Cool Product of the Day

There are two significant barriers for most people to traveling the world and seeing all that it has to offer: money and not knowing the languages native to the places you wish to visit.  Once you have enough money to travel, you have to determine whether you want to learn a new language or hire a guide.  Either choice may require an investment of time or money you may not wish to spend in that manner or, in the case of adding an additional person, it may fundamentally change the experience you were hoping to have.  Thanks to ECTACO there is now a third option!  If you want to visit Korea, you need not learn the language.  Instead, you just need to take the Partner EK900 Deluxe English-Korean Talking Electronic Dictionary with you! Read more »

The digital music revolution has been criticized by many audiophiles; people who love sound and music.  The main complaint that most audiophiles share is that the quality of digital music files is severely lacking when compared to records, compact discs, and live musical performances.  Many of the companies that are devoted to creating hardware that presents audio recordings have worked hard to overcome the quality issues of most digital music files.  Much of their hardware is designed to help you get the most out of your digital music collection.  Bang & Olufsen is one of the companies audiophiles trust and the Beosound 5 Encore is part of the reason why. Read more »

Given how fast the smartphone has gone from a novelty to a ubiquitous accessory in the hands of people from every demographic, it might be unsurprising to you how few manufacturers of smartphone accessories have tapped into all of the benefits of the smartphone for their accessories.  While many manufacturers focus on creating accessories that protect your mobile computing device or interface devices that make your mobile device act like a more traditional audio or video player, real innovators continue to create gadgets that use the full range of your mobile device.  Already, there are products that connect your smartphone to a controller to create a new handheld gaming system.  Brookstone wants you to use your Apple mobile devices to control Rover! Read more »

The popularity of Apple’s mobile computing devices has led many manufacturers to create accessories that attempt to make Apple’s products even better.  While Apple’s mobile devices, like the iPad, iPhone, and iPod lines are convenient for travel, they may be less-than-ideal for presenting media in a home environment.  Seeking to augment the usefulness of your iPod or iPhone, Denon now makes a cool iPod/Networking Client Dock With Wi-Fi. Read more »

The notion that each person wears many different masks in the course of their lifetime and in different groups, is a very old idea.  How you interact with other people and what you choose to show one group of person in your life changes based on very old social mandates and ideas.  With the rise of the Internet and the subsequent explosion of social networking sites, you put quite a bit of information about yourself online every year.  Unfortunately, all of that information may create a much jumbled view of who you are and may be mixed in with information about other people who happen to share the same name as you.  Now there is a new site that has the sole goal of helping you create a single, focused, online profile that collects all of your disparate elements in one place.  That site is Vizify and it is very cool. Read more »

Even with the rise of the smartphone, the need for specialized personal safety devices persists.  For sure, a smartphone may be very helpful in a medical emergency or when there is a threat against your life.  However, with so many smartphones running sophisticated programs, one must often unlock their smartphone and wait for it to boot to a menu screen from which you select the applications you wish to use.  The time it takes to unlock your smartphone may be the moments – especially in a heart attack or assault situation – you need to actually be able to make an emergency call.  Fortunately, as communications devices have become more sophisticated, so too have the specialized emergency/personal safety devices.  One useful personal safety device is the ZOMM Wireless Leash Plus. Read more »

The name Hallmark Cards is virtually synonymous with greeting cards, much the way people refer to MP3 players as iPods or inline skates as Rollerblades.  To its credit in the rapidly changing world, Hallmark Cards has worked very hard to keep with the times and it has a robust online presence.  The physical greeting card manufacturer effectively competes against many online digital greeting card sites and Hallmark Cards continues to innovate.  Seeing the intense interest in mobile computing among many of its fans, Hallmark Cards has released the Hallmark Go Cards application! Read more »

In the wake of virtually every tragedy involving gun violence, the media and politicians talk quite a bit about responsibility.  While responsibility is easy to determine in incidents where a shooter or group of shooters does violence against others, in situations like accidents involving unsecured firearms (or firearms that were secured, but some element of that security failed), upon whose shoulders the responsibility rests may be harder to judge.  Regardless, technology now exists to make it far easier to secure your firearms and other valuables so that accidents are less likely to occur and so you might avoid losing your valuables to burglars.  Some worthwhile personal security technology is present in Barska’s Standard Biometric Keypad Safe. Read more »

For a long time, there was a serious demographic of photographers who were being neglected with the digital camera revolution.  Those photographers were those who had an aptitude for taking photographs of subjects underwater.  While many cameras boasted of being water resistant, finding a truly waterproof digital camera was a difficult thing.  Fortunately, that trend is changing and now there are several entirely waterproof digital cameras on the market.  One of them is the Intova IC14 Digital Camera with Waterproof Housing. Read more »

Online and mobile payments are a growing industry.  One of the most recognizable names in the virtual payment industry is PayPal.  PayPal rose to prominence as a spin-off of eBay and as eBay grew, PayPal synergized with it in such a way that it rapidly gained the dominant market share for online payments.  However, with the rise of the smartphone, new mobile services like Dwolla, are steadily eating into that market share.  While the Technical Officers at PayPal work to increase PayPal’s mobile influence, it is Ranjana Clark who is retaining and winning over new customers for the company. Read more »