No home should be without an emergency radio of some kind to use in times of crisis. These small, self powered, portable emergency radios are also great to take along on camping trips and to keep in the car in the winter in case of trouble. This side by side comparison of several popular emergency radios is intended to help the reader make a reasonable and informed choice when shopping for an emergency radio for the home.
Leave it to the guys over at Samson Electronics to come out with a new twist on digital audio recording technology. I am a big fan of the other Zoom digital audio recorders such as the Zoom H4n, as many other music educators are as well, but they now have released a new hybrid unit into the marketplace known as the Zoom Q3. The twist is that this little unit not only records stereo audio, but it has a built in video camera to record video with at the same time. At first glance I was kind of confused as it didn’t make much sense to me, but then I saw the potential applications of having both things available in one compact place. Imagine throwing this thing on a tripod during a marching band rehearsal to not only record the audio but also the video at the same time. A director could easily use the same thing in a classroom to record himself conducting while still getting high quality stereo audio at the same time.
I have not held a unit in my own hands yet to try it, so part of me wonders how this would be any better than a traditional video camera or one of the popular Flip video cameras, but the ads I have seen say that it uses the same microphones as the H4n so my guess would be that you are probably buying the unit for the audio more than the video. It only records in 640×480 pixel resolution which is perfect for putting on YouTube but lousy for anything that you might want to save on to DVD or watch on a larger TV screen.
The form factor seems to be a bit of a step back from the stylish solid feel of the H4n, and the lack of many buttons on the unit makes me wonder how hard it will be to quickly adjust the settings on the unit. Still, I will have to wait until I see it in person to make a real judgment call. Also the 2GB SD card seems downright puny for recording video and stereo audio at the same time. Still, all of the other portable digital audio recorders from Zoom have been really good, so I hope that this one follows suit. If anyone has actually had a chance to try out the Zoom Q3 Digital Audio and Video Recorder please leave a comment and let us know what you think!
Last year I had a near catastrophy at work. I am a school teacher that travels from building to building as a part of my teaching duties and I carry a laptop around with me. The students use it on a regular basis to record themselves playing their instruments and to use a program called SmartMusic Studio. One day a student forgot to remove the microphone from her instrument and in her joy of finally passing the song she turned and pulled the laptop off the top of the piano and onto the floor. The laptop survived but just barely.
A few months later I found a product called the Replug Break Away Audio Cable Connector that is essentially a magnetic break away audio plug that works with any existing 3.5mm headphone jack. Simply take your headphone (or microphone) cable from your laptop, iPhone, or MP3 player and plug in the Replug between the headphones and the device. If you walk too far away and start to bend or pull too hard on the connection the magnet breaks away and prevents the cable from snapping its contacts or from breaking the internal connections inside the deviceFor the laptop example it probably would have prevented it being pulled onto the floor altogether, as it would have snapped off when the student walked away from the laptop. I was lucky that the laptop survived, but it could have just as easily broken the microphone port as well. The Replug sounds like a great idea and it is priced very conservatively at around $9 on Amazon and comes in both black or white.
Batteries may be on their way out. In case you have not heard new kinds of energy storage devices called supercapacitors are making their way into many different consumer electronics. The difference between normal batteries and supercapacitors is that while a battery takes several hours to recharge a supercapacitor takes just a couple of minutes. Ultracapacitors can take only seconds to recharge, even from a completely dead state.
The first real blog post I made here on Gadgets Gizmos and Other Good Stuff was on the Light For Life, an ultracapacitor LED tactical grade flashlight that charges in just 90 seconds and is aimed at the police and fire market. Normal everyday people can still buy the thing, but as of the time of writing this article they are so back ordered that they have temporarily stopped allowing people to order them. Apparently the high price tag ($170) did not phase too many would be buyers.
Now, I am seeing many more supercapacitor and ultracapacitor powered devices coming on the market. I might personally have to go and order an Ecolight Solar Rechargeable Flashlight. It’s not as powerful or as fast to charge as the Light for Life, but it still puts out 50 lumens, and charges in four minutes when plugged in or in one hour if using the solar panels that are built into it.
For another cool little ultracapacitor powered gadget I see that Coleman has come out with the Flashcell Cordless Screwdriver. This one charges in just 90 seconds and has a lifetime of over 500,000 charges! Very cool, if only I could figure out how to keep from losing the stupid driver bits…
When we first got our Wii all we had was the good old Wii Sports game and Wii Music. The kids rather quickly got tired of Wii Music but Wii Sports has stuck with us for over a year and is still a popular game with our four kids. When I heard that Wii Sports Resort had been released I decided that I had to go out and get it despite the rather high cost of ownership.
For those unfamiliar with Wii Sports Resort it includes twelve different games ranging from classics like a souped up version of the old bowling game to more unique titles like wakeboarding, archery, and fencing. Each of the games is well rendered, with easy enough rules even for my three year old to figure out how to play. My only problem with the game is the price tag. Not the $50 for the game (many popular Nintendo titles seem to start out at that price level) but with the required additional controllers that you have to buy to play the games. Wii Sports Resort uses a new enhanced motion detection accessory called the Wii Motion Plus. It attaches to the end of the Wii remote and comes with a special extended length jacket to put the remote in. The big problem is that each remote needs a Wii Motion Plus, and each adaptor costs an additional $20 (the game ships with one included). If a friend comes over to play and brings his remote it will not work unless he also has a Wii Motion Plus to go with it. In another bit of annoyance for certain games (like Mario Cart) you have to take the Wii Motion Plus off if you want to use a steering wheel or if your hands are too small to be comfortable (such as with small children). Removing and reinstalling the Wii Motion Plus is relatively easy, but it is still an annoyance due to the special effort you have to make to get the thing in and out of the new, longer jacket.
Overall though, I can’t complain about the games. Even the old games like bowling are definately enhanced with the new controller. My three year old who used to bowl 270 now gets a more reasonable 100 or so. In the end, if you can afford to invest $70 for the game and two controllers then Wii Sports Resort is a resonable buy for the amount of game play involved and will provide your family with hours of interactive entertainment. Would I buy it again, sure,
Nikon Coolpix S1000pj Digital Camera and Video Projector
If you are in the market for a new digital camera take a moment to check out the new Nikon Coolpix S1000pj Digital Camera / Projector
for something totally new and exciting. More than just an ordinary 12 megapixel camera, the Coolpix S1000pj includes a built in video projector for projecting both images and videos onto a wall or any other white surface. Imagine taking pictures at a family event or at a game and taking them home to instantly display them just by pointing the camera at a blank wall!
This thing just sounds so cool to me. Not too long ago I remember reading about a new pocket sized video projector called the Optima EP-PK-101 Pocket Projector and was drooling over it as well, but the Nikon combines two often used devices into one in a way that makes sense. No idea if it can take the output from a laptop or the composite video from my iPhone and throw it up on a screen or not, but if it does I think I am going to have to take a real close look at it as a potential purchase for me in the classroom. I am always frustrated with having to carry so many different devices with me when I move from school to school (or room to room) during the week. Having a projector wrapped up into something as tiny as a camera (and having the digital camera available to boot!) would be a very nice device to have.
The Nikon Coolpix S1000pj camera/projector will ship in September of 2009.
I just heard about this one while listening to the Giz Wiz podcast over at Leo Laporte’s Twit.tv podcasting site. This new flashlight from a company called 511Tactical uses a new kind of power storage technology called an ultra-capacitor. Essentially it is a battery, but a battery that charges incredibly fast and does not “leak” energy during storage. The company claims that the flashlight can be charged in under two minutes and can run for up to two hours on it’s lowest setting or 15 minutes on it’s super bright setting.
The flashlight is obviously geared toward the police and fire department market, but it is receiving a lot of press and interest from consumers as well. At the time of the writing of this blog post the backorder ship date was already four months out. I would love to get one of these, but at $170 it is more a luxury item at the moment.
New Gadgets | admin | 
October 31, 2009 8:40 pm | 
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Last year I had a near catastrophy at work. I am a school teacher that travels from building to building as a part of my teaching duties and I carry a laptop around with me. The students use it on a regular basis to record themselves playing their instruments and to use a program called SmartMusic Studio. One day a student forgot to remove the microphone from her instrument and in her joy of finally passing the song she turned and pulled the laptop off the top of the piano and onto the floor. The laptop survived but just barely.
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