Geek Woman Speaks » Gadgets

Good Bye Twitter, Hello Plurk

geek-woman — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 20:19:17 +0000

After I left Twitter behind in a huff I switched to Plurk. It isn’t up for immortalizing by the Library of Congress. So I am giving it a try. Civil disobedients, Twitter malcontents, follow me on Plurk now! The Plurk App

is Free. Over all Plurk has a cute factor that Twitter does not. Plurking which offers a similar concept to Tweeting, and began about a year after and has been more popular in Asia according to Wikipedia.

Plurk offers group conversations, ‘one to one’ and has a timeline display as additional features. It’s different and innovative there is a system called “Karma” that reflects one’s participation on Plurk, that works similar to Fubar. The more ‘Karma’ you get the more emoticons and other little icons you get. Plurk is alot less crowded and hasn’t crashed yet on either the MSI Wind Netbook or the iTouch. I give the Plurk App 10 out of 10.

Good Bye Twitter, You Suck, and Sold Out

geek-woman — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 17:31:06 +0000

I never had much of a use for Twitter, and now I’m boycotting it. After the announcement yesterday that the Library of Congress is going to acquire All Tweets since 2006 that have gone out on Twitter I shut off the feed from my website. I’m going to delete Tweet Deck and Twitterific off my iPod next. I didn’t sign up for public records. I signed a TOS for a light hearted social networking site. Instead it has become something very different.

It is big brother capturing an enormous data base that can be twisted and used against us all in innumerable ways. It provides profiling on everyone who has spoken on it. It is monitored speech, which infringes on freedom of speech. It’s involuntary wiretapping. Tweets should be protected like the U.S. Mail, with privacy and choices in the hands of the authors. Having all Tweets as public information will give baddies on both sides of the class divide equal access to where you go, where you live, who you trust, your mobile number that you Tweeted from, and all the other indelicate information that you have so blithely released out there on Twitter. Not to mention Facebook, and Google Mail as well.

Wake up people. The precedence this is setting for the future is too evil to contemplate. Where the hell is the ACLU on this one? Or Annymous, someone should stop it.

Good luck. I’m the one who lamented that commerce came to the Internet, and suddenly it isn’t a libertine place that you can escape to for fun. Unless you are playing an MMO, but even then, someone someplace has your credit card number. So from now on, do it the old fashioned way, bookmark me, and none will be the wiser when you want to read me.

Good Grief Geek

geek-woman — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 18:27:46 +0000

2010 hasn’t been a year paved with fun and games at our house so far. With one family member turning up mysteriously dead in January, and another convalescing at home with a long term illness there hasn’t been much levity. The gadgets that I have assembled have had more to do with life support than virtual sports. I’ve been putting together things with power tools, instead of studying up on how to be a power user, on the iPad.

Technology none the less has played its role in bad times for me as well as the good. Games provide a diversion and physical therapy. When I was particularly sleepless my iPod was indispensible. It provided sleep Apps and mini games like Bejeweled 2 and Hello Kitty. Those mind numb-ers were the only way to quiet a restless head at four A.M. Also of interest have been the many supernatural Apps such as Ghost Radar.

The best technology purchase yet was the LG washer and dryer that my partner picked up online from Best Buy. We even went for the stacking kit. They’re green and claim to cost about $22.00 a year to run with a gas water heater. Now the cleaning tower of LG is not only doing the wash, but the clothes, socks and towels seem restored coming from these two chiming bots of love. Instead of trucking off to the laundramat, doing laundry at home is mana from heaven. That was how I geekily spent my weekend. I give them 10 fuzzy socks out of 10.

Things have calmed down around here. Time to get back to the important things, video games.

Geeky Tools for Monitoring Quakes

geek-woman — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:04:57 +0000

Following the loss of my brother and personal guru in a hiking accident on January 12, I was left with a feeling of having many unanswered questions about what had happened. Being a self proclaimed geek mourning a self proclaimed nerd, I’ve turned to various resources in technology to comfort myself. That small comfort being found in the familiarity of doing research. Finding some slim answers, and yet more questions. Since Frank passed (presumably) on the same day as the Hati quakes happened, I wanted to see if what ever plate movement that was rocking Hati had slammed into any of the California faults. Sure enough a Quake search of the Southern California Earth Quake Data Center showed 50 events took place that day ranging beween 1 and 4.7 magnitude all around the area. Looking at that and the records provided in real time by the Iris seismic monitor I was led to think that there would be more quakes coming. It seemed that horizontal plates which resedmble the shape of the slashed smiley face of the Joker were bumping into the faults south and west of California. I predicted that we would see more quakes not only in Hati, but also in Mexico, the Florida keys and So Cal. I don’t like my predictions to come true. Today a quake of 6 magnitude occured off the California coast. With the solar flare cycle intensifying, and global warming melting the ice caps, there is more water weight and pressure on the earth’s crust than ever. With the coming full moon we are certain to feel the earth move.These are some resources for monitoring the seizmic activity. They all work fine on the iPod Touch as well. The Iris seizmic monitor made a very sharp looking icon on the Homescreen.

The iPad Future

geek-woman — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:47:06 +0000

Ok stop kicking the walls and shouting boys, and SIT DOWN. I will explain to you in words that even the young male readers will understand. If you can’t see what the iPad will do to the world in the future right now, then you just don’t have the vision for it. Not everyone can be a techno visionary, like me. It’s ok, it probably isn’t your fault. It’s most likely you just don’t have enough IQ points for imaginative thinking. I’ll explain it to you. When something new is invented by Apple they put out the first version of it, and then they let their elite, yes I said it, elite cadre of technophiles buy it. Like actor Stephen Fry says in his blog about the iPad, this group of savvy geeks then “salivate, dribble, coo, sigh, grin and bubble with delight”. The end result of that process is what will become general consumer products.

The rest of the world, might not be able to imagine the iPad future, but at this point they are pretty sure they felt something big drop yesterday. I’ve seen Steve Jobs revealing the iPad on the Weather Channel alone twice this morning. Now it’s on the Ellen Show. One of the most significant impacts that the iPad has is the iBooks Store Launch announcement. The Kindle which I have bashed in detail before, now looks like the piece of yard sale junk that it truly is, up against the elegant iPad. On it, books look like books. Using the if – then formula, if Kindle is Amazon’s number one selling product, and Amazon sells more stuff than anybody. Then, Apple will sell more iPads and iBooks than anybody. Time will tell. If you have been waiting for a device to replace your bookshelf, or your eyes have been burned in by the monochromatic Kindle then you don’t have to wait anymore. Oprah needs to get with the program.

I’ve actually seen the Apple haters saying “Who did they make this for, soccer Moms?” Well if so it is about time someone did, because Moms hold the most purse strings. Yes ladies, we are going to love this thing. I might not be clicking over to buy one today, and I’m not ready to tell you that you should either. Soon the time will be right. I waited to get my iTouch until it was on sale at Walmart. All we need to do is to wait a little bit and post and Twitter about what our iPad wish list is.

One of the criticisms of the iPad I’ve heard around the net is : “It doesn’t multi-task.” Perhaps the iPad doesn’t multi-task the way that other computers have in the past. Last night I was using the Google Maps App to zoom in on a location. When I found the place of interest, I clicked on the W and read the Wiki for it, then it asked me if I wanted to open Safari and I did. Three Apps at the same time. The integration is seamless. A well made App automatically opens what it needs, and does it all conveniently. I think that the Apps themselves will rise to the tasks ahead and integrate where it makes sense. The iPad like its fore-runner the iTouch, it is all about speed. Simplicity makes it speedy. The App store in a short time has become a portal for 140K pieces of software, nothing has inspired that kind of creativity in the development world, ever.

The iPad which has more power and an amazing touch interface will no doubt inspire even more development than iPhone. Not to mention that photos, and videos look extraordinary in hi-def on it. It will be outrageously fun for gaming. New interfaces will be designed for it. I would love to play an MMO on it, with the touch screen making it a very immersing experience. Someone should make an App where you swim underwater for the iPad it will be phenomenal. It is a tactile and sensory experience unlike anything that has been made before it.

Apple has designed its own chip, the A4 which is a small revolution in of it self. It is great to see a company that invents an entire product and invests in seeing it all the way through. It is ingenuity that has been all but lost from America. Once again the haters jumped all over it. For now, it might not be what boys were expecting, or what they wanted, but in time it will be what it needs to be.

Right out of the chute, the iPad is far from perfect. It needs a web cam, or a digital camera. I can’t pretend to know why there isn’t one in there, or why it doesn’t have GPS. But it does seem like this first iPad was designed for home use.

On the Apple site the iPad has system requirements of

“Mac computer with USB 2.0 port” and “PC with USB 2.0 port”. What, a computer that needs a computer to run? This is one of the things that the early adopters are going to have to test for us. Like the iPhone and iPod you have to sign up with iTunes and have an account. You’ll need at least a debit card to even attempt it. With a wifi connection at your home, school or work you could perhaps feasibly download iTunes and set up an account to get the iPad started.

It charges on USB, so you need one to charge it up. But Overstock carries a USB to electric outlet adapter for $4.99. There is only the connector off the bottom though, and a USB connector cable. Would plugging it right into a wall outlet with a USB adapter fry it? I’m glad I won’t be the first to find out. Right now there isn’t a free USB port on it. Even though the iPad is unlocked, and you could theoretically use any data provider for 3G satellite Internet service, you probably can’t stick a Virgin Mobile Broadband to Go USB device into it. For now anyway. The AT&T data plans might be a price drop for them, but they are the same as Virgin’s right now.

What is uncertain to me is wheather you will need the Mac or PC to perform the functions that you do with the iPhone and iTouch. If so it seems counter productive. You should be able to move around folders, edit and customize within iTunes right on the iPad. Or it isn’t a true competitor for the Netbook. Even wishing that it had OSX instead of the iPhone software platform could be shortsighted. I guess I will find out when I have the chance to get my hands on one. For now my bet is still on Apple.

The iPad is Here!

geek-woman — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:18:22 +0000

From the Engadget Live Blog here is the new baby from Apple and ohmygod is it ever sweet!

iPod Touch 3rd (ish) Generation Review

geek-woman — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:54:18 +0000

Good things happened aside from doing the Ellen dance when finally getting my iPod Touch, someone at Walmart did me a solid. Really. Grandma’s Christmas money was well spent this year. If the iPhone is the equivalent of the communicator then the iPod is the tricorder. As some ask what is it? And why would you want it if it isn’t a phone? These days there are more ways to talk than just by cell and land line. It should have been marketed as “The iPhone Wifi” vs the “iPhone 3G or Cellular”. How you communicate depends on where you are at. And your iPod knows where you are too.

Truely the Touch is a device that should get a lot more love. If you have routine access to wifi it can be used as a VoIP phone. Regular Skype fees and rules apply. The app, short for Application works smoothly and is a breeze to download and install from the App store. As a tool it will do everything for me from helping to figure out if the new sub-floor in the laundry room is level, to assisting me in planning menus for the week. It will tell me if anyone is Tweeting withing 5 miles of me, and it will determine where any wifi hotspots are while I walk the dog.

At first my fingers tried to treat the touch screen like a DS. but the feel of it is quite different and much more sophisticated. Long nails are a no go unlike the Japanese shojo oriented DS. The quick glide is effortless and there’s no friction to kick up the wicked gamers arthritis in my hands.

Ok, ok, no it isn’t entirely a love story. We went online 12/26 to find the cheapest iPods in our area. Which was Walmart. They were out of stock online, but it said available in store only. The 32G 3rd generation iPod Touch was going for $269.00 and the 8G was also listed as “in store only” for $183.00. The 8gig iPod touch apparently is a second generation iPod with the update to the 3.0 software, making it a close out item. A 3rd generation – ish iPod Touch.

When we got to Walmart though they were priced differently. After a short conversation with manager “Nick” we actually got Walmart to give us our iPods at the price which they were advertised. I had them over a barrel when I showed them Best Buy with iPods in the same price range.

Having past that hurdle we went on to the next step at home. I had all ready downloaded the PDF of the manual and read it Christmas night. Yes, that is what geeks do. The 8 gig synched and worked out fine. Music on that one is only about 1 gig and it will mainly be used for apps and games. The 32 gig has 7 gigs of music on it and three e-book readers. But in the course of picking up some movie geek apps for the 32 gig we ran into some problems. Shortly after down loading the IMdb app none of the apps on the 32 gig worked. They all quit on start up. It turns out that not every app is optimized for the iPhone / iPod Touch 3.0 software. Quickly resetting and re-synching it worked it out immediately.

Then there is charging. The only way to do it so far, is to plug it into the iMac, when it is on. Not the keyboard. Not when it is sleeping, or running on low energy settings. The first night I just plugged it into my somewhat antique iBook thinking, ok it will charge over night. Nothing doing. I knew enough not to open the old iBook with the iPod plugged in because that ancient version of iTunes was sure to crash like a MoFo if I did. The second night we shut off the iMac plugged in the 8g and went to bed. Got up to find a dead battery yet again. So far, not so good. I’m expecting the Power Mat to come in for review any time now. I am hesitant to try plugging the iPod into my MSI Wind Windows machine. Call me superstitious or just wary of OSX and XP iTunes incompatibilities. Jobs and Gates may be getting along better in their old age but that doesn’t mean I have to believe.

The 32g needed charging after two days of use, since mine the 8g was being used constantly to try one app after another, and the other was being used mainly to listen to tunes, which takes less juice. However after synching the 32g iPod it had all of my apps on it too. Now my partner was treated to things like WiFi Get, iHandy Level, and Princess Ai. We really need to read the rest of the manual, because my partners iPod is full of manga! It was worth the laugh though.

Over many years of buying Apple products it seems like they revel in selling you things with no instructions. As if to imply that everything they make is self explanatory. Yes, the ease of use is there, and the manual is on the hard drive. You actually can fudge your way along with any Mac without having a clue lots easier than with Windows any day.

It’s true that now that I have it I don’t know how I lived without it before. The way I look at it, it’s a way to have an Apple computer for $200. Why are people waiting around for an “Apple Tablet” including us, when here it is right here. It has an awkwardly long name. Luckily that marketing miss-step hasn’t killed it.

In fact the App Store with around 80,00 different apps in it is a software revolution. The apps like Photobucket and Tweet Deck are sleek, elegantly designed and useful. It puts the browsers to shame. It even makes YouTube look good. The apps take the Internet, simplify the information, and make it functional and easy to use. Your weather, schedule, videos, photos, websites and thousands of other possibilities.

No it isn’t a phone. Yes it is. The iPod Touch is really a WiFi Phone but Apple being in bed with AT&T right now can’t really come out and say that. If it isn’t a phone then how is it that we are video phoning to one from the PC or voice chatting on it with the iPod headphones and microphone?

The sound, even on music videos from You Tube and iTunes were dramatically improved over listening to them on the iPod classic. Or when using the set of Gummie ear buds on the MSI Wind. I could hear bass lines in Skandal’s Shojo S and in Chii’s Theme from Chobits, that I had never heard before. All in all the Christmas iPod experience was pretty sweet. Even at Walmart. Xmas spirit is alive and well somehow.

I’m looking forward to reviewing games on the things of course as well, so bring them on. I give the iPod Touch 3rd Generation 9 happy bouncing icons out of 10.

Logitech Wireless Optical Mouse Review

geek-woman — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:02:25 +0000

We picked up the Logitech V220 Wirelesss Optical Mouse for playing Aion on my MSi Wind Netbook. This mouse was especially designed for notebooks. It was $29.99 at Best Buy. So it was reasonable as well as innovative. I needed it for the wheel in the middle for zooming the perspective in and out in Aion where the combination of keys mapped don’t work out for a three button touch pad. It comes with a double A battery, easy installation instructions and a disk. But you might not need to do much besides stick the wireless receiver, which looks like flash drive, right into your USB port. Then when you are done, take the receiver out of the USB port and return it to the slot on the bottom of the mouse. That shuts it off and saves the battery. When you take it out again, the hidden switch underneath handily powers the mouse back on.

I went with the plum one to go along with the pink heart Wind, since I didn’t see any pink ones left. It accessorizes well with the assortment of cotton candy pink and hot pink gadgets on my desk. It fits perfectly in my hand, and it has non slip grips unlike my old mouse that heated up with long sessions. The high definition optical mouse is 2.5 faster and more responsive than other optical mouses in the house.

The Logitech V220 Wireless Optical Mouse for Notebooks is attractive, comfortable and easy. I give it 9.5 pieces of cheese out of 10.

Smooth Away Scam and Malware Attack Web Site

geek-woman — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:53:39 +0000

Bear with me on the review of this “gadget” male readers. My mother in law had one of these kits lying around unopened so I picked it up. What I found to be weird was that there was email from them in her mailbox, and I know that she did not order online, and paid by mail with a check. I blocked them from her email account. There were also Trojans on her machine which I removed with Spybot Search and Destroy. I also ran Ice Sword to check the outgoing ports.

I opened the packaging and was surprised to find a 3M sticker on the pads. They are just sandpaper! I tried it and not only did it not work, but it burned like a mofo and now my skin is chapped. Applying aloe didn’t help any. Physically the product plain sucks. But it doesn’t end there.

I did a Google on it and the top searches brought up “Smooth Away Scam” revealing reviews from hundreds of ladies complaining of skin damage and credit card over charges. Once they get a hold of your card they don’t stop. Some people were charged as much as $60 US for a $9.99 product. Others were charged over and over and never got the product or their money back. The BBB has a file on them.

I attempted to go to their website this morning to grab the pic, but it was loaded with malware. I only got away without a Trojan by powering off the computer right away. I repeat DO NOT GO TO THE SMOOTH AWAY WEBSITE.

FYI don’t buy off TV infomercials, the stuff is cheap because they are selling your credit card information over and over to charlatans.

Edit : I wasn’t fast enough after all. The Smmoth Away Website installed Virtumonde a virus that replicated itself 9 times. Spybot could not remove it. It disguised itself as a program called “Windows Security System” the fake screen that it put on the desktop was meant to look like a tool to remove a virus. Since I had unplugged our modem and router to get rid of Virtumonde, it didn’t see a wireless connection in our house. So it began to try to jump on to nearby networks in the neighborhood. I ended up having to wipe my C drive, because I could not get to any of my files or to the real Windows Security panel. I’m updating today from my 9 year old iBook. Oh Apple how I miss you. Please make me a $400 tablet with OSX on it. K? Thanks.

E – Cigarette Review

geek-woman — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:21:29 +0000

We are trying out two disposable E – Cigarette introductory trials. The first one that arrived is the No. 7 Tobacco flavor. We found that dropping the cartridge is bad. Don’t do that. These new gadgets make many claims such as being safer than cigarette smoking, eliminating second hand smoke and being free to “smoke” anywhere. They are almost odorless, but they do deliver a warm blast of cigarette – like vapor. An led lights up when you take a puff, and from a distance it looks like a cigarette. The feel isn’t much different, but it is longer than our usual brand. For those who want to avoid all the down sides of real cigarettes but don’t want to quit, these might be a way to have your cake and eat it too. So far, so good.

There are options for the strength and flavor of the experience. You can get standards like lite or regular and tobacco or menthol. The tiny anonymizers could conceivably also be used for weight loss. You can order the 0 nicotine (empty) cartridges and opt for chocolate or vanilla refill liquid which has been shown to settle some food cravings.

E-Cigarettes have microelectronic integrated structure with a cartridge, an atomization chamber, a smart chip controller and built in lithium battery. The atomization chamber creates the vapor like smoke, like a real cigarette. The user gets just the nicotine without the negative side effects of smoking tobacco. The over 4,000 different chemicals that are present in regular cigarettes aren’t in the liquid formula used in E -Cigs

On their website at E Cigarettes Choice they claim that clinical trials have been carried out in New Zealand by Dr Murray Laugeson of Health New Zealand. They have this quote in their FAQ

The test found that the E-Cigarette was:

“…very safe relative to cigarettes, and also safe in absolute terms on all measurements we have applied. Using micro-electronics it vaporizes, separately for each puff, very small quantities of nicotine dissolved in propylene glycol, two small well-known molecules with excellent safety profiles, – into a fine aerosol. Each puff contains one third to one half the nicotine in a tobacco cigarette’s puff. The cartridge liquid is tobacco-free and no combustion occurs.”