The Savvy Life

I am not the kind of person who carries photos of people around with me. Just for the record, I’m also not the kind of person who has photos of my car in my wallet. I have two pictures up at my desk of friends, and I even feel weird about that because it seems obsessive. Why those friends? Are they particularly close to me or did I just put them up so people at work don’t think I’m a loner psycho? Well, if I ever decide to carry photos with me there is a new gadget that will make my life easier. No more stuffing photos in my already stuffed wallet. Digital Foci Pocket Album is a keychain with a 1.5″ LCD screen which holds up to 74 pictures (8 MB storage). Luckily I don’t have that many nieces and nephews… I think. It has been awhile since I counted. If I did though, I would be set. For $39.95, it seems like a pretty decent device to me. Especially since it can also act like a watch. It is charged via USB for extra convenience.

Speaking of high tech pictures, the eStarling E-Mail Enabled Wi-Fi Photo Frame at ThinkGeek is a wireless digital frame that can take pictures from Flickr feeds or receive pictures emailed to it from outside sources. Can’t wait to see the spam that will start to appear on these frames! Oh, not to worry, the frame can be set up to receive pictures from specified email addresses. This is a pricey gadget costing between $149.99 and $269.99 representing three different models with different resolutions.

A little secret about me, I really love steampunk kind of stuff, yet Target doesn’t really sell steampunk designs. Yet. Instead of shaking my fist angrily at the sky I can shell out $59.95 for the Lightning Alarm Clock from Physlink. Instead of an annoying beeping noise, the clock supposedly wakes the sleeper through electrical buzzing. I don’t know if I would necessarily trust it to wake me up on those dark cold winter mornings, but it looks so dang cool!

Flavor injected meat is both moist and delicious. Injecting the flavor can be a real pain though and if the meat is being basted, it involves opening up the oven door which means huge fluctuations in the temperature of the cooking environment. The Spice Seasoner found over at Solutions.com does the tedious work in the oven. Fill it with the oil and flavors, push it into the meat, and let the heat of the oven do all the work. This is a stainless steel device with a very reasonable price tag of $14.95.
Replug is a brilliant little device that I think will be part of a revolution of wired technology. This particular gadget is designed for audio plugs. The male connector slides into the audio jack of your device and then the other end where you would plug in your earphones connects to the first part magnetically. When force is exerted upon the connection, it pulls way from the device without straining the plug or jack. The Replug is not yet for sale, but will be soon, according to the website.

Wait.  Is it Thursday already?  But I just wrote a Gadget Thursday post last week?  Time keeps on slipping, slipping into the future.  The Savvy Life is not meant to be just a gadget blog but I seem to forget to write about the other aspects of The Savvy Life.

Okay, enough with excuses let’s take a look at what I think are some of the better gadgets that came along in the last week.

Power is attractive.  Or so I am often led to believe by television and movies.  Maybe this is why I am enthralled with the 400-watt Power Dome EX.  For $159.99 The Power Dome EX is a portable generator.  The stats on this device are impressive.  2 AC outlets and 1 DC, 260 PSI air compressor, 600 amp jump starter for cars, and a high intensity LED light.  The Power Dome gets its power from a rechargeable high grade sealed lead acid battery.

While we are on the topic of power, when was the last update to the power outlets in our homes?  I suspect the bold move from two prong outlets to three prong outlets was the last innovation and seeing that a lot of apartments here in Chicago still have just two prong outlets, this necessary innovation still hasn’t reached everyone.  Due to this, the following technological miracle will probably take some time to become a common feature in homes across America.  Luckily we can buy it.  I’m talking about the 360 Electrical Outlet, of course.  As more of our plug in devices have power adapters that tend to be bulky, plugging them into the standard wall outlet usually means losing both receptacles.  The 360 Electrical Outlet rotates and locks into 18 different positions to allow the bulky item to be rotated away from the second receptacle.

I’ll wrap up this Gadget Thursday with what I consider to be one of the most clever devices to come along in awhile.  Okay, it isn’t a new idea, it is just a simplified idea.  The Simple 9-Volt Battery Flashlight is just a LED contraption that clips on the end of a 9-volt battery, turning it into a mini-flashlight.

I rarely need a full blown flashlight and would really hate to have to carry one in my bag of necessary items.  This sucker would fit right in with my tin of Altoids, cellphone, mp3 player, camera, pens, and notebooks.  Maybe I could even use it to light up the inside of my bag when I seem to be unable to find a single pen of the twelve I should have inside that abyss.  Sorry, that is just a personal problem.  This mini-light looks functional, convenient, and runs off those batteries you find in that round device in your home that beeps when you cook.

I almost forgot again. Is it self sabotage? Maybe. But here I am after enjoying a few drinks to celebrate “Talk Like a Pirate Day” sitting down and writing the Gadget Thursday entry.

No, I won’t pepper my writing with piratey talk… I think I got most of that out of my system today.

I want to start off with the Power-Failure Light from Hammacher Schlemmer. Not sexy, I know, but I love the ultra-practical aspect of this device that connects between the light socket and the bulb of any standard lamp. When the power fails, the six LEDs provide up to 8 hours of light. But wait… there’s more. If you are like me, you may have a few questions… does the lamp have to be turned on at the time of the power failure? Sadly, the description doesn’t make that clear. I am not sure how it knows the difference between a power-outage and just turning the light off. What is good is it is powered by built in rechargeable batteries that recharge when the lamp is turned on. Additionally, a photosensitive cell won’t light up the LEDs if there is enough light in the room. I do think this is a good idea, and the worst case scenario is when the power goes out, a person would have to fumble over to the lamp and turn on the backup light.

Going back to the Hammacher Schlemmer well, I found myself enthralled with the ultra modern Wall-Mounted Digital Scale and Clock. The scale transmits the weight to the display on the wall and when the cook is done with the scale, he can hang it over the top of the display and have a clock in the kitchen. I live in an apartment with a rather small kitchen. Counter space is a premium so this device gives me not only a wall clock, something every kitchen needs, but also a scale that doesn’t take up that precious counter space.

Okay, time to get away from Hammacher Schlemmer. I can’t say, despite the fact that I just fawned over two of their items that I am a huge fan of their overall collection of items. To cleanse the Hammacher Schlemmer taste from my mouth, I need to visit good ol’ reliable ThinkGeek and thank goodness I did or else I might have missed one of my favorite things… gadgets in a case.

ThinkGeek is offering a USB Podcast Studio in a box. This includes a 19mm internal shock mounted diaphragm with cardioid pick up pattern with a desktop mic stand and some software that I don’t know anything about. I’m an Audicity fan myself. Did I mention the case? It all comes in a case. Look at the picture? How can you not want to have something that comes in its own case? I know I can’t resist it!

I’ve been debating how to cover technology in this blog. So many other blogs cover the release of every TV, cellphone, and automatic ear cleaners that no one needs yet another blog pointing to the same gadgets. Additionally, I don’t have the time or desire to watch for each and every gadget that is released. Yet, I do enjoy a good gadget and there are gadgets that fit into the core theme of this blog: luxury, pleasure, and efficiency.

Using that as a guideline and instead of writing about each gadget as I discover, I figured I’d sort through the weeks of gadget news and filter out only those gadgets that meet the criteria of luxury, pleasure, and efficiency while being unique.

To begin Gadget Thursday, let’s look at something that is most likely out of the price range of many of us, but will go on our wish lists for when we finally hit it big. The contemporary arcade table at Surface Tension is beautiful yet fun. The table runs Windows XP and has an arcade emulator. The surface is slightly opaque so the LCD screen can’t be seen unless it is turned on. From the table, you can surf the web, use iTunes, and play classic arcade games. Or you can fold it up and pretend you are a respectable member of society. This table is ideal for the closet geek.

For the coffee lover who is only brewing coffee for one, Tassimo has struck a deal with Starbucks to make available four blends of coffee for the popular single serving brewing appliance. I will accept the argument that not everyone loves Starbucks coffee so this deal doesn’t mean too much, but I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that if Starbucks begins to carry the Tassimo machines in their retail locations, the single serving coffee market is going to blossom. As it is, coffee comes to us only from cafes or our own coffeepots and when we make it ourselves, brewing a small amount seems like too much effort. Tassimo gives us just one cup with little effort.

For those who enjoy reading in bed or just having some extra light while in bed but maybe live in an apartment and can’t wire a light over the headboard, there is the wireless OverBed Dual LED Lamp. I’m personally rather excited by this because while I like my stylish Target bedside lamp, it really isn’t great for reading while in bed. The OverBed lamp offers two dimmable LED lamps on tracks for easy adjustment.

If you come across any handy gadgets that provide luxury, pleasure, or efficiency I’d love to hear about them

Camping to me is one of those oddly satisfying activities for me. Camping for me is about switching out my stressors. Instead of getting all worked up over traffic or the ringing phone, I get worked up over whether I’ve set the tent up correctly to protect against rain or whether I’ve secured the cooler to the racoons can’t get at it. Camping is not stressless, but since it has completely different types of stress, it is refreshing.

I once spent three hours trying to get a fire going. There weren’t other options. It isn’t like I could just stop and use a different method. I had a small bic lighter, a few scrap pieces of paper, paper towels, toilet paper, and bits and pieces of almost dry wood scrounged from the forest floor. Making this fire was the task I had to accomplish if I wanted warmth and food. When I had finally hit upon the right combination of tinder and blowing and those little orange flames spiked up over the kindling I had chopped from the logs I purchased, I had a real sense of accomplishment. I had achieved something of undeniable value.

I know a few of you are saying, “Wait a minute, this blog supposed to be about urban living.” It is, but sometimes an urban dweller like myself heads for the woods and sets up camp to get away from the rat race. Getting away does mean leaving behind a lot of specific luxuries.

I choose to cut off the internet and television. No movies, either. When I was in high school, I was in a science class that took us from Montana to Idaho, Washington, and Oregon where we spent a lot of time camping. One of the rules we had to follow was no radios, cassette players (cds were just coming out), or any other device of that nature. If we could play a musical instrument, that was fine. I still follow these rules, sort of. I usually camp by myself, but I try not to replicate what I could just do at home. The whole point is to experience the world in a different way.

This does not mean that I go out into the woods to be miserable. Camping gear is improving to the point that camping really can be an escape from the ordinary. When it comes to tents and you are an urban dweller with some needs for urban luxury like light, ventilation, and iPod recharger, then you should consider the N!Ergy Tent from Eureka! It sports the E! Power system which provides 12-volt outlets for your powered gear.

For the foodies, camping provides some fun obstacles, but Coleman assists with tools that will turn your campsite into a top notch bistro. I covet the Coleman Pack-Away(tm) Kitchen. After spending time trying to prep food on a board wrapped in aluminum foil sitting on the ground, I look at this glorious set up and dream of hamburgers without dirt. Sometimes you are lucky enough to have a picnic table to use in your food preparation, but I know I tend to use the picnic table as the general storage area until it is time to eat.

The one luxury I refuse to go without when camping is coffee. I like rustic coffee, so I don’t mind the old camp pot hung over the fire percolating and brewing into a thick sludge. That’s just me though. Coleman understands that normal people like good coffee and to that end have provided the perfect camping accessory, the Coleman French Press.

This isn’t all though. PCMagazine has an article called 10 Must-Have Gadgets for the Great Outdoors. I call BS on the Must-Have part of that title, but some of these items are nifty. One of those items is the Wavebox, a portable microwave. I may scoff at those people who want to bring their portable DVD players, but I am in awe of those people who have a portable microwave. It is tantalizing imagining the multitude of cooking options this clever device provides.

One of the downsides of camping is trying to keep those foods which require refrigeration as cold as possible. Gadgetry is not a match for physics. Beore packing the food, make sure it has been refrigerated. Don’t expect to the cooler to do the work of the refrigerator. Additionally, don’t use ice. Ice creates liquid water which becomes a medium for cross contamination. Use icepacks and bottles of water that have been frozen to create the cold environment you need. Put those items that will be grabbed immediately on top and those items that will be used later all the way to the bottom. Insulation is the camper’s friend. A layer of newspapers laid on top of the cooler after it has been packed but before it has been closed will help keep the cold air trapped inside when the cooler gets opened.

If you do go camping and have special tips and tricks you’d like to share, please leave them in the comments section.

When I was in college, I ran an information simulation as a way to illustrate the concept of information overload. This simulation was regarding how governments handle world events and why, even with vast resources available to them, governments lose track of secondary critical issues. The same thing happens in our personal lives as well. We have so much information coming at us at such a steady pace that it becomes remarkably easy to lose track of things we have stated are important to us. Even the information on how to use the tools that we use to manage our information keeps changing and updating.

I’m currently working on a ‘life’ project I am calling Time Dissection where in I hope to manage how I spend my time better to optimize fun and work more efficiently. As part of this effort I have been exploring ways of creating a tickler system to help me stay in contact with friends and family. I have a habit of letting weeks go by without contacting people.

I found this article, Manage Your Personal Data Flow, to be an interesting combination of these two concepts. Here is a way of keeping track of information without occupying mindspace with information not needed at the moment and time-shift it to when it is needed.

Consistently getting the right information when you need it — but not before — is a huge time saver and career enhancer. We spend scads of time hunting for information, which wastes time and energy. Sometimes we can’t find information just when we need it, which makes us look unprepared and ill-informed.

I’ve often relied upon sticky notes to keep track of my random information, but the reality is at a certain point, I have have a huge pile of sticky notes that I keep saying I’m going to ‘digitize’ but never do because I don’t have the time.  The article does a good job of presenting a wide variety of tools to use and suggestions in ways to use them to manage information flow.

I will never forget the dull mundane details, like whether or not I need to go to work.  And I won’t forget the major things like important work deadlines.  I will forget the secondary but important things like birthdays of people important to me, grocery lists, oil changes for my car, and dentist appointments made six months ago.  Yes, I know, some of this stuff is supposed to go on your calendar, but I don’t have a unified calendar as I like to keep my personal things off of the corporate systems.

If you have any other methods of managing information flow that don’t include ‘ignoring it’, I’d love to hear about it.

The concept of The Savvy Life is to promote a lifestyle of luxury, pleasure, and efficiency. There is a lot of vagueness and leeway in those terms that pretty much allows this blog to explore pretty much every fascinating bauble out there in the wide world. One of the parameters I set for myself is not to go head-to-head with gadget sites because they have much more experience and resources to effectively review cellphones and the like.

A recent rant over at Gizmodo gave me a bit of joy and I want to point everyone to Horseshoes and Hand Grenades: Joel Johnson Returns…to Spank Us All for Supporting Crap. This is one of those rants that I think everyone should be required to read before plopping down hundreds upon hundreds of dollars for consumer electronic gear as it hits the market. Every person who even considered utilizing eBay to buy a device that just hit the market because it sold out at Best Buy should be strapped into a chair like in A Clockwork Orange and have this rant read to them.

Stop buying broken products and then shrugging your shoulders when it doesn’t do what it is supposed to. Stop buying products that serve any other master than you. Use older stuff that works. Make it yourself. Only buy new stuff from companies that have proven themselves good servants of their customers in the past. Complaining online about this stuff helps, but really, just stop buying it.

Brilliant simply brilliant. Of course I say this as a relatively conservative shopper. I am not a luddite by any means but I haven’t purchased a new cellphone in two years. By focusing on luxury, pleasure, efficiency, I tend to not want to struggle with my technology. I’m willing to read a well-written manual for a complex piece of equipment, but little more. If I have to worry about making sure I’ve got the latest firmware on my toaster, I have to question if that toaster is providing the proper luxury, pleasure, and efficiency that it should.

Everyone who owns an iPod or associates with someone who owns an iPod knows that the built in battery is less than ideal. I’ve heard they’ve improved but this still might be valuable knowledge. I came across this at Lifehacker.com: How to replace your iPod’s battery.

Although surgery on your beloved iPod may seem horrifying, it’s actually a pretty simple procedure. The video shows you how to open the casing, pop out the old battery and swap in a new one, all without leaving a scratch on your precious.

The blog entry over there links to video that demonstrates how to replace the iPod battery. If it is the difference between owning a brick and cracking the case, I think we can all agree we might as well crack the case.

February 14th is sneaking up on us and it seems a box of chocolates and a cute card are no longer acceptable as Valentine’s Day gifts. If I were to believe the radio ads, there is only one acceptable gift on Valentine’s Day… jewelry. The funny thing is none of the commercials seem to urge women to buy gifts for men. I’ll save that observation for a rant for a different day.

If jewelry isn’t up your alley or up the alley of the person of your affection, then you may be interested in these Five Picks for High-Tech Love.

Digital Jane Austen

Face it, men, on Valentine’s Day there is exactly one great film: Pride and Prejudice.

As nice as she acts during supposedly great films like Citizen Kane, The Godfather and The Departed, there is simply nothing to compare on this special day to Mr. Darcy and his ego issues.

This is not news. What is news is that finally, great gal-friendly movies are now available for download.

No more messy discs and battling players — direct-from-the-Web movies ($5.95) have gone mainstream.

Words of warning: You will be paying top dollar per film — almost six bucks.

These are great suggestions, but for the sake of everything you hold dear, do not forget the roses, box of chocolate, and that really cute card with the little boy and little girl holding hands in a field of wildflowers that says, “I wuv you!”