By now you may have seen the commercials for Ford’s line of cars featuring Microsoft Sync, a music and mobile phone platform for automobiles. If not, you can view one here. It chronicles the embarrassment of people who find that treadmills, doors, and curtains do not respond to their voice the way their car does. While I like the concept of Bluetooth capability in cars, and I think voice commands are a safety enhancement over trying to dial a phone or search for a CD while driving, I sometimes wonder if our cars are becoming too electronic and computerized, to the point that safety could be compromised. I actually also wonder if some cars are just becoming too complex.
As a kid, I absolutely loved the movie Spaceballs. As an adult (and arguably still a kid) I still love the movie Spaceballs. When I got my mitts on the Corsair Voyager GT, the line “Light speed is too slow?” “Yes. We’re gonna have go right to – ludicrous speed” popped into my head. According to all the Corsair hype, the Voyager GT is supposed to be up to 4X faster than a standard USB key. Let’s see how it stands up during some real world tests.
The first thing I noticed when I got this USB key is the attractive look to it. It’s a good looking unit with its black base and red, yellow and white accents. The activity light is blue, which seems odd for something in black/white/yellow/red, but whatever. This key has a rubberized exterior that gives it a nice rugged look. According to the materials that came with it, it’s waterproof and shockproof! I’ll try these features later; that way if I break it, I at least get to test it first.
The benefits of owning a GPS unit are still something that remain a mystery to many. The cost of a unit can be prohibitive for a device that many people would consider a luxury. I spend a considerable amount of time hunting and fishing in the great outdoors. A GPS could be quite beneficial to someone like me. If you spend a good amount of time outside hunting, fishing, jogging, hiking, boating, camping, or any other outdoor activity, a GPS will likely add to your outdoor experience.
This year the US Government is dispersing extra funding to a large chunk of the US population. I had an epiphany with this extra money coming in – beyond paying off bills and buying beer, why not get that GPS that I’ve long been wanting? To that end I decided to contact Garmin to see if I could get a look at one of their products for review here. Like Christmas in early March, the Colorado 400t arrived at my doorstep just begging to be tested.
The Colorado 400t has a very “you can’t break me” look to it. When I first laid paws on it I had this urge to throw it down a flight of stairs. Fortunately, common sense prevailed when I remembered that Garmin has my Credit Card number. Nevertheless the unit certainly looks rugged. It has good heft, a large screen and a control layout that’s both simple, yet effective. Even for those wearing gloves.
Some of our more “chronologically enhanced” readers might remember a time in their childhood when dad decided that the family should pile into the trusty station wagon (sans seatbelts of course) and see the country (for you younger readers, this time should be referred to as “back in the day”). You might have gone to drive the famed Route 66 or traveled countless hours with your thighs sticking to the vinyl seats to ride a smelly burro through the Grand Canyon. Wherever your ill fated journey’s final destination was supposed to be, there was always one part of every trip that was guaranteed to be ever present, the giant multifold map (or if your dad was particularly adventurous, the full sized road atlas of the lower 48 plus Alaska and Hawaii). Have you ever used a standard multifold map? Probably. Have you ever successfully re-folded one back to its original form? I seriously doubt it, unless you’ve got a doctorate in “map-folding-ology”.
There used to be a time when our society was built and maintained by blood, sweat, and hard work. Today, however, our world runs on information and communication. With the ever growing amount of digital information that we create, modify, and share on a daily basis the need for ensuring the security of that information also increases.
One of the most common methods in today’s world for transferring our important data from one place to another is the ubiquitous USB memory key (or Thumb drive, or Memory stick, or little magic contraption of wonderfulness). With the current availability of high capacity, small form-factor USB flash memory comes a universal availability of inexpensive storage devices. Don’t believe me? Go to your local computer store (heck even Wal-Mart) and look for the USB drive section, if there is not an entire aisle in the store dedicated solely to these little titans of data migration then there is definitely a large section of one.
This universal availability comes at a cost though, more of us every day are loading Gigabytes worth of personal, corporate, or even government related information onto these, for the most part, COMPLETELY unsecured devices. There is also a growing trend, in all forms of consumer electronic devices, towards making everything as small as the laws of physics will allow. How many Über-micro cell phones have you lost? When’s the last time you set that Ipod mini down and couldn’t remember where? Now compare the size of most modern electronic devices to your USB drive, it’s virtually invisible isn’t it? So what happens when you misplace your memory key (which, incidentally, I did this morning. No idea where that thing is.) that contains all of your personal photos, hours of music, or top secret plans to take power from your boss and rule with an iron fist? Your only option, in most cases, is to hope that some Good Samaritan finds it, realizes that you’re the only geek in the place, and returns it to you. That’s a pretty scary “disaster recovery plan” if you ask me.
More than four out of five people admit to telling little white lies at least once a day and the preferred way of being “economical with the truth” is to use technology such as cell phones, texts and e-mails, a survey on Thursday said.
The research by UK pollsters 72 Point found that “techno-treachery” was widespread with nearly 75 percent of people saying gadgets like Blackberrys made it easier to fib.
Just over half of respondents said using gadgets made them feel less guilty when telling a lie than doing it face to face, the study on behalf of financial services group Friends Provident found.
Just talked to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates in advance of tomorrow’s Very Big Deal launch of the new Vista Windows operating system and new generation of Microsoft Office. (Funny — I saw Sun Chairman Scott McNealy last night, and he joked that Windows and Office make up “120% of Microsoft’s profits.”)
Though we didn’t really intend to talk about the Zune music player, it did come up — and, you’re hearing it here first, Gates says that if Apple will make iTunes music playable on Zune, he’ll make Zune music playable on iPods. Though, of course, Gates knows what it’s like to hold all the cards, and right now Jobs holds all the cards in digital music.
Said Gates: “If Apple said any song on the iPod could be played on Zune, we’d say the same thing. Because they have such a high market share, they’re not interested in interoperability, but that’s too bad.”
Today’s cell phones are really tiny computers, often functioning as phone, camera, e-mail device and personal digital assistant.
But what happens when you toss your old phone to upgrade to the new and improved model?
You’re certainly conscious of the evils of identity theft so you take the time to delete all your personal info, such as phone numbers, e-mails and old photos. You may even go the extra mile and reformat the phone.
Following the lead of rivals Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., top Internet search engine Google Inc. on Thursday is expected to release a downloadable version of its Gmail email feature for cell phones.
The free software, to be available only in the U.S., is compatible with more than 300 cell phones, and can be downloaded by pointing a phone’s Web browser to gmail.com/app or by text messaging the software to a phone from a personal computer.
Unlike its wired Web version, cell phone Gmail does not come accompanied by ads.
“We want to provide relevance and targeted ads, but with a cell phone’s small screen and all that, it’s tricky,” said Tony Hsieh, a product manager with Google’s mobile team.
Free Help from Tech Experts
By now you may have seen the commercials for Ford’s line of cars featuring Microsoft Sync, a music and mobile phone platform for automobiles. If not, you can view one here. It chronicles the embarrassment of people who find that treadmills, doors, and curtains do not respond to their voice the way their car does. While I like the concept of Bluetooth capability in cars, and I think voice commands are a safety enhancement over trying to dial a phone or search for a CD while driving, I sometimes wonder if our cars are becoming too electronic and computerized, to the point that safety could be compromised. I actually also wonder if some cars are just becoming too complex.
As a kid, I absolutely loved the movie Spaceballs. As an adult (and arguably still a kid) I still love the movie Spaceballs. When I got my mitts on the Corsair Voyager GT, the line “Light speed is too slow?” “Yes. We’re gonna have go right to – ludicrous speed” popped into my head. According to all the Corsair hype, the Voyager GT is supposed to be up to 4X faster than a standard USB key. Let’s see how it stands up during some real world tests.
More than four out of five people admit to telling little white lies at least once a day and the preferred way of being “economical with the truth” is to use technology such as cell phones, texts and e-mails, a survey on Thursday said.
View: 
Just talked to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates in advance of tomorrow’s Very Big Deal launch of the new Vista Windows operating system and new generation of Microsoft Office. (Funny — I saw Sun Chairman Scott McNealy last night, and he joked that Windows and Office make up “120% of Microsoft’s profits.”)
News source: 
Following the lead of rivals Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., top Internet search engine Google Inc. on Thursday is expected to release a downloadable version of its Gmail email feature for cell phones.