Category: Consumer Electronics

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Top 10 Unique Gifts for Mom this Mother’s Day 2017

Is your Mom into technology? Maybe a little on the geeky side? Well I tried to put together a list of 10 unique Mother’s day gifts that maybe your mom would enjoy. Scroll down and take a look. Don’t forget to check out the bonus gift.  (I made it!)

Fitbit Alta Fitness Tracker

For the health conscience or Mom on the go, the Fitbit Alta makes a great gift. Starting at $129, its a gift Mom will surely enjoy. My wife picked one of these up last year and wears it every day.

Don’t forget the extra bands!

 

Robot Vacuum Cleaner

Give Mom a break and let the robot do the cleaning  for her. Roomba has been around for quite a while and is my favorite robot vacuum. However so many other brands and styles have entered the market at various price ranges. The Roomba 650 pictured to the left is about $325.  If you click through this LINK you will see robot cleaners from $60 on up. Just read the reviews before you make a purchase. Especially if you have pets.

Continue reading “Top 10 Unique Gifts for Mom this Mother’s Day 2017”

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How to make a Nintendo NES controller USB flash drive.

This is a fun project that takes an old Nintendo NES controller and converts it into a cool USB drive that your friends will envy.

Time to build: 1 hours
Skill Level: Easy

Supplies:

A classic NES controller. Can be found on EBAY or at the bottom of your closet or in the basement.

 

Any USB drive extracted from its case. I used a 16gb drive for this project.

 

A USB extension cable. I found this one laying around the shop.

 

Continue reading “How to make a Nintendo NES controller USB flash drive.”

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Apple rumor mill churning out new iPhone for 10th Anniversary.

The iPhone will be celebrating its 10th birthday in June. Awe double digits already! It feels like only yesterday we were looking at the world through your 2.0 megapixel camera and gazing at your 320×480 display. If we were lucky an upgrade from the standard 4GB model to a mind blowing 16GB.

All joking aside, in my opinion the iPhone is one of the most revolutionary devices in modern times. The amount of computing power in such a small device would have been incomprehensible just a few decades ago.   Just think about it, roughly two-thirds of Americans are walking around with access to all the knowledge of the entire human race in their pockets.

What does Apple have in store for its 10th anniversary?

According to Bloomberg, Apple is preparing three phones for launch this fall, two will be the upgraded models of the current generation. (I would guess 7s & 7s Plus??) However the third is going to be something special, a so called best of the best iPhone and of course it will come with an alleged  higher price point.

Whats so special about the new phone?

According to Bloomberg’s sources, the new phone will be stainless-steel and will be about the same size of the current iPhone 7. However a new curved glass screen will have a minimal 4mm bezel and be almost as large as the 7 Plus.

If you can trust the tech drawing to the left it would appear that the front camera, sensors and ear piece are under the display. Also the home button /finger print scanner is hidden as well..

 

Speculated Features:

  • Front-facing Touch ID beneath the display.
  • 4mm bezels around the entire edge of the device.
  • 2.5D contoured glass on the front and back of the device surrounded by a metal frame.
  • Wireless charging.
  • Same dimensions as the iPhone 7.
  • 5.8″ OLED display.
  • “Invisible” front-facing camera hidden underneath the display.
  • Large power button featuring two points of contact.
  • New camera options including a dual camera system and different placements.

 What can we actually expect?

We can most likely expect more of the usual from Apple, they will announce issues implementing the new features and supply delays with the new phones at launch.  We will see a small group of die hard Apple fans waiting online to be the first with an iPhone 8 “10th Anniversary Edition” and the rest of us will just wait until they are back in stock. Don’t forget this iPhone will have the fastest processor yet with iOS 11.

Personally I hope Apple releases a “cool”  new device, it doesn’t have to be revolutionary like the original iPhone, but I do hope there is some new technology that will at least make the iPhone fun again.

Thanks for reading my blog
-Joe

 

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Turn On Your “Pi Hole” and say hello ad blocking on all your devices!

We are bombarded with Internet advertisements all day long. They have become such a part of the landscape most of us don’t even notice them anymore, let alone click on them. Marketers have become ever more clever to get noticed on both our desktops and mobile devices. This is when the advertisements become obnoxious! Pop-ups, video ads with auto-play, even adds on our mobile devices that are ridiculously intrusive and  hide the “X” to exit.

Enough is enough already!

This is where Pi Hole fits in! What is a Pi Hole you say? Think of the Pi Hole as an open source advertisement blocking network appliance for your entire home.  The developers of the Pi Hole software found an easy way to block most advertisements from displaying on all your devices. When you boil it down the Pi Hole is simply a DNS black list joined with the inexpensive Raspberry Pi computer. Continue reading “Turn On Your “Pi Hole” and say hello ad blocking on all your devices!”

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I guess its back to passwords for our smart phones!

I have enjoyed the convenience of simply placing my thumb or index finger on my iPhone’s finger print scanner and having the phone quickly unlock. Apple has convinced me and many of you that the fingerprint scanners are secure and almost impossible to hack.

Well the honeymoon is over folks. According to a new study published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics & Security researchers from Michigan State and NYU have created what they dub a “Master Fingerprint”. This new finger print composite was made by compiling patterns found in real fingerprints and is said to be able to unlock about 65% of phones. Continue reading “I guess its back to passwords for our smart phones!”

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How To Partially Cut The Cord With HDHR by Silicon Dust (Part 2 of 2)

In my previous post  “How To Partially Cut The Cord Part 1″ I explained the ease of reducing your cable bill by purchasing an HD Home Run from Silicon Dust. I have been a huge fan of their tuners for the last 10 years and in this post I’m going to give you an idea of how my setup works.

I am a Verizon Fios customer and subscribe to one of their silver packages. I have two HD Home Runs. The first is a dual tuner HDHR Connect $93.00 at Amazon and the second is an HDHR Prime $119 at Amazon.

TUNE IN – My tuners:
The HDHR Connect will allow you to tune 2 channels of unencrypted QAM or over the air digital TV. I am lucky since FIOS has all OTA channels in clear QAM on their line. The HDHR Prime has a Verizon supplied cable card (mcard) installed for $5.00/per month and can tune 3 channels of encrypted signals. This gives me a total of 5 tuners to play with.

WATCHING TV – Live:
Once the HDHR tuners are setup on your home network, you can easily stream HD content to a ton of devices. I have tested mine with a Windows 7 & Windows 10 pc, Android tablet, XBOX One, Amazon Fire Stick, and a Raspberry Pi 3 running Kodi. All are able to keep up with HD content over my wireless N network. Continue reading “How To Partially Cut The Cord With HDHR by Silicon Dust (Part 2 of 2)”

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How To Partially Cut The Cord With HDHR by Silicon Dust (Part 1 of 2)

In the United States the cable companies have close to a monopoly on the market. There is very little choice in which provider you can select and there is not much flexibility in the packages and equipment offered.

In recent years there has been a lot of talk about cutting the cord and tossing the cable company, but its harder than you may think. You could simply use OTA (over the air) antenna to receive the major broadcast networks, that’s providing you can still receive the digital signal. Maybe sign up for Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Sling TV, HBO GO, search the web for On Demand,  ETC. There are many digital providers to choose from but most don’t provide the full cable experience and offer every channel you may want to watch.

How can we reduce our cable bill while still maintaining the package of channels that we want to enjoy? EASY! Give all their equipment back! Don’t rent their DVR’s or cable boxes. If you currently have four TV’s and your providers equipment you are most likely paying over $40 per month for equipment rental, close to $500 a year. What if you could reduce that rental cost to $5 or $10 per month and a few one time charges to purchase your own equipment that you would OWN!

This little box called the HD Home Run (HDHR) Prime was one of the best investments I have made to reduce my cable TV costs without loosing programing. Continue reading “How To Partially Cut The Cord With HDHR by Silicon Dust (Part 1 of 2)”

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Ring Wi-Fi Enabled Doorbell Is A Real Ringer!

The Video doorbell by Ring has been on on the market for quite some time now. So I bet you’re wondering why I would blog about this now so late in the game. Well I treated myself to one for Christmas last year and here we are 5 months later and I am enjoying the doorbell very much!

$199 at Amazon.com

From the second I opened the box I could tell that the unit was very sturdy and built to handle the elements. The construction looked good and according to the manual installation was going to be a breeze. After letting the unit charge overnight and a brief setup pairing the Ring to my WiFi, I was able to mount it to my front door in under an hour. Since the device has an on board battery the unit can be installed with or without full time power. I decided to use the existing doorbell wire and indoor chime which was attached to a 20v AC transformer in my basement.

Ring comes in 4 colors to match your home – 2 types of brass, nickel and bronze. You can pick one up at Amazon for under $200.00

INSTALLATION
Mounting the doorbell was extremely easy. After removing the old doorbell simply attach the included mounting plate to your home with the included hardware. They even included the screwdriver and a handy level in the box. On the mounting plate there are two screw terminals for you to connect your existing bell wires. Since most doorbell transformers are AC the positioning (polarity) of the wires does not matter.

Now your ready to attach the Ring unit to the mounting plate. At the very bottom of the unit there are two “security” screws that need to be loosened first. No worries, once again the screwdriver is included. Next, slide the unit onto the bracket and tighten the screws to secure. If you chose to install the unit without external power keep your security screwdriver handy, you will need it to remove the ring for charging every 6 months or so.

Now its your turn to watch the UPS driver throw your Amazon packages, or freak out the Girl Scouts selling cookies! Remember you can add all your family members to the app so everyone can be on the lookout! Continue reading “Ring Wi-Fi Enabled Doorbell Is A Real Ringer!”

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