Gizmo of the Day

5 Roku 2 XS Features You Should Know About

The Roku is well-known for its streaming media capabilities, but that’s not all this versatile device is known for. If you have never explored the extended capabilities of your Roku player, you’re missing out. From playing your own media to using the box to check your social networking profiles, you’ll get far more use out of the box once you’ve read this.

Book Review: Cool Tools in the Kitchen

Blog becomes a book. Life imitates art. And so on. Cool Tools in the Kitchen is an ebook (ebook only that is) that was curated by Steven Leckart of Wired and Kevin Kelly of kk.org. While the entire book is drawn from the contents of the Cool Tools section of the blog, as the authors rightly pointed out, you would have to go searching through the site to find all of the best kitchen tools. For a few dollars instead, you can get this book.

While I’m a big fan of ebooks, I still grew up in an age without and really enjoy a well-assembled book with color photos and diagrams. For that reason, I was a bit disappointed with what was a fairly basic format, with no obvious attempt to enhance the original blog posts. On the other hand, this is only a $4 ebook! I shouldn’t complain too much.

The Roku: Simplifying Your Entertainment Viewing Process

Roku 2 XDRoku has been making streaming media players for some time now (we featured their Soundbridge in 2004!), but seems to have just recently made real waves in the entertainment industry. As more of our entertainment comes via the Web or Internet, with services like Netflix streaming, Hulu, and YouTube, having a device that can integrate all of that plus your tv entertainment on your television is almost essential. This is where a Roku box solves your diversity-of-entertainment problem.

Crowd-sourced blog PhutureNews imagines the future’s news stories

Sci-Fi meets extrapolation meets imagination meets entertainment meets crowd-sourced blog is how I like to view PhutureNews. This site/blog is all about predicting the future but not in the boring “in the future, we think…” style, but rather as headlines and stories with future date stamps. Although they just launched, they have some rather interesting ‘stories’ like “Steve Jobs rising out of the iCryo”, “China wins the 2046 World Cup”, and or the more realistic “Self driving cars mandatory in California”.

Two suggestions for PhutureNews: first, please go buy the FutureNews.com (or dot whatever domain) and rename the site! The “ph” doesn’t quite work. And second, you absolutely need RSS feeds. Other than that, keep writing cool and interesting stories.

KIMTECH* Touchscreen Cleaning Wipe

Review: Kimtech Touchscreen Cleaning Wipes

KIMTECH* Touchscreen Cleaning WipeThis is one product category that has tons of nondescript entrants, and for the most part, they all do the trick more or less, and that’s to wipe your gadget’s screen. Kimberly-Clark decided to try something a little different – make them dry, disposable and inexpensive.

The KIMTECH Touchscreen Cleaning Wipe are made especially for touchscreens, which we all seem to be adopting at a rapid rate. I tried out a sample and wasn’t disappointed. These come 10 to a pack, and while dry, they are soft, and had no fear of using it to wipe the screen on my iPad or smartphone.

Keep New Year Resolutions using Technology

Happy New Year!

For some, a new year is time to start anew. Perhaps last year was particularly rough with relationships or monetarily or perhaps there were physical or mental issues that put a damper on 2011 but with the start of a new year we can start all over and work towards a better you in 2012!

Here are 10 ways you can improve yourself and keep your New Year’s Resolutions by using Technology:

1 Habits 2012 – Reach your Goals with this highly customizable Habits app. In Habits 2012, the app offers a habits-focused set of items such as “Live a Healthy Life” that allows you to daily track the various tasks required to reach you goal. For example, have you flossed and did you sleep at least 7 hours? If you’d like to use a broader set of items like customizable, visual scales then you can move up to the developer’s Track & Share app, which comes in a Pro and Lite version. (Pricing options from Free to $0.99)

Tablet Battle: Amazon’s Kindle Fire vs Barnes & Noble’s Nook

During the holiday season, many tech-oriented shoppers will be scrutinizing the market for the best valued tablet. While most analysts point to the iPad as the pinnacle of current tablet design and functionality, consumers have one big beef with the product: its price. The iPad 2 starts at a whopping $499, a price that most consumers simply can’t afford in this economy. So let’s set aside the iPad 2 and consider some of the more economical tablet options for the holiday shopping season. Of course there are the other most talked about tablets to consider, Barnes and Noble’s Nook Tablet and Amazon’s Kindle Fire. Now that both tablets have been released, analysts expect the competition between the two to be fierce since they come in at similar price points and offer comparable features. But which of these tablets would work best for you, dear consumer?

FitFlop Shoes Tone Your Muscles As You Walk

Could the FitFlop be the world’s first smart shoe, without actually containing any technology? Fitflop use their own system of changing the amount of material at the front, middle and back of the shoe to help your body out.

They claim that wearing their shoe increases your leg and bottom muscle activity by up to a third (over regular shoes we’re guessing). This should help you tone up these muscles whilst walking. They also absorb more shock than normal shoes, which is better for your joints. Some wearers of FitFlop sandals have even said that they have provided relief from many joint problems. So how do they work?

My Top Must-Have Tech Products that I Use Daily

Here’s my list of favorite, must-have, daily use Web and tech products (mainly software) inspired by Michael Arrington and his annual list over at Techcrunch. For some reason, this year, he hasn’t published a list (yet?). [Here’s his list from Jan 1, 2010.]

There are 19 products on this list most of which I feel are the best web services available today. And while I absolutely use many more times that number of online web services and other software on a regular basis, I took a cue from Mr. Arrington’s list, and this is the top must-have services and products that I couldn’t live without and that I use practically every day, and in most cases in both my personal and work life.

Scroll to Top