The Gadgets Page

Sometimes I only want to link to a specific spot of a YouTube video. For example, on Starling Travel, I was talking about our magical encounter with fireflies in Oklahoma and I needed a video showing what I meant. I found an educational video, but the real firefly action didn’t start until the 1:38 mark. I didn’t want my readers to slog through the whole opening education, so I created an embedded video that started in the correct spot like this:

Here’s how I did it.

Firstly, Google has made embedding a YouTube video is much easier than it used to be. YouTube will create the embed code for you if you click the Share and Embed buttons.

You can easily edit the width of the video, copy and paste it into your blog or website. Adding the command that starts the video at the 1:38 mark, however requires a little tweaking. Look at the way this embed command is different than the one YouTube gave me.

Did you notice the #t1m38s that was added right after the link to the video? That is how you start the video at the specific spot. The 1m38s indicates the minute mark when the video will start.

You can also do this with links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=8yK4dsOQLLo#t=98s

That link will open up the video at the exact spot where the fireflies start getting interesting. The way you create it is to right click on the video when it is paused at the spot you want and choose “Copy video URL at current time.” That will give you a URL that easily links to EXACTLY were you want the video to start.

The next time you want to link to or embed a video that has WAY too much introduction, here is a handy way to start the video EXACTLY when the video gets good.

Via: Matt Cutts: Link to a specific part of a YouTube video

Depending on how dusty your home is, this may be a shocking surprise or a nod in understanding. When we lived downtown during the I-80 construction, our home was covered in dust EVERY day. No matter how often I dusted, within hours, it looked like a haunted house again. Our computers suffered as much as my fireplace mantel, so we took a can of air and blew them out every once and a while.

That’s something the owner of this PC should have done EVERY week, apparently:

That huge cloud of dust that came out when they first started blowing on that PC was a familiar occurrence to me, but it was FAR more than anything we had ever experienced. Next time you curse your computer for running improperly, take a moment to blow all the dust out of the thing and see if that helps at all.

Just a quick retro distraction today with a YouTube video showing a TV news report about a computer virus in 1988.

I find it incredibly funny that they used video footage of the game, ET, to demonstrate how a virus might eat up your data and spread.

This is a description of the game according to Wikipedia: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (video game)

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (also referred to simply as E.T.) is a notorious 1982 adventure video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. for the Atari 2600 video game console. It is based on the film of the same name, and was designed by Howard Scott Warshaw. The objective of the game is to guide the eponymous character through various screens to collect three pieces of an interplanetary telephone that will allow him to contact his home planet. [It] is often cited as one of the worst video games released and was one of the biggest commercial failures in video gaming history.

Stacey and I loved the video game and played it on our Atari constantly. It wasn’t as much of a favorite as Adventure or Journey Escape, but we loved it.

I find it interesting that something that we deal with on a regular basis was such a novelty less than 25 years ago. I like to think that people who write computer viruses, email spam and comment spam have a special hell that they will enjoy in the afterlife. They will constantly find themselves in a desperate situation: a loved one is injured, they are trapped in a hole, or they are irrevocably lost. When they try to call on the cell phone, they can’t because it rings constantly with calls from telemarketers. When they hang up on the intrusive calls and try to call out, they are blocked because the towers are so jammed full of telemarketing calls. Their torture continues as their situation gets worse and worse, with no hope of help in sight and the constant interruption of telemarketers.

We’ve come a long way from that news program that describes a hacker as a “dark genius” and a “good A student,” to the nearly epic proportions of attack we have on our computers every day. The financial economies of entire third world nations have been built on attacking our computers, email and comments sections. And I imagine a special hell for each and every one of them.

Via: Retronaut: COMPUTER VIRUS NEWS REPORT 1988

Every time you shoot a video with your phone (heck, I’ve even accidentally done it with a camera), there is the temptation to accidentally shoot a Vertical Video. Not know what I’m talking about? Watch this public service announcement.

The first video I ever posted on YouTube was an accidental Vertical Video.

Because it was shot on a camera, it was sideways and I had to use an app to rotate it. With the iPhone, it will be right side up, but look incredibly silly when showing it to family and friends, like this video.

You can’t escape the feeling that you’re missing something on either side of the frame and viewing the video is an exercise in frustration. Keeping the video sideways is even worse.

It’s not artistic. It’s just bad filmography that gives you a crick in your neck. LEARN how to use your device. Just Say No To Vertical Videos.

Via: WIL WHEATON dot TUMBLR, boballthetime: Just say no to Star Wars: The…

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you give EA games a button to press to make more money, they will keep pressing that button until they piss off their customers so much that they will stop playing the game. That is what has happened with Bejeweled Blitz [iTunes link].

I loved playing Bejeweled Blitz. I had one minute to match as many jewels as I could and I got REALLY good at it. I even wrote an entry telling people how to do as well as I did.

• The Gadgets Page: How To Get A High Score on Bejeweled Blitz

When EA Games bought Pop Cap, I didn’t think it would be a problem, but I was sorely mistaken. Here are the many ways that EA Games keeps pushing the “Make Money” button over and over.

• They added Coins, which could be earned when I play the game.
• They allowed you to buy coins with real money.
• They added boost where you can buy extra time or other advantages with the coins.
• They added special gems that players can buy with coins at random times.
• They added the Special Gem blowouts where EVERY game you play, you’re offered a Special Gem.
• They added discount days on coins, so you can buy them for less money.
• They notify me when they are having Special Gem Blowouts of Coin Discounts using the push feature on my phone.

When they first started offering coins for sale, I vowed to NEVER pay to buy them. I would only earn coins by playing the game. Dan, however, eagerly welcomed the change and uses boosts and special gems on every game, gladly paying the extra money in an attempt to beat Nicole and me.

The day they started offering the coins for sale was the day that Bejeweled Blitz stopped being a game of skill. Now, whoever is willing to pay the most money will end up on the top of the list every week.

This has made me a tad bitter…

I know this, because this is the Facebook Post I made when I was temporarily at the top of the list with my high score.

It reads:

I just scored 356,600 and earned a 350K Star Medal in Bejeweled Blitz. No boosts or Special Gems. Suck that, EA GAMES!

I was playing in the middle of a Special Gems Blowout Thursday morning and didn’t buy any of the gems offered to me. Now, 350K isn’t that high of a score (Nicole and Emily regularly get 700K), but I did it without any of the artificial boosts and Special Gems that had been added. I got the high score (albeit temporarily) without paying a penny to EA GAMES.

How did I go from “Thank You, Pop Cap Games!!” to “Suck that, EA GAMES!” in a little over two years? I was so grateful and happy for my $5 game and now I HATE them and have decided not to play. All because someone gave EA games a button called “Make More Money.”

How To Make Money From Me Without Pissing Me OFF!

There are lots of ways that they could have made more money from me without ruining my beloved games. Here are a few:

• Offer a notification feature for a monthly fee. Each time one of my friends gets higher than me on the Facebook high scores, they push me a notification.
• Offer an All-Time High Score List for an extra fee. If you pay for this feature, you get a list of all your friends’ ultimate high scores and see how you rank against them.
• Offer better score tracking. Right now, you can see how you rank against each friend over the last five weeks. Why can’t I see that data from two years ago when I got that 500K score (without the help of boosts or Special Gems, BTW)? I’d pay an extra fee for that.

Instead of offering features like that for me, they have literally ruined the game for me. While some people may see the addition of paying for extra boosts and Special Gems as a way of leveling the playing field, winning games isn’t about leveling the playing field. Just think how that rule change would RUIN basketball. If the Utah Jazz could have just PAID an extra fee to get three more players on the court, Larry H. Miller would have done that in a second. We might have been able to beat Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls back in 1998. That’s not how basketball works. And it CERTAINLY shouldn’t be how Bejeweled Blitz works.

I have always loved Scribblenauts since it came out on the Nintendo DS. A game where you can create any object and see it interact with the environment you create? Fun! I loved being able to make things like an atlatl (primitive spear-throwing weapon that allows you to throw a spear farther) or a lion fish. Then in Super Scribblenauts you could add adjectives like angry, fire-breathing, and giant, such as this angry, giant, fire-breathing baby.

Scribblenauts Remix [iTunes Link] is an iPod version of Super Scribblenauts, and as soon as I heard about it I really wanted it.

It accepts all the phobias I know of including Brontophobia (Fear of thunder, not dinosaurs) as you see in this picture.

Creatures and people react exactly how you expect them to. For example vampires are scared of, and will flee from, garlic and “Garlicky” items, and people will flee from vampires.

The levels in it are mostly levels from Super Scribblenauts, but they are still very fun to play again because the number of possible solutions. In this one it seems slightly less picky about your solutions and makes it more enjoyable.

The one problem I’ve found is that when you start the game it is very difficult to move your character around, but this is easy to fix. First go into the “Start” menu. Then tap the joystick on the bottom right side. This will give you two joysticks on the screen to move. One for your character, and the other for the camera. This user interface is easier to use than using the touch screen.

If you find there aren’t enough levels there is some downloadable content you can get.

I suggest that you purchase this app for $1.00, because I really enjoy this game and I think you would too.

In January at CES, the nice people at Yurbuds gave me a pair of their ear buds to test for The Gadgets Page. After two months of using them, I’m finally ready to write a review.

The promise was that Yurbuds would stay in my ears through the sweatiest workouts and they wouldn’t hurt. At the booth at CES, they measured my ears and said that the size 5 buds would fit in my ear, stay there and not hurt me.

That’s a tall order. I’ve never been able to use the Apple earbuds because they just fall right out of my ear. I’ve always had to use the in-canal ear buds, but after a half hour running, they hurt and need to come out, not to mention the gross factor of ear buds that have been in my ear canal and covered in ear wax. Blech!

The folks at the CES booth were quite adamant about the correct way to put the Yurbuds in my ears. I made sure that every time I put them on, I twisted them into my ear, just like they showed me.

I’ve tested the Yurbuds for the last two months, during the cold walks and runs of January and February. Honestly, I was quite impressed with them. They had only fallen out once, when my hand hit the cord and literally YANKED them out of my ears. I used the microphone once when my mom called during a workout and she was able to hear me and understand me while I talked. I used the button to advance past songs that I was sick of and it was handy as well.

But yesterday was different. It was a warm day for my walk, so all I did was throw on a hoody instead of piling on the fleece and layers. I couldn’t keep the damn earbuds in my ears. They fell out three or four times on my half hour walk. After two months of great workouts, I couldn’t understand why they stopped working, and then I remembered. During the freezing walks of January and February, I had always worn my fleecy ear band. Not only did it protect my ears from the cold, it was keeping in those Yurbuds. Yesterday, it was warm enough that I didn’t need extra protection. That’s why they kept falling out.

This morning, the freezing wind whipped the house noisily, so I bundled up. My Yurbuds stayed in place under my ear band and hat. I realized, with disappointment that the promise was not to be. Ear buds that shape just do not stay in my ears unassisted, and if your ears are shaped the same as mine, sadly, Yurbuds won’t work for you.

As soon as the weather warms up, I’ll have to relinquish my Yurbuds and return to the gross and painful in-canal ear buds that I’ve used for the last three years. I really hoped that Yurbuds would work for me, but sadly they weren’t quite good enough.

If your ears usually work with this shape of ear buds, then you’ll be immensely happy with Yurbuds. You can purchase them here: Yurbuds V10-11ID-10601 Inspire PRO Earphones at Amazon.com

I bought Nutranail Gel Perfect at my local grocery store last month and was thoroughly unimpressed with it. It only lasted two days on my fingernails before it chipped. The Nutra Nail people thought that adding nail glue to the polish process would make it last as long as a “real” gel manicure, but instead, it just makes the polish brittle and chip as soon as your nail bends under pressure.

I don’t usually do bad reviews, but this product was so expensive and so worthless that I planned on at least mentioning here that it was a problem, but then I promptly forgot. Luckily, YaYaLifestyle on YouTube mentioned it on her recent regrettable purchases. You can see her review here. I agree with everything she said and feel lucky that my polish lasted a day longer than hers.

On a more positive note, I’m extremely happy with the Sally Hansen Salon Effects polish strips. I tried them in this Are You Single? style because they were on sale at my grocery store (ironically on the EXACT same shelf where the Nutra Nail Gel Perfect had been displayed). They looked like a fun thing for Valentine’s Day, so I thought I’d try them, fully expecting them to fail me just as others had in the past. I applied them on Saturday 01-28-12 and they are still going strong a week and a half later. This picture was taken today and as you can see, I will end up having to remove them because my nails have grown out, not because of chipping or wear.

There has been some wear on the tips. It’s about the same wear as I would have when I had artificial nails and my manicure would last two weeks (or more). I used to get artificial nails just so I wouldn’t have to keep polishing my nails every three days. Now, Sally Hansen Salon Effects is my new saving grace for great nails.

I suspect that if I had a more uniformly colored design, the wear at the tip might be more noticeable, but keep in mind that some of that wear came from me filing off the edge of the sticker. I wasn’t quite as skilled at application as I will be after a few more tries. For detailed directions, here is a video from BellaSugar:

One note, I followed the instructions to the tee, right down to using nail polish remover on my nails right before applying the strips. I really think that removing every trace of oil from my fingernails has helped them stay on as long as they have.

If you are looking for a manicure to last you as long one you might get at the salon, go with the Sally Hansen Salon Effects and leave the Nutra Nail Gel Perfect on the shelf.

I have found that many free game apps have very little content, and if they have multiple games they tend to all be boring. I noticed AddictingGames by Nickelodeon in the app store for free, and having been to their website I thought I would try the app. Upon trying it, I was surprised at how many games were on it and began to try each one.

There are 33 games currently and more seem to be coming on a regular basis. As I began to write this review one new game was added, and it seems that one is added every week. My favorite games are Feed the Panda and World Wars.

In Feed the Panda your goal is to, well, feed the panda by cutting various ropes holding cookies.

In World Wars your goal is to take over the map. The game simulates dice rolling for your number of soldiers, and the computer opponent’s soldiers, and the winner either takes or defends their area depending who got the highest roll.

There are also games like solitaire and even a game to help you memorize the states and their location.

I really like this app and didn’t even mention many of the games. The games range from card games to “Zombie Burger.” Most of the games could be their own apps and still be fun, but there are a few that aren’t as fun and seem pointless like Potty Copter.

In Potty Copter you fly foreword and try not to crash. Thats about it…

This app is safe to put on your child’s iPod because, as far as I can tell, there are no In-App Purchases. There are a few games in this app that I haven’t tried yet. But from most of the games I have played they are fun and creative. I really enjoy the AddictingGames app and you should try it.

I have been looking for a hand crank charger for my iPhone for over a year now. I tried out so many of them and returned them to the store disappointed. The biggest problem is the consistency of power. The iPhone must have a consistent charge in order to work.

Eton got things right with their FRX3 Solar/Battery/Handcrank Charger. As soon as I saw it at their booth, I pulled out my iPhone and wanted PROOF that it would charge it. So many chargers had claimed to work with the iPhone that I really didn’t believe it would.

They gladly let me try it out.

It worked easily and the reason is quite ingenious.

Instead of depending on the user to crank the handle at the PERFECT speed to provide power to the iPhone, the Eton charges the iPhone with its battery. When you need to charge your iPhone, you must crank up their battery FIRST and then it will charge your phone without any problems.

Additionally, it can trickle charge the battery with its solar panel on the top, using an electrical outlet and with AAA batteries. I was really impressed with all the options available.

Here is a video of me attaching my phone to the charger.

It’s a good looking unit that comes in both black and red.

There is also a radio and a flashlight included, so it doubles as a great emergency tool.

They are going to retail for only $60 bucks, but there was no word on how soon they would be available. Until then, I’m checking the Eton website every few weeks to see if I can buy it.

• FRX3 Solar/Battery/Handcrank Charger

Hak5 did a FULL booth tour here: