and when it’s the Apple iPhone, it’s one of the best gadgets of all time.

Beautifully designed – and not just for looks, but with a full keyboard for ease of use – the iPhone is slick and simple, with a look that says ‘I’ve arrived’ more than any other cell phone on the market. With capabilities far beyond that of the average cell phone, the iPhone is set to become a design classic and an icon within a very short time of its recent introduction to the market.

The best camera

Next on the list of must have gadgets is the digital camera, an item that has revolutionized our lives in more ways than we may notice. Given the ability to take photos any where, and the portability of the devices on offer, we can record our lives more easily than before, and none does so in a better manner than the Nikon Coolpix S51c, a camera that is both beautiful to look at and use, and that has the added attraction of wi-fi capability, enabling you to send photo’s direct to your PC without cabling.

The digital video camera

A little further up the market from the still digital camera we arrive at the camcorder variety, the doyen of Japanese tourists in America, and American tourists in Japan, that makes every move in our busy schedules recordable and replayable for ever more.

With anti-shake devices turning us all into instant maestros, models such as those in the Sony Handycam range have brought high quality film making to the masses, and everybody can now shoot digital film with absolutely no training in the medium at all.

Of all these items – the cell phone, digital camera and digital video camera, only one can be considered essential in any way – the phone – but it remains a fact that recording images of our lives is becoming more and more commonplace.

The idea for the mobile – or cell – phone has been around since Alexander Graham Bell devised the first operable telephone system, and portable phones have been used in one form or another for many decades now – think of the field telephones used by the military in the second world war, and earlier than that.

Mobile phones first took on the aura of a must have gadget in the 1970’s, when having a telephone that could be carried around was seen as a sign that one had ’arrived’, no matter that the item was bigger than a briefcase and twice as heavy, with a battery life of a few minutes and a usefulness that bordered on the very poor.

Downsizing

Technology, though, has a way of moving these things ahead at speed, and it was not long before the brick sized and inefficient first phase of cell phones were being replaced with small, light hand held units that had been enabled by breakthroughs in battery design.

By the time we reached the 21s century, the mobile cell phone had become not just the possession of city boys with big bonuses to shout about, but of everybody, and nobody in particular.

Everybody’s talking

It is now – eight years into that century – the absolute norm to carry a mobile phone, and the talk now is not that you have one, but how small it is, what it looks like and, most of all, what other features it carries – for being a phone, an ability for making calls, is simply not enough.

These days cell phones are so small that they can be lost in a handbag, so thin that they may be invisible beside a credit card, and so versatile that they are replacing the landline telephone as the every day method of communication.

The average phone

Not only that, but from a short charge a life of a few days can be had, so advanced are the batteries that power the average phone these days.

And that average phone will come with at least one, if not all, of the following – a good quality camera with the ability to record video, an MP3 capable audio device, an internet surfing feature, and the ability to send and receive emails.

Anything less than those, and what you have is not a talking point, but an embarrassment.

A gadget is described as a small object, novelty or otherwise, that is designed to perform a particular function, whether essential or not. Gadgets are not always small, however, but are more often than not portable in one way or another.

Take the mobile cell phone – a gadget now considered an essential item, and one loved and loathed in equal measure.

Innovative and novel

The mobile cell phone was an innovative and novel item when it first appeared in our midst, and was intended for one purpose only – that of making and receiving telephone calls while on the move.

Now, as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the mobile is considered so much a part of everyday life that, while still technically in the realms of gadgetry, manufacturers are loading them with more and more features in order to make them more attractive than a rival offering.

Cameras, music players, even GPS systems are being crammed into many models of mobile in order to make them more useful, but when did it come about that mobile phones should also double as cameras, or as audio devices?

Marketing the key

It becomes clearer, when looking at the history of the mobile phone and its development, that as it became a necessary item rather than a novelty, manufacturers saw the need to add to the available feature – a phone than made calls was no longer a marketable item, but one that went further than that – one that could tell you where you are or play a tune, or take a picture or a film – would clearly have a lead on others that did not.

The mobile phone, therefore, began as a gadget, but rapidly developed into something that everybody carries without thinking, and has now been transformed back into the realms of gadgetry again as the market becomes saturated.

It still begs the question what is a gadget, and what is not? More and more the term gadget is applied to useful objects rather than those that are there for mere fun, and more and more the simple everyday item is becoming imbued with the substance of gadgets in order to make it more saleable than the next model.

Design as well as function – flip phones, slide phones, qwerty keyboards and more – takes the cell phone further down the road to gadgetry as development continues.