The Gadgets Page

This month’s Wired Magazine has a “Found Artifacts from the future” that I can’t wait to exist. Imagine contacts that will give you all the information you need right in front of your eyes.

Click here to see the full size image:

• Wired Magazine’s Found July 2006 – by Sean Hamilton Alexander

Someday, we will be able to easily access all the information we want. I don’t know how it will happen. Maybe it will be on our cell phones. Maybe it will be in a chip in our head. Maybe it will flash before our eyes on our contacts. I’m excited for the future to come.

If you are short on space in your home, the eNook is a handy shelf that can double as a desk. It can dock and charge all your gadgets. The fabric covered background can double as a bulletin board and best of all, you can close it all up and lock it to secure everything.

The only problem with the eNook is the price tag. At $399, it doesn’t matter to me if you can lock everything up, customize the fabric color for the bulletin board or double as a desk. Here’s a run down of the cheap and easy way to do things:

The IKEA Ingo wall mounted table: $19.99

Belkin SurgeMaster 10 Outlet Surge Protector: $44.99

Expo Combination Dry Erase/Bulletin Board: $16.99

For about 82 bucks, you can get 90% of the functionality of the eNook at 20% of the price. Sure, you can’t close it up and lock everything inside, but you can have an efficient desk in a compact spot in your home. Next time you’re tempted to buy an expensive item that solves all your problems, imagine how you could do it yourself and see if it’s cheaper. This time it was.

One of these days, Microsoft will release a product with a simple, catchy one-word name like “Penguin” or “Albatross.” In the meantime, I’ve spent the last few months testing Microsoft’s top-of-the-line ergonomic keyboard, the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. (previously)

This is a nice keyboard with a good feel. Along with the ergonomic split, it has a very comfortable non-removable wrist rest. The keys and layout have a slightly odd curved shape that caused a few typos the first week, but works perfectly for me now. The keys have a good tactile feel.

Like my previous Microsoft keyboard, this one surrounds the alphanumeric keys with an assortment of extras:

• The function keys have alternate names, like Undo, Open, and Close, which can be reprogrammed via the Control Panel. An “F Lock” button forces them to act as normal function keys, which I’ve set as the default.
• Web, Search, and Mail buttons that open the application of your choice
• Five numbered “Favorite” keys plus a “Favorites” button that lists their contents. These can open any web page, file, or folder.
• Media buttons: Mute, volume up/down, play/pause.
• My favorite, the Calculator button.
• A useless “Zoom” slider that doesn’t work in Firefox, and I wouldn’t be likely to use it regardless
• Web Back/Forward buttons that hide under the spacebar.

As usual, all of the extra keys are mostly for decoration, but I do find Mute, Volume, Back/Forward, and Calculator handy, and the rest stay out of my way. I programmed five web sites I use constantly into the five Favorite buttons, but haven’t used them as much as I expected. I was able to get the Play/Pause key to work in WinAMP, and I’ve had no problems with the configuration.

After a few months’ use, I’m happy with this keyboard. If you spend lots of time typing and don’t mind paying a bit more for a good-quality keyboard, this one is a good choice.

I have received so many comments about my Bell Spinfit Calorie Speedometer asking me if I could email them the instructions because they lost their manual and their battery died. The Bell company’s website is worthless for instruction manuals, so I have scanned mine in. The most important page is below:

These are the secret codes that you have to program into the speedometer to tell it what size wheels you have. If you get the wrong code, you end up with the wrong mileage.

The rest of the important pages are here:

I hope these help you and you are able to reset your speedometer accurately. Good luck!!

(Thanks to those who posted helpful comments on the previous post.)

Update 06-27-06: A most grateful thank you to Ken Miller who emailed me this .pdf of the ENTIRE instruction manual.

• Bell Spinfit Calorie Speedometer Instruction Manual in .pdf

Along with the 25 Worst Tech Products I previously mentioned, PC World’s July 2006 issue also includes a list of 100 best products of the past year:

• PC World: 100 Best Products of the Year

As with the “worst” list, it’s a random assortment of hardware, software, and services. The top 10 include Intel’s Core Duo processor, AMD’s Athlon 64 Dual Core, Craigslist, the iPod Nano, Seagate’s 160GB Portable Hard Drive, Google Earth, Adobe Premiere Elements 2, the Canon EOS 30D, YouTube, and Apple’s Boot Camp.

Other highlights include Firefox, WordPress, Blogger, Google, and the iPod. Apparently the phrase “of the year” in the headline is far more flexible than I had imagined. Here’s the entire list of 100.

Palm’s new Treo 700p is going to be a great upgrade to my Treo 650, mostly due to the EVDO high-speed Internet access. It also offers more memory and stability, a better (but only 1.3 megapixel) camera, and some improved applications.

Since the Treo 700p has just appeared in the wild, the first reviews are starting to trickle in. Here are three of them:

• Palm InfoCenter: Palm Treo 700p Review
• Treo Central: Palm Treo 700p
• Treonauts: Treo 700p Review Part 1: In Love All Over Again With The Best Smartphone In The World
• Treonauts: Treo 700p Review Part 2

So far, I haven’t seen anyone complaining about a Treo 650 feature that is missing on the 700p—always a good sign, and not always the case with new Palm products. The Treo 700p is currently available from Sprint and Verizon.

The Internet is all a-buzz about a new iPod or maybe an ultraportable from Mac. There have been patents registered that people have been speculating about for so long that they have imagined what I hoped from the very first, the return of the Apple Newton.

• AppleInsider | Apple seen delivering “ultra-portable” at Macworld

• The Browser: Apple may prep new iPod, ultraportable Mac

• GigaOM : » A Non Touch iPod Coming?

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he immediately closed down the Newton division. What had looked like something that would be good for me if only they could get the form factor into a size that would fit into my purse, suddenly was snatched away from me. If Apple resurrected the Newton, I might actually be convinced to abandon my Treo in favor of it.

Can I have my Newton back, please?

Via: videoblogging : Message: iPod rumors

Microsoft has updated their Office Suite for 2007. You can download the Beta version here:

• 2007 Microsoft Office System Beta 2: Get the Beta

I downloaded MS Office Beta 2. Their video talks a lot about their new user interface. They say they have removed menus and toolbars in favor of “ribbons.” This video shows you the new user interface from its “ribbons” to its “shy little toolbars.”

Click here to watch the video.

As far as I can tell MS Office’s “ribbons” are just a fancy word for toolbar. They pop-up when you click on a picture or text box. So far, I haven’t had any trouble with things popping up when I don’t need them or not popping up when I do.

As far as the “preview” feature, it works VERY slowly on my computer. I have to wait at least 10 to 20 seconds for the preview to show up. It’s a great idea, but I have worked on dinosaurs in the business world that wouldn’t be able to handle the delay. I know Microsoft warned me about this with their system requirements, but this software is a little bloated.

I’m disappointed to find out that I still have to hold down the shift key when resizing a picture in order for the picture to keep its original ratios. Since almost EVERY drawing program keeps the ratios if you resize at the corners instead of the middle handles, I found it irritating to have to do that extra step of holding down the shift key.

Additionally, I STILL can’t attach a picture to a certain paragraph. I can tell Word that I want the picture in a specific spot on the page, but I can’t tell Word to keep a picture with a certain paragraph. It’s like the people at Microsoft have never conceived of the notion that I want the picture of myself in the vampire costume to match to the paragraph where I talk about how my lips felt after being bitten by the teeth all night. Do they not even use the software?

There are a lot of pre-made “galleries” for you to use with your charts, pictures and text boxes. I suspect that these will become as ubiquitous as the pre-made form letters that MS Office included in its templates a decade ago. Whenever I saw those familiar letterheads, I KNEW I was dealing with a company that didn’t really know what it was doing. I imagine that five years from now, choosing a text box or picture style from Microsoft’s “gallery” will be like a huge advertisement saying, “I’m lazy! I’m not a power user! I let Microsoft design my letterhead (text boxes or picture styles) for me!”

The most surprising thing to me is that downloading MS Office 2007 Beta made me realize how little I actually use Word or Excel anymore. I used to use them all the time for my writing, but now I do so much of my writing online that I haven’t fired up Word for months. My online editor with WordPress is so simplistic that it makes the new MS Word feel really bloated.

I suspect that the business world doesn’t need MS Office 2007. What they need is something simple that will run on their ancient computers. It may be that Google and their Beta spreadsheet are actually going to give Microsoft a run for their money.

Via: Anil Dash: Office 2007 is the Bravest Upgrade Ever

The Dazzle Video Capture Device is my most recent toy. I have been struggling with trying to get good video out of a Sony Handycam. The digital quality is horrible, so I went back to my sister’s old JVC analog video recorder. The camera is over six years old, but the video quality of analog is still better than the digital quality of the Sony Handycam. The only problem is that I needed to get the video into digital form somehow. I worried that a video capture device would degrade the picture so much that any quality might be lost.

Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised.

The Dazzle DVC-90 has been an excellent little machine that coverts the tapes of recording to digital. The only complaint I have is that it doesn’t work with Adobe Premiere Elements. I have to capture using Pinnacle’s Quick Start and them save the output as an AVI file. Fortunately, nothing is lost in the process. I don’t know if the lack of compatibility with Premiere Elements is Adobe’s fault or Pinnacle’s. Either way, I’m bugged by not being able to capture and edit with Premiere Elements.

A digital camera that can capture your moments as clearly as analog tape is still quite expensive right now. If you have an old school video camera lying around, it might be more useful than you thought it was. Just a small little device and you can get all your video onto the computer for a lot less than a $999 digital camera.

PC World has compiled a list of the 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time. Like all “25 this” or “100 that” lists, it’s highly subjective, and the selections are somewhat random, but it’s still amusing. They boldly gave the #1 position to AOL, but many of the other selections are products that are now just unpleasant memories. Here’s a sampling of my favorites:

• #4, Windows Millenium, is called “the worst version of Windows ever released.” Come on, it wasn’t half as bad as Windows 3.1.
• #7, Microsoft Bob. What was Microsoft thinking.
• #12, PointCast Network. This seems a bit unfair. PointCast was an application that let me quickly access a wide variety of news sources, updated whenever there was news. It bears a striking similarity to what I now use BlogLines for. Released in 1996, PointCast was just ahead of its time… and a bit ahead of the technology of the day.
• #15, Iomega Zip Drive. This device singlehandedly destroyed more of my valuable data than any other. I curse its vile memory.
• #20, CueCat. “Typing URLs in from magazines is so hard! If only people could hook a bulky device up to their serial port, install some drivers, and then scan a barcode instead! That would save so much time.”

[Read the entire list at PC World]