The Gadgets Page

Palm made an announcement yesterday introducing the Foleo. It is billed as a smartphone companion, but it borders on the size of a notebook computer. It costs $499 (after $100 rebate), making it a hilariously expensive accessory or an amazingly inexpensive laptop.

• Palm, Inc. – Products – Foleo

Sadly, it looks like the Foleo is merely a hilariously expensive Treo accessory. It is a machine that runs the Linux operating system, not Windows, and connects to the Internet through your phone to bring the web and your email to full size. Unless there are some amazing features that they are hiding up their sleeves, it looks like they expect you to pay 600 bucks for a wireless keyboard.

Are they daft or do they not realize that I can already get online with my laptop and my Treo? Their crippled Bluetooth implementation doesn’t let it be wireless, but I have no problem pulling out a cord to connect my phone to my computer. With the Foleo, I can’t edit video, retouch photos or play Second Life, but with my tiny Acer notebook, I can do all that plus email for only 500 bucks. They brag about only weighing 2.5 pounds, but my Acer weighs a mere 5.3 pounds. The Foleo is too big for your pocket and most purses, so you’re going to need to carry it around in a bag anyway. Might as well carry around a REAL computer and not this crippled monstrosity they are trying to pass off on you.

Palm keeps dropping the ball. The iPhone comes out next month and they are going to have serious competition from a company that understands how people use their phones. This latest move just makes it easier and easier for people to give up their Treos and choose the iPhone.

Via: Foleo | Palm’s New Smartphone Companion | Treonauts

The sun is beating down on us every day. Why aren’t we all taking advantage of that wasted energy by installing solar cells on the top of our houses or buildings? Bob Boehm from The University of Nevada’s Center for Energy Research explains why:

• Ryan Is Hungry – Solar Las Vegas: Center for Energy Research – 03.07.2007

If you’re tempted to stop watching, fast forward to 4:36 minutes into the video. He talks about a really cool way to light your home or office using fiber optics and concentrated light from the sun. It’s far better than a skylight because it redirects the light to where you need it. Why doesn’t every office have this? I want to know specifics. How much would it cost to include this into my home?

This video is from Ryan Is Hungry, a weblog that brings green-friendly ideas to you on a regular basis. If you are interested in finding more efficient ways to live on this planet, they have enough ideas to fill your mind.

I picked up Games ‘n Music up at Walmart for about $35. It was just inexpensive enough to try out for fun. It is a game card that allows you to play videos, music and homebrew games on your Nintendo DS. It came with a 128 MB Micro SD card loaded with 25 games. The included card was enough to hold two hours worth of video, but I bought a 2 GB card and now I can play almost 11 hours of video on Nintendo.

You can see a video demonstrating Games n’ Music here:

As you can see, the video looks really good. Their software to convert video is amazingly fast. I used the lowest quality conversion and it still looks really good on the screen. Sadly, the video player leaves something to be desired. You can’t fast forward or reverse the video. If you go out of the video you’re watching and then go back in, it will restart you at the beginning of the video instead of where you were last and there is no way to fast forward to where you were before.

The MP3 player is a little better because it allows you to scan through the song. It also allows you to skip to the next song. Unfortunately, there is no good organization for the music and it doesn’t read song title from the MP3 data.

The games that come with it are utter crap. Sorry, but there is no nice way to say it. They are not worth the small storage space that they take on your card. They don’t use any of the buttons on the DS, even if the game would be better played with the button controls than a touch screen. There is no way to get out of the games without turning off your Nintendo. You can’t reset or hold down the start button to escape them.

I have been able to run some homebrew software using this card, but honestly, I haven’t been able to find anything good out there. I don’t know if this card is making them crash or if they are just substandard and crash all the time. I guess when it comes to online software available for free, you get what you pay for.

I compared the video quality of the Nintendo DS running Games n’ Music with the Video iPod and the Samsung U-740. You can see how each of them handled this Galaticast video.

The Games n’ Music conversion “squishes” wide videos to make them fit on the DS screen instead of letterboxing them like the iPod and the Samsung U-740 did. I feel like that should bother me, but honestly it doesn’t. My standards for video go way down when I’m watching it on a tiny screen. The cool thing is I can load up my card, keep my DS in my purse and pull it out to watch a video whenever I want. I could do the same thing with my Treo, but it is SO difficult and time consuming to get video to work on my Treo. It’s as easy with Games n’ Music as it is with the iPod. I just wish they would let me download a fix for the video player.

Official Website: Datel Design & Development Ltd – Games N Music

My stomach was sick when I watched him put his iPod in the blender and let the machine pulverize it.

These videos are a commercial for The Total Blender, made by BlendTec. You can see their website and the full array of videos here:

• Will It Blend? Presented by BlendTec

The premise is that if the blender will blend your iPod, then it certainly won’t have trouble with the ice cubes in your smoothie. I’m all about a good blender when I’m on a smoothie kick and then it will gather dust when I’m not. Of course, if I was using my blender to dispose of my old gadgets, then maybe it would get more use.

Apple has a couple of new ads in the PC Vs. Mac series. This one, Genius, is kinda funny.

They don’t show you standing at the counter making your appointment to see this supposed Mac Genius. They don’t show you waiting around forever just hoping that someone else will flake on their appointment so you can take it. They don’t show you arguing with the Mac employee that there is a sound problem with the iPod you JUST bought and instead of just exchanging it, he’s making you see the Mac “Genius” who insists that there is nothing wrong with the sound on your iPod and blames it on buyers’ remorse.

Sure, Macs are great, but don’t go braggin’ on your “genius” bar. I’ve found it to be less than satisfactory.

I saw the title to Real Live Preacher’s weblog entry and I immediately thought, “Yeah, and how to clean frozen Diet Coke out of your freezer when you forget about it…”

If that was your first thought as well, you need to click on over to RLP’s site:

• Real Live Preacher – How to chill a can of diet coke in 2 minutes

I have been doing the same things over and over that it never occurred to me that I could do something different. Here’s to RLP for reminding us that there are different ways to do things.

Singer and song-writer, John Mayer, got an early release of the Blackberry Curve. He shows us pictures here:

• JOHN MAYER blog – Blackberry Curve

When you think of a celebrity blog, do you ever expect them to do a review of their phone? I sure didn’t and I was pleasantly surprised. This isn’t the first time John Mayer has reviewed his gadgets on his weblog. He wrote this entry on his Nike+ a while back:

• johnmayer.com – NIKE PLUS VS. A GUY ON STAGE

I wrote about it here:

• Starling Fitness » John Mayer and His Nike+

It seems that John Mayer likes his technology as much as we do and I’m excited to see more from him about his new phone.

Via: BlackBerry Curve hands-on by… John Mayer? – Engadget

We bought this LensPen set from Carson a long time ago. I remember Mike lovingly cleaning the lens of his first Nikon with it, so we’ve had it for at least seven years. I didn’t have much use for it. T-shirt material is really soft and works pretty well to clean off camera lenses. I’m almost always wearing a t-shirt, but I’m never carrying around a Lenspen.

Then I started actually using the camera that’s on my Treo. I was inspired by kitykity and her Blackberry photos. My only problem was the lens on my Treo was covered with smudges, lint and gunk. I tried to use the t-shirt method, but camera phone lenses are so tiny that I just couldn’t get it clean. That’s when I finally found a use for the LensPen.

The LensPen Mini Pro fits perfectly into my Treo lens and cleans it up beautifully. Every couple of days or so, I have to charge my phone. When I do, I use the LensPen on the lens so that it will be clean when I want to take photos. If you use your camera phone as your primary camera, it would probably be a good idea to pick up a LensPen and give your lens a cleaning every week or so. You’ll take better photos.

When I’m out and about, I fill up my SD card on my camera all the time. Especially when I’m filming a lot, my little 2GB SD card can only hold 22 minutes of video. If I’m trying to film a birthday party or another family event, 22 minutes goes by so quickly. I usually lug my laptop around to empty out my SD card, but iWay has created a different option for you: use your 80GB Video iPod to store your photos until you get home.

• Herrington : Photography : iWay

Unfortunately, the iWay does not work with the Photo iPod or the iPod Nano, but it is compatible with the 60GB and 80GB Video iPods. One other disadvantage is that it also doesn’t support SDHC cards, so if you splurged and got a big 4GB or 8GB SDHC card, you probably won’t be able to use the iWay to empty it out.

Despite these limitations, I’m tempted by the iWay. For 70 bucks, I can stop lugging around my laptop and just carry the iPod in my purse. This would be especially helpful when I’m doing my walking videos. It’s so easy to fill up my cards when I’m filming those.

Update 06-15-07: I just realized that 2GB cards are getting cheaper and cheaper. For that 70 bucks, I could just get a couple extra SD cards and eliminate the need to transfer until I get home.

Via: iWay: an SD card reader for your iPod – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Holy cow! The AIR tested 17 microphones in the studio and YOU can listen to the results here:

• Transom Tools: Transom Mic Shootout – Blindfold Test

Here is their description of the shootout:

AIR: The Association of Independents in Radio helped organize a mic shootout, seeking to compare a wide variety of announce mics in a neutral setting. In the large, quiet room of Studio A at indre Studios in Philadelphia, a few independent producers set up 17 mics side-by-side. The mics ranged in price from less than a hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars. We concentrated more on the less-expensive mics, and the mid-range popular standards, rather than pricey esoterica or cult-classic mics, hoping to find some bargains that might be practical for the independent producer, or to confirm that some of the pricier industry standards might be worth the expense.

They also have a handheld microphone shootout:

• Transom Tools: Handheld Microphone Shootout

At the end of the handheld microphone shootout, they also compare the handhelds to lavalier microphones (those small clip-on microphones). You can hear the audio clips of the lavalier compared to the handhelds.

If you have been thinking of buying a microphone, no matter how much you were planning on spending, you should check out this website!

Via: Jen Simmons on Twitter – Awesome job, Jen! Thanks!