Category: Gadgets

Cool Gadgets

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Nikon D300 + N2 di-GPS = FUN!

I have really been enjoying my New Nikon D300 camera and there really isn’t anything that I don’t like about it. It’s FAST, takes incredible shots and has all the bells and whistles that I’ve always wanted. Although the Nikon D300 doesn’t have a GPS unit built-in, it does now feature direct support for one and there is even a GPS menu on the camera itself. I bought the N2 di-GPS which works directly with select Nikon & Fuji DSLRs. It arrived this week and it wasn’t until yesterday during lunch that I got a chance to take it out for a spin. The first thing I said to myself when I opened the box was, “wow, this is much smaller than I imagined!” It’s not much bigger than a pack of gum. Very lightweight and easy to travel with. Although it’s designed to sit on the hot-shoe, it’s doesn’t have to. The integrated mount will also attach to the camera strap. There is no battery in it as it gets its power directly from the camera via the cable that attaches to the D300’s 10 pin remote terminal.

GPS menu built-in to the New Nikon D300 and D3

 

Once you connect the cable, there is only one switch on the device and it switches from OFF, to Auto, to ON. Do I need to explain OFF? Didn’t think so. In the Auto position the GPS unit will turn on and off with the camera. This will probably yield the best battery life. However, each time the unit is turned on with the camera in this mode it will have to potentially acquire the satellite signal again. In the ON position, it stays on and connected to the GPS satellites regardless if the camera is on or not. Of course this will ultimately drain the camera’s battery faster. I recommend the ON position if you are shooting, then moving then shooting again. If you’re going to use it off and on throughout the day, then Auto is probably best. From a cold start it took about 15-20 seconds to acquire a GPS signal. There is a clear indicator right on top that flashes red when it is searching and stays solid red when it has locked on (Sony could learn from this!).

After connecting the N2 di-GPS and turning it on I was ready to shoot. The beauty of this unit is that the GPS information (longitude and latitude) is inserted right into the metadata of each shot as you take them. No need for post processing when you return to your computer. Since I use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom I can take advantage of this data instantly by clicking the little GPS button in the metadata panel which will automatically take me to the location that I was shooting in on Google Maps.

 

I took this shot at the New Partridge Creek Mall here in Michigan.

 

When I look at the image above in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, I can see the GPS coordinates in the metadata panel

When I click the little arrow to the right of the GPS coordinates, Lightroom takes me to my browser and automatically loads those coordinates in Google Maps for me (you can click the image above for the same experience).

The interesting thing here is that apparently this map hasn’t been updated yet because it doesn’t show the mall on the satellite view 🙂 The mall was just completed and opened in October 2007.

I found the accuracy to be decent, but not great. What I mean by this is that it seems to take few moments to update once you’ve moved. I took some shots just walking around my yard and when I got back to the computer, although I had moved, a couple of the shots were still showing the coordinates from shots taken a few moments earlier. One shot showed that I was in my neighbor’s yard.

 

Here’s a shot I took in my backyard. OK, I’m kidding, this was taken at the Partridge Creek Mall. Normally I would have stepped back to get the whole tree, but there were two security guards waiting to tackle me if I even thought of pointing my camera at a store display (which is frowned upon at most malls).

This shot was taken maybe 50-60′ from the Apple store shot above.

 

Bottom Line

If you want to do some geotagging and map all the places that you shoot and you have one of the supported cameras, you can’t go wrong with this GPS unit. It’s painlessly simple to use and integrates beautifully. The N2 di-GPS goes for $238+$45 S&H. So it’s not cheap (neither are the cameras it supports), but if having GPS data automatically inserted into your images is your thing, this is the one for you.

Supports Nikon D3*, D300*, D2XS, D2X, D2HS & D200, Fujifilm S5 Pro.
*Nikon added new GPS function to D3 and D300. The new function resolved the battery drain issue. The new option in the menu let the user to select the metering system to stay on or auto off when GPS data is received to reduce the power consummation.

Also see my review on the NEW di-GPS Pro!



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Black Friday 2007 Deals

I gotta admit, I’m not a fan of standing in line outside in the cold/rain/snow to "possibly" get a deal. Don’t get me wrong I get all giddy saving money just as much as the next guy. Especially on tech gear. I’m just not a morning person. However, if you like this sort of thing and you don’t mind getting out this Friday, check out this site which offers a pretty comprehensive listing of Black Friday 2007 Deals.

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The fastest card!

I was ready to declare the PNY Technologies card the winner in my recent Compact Flash Card Speed Tests when my buddy Scott Kelby reminded me that it’s not only about how fast the card reads data, but also how fast the card writes data. So this lead me to do some more testing.

For those of you who haven’t been following along, this all began with my recent purchase of the CFExpressPro+ PCIe ExpressCard to CompactFlash Memory Card Adapter 2.5Gbps. This ExpressCard Compact Flash Card Reader boasts the ability to operate at the ExpressCard slot’s true PCIe speeds. My first tests with Lexar Pro media yielded horrible results in that I either have a bad card or their write acceleration is just not compatible with this reader. So I went out and bought some different cards. I bought a couple of SanDisk’s Extreme III and IV cards and I bought the PNY Technologies Optimal PRO and Optima PRO UDMA cards. These cards were rated at 133x and 266x by their respective manufacturers. I was shocked that the PNY cards were much faster than the SanDisk cards on READING my 1.1GB test folder. Like I said, I was ready to declare PNY the winner until I ran some WRITE tests. The results put SanDisk back on top. Using the Sychnrotech ExpressCard PCIe Reader, here’s what I got:

Card Read 1.1GB Write 1.1 GB
PNY Technologies Optima Pro 133x 2GB Card 40.9 seconds 56.9 seconds
PNY Technologies Optima Pro UDMA 266x 2GB Card 35.7 seconds 45.2 seconds
SanDisk Extreme III 133x 2GB Card 70.8 seconds 71.1 seconds
SanDisk Extreme IV 266x 2GB Card 41.6 seconds 29.4 seconds

 

While the PNY card did win the Read tests hands down, what really matters to a digital photographer the most (besides reliability) is the speed at which images can be written to the card and the SanDisk Extreme IV edges out the PNY card by 18% margin!

Also no matter how you slice it having the Synchrotech ExpressCard Memory Adapter ($65) blows away USB card readers. In all of my tests the fastest time I could achieve with my USB card reader was just over 2 minutes whereas with the ExpressCard adapter I achieved 35.7 seconds and 41.6 second read times. If you’re a pro digital photographer and have a notebook with an ExpressCard slot, this is a must purchase. Time is money.


 

 

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Navigon 2100 Portable GPS Review

  

My dad dropped a subtle hint that he would like to have a GPS unit for his car. So being a good son, I began looking for one for him that will be his holiday gift this year. Keep in mind that my dad is 78 and not the least bit technical, so this GPS would have to be pretty easy to use. Although I’m a fan of the Garmin Nüvi line of GPS units, they would be overkill for his needs. So I started looking at other brands. I came across a reference for Navigon and they have a feature called "3D Reality View" This is a photo realistic view of complex highway lane changes and exits. So I stumbled upon a sale at Staples.com and snagged the Navigon 2100 for a mere $179.99 which was $45 off their regular price and the lowest price GPS I could find with the features I wanted. The Navigon 2100 arrived, but I got off to a rough start. I wanted to set the unit up before giving it to him (yeah, I wanted to play with it too) and it’s a good thing I did. Out of the box, when I turned it on I got an error that indicated that the map files were invalid/not compatible. The Navigon 2100 comes with a SD card loaded with all the maps and POIs (Points of Interests). I called tech support and got connected to an English speaking rep right away. I told him about the issue and he informed me that some of the units that went to Staples got "bad" cards. He took my info down and overnighted me a new SD card. He also told me that I could keep the old card and use it for whatever I wanted to. I decided to copy the new card onto the old one as a backup. That worked fine. With the new/proper card installed the Navigon 2100 powered right up and I was presented with an easy to follow menu. I keyed in my dad’s address so that he could use the "Take Me Home" button whenever he needed to and be routed to his house no matter where he was in the country. While I had the unit open, I decided to take it for a spin. I assembled the suction cup mount and took the GPS for a test drive. I was impressed with how fast it starts up and acquires a satellite signal.

 

Real world testing

One of the things that makes or breaks a GPS unit is how easy it is to input your destination. This was also going to be the determining factor as to whether or not I felt my dad would be able to use it. I really liked the fact that you have the option of keying in the city OR just the zip code! I also liked having the choice of entering the city, street and address OR the street, address and city. Unlike many units the Navigon 2100 remembers the last city you used so that you don’t have to key it in each time. Now on the down side and the thing I’m worried about the most is that the on screen text is kind of on the small side. If I had to guess I would say that some of the text is as small as 8pt type. Also on some of the displays the on screen buttons aren’t as large as they could be. The other thing on the down side is that there is no "bean bag" mount option. I’m not a fan of suction cup mounts, although the one they include stayed on my window the whole time with no issues.

 

Great features

It’s clear that the Navigon engineers looked at the other GPS units out there and tried to build a better unit. I had to keep reminding myself that this GPS is half the cost of others and has all the features you’d expect in a higher-end unit and MORE! Let’s get the basics out of the way. They 2GB SD Card includes the maps for the entire US and Canada. The Navigon 2100 features "Text-to-Speech" so rather than saying "turn right in 200 feet", it says "turn right on Woodward Avenue, turn here". There are also thousands of POIs and you can input your favorite destinations and save them. These are the features I would expect to find in any modern GPS unit. Where the Navigon 2100 steps ahead of the pack is in the little things. First of all the 2100 is about the size of my Nüvi 360 if not a little thinner. Most units in the $200-$300 range are much thicker. Not only does the 2100 show you where you are on the map it also shows the speed limit of the road you’re on. By default there are speed warnings built in (which you can change) that are set to 10 miles over on the highway and 5 miles over elsewhere. Of course I had to test this out, so I went over 75mph in a 65mph zone and the voice said "Caution" and displayed a little yellow triangle next to the speed limit sign in the upper left of the display. I was also impressed with the display of the POIs along the way. Rather than the typical gas pump logo on the side of the road representing a gas station, it actually displayed the "Mobil" logo as I passed near the station. Now of course they don’t have logos for all businesses/POIs, but it did display the names of restaurants as I passed near them. This blew me away. Imagine how helpful that would be if you’re driving in an unfamiliar area.

 

The killer feature was the one that caught my eye in the first place and that was the "3D Reality Viewâ„¢" This view automatically pops up when you’re approaching a complex interchange or exit. As you can see in the photo above I was instructed to stay on I-696 headed towards Lansing and the photo realistic display mimics the actual road signs that you can see in the upper left corner of the photo. The orange arrows on the display clearly indicate the lane you should be in so there is no way that you could take the wrong exit. This feature ROCKS! It totally takes the guess work out of navigating these kind of exchanges. I’ve never seen anything like this even on units that cost much more.

 

The Navigon 2100 includes the GPS unit, an SD card with maps and POIs for the lower 48 states (the 2120 is the same unit, but with maps for North America excluding Mexico), an Auto charger for charging the built-in Lithium ION battery, a suction cup mount and a quick start guide. For an extra $99 you can buy the Lifetime Traffic feature which is an antenna that plugs into the 2100 and a service that can automatically re-route you around traffic jams. You can also spring for the Zagat Survey Ratings and Reviews feature which includes 21,000 entries. Ratings of hotels, restaurants and entertainment in the area. This add on goes for $39.99.

 

The Bottom Line

GPS units don’t have to cost a fortune. The Navigon 2100 proves that. I was floored by the number of features that were included in this relatively low cost unit. I would like to have seen a wall charger included for charging the unit in the house, but hey for less than $200 what you do get is a great bargain. You can catch the Navigon 2100 for $179.99 while it’s on sale at Staples or you can get it for $209.94 at Amazon.com. This would make an EXCELLENT Gift!

Hey, I made Newsweek!

 

 

Speaking of GPS units check out this article in Newsweek where yours truly [I] was referenced on page 3.

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Blu-ray vs. HD DVD, why pick sides?

TiVo HD on the Bottom, Toshiba HD-A2 in the middle and Sony Playstation 3 on top. It’s an HD sandwich!

 

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of High Definition Television (HDTV). This means that I also want my movies in HD as well as my broadcast TV and cable stations. Well unless you’ve been living under an analog rock, you have probably heard that there is a format war going on between the major high-def camps. The two formats battling for your attention and money are Sony’s Blu-ray and Toshiba’s HD DVD.

As with any new technology, consumers tend to wait and see who comes out on top before making a major investment. Then there are the early adopters like me that live for today and worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. From what I could tell Blu-ray was going to be the winner so I started down that route with the purchase of a Sony Playstation 3 which could playback Blu-ray movies. Life has been good and I really haven’t given HD-DVD a second thought until recently. I read an article about how Toshiba was offering their Toshiba HD-A2 player for a mere $99.99 for one weekend only which amounted to a half-off sale. Even then I really didn’t pay any attention to it. It wasn’t until I read an article about how 90,000 players were sold in one weekend at that magic $99.99 price. That’s when it clicked that for $100 I could have BOTH formats. However, it was too late. The magical sale had ended. I headed over to eBay (of course) where I was sure some enterprising sellers would be selling new in the box units for slightly more than the $99.99 price. I was right and I picked up one for about $25 more.

The Toshiba HD-A2 arrived yesterday and I hooked it up in my theater last night. Of course I don’t own any HD DVD movies, so I headed over to my local Hollywood Video and rented a couple of titles to try out. I was stunned at how few titles they had in either HD DVD or Blu-ray. There was basically one rack dedicated to each. Both of these racks were together in a corner of the store. There were miles of racks for standard def titles. I watched Aeon Flux which was an OK movie, but looked really good in high-def (I also picked up Transformers in HD DVD). I didn’t expect much for $100 and I was right. The unit is pretty basic and comes with a remote and of all things standard composite cables. If you’re buying an HD DVD player, chances are you want to enjoy it in HD. You’ll never get there with the supplied cables, so that was a total waste. I went with HDMI and Optical Audio connected to my Octava HDMI & Optical Audio Switcher (which I love). To be honest I can’t really tell much of a difference (make that NO DIFFERENCE) between my Blu-ray movies and HD DVD movies. So when it comes to picking a format it will likely come down to available content. Right now Blu-ray is winning in the content game as 2 of the 3 major movie houses have gone Blu-ray and Blockbuster only rents Blu-ray in addition to standard def DVDs. My movie rental house of choice is Netflix. They offer both Blu-ray and HD DVD titles and even let you configure your queue to your favorite format first if the movie is offered in both. So now I have Netflix set to prefer Blu-ray first, then HD DVD, and then DVD.

The out-of-the-box experience was pretty good and pretty straight forward. I did connect it to my network via Ethernet (wish there was a Wi-Fi) option. There is a sheet in the box that suggests that you check for the latest firmware right away. I attempted to do so, but it couldn’t connect to the update server. I’ll try again another day. All-in-all, not bad for a little more than $100. The war can rage on and now I don’t really care if anyone wins or not. I’ve got both!

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What a difference a card makes

On Friday, I did a review of the NEW Synchrotech ExpressCard PCIe Card Reader for ExpressCard slots found on MacBook Pros and other various PC laptops. Although the reader performed better than my USB reader in my initial tests, I was disappointed in the apparent lack of speed in the Lexar Professional media. So over the weekend I went out and bought two different CompactFlash cards. I bought the SanDisk (my usual preferred brand) Extreme III 2.0GB card and just for comparison I bought a PNY Optima Pro 2GB Compact Flash. Both cards are rated at 133x.

Using the same exact test folder from Friday of just over 1GB of images I began my tests with the new cards. The results were STUNNING! In my first test with the SanDisk Extreme III card in the Synchrotech reader was almost TWICE AS FAST as my USB reader. However, what was even more shocking was the results I got with the PNY card. I had always seen this brand card, but never tried it before. It seems that most of the pros I know either use SanDisk or Lexar. However, after my tests on Saturday I may be buying a few more PNY cards. Why? Because it was the FASTEST card I’ve tried yet. It copied the same data about 30 seconds faster than the SanDisk card! Now keep in mind that both of these brands come in even faster speeds. SanDisk makes an Extreme IV and PNY makes a UDMA 266x speed card. So the speed increase could even be more dramatic with the ExpressCard reader while over USB there would be no difference because the cards tested are already faster than the USB reader can do. I plan to get the faster versions of each card and do more tests.

In all of my tests the USB 2.0 reader seems to top about at just over 2 minutes to copy over 1.1GB of data from all of the cards I’ve tried. However, the Synchrotech ExpressCard Reader really started to rock with the SanDisk and PNY cards copying the same data in 1:10 and 40.9 seconds respectively.

 

Copying 1.1GB of data from each card Synchrotech ExpressCard Reader SanDisk USB2 12-in-1 Reader
SanDisk Extreme III 2.0GB Card
1:10.8
2:02.01
PNY Technologies Optima Pro 2.0GB Card
40.9
2.03.01
Best results in GREEN.    

 

In this world of Faster, Faster, Faster, the Synchrotech ExpressCard Reader ($65) will become a permanent addition to my camera/computer bag. If you have a notebook with an ExpressCard slot, I highly recommend this reader. It kicks the crap out of USB 2.0 readers. I also recommend that you give the PNY Optioma Pro CompactFlash cards a spin too.

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True Express Card PCIe Speed for Photographers

As our images continue to grow with 10-12MP cameras becoming the norm in the pro world of digital photography, it has become even more important than ever to be able to download our images as fast as we can. When Apple introduced the MacBook Pro, they made one important change that had the photography community grumbling for months. They eliminated the PC Card slot that we had all become accustom to in favor of the new (smaller) ExpressCard|34 slot. The excuse was, "this is where the industry is going" and Apple likes to be on the cutting edge (most of the time). The biggest problem with this slot is that it’s not as wide as a Compact Flash card and therefore any adapters would require the card actually pert rude out of the side of the notebook.

As time went on ExpressCard adapters started to show up for all the various card formats. However, the one thing that these adapters had in common is that most, if not all of them operated at USB 2.0 speeds. Where was the promise of the super fast ExpressCard slot? So when I saw the CFExpressPro+ PCIe ExpressCard to CompactFlash Memory Card Adapter 2.5Gbps I was intrigued! This was the first adapter I had seen that promised to operate at the native PCIe speeds of the slot. So I ordered one.

The adapter arrived the day after I had upgraded to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and although I know better to install drivers that don’t specifically say that they are compatible with the OS I’m running, I did it anyway and that was a mistake. Come to find out that Leopard already includes the driver for this card. There was no graceful way to revert back from what I had done (although the manufacturer tried really hard to help me get back to a state before their driver), so it was Archive and Install Time of Leopard to get the native driver back. NOTE: If you’re on Leopard DO NOT install the drivers that come with the adapter!

I started my tests with a Lexar Professional CompactFlash 133x Speed 4GB card and the results were shockingly bad! I thought that there must still be a problem with the driver and the manufacturer went off to try to solve the problem. In my initial tests the card copied the data about ten times faster using my old SanDisk USB 12-in-1 reader. So today I decided to try a different approach. I used a different MacBook Pro that still had Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4.10) on it and installed their driver and the results WERE THE SAME! The problem seems to be with the Write Acceleration (or some other factor) that Lexar uses on this particular card. I tried a test of 2.72GB of data and the USB card reader copied the data in 6 minutes 8 seconds. I stopped the ExpressCard copy after 6 minutes because the Finder reported that there was still 49 minutes left!

When I reported these findings to the folks at Synchrotech, they asked me "which card" was I using? I told them, but this question prompted me to think that the issue may be with the Lexar card itself. This lead me to conduct more tests with my older (slower) SanDisk card which gave me results more in line of what I was expecting.

 

Speed Test Results

 

  ExpressCard USB 12-in-1
SanDisk Card/Leopard Driver (1GB of data) 1:58.0 2:22.7
SanDisk Card/Synchrotech Driver in Tiger (1GB of Data) 1:55.9 2:26.1
Lexar Card/Synchrotech Driver in Tiger (2.72GB of Data) Too Long! 6:08.3

 

Testing environment:

Both MacBook Pros are 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duos with 3GB of RAM. One running Mac OS 10.4.10 and the other running Mac OS 10.5. Both with 5400 rpm internal drives.

 

The Bottom Line

The Synchrotech ExpressCard PCIe adapter goes for $65 and seems to have about a 21% speed increase over my USB 2 Card Reader. However, the one thing that has to be ironed out is compatibility with the very popular Lexar Pro Compact Flash cards with Write Acceleration. I do plan to do another test as soon as I can get my hands on a FAST SanDisk card or a newer Lexar card. And I expect the speed difference with a high speed card to be even greater over USB. So stay tuned…

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TiVo-to-Go on TiVo HD

The gift that just keeps giving. I love my TiVo HD boxes. I had always been a DirecTV TiVo user and therefore missed out on all the Series 2 coolness of things like TiVo-to-Tivo transfers and TiVo-to-Go. Well I came home from a business trip to find a message waiting on my TiVo HD indicating that the long awaited software update had been applied (automatically over my Wi-Fi network) and I now have TiVo-to-Go among other nice features.

TiVo-to-Go allows you to transfer recorded shows to your Mac or PC. From there you either watch the shows, burn them to a DVD or more importantly you can convert them for playback on iPods, iPhones, Apple TV’s and PSPs. This is what I was most interested in because it would be nice to take my favorite shows with me to watch on the plane or in other situations where I have time to kill.

So last night I did a couple of tests to see how it would all work. First off on the Mac, the solution is to use Toast 8 Titanium. It is the officially sanctioned software that enables TiVo-to-Go on the Mac. There are other shareware utilities out there, but since I already own Toast, I decided to start there.

Toast is the app that let’s you actually burn the content to a disc, but it comes with another component called "TiVo Transfer" that you can enable during installation or after the fact from the Setup Assistant under the Help menu. TiVo Transfer sees your networked TiVo Series 2 or Series 3/HD DVRs and will allow you to transfer the recordings of your choice to your Mac (if you’re a Windows user you can download TiVo Desktop). TiVo Transfer works exactly as advertised. It found both my TiVo HDs on my network and showed me a list of the current shows on the drives of each one. I could transfer the shows I wanted, to my Mac and even setup a "Auto Transfer" to automatically transfer a particular show and all of its future episodes. You might really want to do this considering how big these files can be and the time it takes to transfer them. The first show I did as a test was an episode of South Park which is 30 minutes in length and NOT HD. So it was 680MB in size on the TiVo. Not bad. It took about 15 minutes to transfer it to my iMac G5. However, an episode of The Unit which was in HD was 7.5GB and took close to 3 hours to transfer. Once this 7.5GB file was on my iMac it was still in HD format and can be watched at it’s full size and resolution which is cool, because you’ll get that full-screen super clear experience on your laptop provided you’ve got the extra space. Now of course the other option is to simply burn it to a DVD with Toast. There is a "Toast It" button right in the TiVo Transfer window which will launch Toast and add the show to your Video DVD window for burning. Toast will handle the DVD creation and encoding for DVD. In theory if you had a Blu-ray burner you’d be able to keep it in high-def and make a Blu-ray disc.

The next option is to not burn it to disc, but to "Export" it from Toast to an iPod/iPhone/Apple TV or PSP format. This is great, but there is a restriction here. You can only export at a resolution no higher than 320 pixels wide. Which is kind of a bummer since the iPhone and iPod touch have higher res screens. Also it takes time to convert the files into iPod format. However, once the conversion is done Toast automatically adds the shows to iTunes as TV shows with their complete descriptions so you’d be ready to sync with your device. The resulting size for South Park was 221.8MB and The Unit was 364MB as a 320 pixel wide iPod video.

 

The Bottom Line

I welcome this FREE update to a DVR that I was already enjoying. Now I have a few options to take my shows with me and as a person that is constantly on the go, this is very cool. I still wish the process were faster and it prohibits the last minute "I’m heading out the door and wouldn’t it be cool to take a couple shows with me to watch?" kind of situation. However, with a little planning the night before, I could have a MacBook Pro or iPhone loaded with a couple shows ready to go. TiVo HD simply blows away the Comcast supplied DVRs.

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My 2007 Holiday Gadget Gift Guide is here!

It’s that time of year already! I’ve just completed my annual "Terry White’s 2007 Holiday Gadget Gift Guide". That’s right it’s my guide to help you with you holiday shopping for the gadget lover (freak) on your list. The way this thing started was last year towards the holiday season all my friends started asking me and emailing about what my picks were in various categories and of course the answers were the same. So I decided to compile a list and just email it to the folks that asked. Then I followed my buddy Scott Kelby’s lead and decided to formalize the process with my very own interactive PDF.

The guide is broken out by product category and lists my picks from the lowest dollar amount to the highest. So there are products in just about every price range. The guide is interactive with links to each of the products (just click on the product shot or price) on sites that I trust to make online purchases from and have dealt with in the past. Each of the products are either products that I use or products that come highly recommended by friends whose opinions I trust.

So check it out today!

 

PS. As you might have guessed the entire guide was built in Adobe InDesign CS3 and Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional.

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A New Look to an Old Resource

This is not my first tech blog. Actually my first tech blog was created last year using Apple’s iWeb and .Mac service. I eventually outgrew it and one of the things that frustrated me then was that there was no way to change the look of it. In other words once you picked a theme you were pretty much stuck with it. Well now that I’ve upgraded to iLife ’08 which includes a new version of iWeb, I was able to change the theme of my old tech blog to make it easier to read. I still don’t plan to go back to iWeb or .Mac for my blog, however, I did a ton of reviews that are still useful today. Unfortunately the Search feature seems to be broken, however the Archive page is working with all my past reviews. Check out the site here.