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Logo Gadgetize: January 2006

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» A Day With Kindle and a Free Kindle Book
» Too Good to Pass Up - Pen Spy Camera $25
» MicroSD Adapters for Cheap - $2 Delivered
» Is this a gadget? The PedEgg rules.
» Samsung Messager vs. Kyocera Lingo -- No Contest
» Intriguing 8GB Insignia Pilot Bluetooth Player - $100
» Almost Gone-- 24" Soyo DYLM24D6 $220 Shipped
» Loving Imageshack's Torrent Service
» Free Standalone File Recovery
» Inoi HV670 DVD/HDD Media Player for $80


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Thursday, January 12, 2006

Find the Culprit, Kill-a-Watt $34 Shipped

This seems like it'd be pretty fun, and maybe, just maybe, a little useful. Just put it between your appliance and the outlet, and it keeps track of your power usage.

I have some 220 that it won't help with, but still, I'm curious if the refrigerator uses as much as I read they do.

You can get the Kill-a-Watt for $34 delivered from Amazon.

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Wednesday, January 11, 2006

The Sonic Impact T-Amp: $30 Giant Killer?

This is one I missed altogether, and I really used to love audio equipment. Nevertheless, the somewhat belated buzz on the Sonic Impact T-Amp is that it is as good or better than amplifiers 100x the price? Unbelievable? Read the reviews, from everywhere. There are a couple linked from the product detail page.

I have already ordered one, looking forward to the sonic majesty.

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Tuesday, January 03, 2006

My Experience with Vongo

I went ahead and tried out Vongo today, a $9.95/month service for legally downloading and watching movies. You can watch as many movies as you like each month from their main selections, or download pay-per-view titles for 3.99. It also includes a live feed of the Starz! channel.

The software installation was simple, and as far as I can tell, the Vongo player and interface use Flash for pretty much everything. It worked smoothly, registration was trouble-free, but I decided to pass on the monthly until I could watch something. I would recommend Vongo make some kind of demo video available to test quality and convince people to sign up.

The selection of movies was a little slim, but I'd expect fast improvement here, so I wasn't too upset. There were 3 or 4 movies I definitely wanted to see right away. However, I was a little hesitant to sign up for the monthly service, thought I'd be watching 3 Ninjas before too long.

I went with a pay-per-view so I could find out, and I watched Infernal Affairs. Not bad except I hate dubbed movies. The download process took less than 20 minutes on my cable modem, which was surprisingly good I thought. The player worked nicely, the quality of static screens was excellent, and looked great full screen on my projector.

So far, so good. But the movie I watched had a lot of horizontal panning. Either the codec itself, or the quality of the encoding led to a fairly jittery sideways pan. My computer was far beyond the minimum requirements, so I don't believe the problem was on my end. To me it was extremely distracting, enough so that unless something changes, I wouldn't watch again. I did finish the movie, but I was aware of the problem all the way through.

Again, it could have been that specific movie, but without some demonstration video to show off the codec without paying, I am left with the impression that the service is a very slick one, with a very attractive price level, but also with a slight quality problem that makes it unacceptable for me.

On the positive side, if there were a few more movies and the quality improved a little, I would subscribe without hesitation.

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