Holiday sites that make me laugh

Last year I was all about elf yourself. This year large corporations (including the one I work for) have deemed this an inappropriate use of Internet resources and added it to the block list. Apparently humor is bad for business. Or morale. Or something.

Here is another I found entertaining.



And this called make-a-flake. Of course I failed at my first two tries to cut. (must connect the cuts to the outside.)

And if you want to watch Christmas videos - there is this site I couldn't believe how many classics were available, including Rudolph.

USB or not USB - that is my question

Now that I do podcasting, using Skype, I needed to upgrade my microphone. One of my soundcards can be really unreliable when using the microphone port, so I thought I would try USB.

USB is handy - but it is easier to manipulate two separate ports. Fortunately, I don't have to choose. I got the Logitech folding earphones that have a converter from USB to standard microphone/earphone jacks.

My new phone is not an iPHone - Chocolate 3

In all the excitement about the iPhone, there were several other phones that came out this week. One is my new phone, the LG Chocolate 3, aka LG VX8650.

My venerable LG VX8100, one of the best phones ever, was started to fade. Text messages did not work. Imagine the frustration of your phone beeping to say "You have a text message" and not be able to read it. Grrr! The camera took pictures occasionally, but made it look like it was bright sun on a cloudy day. (Not a good look)

I went into Verizon thinking I would buy the LG Dare, the Verizon latest version of a touch phone. I hated the touch screen. You have to look at the screen to use, and screen, like the iPhone, was not nearly sensitve enough to meet my standards. (My standard - work the first time I touch the screen, not the 2nd or 3rd) So I thought I would consider the Voyager. It did not have the cool advanced camera of the Dare, but the keys worked well, and there were keys to move the cursor around the screen instead of fat-fingered pointing. And it was big and only came in ugly black.

So on decision day, coincidentally the same weekend the iPhone dropped, I went into my Verizon store and found LG Chocolate 3. It was a gorgeous aqua, it was slimmer than my current phone with a bigger screen. The salesperson assured me it was feature rich, and she was right.

• 
  a better camera (3 levels of resoltution, 2 MP instead of 1.3)
• 
  ability to do video capture for as long as I had storage for (instead of 15 sec)
• 
  click wheel to control the music player on the front
• 
  support for external micro-SD with storage up to 8 gig
• 
  3.5 mm jack instead of that 2.5 that only works on phone headsets. This means I can use any set of earphones to listen to my music. This is HUGE!
• 
  a faster camera (instead of waiting 5 sec for a picture)
• 
  an FM transmitter so you can hear radio
• 
  Bluetooth stereo
• 
  USB charging (one LESS adapter to pack)
• 
  Crop images in the phone
• 
  flip phone instead of an annoying slider - which kept me away from Chocolate before
  

So when it came down to it, I opted for the sleek design of the
Chocolate cubed over a bloated Voyager or expensive iPhone. My phone has to be small enough to go everywhere, and serve as my backup camera and Internet connection. And I love a pretty phone. Funny, the male geeks on Gizmodo were not rocking the color.

Why I will not buy an iPod - part 2

There is a new gadget coming called Castgrabber that might be my replacement for the annoyance of iTunes.

Apparently, you hook it up to your computer once, and use the software to tell it which podcasts you want. From then on, you put your MP3 player in the dock and it will have your podcasts downloaded automatically, and charges your MP3 player. It has to stay plugged into your router with an Ethernet cable.

It looks handy. And it does NOT work on Mac.

All Things Pink

Like any teleconferencing professional, I spend a lot of time with a Bluetooth headset in my ear. I may look like Seven of Nine on Star Trek Voyager, but I can't give up the convenience. When commuting on bike on in the car, I can't have a phone in my hands.

Then I found out about this Plantronics 950. Love the pink, and the gold is a great neutral that coordinates with most of my jewelry. The picture even show the headset in a jewelry box. The classic lines make the headset blend right in.

The features include a great noise-cancelling capability (see note about commute) and it is very lightweight. It will connect to two phones, so I don't have to carry a headpiece for my work phone, and my personal phone. I immediately put it in my Amazon cart.

Now I just need to decide between the gold and the pink.

Yakitome

Here's link to something nifty. This site converts documents into an audio recording.

http://www.yakitome.com/

Gadget girl from a gadget family

My three siblings and I were recently gathered for an event, and the conversation turned to the Amazon Kindle. We had a rollicking discussion of its features, and basically agreed we would buy when the price came down.

My youngest sister said to me later, that such techie conversation was a rarity for her. Most of the people she hangs with wouldn't have heard of Kindle, much less be considering it a must-have device.

We're a gadget family. It's hereditary.

Inbox Zero

My inbox is always full. I am looking for more ways to clear it, and so I listened to this video. A lot of the things Merlin Mann suggests were obvious - at least to me, because I was already doing them. The concept of touching an email once and then getting rid of it by:

• deleting it (my favorite)
• doing the action requested, and replying (and deleting, because your Sent Items now contains the history and your reply!)
• archiving immediately(and possibly deleting at a later date)
• saving (until the a later date when the topic/project is obsolete and deleting!)

You can tell I am focused on the delete if at all possible. I already pitch lots of email, but I do have to keep that CYA trail for work. (Who sent who what and when) Still, I found the discussion interesting.

The coolest thing yet . .

My fellow girl geeks gave me a great lead on a gadget. I was very excited about Delicious 2 from their description. I read all the great features . Then I found out it only ran on Mac.

So I went looking for a PC equivalent. I found Librarian Pro (Mac and PC) for $80 and, even better Libra (http://www.getlibra.com/) which is free, and only for PCs. Like the specs for Delicious 2, it uses your webcam as a scanner. You point the camera at a barcode, and the software reads it. It looks it up in the Amazon database, and makes an entry for you. If you had entries already in a spreadsheet, you can import the information.

So I downloaded it. Damn if it didn't work just as advertised. Of course you must hold the item you are scanning very still. I can't wait to start getting my book, music, and dvd libraries under control. But that's a post for another day.

OpenID to the rescue

I hate having to create a new user name and password for every forum, shopping account, etc., that I want to look at on the web.

Looks like OpenId feels my pain. I can use an AOL id or a Blogger id, to name two options, and use the authentication from those original sites. So one less identity to remember online is welcome.

So check it out. OpenID might save me some brain cells to use for more entertaining activities.

Blogging is harder than it looks

Great article on the skills needed for blogging. I'm pretty sure I won't have to worry about this legal stuff until someone besides me starts reading.

Why i will not buy an iPod

Every couple years I go out looking for a new portable music player. The features get better. The screens get smaller/bigger/clearer and now are all in color. I go with an open mind, but I never spend my money on an iPod. iPods don't give me the features I want AND they cost more for the same amount of space/functionality. I may be American, but I'm no idiot, to paraphrase Green Day. I don't want to pay more for less.

Yet, the improved features of these alternatives are the best kept secret since the BetaMax. As much as I hear about the ground-breaking oh-so-convenient user interface of iPod, it just isn't convenient for me. How do I know? A trade show gave me a 4 gig Nano. So I thought I would give it a try and see if it was worth it for free.

What I Like

• The colors are pretty - my feminine side loves the purple, mint green, fuchsia, aqua and other girlie colors of the rainbow this comes in. Mine is a very neutral silver, but still nice.


• The size - even in the case, which is a must if you want to continue to see the content behind the screen instead of a maze of scratches, the size is miniscule.


• Accessory selection - if you want a case (see above) there are almost 100 options, and many are stylish and colorful. My case is bronze leather.


• Immediate on - click the play button and your content starts up immediately
• Bookmarking of audiobooks - of course, it is a pain to get them on through iTunes, so I gave up.

What I don't like

• Using Itunes to sync - They just don't give the options I want. For example, - I want the last 3 episodes of one TV show, and the last of another, and all of another. - I want to check the songs or albums I want synched to the ipod without creating a playlist - I want to option to choose which content I want to expire off the iPod - I want the iPod to know what content I have listened to, and offer to expire it. (and I want to tell it only to offer that for Videos of TV, and podcasts, but not for music mixes


• AAC format - which also forces me through iTunes. I want to drag and drop content. I want it to play mp3, Audible, and wma. The conversion needed eats up either time (to convert) or disk (to store the conversion)


• The click wheel - I know, the greatest invention since sliced bread, and I hate the way it works. I feel I have more control with a slider like Creative Zen, or Sansa. Or a wheel with tactile sections so you can feel how much it has rotated, like Insignia.


• The hierarchy - I want to choose the tags I group by, or put things into folders and access the folders. That playlist thing is just bogus. AND, once again, I am fighting with iTunes to see the music the way I want it.


• The battery life - two episodes of "Bones" and the player is drained. Even with the nano's tiny screen, the battery will not get me through a normal plane flight, much less an extended one.


• The proprietary, and ever-changing transfer/charging port - Haven't they heard of mini-USB? Every iPod re-imagines this interfaces, so you must keep specific docks for each model. Also the accessories then have to be sold to match this everchanging target. Honestly, a little standardization could go a long way.


• The missing features -
  • FM radio
  • recording from line-in or microphone
  • Bluetooth headset
  • two headphone jacks
  • SD card expansion, so I could load content on a card and swap it in, or just increase storage

I just get the feeling that iPod is for people who don't know what they want from a portable music player, and are willing to take what Apple dishes out. So even though the Nano is free, it can't take the place of my Insignia. So I carry it as a spare in case my Insignia runs out of juice. (very rare)<

Ooh, leather . . .

Just in case you have money to burn, a

leather keyboard(with no key labels)is just the thing.

or even a floral keyboard

I'm a Gadget Girl

I come by it fair and square. My mom never saw a gadget she didn't like, though there were many she didn't buy. She had the first Mac on the block in a small farming community. Come to think of it, she had her computer before I did.

I'm always on the lookup for the next great thing to make my life easier. And I don't care whether it came from Apple, or IBM, or Timbuktoo -- I'm looking for the gadget with the best features for the best price.

Don't know much about Macs - rarely use them. My personal computers run Windows, so I will tell you about what I know best when it's software. So many gadgets are not software at all, but personal convenience items, so anything goes there.