Heather, On Tech

Solar-powered iPhone

No, not really.  Got your Apple-lovin' attention though, didn't I?

GeekAlerts mentioned a leather case that will charge your iPhone using solar power.  It won't charge the battery completely unless you have a few days to leave it out in the sun.  But, if your battery is on its last legs and you need a smallish charge, you can use this case to get you home.  The battery is 6v USB/DC 5v.  The charging time is listed as less than three hours, so you can actually get your phone charged while you have a picnic.

The case is pretty stylish and can be had for under $50 from Brando.

Not a Gadget, but Daddy will Like

Well, Daddy will like if he's over 35, anyway.  It's a poster of Princess Leia - you know, from the first three Star Wars movies (don't correct me; I don't care about chapters, I care about when they came out).  Yeah, she was hot back then.  And now Daddy can enjoy those days again with the Slave Leia Poster from Think Geek.  It shows Leia in her bikini when she was Jabba the Hutt's slave.

Yeah, I used to look like that too...and I daresay that now I look better than she does...but I'm pretty sure my life has been so much easier!

OK, I digress...you can pick up the poster for your man (or yourself, whichever) for just $9.99.

Emergency Contact Info - on Your License

I've posted before about entering information into your cell phone on how to reach "someone" in case of emergency.  That's a very good idea, you know.

But it seems that the State of Florida, at the persuasion of Christine Olson (after losing her daughter Tiffany), has come up with a way to save your emergency contacts and associate them with your driver's license.  It's an easy-to-use web site where you type in your driver's license number and date of birth, then enter your contacts' information.  What could be simpler?

Oh, and if you have a teenager driving, you definitely need to do this.  Not only in case they are incapacitated, but you know, you never know whether your kid is going to get into something they shouldn't, and you need to come get them.

HDTV: Get One NOW

I'm a huge fan of media, as you might have guessed.  Not news media, but music, movies, TV, that sort of thing.  If there's something good to watch, I'm all over it.  I guess I'm a visual person, huh?  When we bought our house about eight years ago, we got a big TV to go in the family room.  By "big" I mean huge - a 60-inch projection television with all kinds of connectivity on the back of it.  The thing was a mammoth, but damn, it had a great picture and speakers.

Well, over time, the tubes in that great TV have filled up with an algae-type substance that makes the image fuzzy.  This happens because the projection tubes get hot when you watch TV, then when you turn it off it cools down and causes condensation inside the tube - which causes algae to grow because, well, this is Florida and you can pretty much grow algae or moss on anything down here.  So, our picture has degraded to the point of being unable to tell which team was which when you watched football.  And we can't have that, now can we?

Next came the debate over getting the tubes cleaned or getting a new TV.  Technology has come a long long way in the last eight years, and so the new TV won out.  Man, I'm glad we decided on that because damn what a picture!

We opted for an LCD television, flat-panel, HD of course (may as well go all-out).  We got a Sony Bravia because you can connect the computer to it and watch iTunes movies (or whatever else you like, pretty much), and I liked that idea a lot.  It was delivered last Thursday and David and I hooked it all up Thursday night.  Primo!

The picture was crisp and clear and I couldn't complain one bit.  It was just incredible.  We watched football all day Saturday, and we could tell the teams apart (a little too well in his case - he's an FSU fan).

Yesterday we had the cable company come out and install HD cable.  Mostly because I wanted the DVR service, but hey, again, may as well go all-out, right?  The guy came and hooked it all up and turned it to an HD channel.  I was expecting a good picture.  What I got was the most incredible television experience I had ever had the pleasure to enjoy.  He turned it to the Food channel (I guess since I'm a woman I must enjoy watching fat people cook, huh?), and let me tell you, I could almost smell whatever that stuff was they were cooking (it was too pretty to be able to tell what it was).  So then I had to surf around and see what I could see.

I kept turning channels back and forth between the HD and digital channels (you know, when you get HD cable, you still get the old digital channel as well) just to see the difference in the picture.  I was utterly amazed.  So then I watched the better part of Live Free or Die Hard.  Entertainment at its best, for sure!

So, people, trust me when I say this: if your TV is on its last legs and you have to buy a new one anyway, get yourself an HD television.  You'll be glad you did, without a doubt.

Ummm, OK.

This just cracked me up.  I mean, really...

Little E wants to be Darth Vader for Halloween (at least, yesterday he did).

Wow, Somebody Likes My Blog!

OK, this post is not about a gadget (really) - it's about horn tooting. :-)  I'm not one of those "I have to be the most popular blogger" type of people.  If you read this blog, you probably have figured out that I am just an opinionated crazy person who happens to love gadgets!  But, let's face it, you hear enough crap about the iPhone anyway, so I choose not to write about that sort of stuff.

Apparently someone is reading - her name is Topsy-Techie, and she's nominated me for a Blog Award! Topsy likes techie stuff too (as you might have guessed by her name) - and she's a homeschooling mom, which makes her somewhat of a saint, in my opinion (I personally do not have the patience or energy to spend the entire day with my children every day - although I love them dearly, of course).

Topsy-Techie just won a Blog Award and she was required to nominate seven other blogs - so I rank up there with her husband and her son, and some other really great blogs that she enjoys.  Congratulations on your award, Topsy - and thank you for the nomination!

Save Your Stuff!

I recently did something I never thought I would do - I ran out of space on my hard drive!  With 160GB, I figured that would last me until I got the next machine (little did I know I'd be converting lots of CDs to digital music).  The last time I ran out of space, I had a 500MB hard drive on a Pentium 75.

So, we invested in a Western Digital MyBook drive (1TB).  It was the smartest move I've ever made!  We've been able to back up all our machines so far, and I've got all my iTunes on there so I no longer have to guess which machine I had that music on (downloading over the years means figuring out which machine I was using when I got or ripped a song).

The greatest thing about it is the ease of use.  Plug it into your machine (USB port), plug it into the wall, and you're ready to go.  It's literally a giant USB drive, so it works just like a thumb drive.  There is some auto-backup software on it, which I installed, but I'm too impatient to wait on it and so I ended up just dragging and dropping it all.  So easy, no installation, and no worries.

I highly recommend this to anyone who gets a new machine every few years (hey, when you have two software developers in the house, it's hard NOT to update your machine at least every three years - you have to or the latest dev tools won't work).

The best part?  We got it on Amazon for about $180...although it must have been on sale because now it's listed at $209.

Can U Find Me?

By now some of you have noticed the widget on the left (obviously if you are reading this in feed form you haven't seen it...), so it's time to tell you what it's all about.

I've started an online game called Can U Find Me - it's the online version of hide and seek.  How do you play?  It's easy!  You upload a photo, email it to friends, and they try to guess where you are.  Many people do this on their blogs, and I wanted to extend that a bit.

You don't have to register to play, but if you do register, you can email your photos to the game and it will be auto-emailed to your friends, or you can upload to Twitter or Brightkite.  Eventually I will expand that to Facebook, MySpace, and other platforms, but for now that's it.  Registering also creates a widget for you if you want to put one on your blog or other website - and it's automatically updated with your latest image, so you don't ever have to change anything.

So, if you like to play online games or think you might want a widget for your blog, check out Can U Find Me?  If you have any feedback, I'd love to hear from you - just fill out the form on the site.

Relive Your Childhood on YouTube

I love reminiscing about old television shows.  I was a child of th 70's and 80's, so I remember the $6 Million Man, Emergency!, The Incredible Hulk (I so miss Bill Bixby!), The Love Boat, and Fantasy Island.  There are countless others, but this isn't about seeing how many I can list (and I've just realised that doesn't even touch the 80's!).

I have no idea how many episodes of any of the above you can get on YouTube, but I'd bet if you can watch an entire episode of the original animated Transformers, you can most certainly get an episode of (the first) Steve Austin running in slow motion to look fast!

Another thing I've found on YouTube is old cartoons that we used to watch in elementary school.  You know, those Friday afternoons when it was raining and you couldn't go outside to play, so you got to watch a movie.  In my youngest days of elementary school, the school I attended used the "pod" system, so there were four classes, with a common area in the middle.  All four classes would sit on the floor in the middle to watch movies.  It was awesome.  This is one we used to watch (even though it was old then, but I didn't know it).

For some reason, this is one of the cartoons I remember watching and loving. Now the 50's style music grates on my nerves, but I still like watching the cave men. I guess I was interested in anthropology even before Raiders of the Lost Ark...

Geographer's Delight: Talking USB Earth Globe

I'm thinking about getting one of these.  I have a really hard time keeping up with which countries have changed their names, or their borders, or whatever else is involved in shifting politics these days (read: I have more important things to keep up with in my daily life, sorry).  The Always Current Talking Globe is a great device for keeping up on actual world events (rather than watch the crap they call news these days).

With this talking globe, you can stay updated by plugging it into your USB and updating the information.  Then, you can play games to help your children learn their borders.  It has 30 learning activities, including a "find" mode, which allows up to four players to find countries, capitals, and cities.  Players battle the clock to see who can find their place fastest.

The globe runs on Windows Vista or XP and will download current stats and world news - but after the first year, it will cost you $15.  Not too bad a price to keep your kid from growing up not knowing that Japan is indeed an island nation!

The globe is available from Hammacher Schlemmer for $180.

Hat tip: GeekAlerts.