He’s like, it turns out, a lecherous old porn producer with a brilliant wit and snazzy glasses. 1up.com’s designer and myself got the chance to interview Adam West at this year’s E3, so you all get to share in it.
Monthly Archives: June 2006
Girl's Gadget Report: The Electronic Defence Whistle
Girls are always concerned with their security and self-protection. Actually, lots of women feel vulnerable from time-to-time, perhaps when travelling alone, when their car breaks down, sometimes at work, or when there are certain difficulties in a relationship or within the home. They are principal users of all those self-defense tools like pepper sprays, stun guns, etc. In some cases these tools can be very useful.
The device we’d like to present you today is, in our opinion, a must have for every girl. I’m talking about the Electronic Defence Whistle. This one is a hand-held personal alarm that emits a very acute sound when brought into action. Frankly speaking, the sound is rather piercing and strong enough to scary both the attacker and the victim. It looks like a whistle and functions like one. You are not going to kill or hurt someone this way, but you will surely attract attention and get a chance to escape.
The Electronic Defence Whistle is very small and stylish, but powerful enough to fulfill its “lofty mission” of protecting you from an attacker. It’s available in three colors: pink, blue, and orange. It fits perfectly any handbag, even the smallest one. You can also wear it on a necklace or keep it in a pocket.
Don’t let them attack you! Use this Electronic Defence Whistle! Available soon at http://www.futureinstore.com/FIS-web%20folder/images/FIS_wheretobuy.html
The Weekly Girl’s Gadget Report is brought to you by http://www.gadget4girls.com/
Gamera Walkie Bits!
Oh, look! It’s so cute! Takara toys has released limited edition Gamera Walkie Bits to coincide with the new Gamera movie. These little robot turtles are very popular in Japan. They will walk to a rhythm you specify by clicking their mouse button-like shells. They also sing and race. Gamera singing, that seems like a new one to me. There doesn’t seem to be an excuse to not get one, unless you have a dislike for adorable little toys with the power to entertain children and draw attention from adults in coffee shops. Note, though, that all the instructions are in Japanese.
Google's Browser Sync for Firefox
This is such a simple idea, it’s a wonder you don’t see it more often. The Wonderful Google (hallowed be thy name) has given us an extension for the Firefox browser that synchronizes your bookmarks between different computers. So if you’re using Firefox at work and at home, you can rest assured that you’ll never have to send yourself emails with the newest website bookmark in them; Browser Sync does it automagically for you!
Learn more about it here.
Mix it up with the very useful RSS Mix tool
Have you ever wished you could just have one RSS feed that had information from a number of different sites? You could have a single feed with everything you want concerning a particular subject or idea no matter what or how many sites the information comes from. One service out there called RSS Mix does just that.
For example, consider LIVEdigitally’s three feeds (entries, comments, Flickr). Enter each feed in RSS Mix’s simple text box and hit Create! What you get in return is a new feed that combines all of the information from all of the feeds. Here is the single feed created with RSS Mix for all of our feeds here.
Besides combining multiple feeds from one site, you could also combine feeds from multiple sites on a particular topic. Maybe you’re freakishly obsessed with something obscure like meerkats (I’m not, it was just a random thought). You could setup a feed from Google News concerning meerkats with one from Powell’s Books to keep track of new books on meerkats. Toss them together at RSS Mix and you have a handy little meerkat feed.
Give this tool a shot. If you have tons of feeds this can really make your life more simple.
Not familiar with RSS? Read on…
Sony Vaio VGN-SZ160P review: function meets form
So I’ve been hooked on laptops since 1996, when I got my first Toshiba Tecra. It weighed about 15 pounds and was a total desktop replacement (meaning it had about all the power of a desktop PC, and virtually all the weight as well), which was perfect for my needs. I went through two more Tecras over the years, then somehow managed to migrate through an HP, a Gateway (it wasn’t bad, really!), and settled on a Dell Latitude for a few years until it died (a bit young in my opinion). I set out to replace it, and settled on the Sony Vaio VGN-SZ160P. It’s been a few months, and I like it quite a bit. Cutting to the chase: if you can afford it, it’s probably one of the best laptops on the market at present. Read on if you want to know the details of why I think so.
I am very happy with the performance. It’s a zippy dual-core Centrino laptop, and easily outperforms my last one, which sported a Pentium-M chip (The good kind that came out 2 years ago, not the crappy one from 3-4 years back. Thanks for the clever naming there, Intel). I am a constant multi-tasker, and at present have 4 IE browser windows open, Windows explorer, Outlook 2003, Outlook Express, AIM, Flickr, MSN Messenger, Word 2003, and Photoshop CS. I can swap between them with ease (unless of course Outlook is synchronizing, in which case it absolutely brings this, and all other, PC to its knees), and rarely notice any delay in launching applications.
Download an entire DVD to your phone in 10 seconds!?
Yea, you read the headline correctly. NTT DoCoMo recently announced a new prototype wireless network with bandwidth capabilities approaching 2.5Gbps (yes, that’s GIGabits per second).
According to Technology Review where I found this article (it’s pretty techy, btw), that’s fast enough to download a DVD in less than 10 seconds! The technology is far from ready to go so it’s not like you’ll be watching a streaming version of Aeon Flux on your Razr anytime soon. Besides, the receiver they used to demonstrate the new network had 6 antennas – not real attractive in my opinion.
See an artist’s conception below:
(Okay, I also moonlighted as the artist on this one – this is what about 20 seconds in Photoshop gets me.)
Moviebeam update and more thoughts
It’s been about 6 weeks since I first reviewed Moviebeam (add another week or so for my HD follow-up) and there are a few updates which I felt were worth sharing.
First and foremost, as Dave Zatz reported, you can pick up a unit for $49 instead of $199 by using an online coupon (enter PR49B at checkout). If you were even borderline before, for $49 I don’t know what would stop you from picking it up. Dave also did a video review that you can see if you are on the fence, or just want to see it in action (Ron at Techlore did a review as well).
Next, Magnolia Pictures recently announced they’d supply movies into the system (thanks HD Beat). I’m curious to see where this goes, as I don’t think the real strength of the product is about niche programming. Personally, I think the mainstream movies are key to building their user base right now. And I have a little story to share as to why I think so…
My wife and I wanted to get a movie the other night, and ended up at our local, sigh, Blockbuster. We walked around the new release section, with our autofilters to block out Martin Lawrence, Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson films (which actually only left three movies in the entire section!). We saw movie after movie that we recall seeing ‘coming soon’ with Moviebeam, and skipped all of these, despite them being high on our want-list. Mid-browse we decided on ‘stupid comedy’ as our category, and beelined it for JIm Carrey’s remake of Dick and Jane (lousy, and Tea Leoni needs to hang up the acting for doing husky voice-over work, she’s much better at that). Bottom line for us was: we won’t pick something up at the store if we think/know we can just watch it with the m-beam.
I watched Aeon Flux (not as horrible as I was expecting) and Glory Road (continuing to reinforce the statement that all sports movies are good, but none are better than Hoosiers) today, the first in standard definition, and the second in HD. I could be wrong, my contacts might be fuzzy, or it might just be to the long summer days, but the picture quality looked a lot better than before! When I spoke with one of the execs at Moviebeam last month he mentioned that the first few HD titles they had were not the best the system can do, and after watching Glory Road, it looks promising. It’s still not quite as remarkable as the Comcast signal, but it’s much better than the last time I looked at it! If this keeps up, I will have to go do a real side-by-side comparison in the coming months.
Now I’m just waiting for the Ethernet port to activate so I can remove the 25-foot-long phone cable running through my hallway and hook it up to my Buffalo wireless 4-port bridge (also connected to my Xbox, Sonos, and Slingbox). I’m also really hoping that with Internet access comes new features. First and foremost I’d like to see community features incorporated into a Web site as well as the product. I’d like access to some Internet-based content too (maybe Akimbo-based or even Youtube).
I believe the future of the set-top box includes a combination of broadcast services (cable or satellite), datacasting (Moviebeam or …), and Internet access. With this combination comes the ultimate in on-demand, personalized television. Now sprinkle it with placeshifting and DVR services, toss in a great EPG with contextual search and a good recommendation and collaborative filtering engine, and then I’m a happy happy boy.
Other than the fact that I still won’t be able to watch any more Arrested Development, that is…
Things that are small are good.
Finger-lickin’ good is really the only thing that can be said here. Sure, an optical mouse that straps onto your finger with a standard 3 button array is probably the best way to get your World of Warcraft fix when you’re on the go, since that iBook one-button mouse just won’t do it. But what if you end up with one freakishly powerful finger and the rest of your hand withers to virtually nothing?
Hi, everyone — I’m Patrick, I blog here, and these sort of things worry me.
For the nostalgic toy collectors of the 80's
Here’s something which may or may not interest you but for the hasbro addicted child that I was, I was overcome with glee when I found out about the live action Transformers movie coming out next year. Well, they finally created a website specifically for the movie and can be found here . I have seen various clips of the robots (autobots and decepticons for you experts) transforming and for all intent and purposes, doesn’t look too bad.
Pandora Update – Free Backstage Pass!
I know, I know, I just posted on this awesome new music service a few days ago but they’ve added this new feature called Backstage that I think is worthy of another post.
If you use Pandora primarily to find new music you’ll like and not so much to listen to tunes 24×7 then you’ll love Backstage. Type in an artist and you’ll get a biography and a selected discography. From this page, you can create a station on your Pandora Radio, shoot an email to a friend about the artist or add the artist to your [Pandora] bookmarks for later use.
Want to go a little deeper? Click on an album. You get a great album summary and a complete track listing with samples of each song, a la iTunes or Amazon. And finally, the magic part – a listing of similar albums by other artists determined by the “genome” of the music. Check out my first post for more info on this.
Now here’s where this service gets really handy. You can click on each individual song and get similar music recommendations – all this based on the genome of that particular song. Different songs on the same album will yield different recommendations because each song is different in many specific ways, even on the same album by the same artist. This is great if you like one or two songs on an album and would like to find similar songs by other artists. From here you can also create a station on your Pandora Radio based on this particular song.
Pandora is so much more than a great new way to listen to music – I think it’s a yet-to-be-fully-realized tool that will revolutionize the music discovery process. I’ve added literally dozens of artists to my to-buy list which, honestly, has been empty for quite some time.
If you haven’t tried Pandora out yet I highly recommend it. Build yourself a station or two, listen to some great new tunes, and then head backstage. I haven’t had this much fun listening to music since I got my personal cassette player for Christmas when I was 10.
Oh yea – consider this an official warning – you will get lost in the Pandora database. I once had to hit my back button no less than 10 times to find out how I got myself to Oingo Boingo.
Welcome(s)!
Well, June 15th unofficially spontaneously became Introduction Thursday here at LIVEdigitally. I want to start by personally welcoming our handful of new writers on board, and thanking them in advance for their future contributions. This is actually my second foray at bringing in some external folks to participate here. The first time out we ended up with Jonas, Ryan and Ameer, all of whom were really great to have around. Unfortunately, it happened in a timeframe where I got so overwhelmed with the six jobs I held at my company that I pretty much vanished for a long while, and they decided to take on new things (which seem to go quite well, way to go guys!).
At Sling we finally expanded to have a large enough team that I could cut down to only working 3 or 4 jobs at a time. This, combined with my basic desire to write, got me kicked back into gear to pump some life back into the LD. And as my traffic reports show, a few folks out there noticed and the readership has grown. So I felt it was good time to build up the site a bit more, and to do that, I need some help. And while both my mom and dad have written a few comments on some of the articles I’ve written, it wasn’t quite enough for me.
So, it’s a long way to say “welcome aboard”, but I am (always) optimistic about increasing the breadth, depth, and quality of the content you find here. Expect a lot of new product reviews from the team, as well as their own individual rants and raves on the technology around us. I hope you enjoy their writing, and let’s see what they have to say!
ps – do you know how hard it is to find a picture of actual lemmings (the animals) on a cliff? couldn’t find anything that didn’t look like this: