Archive for the ‘gadgets’ Category
(Not) Home For The Holidays
I’m pretty happy I don’t have to travel today. I’m going to wait until tomorrow, when all the turkeys have gotten off the road.
Of course, watch out for Wal-Mart and other big retail parking lots. The consternation about having to work on Thanksgiving is pervasive, and I wouldn’t want to see any customers attempt to play Frogger in those big parking lots. It’s dangerous enough just trying to get through the doors and into the store!
As always, my wise counsel is to shop from the comfort of your couch.
Walt Mossberg, the ever-dependable tech journalist with The Wall Street Journal, has written an article about “Making Sense of All the New Laptop Flavors.”
He goes on about the various flavors of Windows 8 PCs and tablets, before concluding that the “least costly Mac laptop” is the 11-inch MacBook Air, for $999.
I bought one just about a year ago, and I maintain it’s still the best, fastest, lightest, most dependable computer I’ve ever owned, and I’ve owned plenty.
If I had to do it all over again, I would have splurged for more SSD, but that’s it.
If you want to make sure your personal shopping engine is fully revved before Black Friday, Gizmodo’s providing its Ultimate Black Friday guide for geeks, grouping deals by category, and offering a list of when every retailer is slated to be open on Black Friday, just in case you prefer shopping in a mosh pit.
As for an update on my new Apple Mini-me “mini,” otherwise known as the 5th generation iPod touch, I can only say I have no buyer’s remorse, even now after having seen the iPad mini in the flesh.
The retina screen and the small form factor on the newest touch are working perfectly for me thus far. I bought a new “Need for Speed” racing game just to be able to check out the graphics in full force, and the retina screen is simply stunning (as are movies and Netflix streams). I’ve always read what a great gaming platform the touch is, but playing that racing game has cemented it.
Over the next several days, if you want to keep pace with IBM’s annual holiday campaign “Digital Analytics” benchmark, just follow IBM’s e-shopping analytics guru, @jay_henderson (a fellow Texan!).
Jay and his team will be working and posting reports throughout the weekend and into next week to keep us all informed how the holiday e-retail season is going. Jay’s already indicated we can expect to see growing numbers on the mobile and tablet shopping footprint this year. You can read Jay’s holiday set up piece here.
That said, don’t ignore those retail emails piling up in your in-box — email continues to be the e-retail Trojan Horse, with lots of Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals already being distributed. From Amazon to Golfsmith, I’ve received a number of holiday email deals, and it’s all I can do to keep my credit card filed away in my anti-scanning wallet!
If you’re looking for gainful employment this pre-Thanksgiving Wednesday, you might want to try somewhere other than LinkedIn. LinkedIn’s Website had a “service unavailable” message this morning, and TechCrunch has been reporting a LinkedIn site outage.
As for me, I’ll be (mostly) disappearing from the cyber maze over the course of the next week. It’s my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary, and I’m taking them on a cruise in the Caribbean to celebrate. I may send a post or two via email if I’m so inspired, but mostly I’ll be spending some quality time with my parents and some extended family, and gazing out at the Gulf of Mexico in a pina colada-induced haze (virgin pina coladas, of course).
For all of my readers here in the United States, I wish you a very happy and restful holiday weekend. For those of you outside the U.S., enjoy the email and conference call silence from your U.S. colleagues…it won’t last long!
DIY
I’m not much of a DIYer.
I’d rather go out and buy a new something than try and fix an old something.
And I think it’s genetic. The primary tools my father had in his garage while I was growing up were a driver and a three wood (golf clubs!).
But sometimes, one has no choice but to channel their inward Ben Franklin-ness because circumstance requires it.
One example: My beloved 55” Sony Bravia TV (which I bought way before the volume discounts kicked in, thank you very much) had a thermal fuse go out. I knew inviting my friends from Sony to come fix it in my home was at least a $400 mission.
I did some research to find the heart of the problem, and found a Web post that generally explained how to replace the thermal fuse. It wasn’t open heart surgery — but it wasn’t removing a cuticle, either.
One day, while the light was still good, and by following the instructions I found online (including very helpful pictures!), I had the TV in pieces in no time, the fuse replaced, and the cover back on, TV working, in about 90 minutes.
You’d have thought I had won the lottery, judging by the smile on my face.
Recently, I had a similar, if less dramatic, episode. I hadn’t used my Acer Aspire Netbook in a while, but I’d recently moved my home office back upstairs so I thought the Acer would be a good “downstairs” computer (I know, I clearly have too many computers).
When I turned it on, I realized there was a problem. Even though the battery indicator suggested the machine was charged, when I removed the AC power source, the computer died.
Fail!
I immediately went online to look for a new, but cheap, replacement battery. But as I entered the query “acer aspire one battery” and started glancing through the results, I saw links not only for replacement batteries, but for “fixes” for people having issues with the battery on that particular system.
Turns out, it was a long known and acknowledged problem, and it had a possible fix: Download the BIOS update onto a USB stick and reboot the machine with a special command.
Sounded easy enough. And surprisingly, it was. What took me about 5 minutes to research and implement saved me on the order of $30, along with shipping and handling, and also spared the planet the premature demise of a perfectly good laptop battery.
I checked the next morning, and the Acer battery (their 6 cell batteries are good for 6 hours or so!) was fully charged and raring to go.
More importantly, I got the satisfaction of solving a not-too-terribly-complex problem by doing a little investigating, and then following through.
Now if I could just find a similar article that would help me consolidate all my different iTunes libraries.
3D TPS Reports
The Consumer Electronics Show officially kicked off in Vegas today.
Once again, if it happens in Vegas, at least for CES, it doesn’t stay there.
Which I guess is a good thing, although I’d have liked to have been there in person for once, and maybe even have done a little “Hangover” sightseeing amongst all the collective geekdom.
So far, it seems like CES this year around is all tablets, all the time, although I am absolutely digging these newfangled XpandD 3D glasses.
Though I don’t have a 3D TV yet (that’s another big focus emerging at the show, with ESPN 3D expected to start programming 24 hours of 3D content soon -– professional ping pong, anyone??!), I think it’s fashionable to start thinking now about your fashionista 3D lenses.
Kate Spade, are you listening?
XpanD’s new 3D shades allows for Bluetooth and/or USB connectivity to iPhone or Android devices, and according to its press release, “can be optimized to address the fact that every human’s eyes and facial structure are unique and that each user’s viewing requirements and environment are different.”
On second thought, I spent most of my life trying to figure out how NOT to wear glasses, until Michael Dell’s brother came along and saved me with his custom LASIK surgery.
Can’t they just come up with some 3D surgery that I can turn off and on at will for the 3D effect?
Yeah, kind of like former U.S. Vice President Cheney can do with his new artificial heart pump, which the former Veep had installed last summer.
The heart pump is known as a “ventricular assist device,” and pushes the blood continuously throughout the body in place of a normal heartbeat, according to CBS’s “The Early Show” Web site.
So, basically, they’re telling us Dick Cheney has no pulse?
And that’s supposed to be news??
Of course, Cheney might could see his near-heart beat with a set of those newfangled 3D glasses, although I’m thinking the ex Veep might forego the Kate Spade varieties for something more along the lines from Wrangler.
Well, no matter how many footballs YOU see coming at you on the big screen, know that Hollywood, along with the sports books in Vegas, are betting that we’ll all start moving into the third dimension and soon.
Me, I just worry about when the day comes that we all have to start consuming PowerPoint in 3D – seems to me there’s nothing more boring than sleeping through bullet points firmly ensconced in multiple dimensions.
Think “Office Space” meets “Inception.”
Life’s too short for 3D flare, I don’t care how many dream levels down you might be, and even Leonardo DeCaprio and Ellen Page couldn’t save us all from endless PowerPoints with psychedelic animations that said absolutely nothing.
Oh, and that overdue TPS report?
Don’t forget the cover sheet…you’re just dreaming you already turned it in.