How many times have you found yourself looking through a drawer and seeing charger after charger for your cell phone with no use at all? I know I have a bunch and I have no idea what to do with them. It’s the same with mp3 players and laptops. Every company has its own way of making chargers for its many products. Apple and Nokia, have always made their chargers respectively the same. It’s helped Apple become a major player, as its whole line-up is compatible with the same charger made over 5 years ago.

On Tuesday February 17th, 2009, a historic landmark was agreed on where 17 of the largest cellphone makers including Samsung, Nokia and Motorola, decided to work together to make a universal standard charging system for cellphones by the year 2012. This system will be identical to the trapezoid-shaped microUSB format used by RIM’s most recent devices, the Bold, Storm and Pearl Flip. Unfortunately, this standard will likely be released in 2012—light years in my mind. Nonetheless, it’s better than nothing. Apple will likely stick its trusty charging standard that has proven golden over the years.

At first glance you might think, oh why would these big companies change things that have worked for them for so long? Well this is a completely valid question because, like cheap printers with their more expensive replacement ink cartridges, cell phones have expensive replacement charging cords that see huge revenue. At the beginning of the implementation, companies will see slightly lower revenues but it will be made up later with lower packaging and manufacturing costs. Instead, companies will sell charging cords separately so big companies like Nokia will now not need to include it in their phone packages. Since it will save costs, these companies will also reduce their greenhouse gas emissions from 21.8 million to 13.6 million tonnes per year, as well as cut energy consumption globally by 50%. 

This might not be the biggest news though because as technology progresses, we will see more and more demonstrations of wireless charging. When Palm unveiled its Pre smart phone, it also introduced the Touchstone wireless charging adapter. 

Excerpt from wiredathome.blogspot.com

The power cord has long been the enemy of many people around the world. You always had to place things according to where the plugs were or you’d have some cord running all across the room. Nobody really notices or thinks about the power cord once it’s being used and has found its place. However, if it could be thrown away, it would make a world of difference.  Now there is a solution to get rid of some of those plugs, wireless charging. To get things straight, this piece of technology won’t replace all of your plugs but is a huge step in the right direction to making the power cord obsolete. Currently there are two ways to wirelessly charge a device, and they are being offered by two different companies. WildCharge will start selling a conductive charging pad and eCoupled will offer an inductive laptop specific pad with a compatible notebook all by the end of 2008. Both companies will offer adapters at a range of $30. If you are the type to enjoy science, then you’ll probably be able to guess the difference in technologies between the two. Conductive charging passes electricity when two objects come in contact. Inductive charging happens when there is a physical gap between two objects.

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The big guys have flooded the industry include Canada Post, DHL, UPS, USPS, Purolator, and FedEx. They charge a hefty amount even if you use them directly and might not advertise all of their options—much like Rogers. I heard a horror story from a friend: he was getting charged $100/month with his Blackberry. His friend found a deal from Rogers that was not advertised and now he pays $60/month and gets more features. Now back to shipping. There are some websites that will help you compare different companies, with different options such as overnight or 2-day. This will help you easily save money on shipping, which is usually pretty pricey. They also make it easy find a rate, as they usually don’t initially ask for too much information. I remember that UPS had a huge form for me to fill out that would have taken at least ten minutes. 

For all of the websites I tried to ship from Markham, ON to Stamford, CT to keep the competition even as well as using the same package, a t-shirt from Xpress’d that was 200g.

ShipGooder

ShipGooder makes it pretty easy to find a rate, only asking for the start and end postal/zip code as well as the weight and number of packages. What I love about this form is that as soon as you’ve entered the postal/zip code, it will verify with you approximately what city it’s from. It’s a nice little touch that goes a long way. Once you’ve entered the information, a neat table will appear. It sorts things by cost and time frame. This is much better than other sites where they sort by companies, since it doesn’t make any sense at all if you’re just trying to save money.

One thing I dislike about ShipGooder, which also happens to be a huge damper, is the fact that when you’ve made a selection, it will take you to the respective shipping company and you’ll have to fill out the information again with more details. 

Shipping Sidekick

This site has a good tool, but it lacks in design. I initially thought the link to the shipping calculator was an ad because it was buried within more ads.

As you can see, even the link is pretty indescript, and doesn’t make you feel comfortable. The tool is not that bad and is lengthier than ShipGooder. The one problem is that it can only calculate a rate for within the U.S. but it gives you a link to a website that lets you ship internationally. For this site, to make it as accurate as possible, I chose to ship the package from Stamford, CT to Jacksonville, NC. ShippingSidekick has the same kind of setup as ShipGooder with a table to show the different rates. The difference between the two tables is ShippingSidekick colour codes the companies. One cool thing is that it sorts things by the date of delivery, though I’m not sure how accurate this is.

As you can see, it’s pretty ad heavy, which can get annoying—especially when you’re filling out the form. The great thing about this website is that there’s an option to print off the label directly on this site, as well as organize a pick-up location. The horrible thing is you’ll have to register as a user with its affiliate whom you’ll have to pay called eShipper. You’ll also have to input all the information again which is horrible.

Which Ones Better?

They have their benefits but they both make you input the information again and go through getting a new quote. It’s something so simple and should be implemented on these sites. I like the fact that ShipGooder is much simpler and works well for any country. It is quicker, cleaner, and possibly more reliable. In terms of price I believe ShipGooder wins because of the fact that ShippingSidekick package did not have to go through customs and is in US dollars. Therefore, those extra costs would probably put it over the $12.70 that ShipGooder charges.

Links

ShipGooder

ShippingSidekick

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Everyone knows that Microsoft Windows Vista is pretty slow, especially when you have all the add-ons but there are a few things you can do to help speed it up. 

Sidebar

The sidebar is nice and all, but do you really need another clock, an RSS feed or some random stock prices? Not really. So right click the sidebar, and click properties. At the top, uncheck start sidebar when Windows starts. At the next boot, you’ll get rid of the CPU draining sidebar.

Visual Effects

In the system properties box, (from Control Panel–>System & Maintenance–>System–>Change Settings. At this point click the Advanced tab and then the Settings button. From here, you can choose which parts of Vista’s visual effects you’d like to take off. I personally have only “Enable desktop composition” and “Use visual styles on windows and buttons “. 

Always remember to take out programs you don’t need, removing them from the start menu so they don’t load when your computer boots. If you go to Windows defender, you can change the start up programs so they don’t load at the beginning. Virus software should always be loaded, but not Windows Messenger. 

Hopefully these tips will help you speed up your computer and if you have any more to share then please feel free to comment away.

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I just got my hands on a new portable video camcorder called the Flip Video Ultra Series, made by Pure Digital. First off, I’ve got to say that it’s got some slick packaging—even in the interior; it definitely hyped up my enthusiasm for this product. One thing that struck me as a huge plus to this camcorder was its compact design compared to the heavy, chunky one we have that lasts only 30 minutes with the LCD screen out. This one could fit in your back pocket and be thrown around, though I would not recommend the latter.

Design

Without a doubt, this compact camcorder is not up to Sony standards—not even close. Everything is basically plastic and even the buttons look cheap. The buttons are easy to press and are placed where it makes sense. It’s simple enough, though, and the colour scheme is ultra modern. It has a nice curved shape that fits the palm of your hands well. The exterior case is easily worn down and I can already see marks within the first week and I’ve barely touched it.

Package Contents

This compact camcorder is unique because you can always attach it to a computer with the included USB stick that is neatly attached to its side. It also does not require any software as the software is built-in to the camcorder. The one thing that wasn’t up to standards was the mechanism that released the USB stick. On my first try I was able to easily release it, but the problem came about when I tried to put it back in. Seems that I didn’t pull the latch down far enough so it just snapped back making it impossible to flip the USB back in. After further trial and error, I finally figured that I had to pull the latch down to the bottom where it would sit there until the USB stick was pushed and the latch would close shut. 

USB Stick

Another thing that struck me as interesting, was the  “Lock/Unlock” switch located at the bottom of the camcorder. At first I thought it would apply to all the buttons, which seemed logical. I tested it, and it turns out that it only applies to the battery case. Now this is another cool thing about the Flip Video Ultra Series, the battery case placement. It took me a good five minutes to figure out where the battery case was and I had to resort to looking at the instructions to figure out where it was. This is a perfect discrete place to put it and makes the design even better. 

Battery Case

Last, but definitely not least is the power button. With all the stupid things I’ve done with this camcorder, I feel even more stupid writing this, but hey, I’m an honest guy, so what the heck. To me, I think it would be common sense to put a symbol beside the power button to tell users that it is in-fact the power button. When I first pulled down on it, I figured it would do something else, but to my surprise, it turned it on. The great thing is that it takes no less than two seconds to turn on. 

Video Quality

This is where the good times stop in my mind. In all fairness, I would be totally surprised if this machine was built for quality videos. It comes nowhere near that even at close range. If you are more than 5 metres away from the point of interest, forget about shooting the video. This camcorder is made for close ups like birthday parties or stuff like that. Please, do not expect to get good family vacation videos out of this while you are visiting some gorgeous landmark in Europe. The screen is small, but it does its job: fair enough. It displays only the needed information such as the amount of time left and the status of the camcorder. At my company meeting for Junior Achievement, we put together some videos of us packaging our product, from  Xpress’d so if you’d like to take a look at the actual quality then be my guest. If you’d like to buy a customized white t-shirt then just leave a comment or head to the website above.

Find more videos like this on Xpress’d

Don’t expect to get great zoom either because it only has a 2x digital zoom, which is the worst of the two (digital and optical). Optical is by far the best, and even I can notice the difference when I switch from optical to digital zoom on my digital camera. 

The Flip Video Ultra Series provides you with up to 60 minutes of video on its built-in flash memory depending on which size you get. The 1GB holds 30 minutes while the 2GB holds 60 minutes. Both versions of the Flip Video Ultra Series store the video on MPEG-4 at 30 frames per second—perfect for easy transers to your iPod. Some camcorders have the option to switch to a lower quality but I’m glad this doesn’t because the quality is poor to begin with. At least Pure Digital has improved on its last models as the memory has doubled, but the amount of video recording time has stayed the same meaning they’ve actually made the video quality better. 

Overall

Without a doubt, I can say that this product is great for spur of the moment videos that you might not have the chance to capture because you left your true, hardcore camcorder at home. The video quality is not that great but it gets the job done. It’s keeping up with trends by allowing you to upload your videos directly to AOL Video, MySpace, and of course YouTube. They even provide you with a TV connector to watch your videos instantly on your TV (although I don’t see a reason). For $149 USD, it’s a little pricey, yet not expensive enough to make it undesirable. If you feel you have anything to share and any critisicm to this post, please feel free to comment and share your thoughts. 

Package

Popularity: 6% [?]

Digital cameras have become better quality, cheaper and with more choice, it’s sometimes hard to choose which ones right for you. But in any case, more people have digital cameras and more people have the internet which is why there are more choices to edit your photos online, and for free. There are four sites that I highly recommend. Photoshop Express, Splashup, Picnik, and Fotoflexer.

Photoshop Express

Photoshop Express gives every user a fairly familiar interface. Some of the buttons from Photoshop are here, but only the basic ones such as touchup, resize and distort. They have just added a Beta Decoration tab which is nothing special at all. The reason I do like it though, is because of its huge and clean interface as well as the ability to save your photos in a library online. The drawback is you do have to make an account although you can take a test drive to see how it works. It doesn’t provide a quick job, as you have to sign in, but it’s one of the quicker sites to use.

Splashup

This site is new to me. I came across it while doing this review. I was surprised to see it uses the same core as Photoshop Express and that’s the new Adobe AIR. This lets websites work much faster and it shows on Splashup. The great thing about Splashup is it looks like a real piece of software as it has the toolbar on top with File, Edit, and so on. It also is heavily based on Photoshop as the layout is virtually the same. An interesting fact is that it is one of the only web editors that will allow you to select a portion of the image and apply an effect. Usually you have to apply the effect on the whole image. Splashup uses layers which is very helpful when you want to do some more creative stuff. The downside is it isn’t very intuitive, much like Photoshop. 

Picnik

PC World gave Picnik top marks but I’m not a total fan. Yes I admit that it is very intuitive and fun to go on, but it doesn’t have all the features I’d like it to have for what I normally do. To me it has very basic features except for it’s resizing tool which does a great job I must say. It’s much faster that what every other editer has and it does allow you to print, unlike any online editor I’ve seen. 

Fotoflexer

I’ve saved best for last, because that’s what I do. Fotoflexer I will say right off the bat is that it is slow. But it makes up for that in a massive amount of useful tools such as it’s form of magic wand as well as other unique tools. Surprisingly, Photoshop Express and Splashup which is heavily based on Photoshop, does not have. It has 34 effects and you can go in full-screen mode. You are allowed to upload more than one image at a time which is great for editing images heavily. The tools are seperated into different categories and the only problem I found with that, is it’s hard to figure out which one a tool may be in as you can only see one category at a time. 

What to download for Editing Photos for Free on Your  Desktop

If you want something special for your desktop that you’ll always have access to, I highly recommend Paint.Net. It’s free, offers a ton of tools comparable to Photoshop and it has a much friendlier interface, almost like a Mac. To download Paint.Net go to download.com. It is compatible with Microsoft Windows Vista and you can get it for Mac.

Popularity: 3% [?]