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Photos that are all wet
Tweet Share on Facebook June 28, 2006 CommentI drew some curious glances when I walked into the local pool carrying a shiny new digital camera. When I dived underwater with the thing, well, that started the questions. So the Olympus Stylus 720SW ($400, olympus.com) is an attention getter.
It was nerve-racking, though, testing its next distinguishing feature: the ability to withstand being dropped from as high as 5 feet. OK, drop–flinch–and gingerly retrieve. No apparent damage done.
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A hiker's watch with GPS
Tweet Share on Facebook June 26, 2006 Comment (2)I'm not one to wear those big sports watches. But Suunto has packed a striking mix of functions into its X9i model ($500, suunto.com/x9i), including perhaps the smallest GPS receiver sold. And while it sits high off the wrist, it's not too bad looking.
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A disk with flashy flights
Tweet Share on Facebook June 23, 2006 Comment (1)Lighting up a Frisbee isn't child's play. The inventors of the Flashflight tapped a number of modern technologies—most important, LEDs and fiber optics—to get a disk that not only would flash but fly.
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Digital video–cheap and easy
Tweet Share on Facebook June 22, 2006 CommentSurprise: Digital video can be cheap and easy. The new Point & Shoot video camera from Pure Digital, also sold as the RCA Small Wonder, costs about $130, putting it at the low end of digital cams. Unlike other camcorders, it won't take still pictures, settings can't be tweaked, and it has no optical zoom.
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T-Mobile's Sidekick sticks with the young adult crowd
Tweet Share on Facebook June 20, 2006 CommentFor the young set that get more of their chats in text than voice, T-Mobile is updating its unique Sidekick–a combination phone and messaging device, with the emphasis on the latter. The Sidekick 3 ($300 with a two-year wireless plan, $350 with a one-year) adds an MP3 player, expandable memory, an improved camera, and Bluetooth support for wireless headsets.
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Will cellphones replace iPods?
Tweet Share on Facebook May 24, 2006 CommentI like instant gratification and might be willing to pay $2 or $2.50 to get a full-track tune anytime I wanted. But the price doesn't stop there. New music stores from Verizon and Sprint Nextel haven't managed to turn cellphones into polished music players, adding nuisance to the dollar price of getting songs on and off a phone. It's still too awkward to supplant most MP3 players, much less the simple-to-use iPod.
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Convenient online music, for a price
Tweet Share on Facebook May 23, 2006 CommentConvenience, or impulse indulgence, has its price. But how high? Sprint Nextel tested the limits when it put a $2.50 price tag on songs downloaded from its wireless music store, which opened late last year. That's more than double the going price for downloaded songs, and pundits predicted the service was doomed.
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Pro-environment PCs
Tweet Share on Facebook May 22, 2006 CommentOur black-and-beige PCs are going green. Environmental green, that is. And it's a change coming to the United States with little effort from Americans. Hazardous materials will begin disappearing from electronics on U.S. store shelves this spring as manufacturers race to meet new government directives – from Europe. European Union regulations go into effect this July that force makers to essentially remove lead, cadmium, mercury, and other substances from electronic devices.
It's those poisons that make electronics, notably computers and monitors, expensive to recycle and dangerous to dump.
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Is geothermal heating worth the cost?
Tweet Share on Facebook May 21, 2006 Comment (27)When it comes to cheap, renewable energy, nothing seems more reliable than sucking heat from Mother Earth. Geothermal heating and cooling has been around for 20 years or more, but it remains unknown to most people—we didn't know about it until a friend installed it, and neighbors hadn't heard of it until a huge drilling rig began the noisy, two-day process of boring holes in our small back yard.
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Toll-free connections
Tweet Share on Facebook April 4, 2006 Comment (19)It's hard to believe–in this hyperconnected society–but I recently had a relative wanting to call me who didn't have a cellphone and had access only to a pay phone. Within 10 minutes, and for $10 a month, I had set up my own toll-free number.
