The Gadgets Page

I love to have a docking cradle for my PDA. I don’t know if it’s because I’m an old-school Palm Pilot fan or if I am just lazy, but I prefer to have a spot to place my phone easily. Fussing with cords is a pain in the butt for me. Half the time, the cord would fall behind the desk when I removed it from my phone and when I finally got a cord manager to prevent losing the cord, it made it difficult to have the phone facing the right direction.

A cradle stores my phone face up and angled perfectly for me to see while it’s charging or syncing. This particular cradle is a little nicer than the one I had for my Zodiac. There is an extra compartment to charge an additional battery and the sync button is a real one, not just a mechanical work around that indirectly presses the sync button on the original sync cable.

Another additional feature is that you have a choice whether it will be a charging station or a syncing station for you. If you want a cradle where you charge your phone, but prefer to sync at the computer with your original cable, you can do that. The same is true if you want to sync with the cradle and charge elsewhere. You don’t need to have both cords connected for it to work.

I don’t know why they don’t include cradles with the Palms anymore. Maybe there are some people who didn’t really like them. Now, there are several cradles from different peripheral providers to choose from, but this one works like a dream.

Palm’s Treo Docking Cradle is $39 for the version linked here, which includes the AC power adapter and USB data connector. A cheaper version, which includes only the cradle and works with your existing cables, is also available.

I just bought a fleece jacket for the winter. Unlike the pictured jacket, my version has a hood, but that’s not important. The important part of this year’s line of The North Face jackets is the little zippered pocket on the upper right side. That little pocket is perfect for slipping in my Treo. I can listen to music, wrap the extra headphone cord in it and zip it up. It doesn’t bounce when I run and it is secure. Best little gadget pocket ever.

It turns out that this little fleece jacket is just as warm as my leather coat. That’s an added bonus that I wasn’t expecting. It’s so light and easy to throw on, I didn’t think it would come close to being as warm as my leather coat. I actually bought it to be a liner for my coat when things get cold this year. Luckily, I’ll be able to weather whatever comes along this season.

A common technique in digital photography is focus-and-recompose: You center the subject in the frame, half-press the shutter to focus, then move the camera to create a better composition with an off-center subject. I use this technique with almost every photo I take. Here’s an article on why this technique can sometimes create out-of-focus pictures:

• Visual Vacations: Why Focus-Recompose Sucks

If you’ve had problems with poor focus or are just curious about how focus systems work, this is a good read.

Keep in mind that you may never run into this issue—with most digital cameras, especially consumer and prosumer models, the large depth of field compensates for the error most of the time. Watch out in these situations, though:

• When taking close-up portraits, especially with digital SLR cameras
• Macro photography with any camera
• When deliberately narrowing the depth of field by using a wide aperture

The solution? Most prosumer and SLR digicams let you choose a non-centered focus point. Use this rather than focus-and-recompose for the best shot.

[via Mezzoblue]

Hello,

Could you please tell me how to set the time on my fossil-starck, cause I do have the manual, but due to moving..it is somewhere, but where..?!

You’d make me very happy, many friend tried..but..as you know, it’s too hard..so I now have a watch which says it is 5 hours and 15 minutes earlier than it actually is.

Thanks! Evelien

Evelien,

The button on the bottom left controls the mode. When you push this button one of the four modes will flash (TIM 1, TMR, ALM 1, or CHRO). Push the mode button until TIM 1 flashes. Now, you are in Time 1 Mode. You should be able to see the time, seconds and date on the face of the watch.

Hold down the mode button until the hour starts flashing. You can now set your time. The top right hand button will move you from hours to minutes to date, etc. The bottom right hand button will change the digits. When you have set it correctly, you can press the mode button (bottom left hand button) and it will start acting like a normal watch again.

In normal time mode, you can switch to TIM 2 by pressing and holding the bottom right hand button and set the dual time in the same manner.

I hope this is helpful to you,
Laura Moncur

I got my headphone adapter at Radio Shack and it looks like the one pictured here. I have been using it to listen to music on my Treo 650, but yesterday, I learned a new feature that was built into my phone. If you are listening to music on the Real Player (it comes with the Treo) and a call comes in, the music pauses and the phone rings. If you answer the call, the music stays paused during your call and resumes when you hang up. If you decide to ignore the call, the music automatically resumes within a few rings.

Additionally, if you pick up the call, you can hear the phone through your headphones. You still need to bring the phone up to your mouth so that the microphone can pick up your voice, but being able to take the call without upsetting my headphones is really cool. Plus, the call came through on both of my ears instead of just one. This is an added bonus if you’re in a noisy environment and want to block out a little more of the noise around you.

This adapter is shaped a little better than the one I bought at Radio Shack, so it might be the way to go. Mine sometimes falls out because it’s so big and bulky. Either way, the headphone adapter has been a great way for me to listen to music wherever I want. The Treo kicks butt!

Following along the lines of paranoia, a former employee of EBGames lets loose his views:

• BUZZSCOPE – The Mad Gamer – EB Games EXPOSED!

I suspect the policies are the same at all the major game outlets, even though I’ve found most of the employees to be pretty willing to tell me when a game is less than enjoyable. He also complains about the trade-in value for games. The way I look at it, if I’m willing to sell it back, it must be just taking up space at home and if I don’t get two bucks for it at EBGames, I’ll give it to the Salvation Army.

It’s nice to know that Mad Catz is crap, though. I thought that maybe I played on that dance mat a little too hard.

Via: Gear Live – Former EB Games Worker Is Pissed

With a paranoid title like that, I had to read the article in full.

PCWorld.com – 20 Things They Don’t Want You to Know

Here’s my take on their “secrets.” I’ve included links to the most interesting.

• Your CPU May Be Much Faster Than You Think: I knew that overclocking could make my computer faster, but I’m not about to rip apart things and add fans just to increase the speed a little bit.

• You Never Have to Pay Full Price: Ever since Priceline.com hired William Shatner to tell me that I could get good deals on the Internet, I have been watching things like a hawk. That’s what it takes to get the good deals: logging on every day and checking the price of what you want to buy.

• Faster Shipping Isn’t Always Faster: They’re right, sometimes regular shipping will get to you just as fast as two-day.

• You Can Kill the Messenger: I haven’t had any trouble with MSN Messenger running in the background.

• Extended Warranties Aren’t Worth It: It depends on how clumsy you are. I have used a couple of these warranties to their fullest because I tend to drop things. Make sure they cover customer clumsiness, though.

• You Too Can Exploit Windows’ Bad Security: I didn’t know about these holes. We tend to keep all our necessary keys easily accessible because you never know when you’re going to have to re-install windows.

• You Can Save Big Money on Big-Name Software Packages: This feels like stealing to me. If I’m not really buying it OEM, then I’m not going to cross that moral line.

• That Dead Pixel on Your LCD May Not Be Covered: Haven’t had this problem, thankfully.

• Your Cell Phone’s Been Crippled: Yeah, I know. Cell phone companies are evil…

• High-End Manufacturers Don’t Always Make Their Products: Yeah, but they do make them BETTER.

• You Can Call Amazon, EBay, and Other Web Businesses: This is the most important information in this article.

• Security Center Can Be Muted: I don’t care.

• Game Consoles Are Hackable: I’m not modifying my Xbox. The reason I love it is because I plug it in and it works every time. I’m not messing with that just to get a crappy Linux machine.

• You Can Use an IPod to Move Music: That’s what SD cards are for.

• You Can Get a Human on the Phone: Knowing the magic words to say to the automated response on the telephone is more than half the battle. Here is the IVR Find-A-Human Cheat Sheet.

• MP3 Players Run Down Too Fast: Yeah, but there isn’t a fix for this yet.

• Useless Specs: Another good piece of information if you are in the market for an LCD monitor, speakers, a digital camera or hard drive.

On the whole, they aren’t really big secrets, but knowing the background information is really nice. I have to make sure I write those phone numbers for Amazon and Ebay down in my Treo just in case I need them.

It was a rainy day, but that didn’t stop the owner of this bicycle from commuting to work. Before I ran across this bicycle at the local bakery, I had never seen a mountain bike conversion before. I was so excited that I immediately grabbed my camera to take pictures.

I don’t know if you can tell from the pictures, but the motorized conversion doesn’t stop you from being able to use your bicycle as a normal bike. You can pedal your way home, or if the wind or incline are too much for you, you can fire up the engine and get yourself home a little quicker.

It took me some searching on the Internet to find this particular brand of bicycle conversion kit, but I finally did:

• Spit-Fire Motor Works Motorized Bicycle

You can’t order it online through Amazon anymore and when I called their phone number, all I got was a message directing me to their website. I have no real proof that you can actually get this product anymore, but this is a perfect match to the bike conversion I saw chained up in my neighborhood.

Here are a couple other bicycle conversion kits that I found online while looking for the Spit-Fire.

• Lash Out available at Electric Cyclery – lashout electric bicycle

• ecoZen Bike Index

Considering the cost of gasoline lately, an inexpensive conversion kit sounds like an economical way to get yourself around town if you’re not in good enough shape to power your bike yourself. With this little gadget, you can certainly work yourself up to that point pretty quickly.

This looks like a really cool way to slice apples. It’s offered by the Museum of Modern Art, so you know that it’s probably more form over function.

• MoMAstore – Apple Slicer

Benefits:

• You can eat half an apple. Leave the slicer on the apple and it will keep the fruit from going brown or drying out.

• Slices thin, easily edible slices of fruit, great for eating with cheese and crackers.

Negatives:

• How does it work? I can almost feel the blood from my clumsy fingers flowing.

• Do we really need a different tool for each food that we eat? I already have an apple slicer and an apple corer. How many more tools can I fit in my kitchen? I guess I need a new kitchen.

I really like the idea of easily slicing an apple in thin slices. I can almost taste the cheese now. If only I could find something that easily slices cheese, too.

Via: Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women – Apple slicer

Palm (formerly PalmOne, formerly Palm) has updated its product lineup with new versions of the Zire and Tungsten series, both of which have been reduced to single letters:

• The Z22 is a new low-end model priced at $99. It has a 160 x 160 display, 32MB of memory, 200MHz processor, and runs PalmOS 5.4 (Garnet).
• The TX is the new high-end model. It has a 320 x 480 display in the classic Tungsten E form factor, runs PalmOS 5.4, 128MB of memory, a 312MHz processor, an SD card slot, and built-in WiFi (802.11) and Bluetooth networking support. It retails for $299.

I’m not too excited about any non-smartphone PDA these days, but the Palm line was in need of an updated high-end model—the bulky LifeDrive doesn’t count.