A Few Cool New Tech Products
Apr 11, 2013 tech
Tonight I attended a consumer tech show with a ‘70s sitcom theme, complete with Shirley Jones of The Partridge Family.
But as cool as it was running into one of my favorite TV stars, I was there to see the gadgets.
The Wi-Fi Smart Thermostat from Honeywell, coming out in May, can be controlled from your Android or iPhone device via a free app. It also learns how fast (or in our case, slow) it takes to heat or cool your house, so that if you set it to be a certain temperature at a certain time it will know what it has to do to get there.
Plus, it can change its display background color to match the color of your wall.
TiVo has come a long way since I bought one in 1999. It was a game-changer for me, since I used to juggle dozens of videotapes trying to keep all of my shows straight. It’s paving the way again with exciting products like the Premiere XL4, which can record four different channels at once onto its two terabyte (!) hard drive. It also gives you access to your Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube accounts, plus a few more.
The TiVo Mini connects to a DVR-less TV and can access live TV and the shows recorded on your four-channel TiVo. You can connect two TiVo Minis to a four-channel TiVo, giving you access to your shows on three different TVs total!
The TiVo Stream lets you stream up to four shows at once to four different devices connected to your home network. And if you want to watch your recorded shows away from home? You can transfer them wirelessly to your device and watch on a plane, in a car, or anywhere else! Another game changer from TiVo.
The dropcam (available now) is my dream come true for catching whoever has been leaving garbage all over our stoop. This small, light camera connects to your home Wi-Fi and can stream a live image (for no monthly charge), including audio, to smartphones, tablets, and computers. You can even talk back, making it ideal as a baby or pet monitor.
And if you want to record what’s happening? The dropcam will save seven days of video on its secure cloud storage service for $9.95 a month or thirty days of video for $29.95 a month.
It can even send you alerts when it detects motion or loud noises, and automatically switches to night vision mode when it gets dark. It can rest on its stand, or be mounted several different ways.
Those were my favorites! I’ll be back with more in-depth reviews as soon as I can get my hands on them.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: dropcam, Honeywell, Pepcom, Shirley Jones, Tivo
Using Windows 8 Without A Touchscreen
Feb 8, 2013 tech
Initially I wasn’t sure if I should upgrade my Sony Vaio Z laptop to Windows 8. It doesn’t have a touchscreen, and Windows 8 was designed primarily for touchscreens. However, since I have a Windows Phone and will be getting a Surface tablet next week, I decided to give Windows 8 a try, to keep things uniform across all of my devices.
What I’ve found is that you can do many of the same gestures with your mouse touch pad that you could do with a touch screen. You can see a demonstration in the video below, but here’s a quick cheat-sheet.
Please note, you may need to change your mouse settings to get the most out of Windows 8. Go to your Control Panel, search for “mouse” and click on “change mouse settings.” Go to the Synaptics Device Manager. If you don’t have Synaptics downloaded, go do that – whether you’re using Windows 8 or not, it will probably give you better control over your mouse pad. (If your computer doesn’t use a Synaptics touchpad – or it’s too old to support multi-touch gestures, I can’t help you; you’ll have to talk to someone who knows more about computers than I do.)
Click on “settings” and check the following boxes:
Some of the gestures listed below involve starting your finger swipe from outside of the touchpad. What I mean by that is, place your finger about half an inch or an inch outside of the touchpad, and then swipe in towards the middle.
These gestures may take a little getting used to, and you may also go through a period where you make them accidentally. Keep at it – it will be second nature in no time, and you’ll be flying through screens in a way you couldn’t before.
For the purposes of Windows 8 gestures, everything open in Desktop mode (the old-school way to open programs) is treated as a single “app.”
Windows 8 TouchPad Cheat Sheet
To access the Windows 8 Start Screen, place your mouse pointer in the bottom left corner of your screen, and click on the little Start Screen when it pops up.
To go back to the last open app used, do the same as above.
To see all open apps, place your mouse pointer in the bottom left corner of your screen, and after the little Start Screen pops up, swipe straight up.
From there, you can click on an app to maximize it, right click it to maximize it or close it, or drag it to the main window.
To switch between all open apps, swipe from outside of the left side of the touch pad, in towards the center. Doing this multiple times will keep switching between all open apps.
To access the Charm Screen (search, share, start, etc.), swipe from outside of the right side of the touch pad, in towards the center. Repeat to close Charm Screen, or tap in main window. Or, place your mouse pointer in the bottom right corner of your screen.
To access hidden menus in apps, swipe from outside of the top of the touch pad, down towards the center. Repeat to close menu, or tap in main window.
To close an app, place your mouse pointer at the top of the screen (it will turn into a hand), hold down the left click button, and drag the app all the way down to the bottom of the screen.
I’m sure there are many more gestures than that – if you know of any, please leave them in the comments.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: touchscreen, Windows 8
My favorite Windows Phone Apps
Jan 30, 2013 tech
I’ve been using my HTC 8X Windows Phone for over a month now, and I’ve been exploring new apps and settling in to my favorites. I’ve changed my start screen a bit since I first posted it, and it just keeps getting better and better.
Now, I don’t do New Year’s resolutions officially, because if I screw up on January 3rd I feel like that gives me permission to screw up for another 362 days. But January is a good time to get organized. So, from getting me out the door on time to getting me ready for my next half marathon (less than a month away!) to helping me work while on the go, my phone has been really great.
Of course, I’m also addicted to Wordament, which is a glorious time suck, but that was bound to happen.
Organization
My days run on alarms. I love that I can set as many recurring alarms as I want, and label them however I want. I use the built in alarm app on my phone to keep things running smoothly. And while my husband laughs at the number of alarms I use (I currently have 15 switched on), I have never forgotten to pick the kids up. :-) [included]
I’ve been a LastPass user for a really long time, and there’s no way I’d be able to remember all those passwords while I’m out and about. Luckily, I can take LastPass with me wherever I go. And since the app is password protected, I don’t have to worry about what happens if I lose my phone. [free]
OneNote is my favorite feature of Office. I use it for everything, from keeping track of projects to recipes and lists. And since I sync OneNote over SkyDrive, everything I have on OneNote on my computer is synced to my phone. And since my grocery list is the OneNote page that I go to most often, I’ve pinned it to my start screen as a tile. [included]
So I mentioned SkyDrive up there? OneNote isn’t the only thing I have synced over SkyDrive. Everything I’m working on at any given time is on there, and I can get to it all from my phone. Word docs, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, pictures…it’s all there. [included]
So technically Find My Phone isn’t an app, it’s a feature on the WindowsPhone site. But if you’ve ever lost your phone in your house when the ringer is off, you’ll appreciate that this exists.
Social/Work
Pinning individual people as tiles is the best thing ever. All of their contact info is right there in one place, along with a history of your communications. Makes it easy to keep tabs on them. I mean, uh, contact them. [included]
Rowi is my favorite twitter app of all time. I’m on twitter a lot, and I don’t want to wait to catch up when I get home, so I stay connected while I’m out. The notifications are very clear on the tile, and are more accurate than any other twitter app I’ve used on any phone or OS.
I have my own little sub-blog of pictures and videos, and I can easily update it any time I want with the WordPress app. If I snap a picture and do a quick post without internet, like on the subway, I can save the draft to my phone and post it when I get back to the street. [free]
I take lots of pictures with my phone, and if I need to fix something I don’t want to wait until I get to a computer. I want to fix it right away and post it using the WordPress app! Fhotoroom can manipulate your images in a gazillion ways, and can even be used as a timer when you take pictures and for quick settings. [free]
I record so many things on Voice Recorder it’s ridiculous. From interviews to reminders to myself, I whip this app out several times a day. And then I share the files on SkyDrive so that I can get to them from anywhere.
Entertainment
Google isn’t playing nice with Windows anymore, but fear not: get the MetroTube app, and not only can you watch videos on the app, but you’ll also be able to watch embedded videos.
I watch a lot of Netflix. There isn’t much to say about the app, it just works. [free]
I spend a lot of time on the subway, so I need something to do that doesn’t rely on an active internet connection. Kindle is perfect for this. Plus, it syncs to my Kindle at home, so I can continue reading on a bigger screen without losing my page. [free]
The Audible app is fantastic for listening to audiobooks. Unless you’re walking down the street listening to Tina Fey’s “Bossypants” and cackling like an idiot. Then people will look at you funny. [free]
When I want to listen to music I don’t even have to open an app, since I can pin individual playlists to my start screen. [included]
Sigh. I avoided Wordament as long as I could, because it looked addictive. And is it ever. It’s a live word search game where you’re playing two minute rounds against everybody else playing at that time. I don’t mean to brag, but I did find the longest word in a round once. [free]
Getting Around
Nokia Drive is simply awesome. I used it for a year on my Lumia 900, but now it’s even better – and it’s available for non-Nokia phones! The directions are clear, you have a choice of accents and languages, and you can download maps to use offline. [free]
Have you ever been sitting on the subway near the map and someone comes over and practically sits on your lap in order to see it? Don’t be that person. Download subway maps to your phone instead. If you’re in NYC, the MTA app is great. [free]
Jogging is my most dreaded form of getting around, but I do love the Runtastic Pro app. It maps my route, talks to me, tells me all of my stats, and can automatically upload what I did to twitter and facebook. If I’m running a race people can even track my progress online. The free version is also full of features, but go for Pro – you won’t regret it.
So those are my favorites. I have a lot more apps than that on my phone, but these are used most often.
If you have any favorites, I’d love to hear about them – I’m always looking for new ones to try out!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 1. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
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Tags: HTC 8X, Windows Phone 8
My Very Own Windows Phone 8 Start Screen
Dec 24, 2012 tech
I’m so thrilled to announce that I’m part of Team Windows Phone! For the next few months I’ll be sharing my experiences with my new Windows Phone 8, the HTC 8X, which has been given to me to review and explore.
That’s my new start screen there, to the left (of course, you can’t see the whole thing on the phone at one time, you have to scroll through it). I’ve been playing with the start screen for two days, getting it just right for how I use my phone.
And it is just right…for now. One of the things I love most about my phone is how easy it is to pin just about anything to the start screen. So if we travel somewhere, I can put a map of that city right on the start screen. When I’m in Disney World I always have a ride wait-time app handy. If I’m working on a special project I can pin the relevant documents to my start screen, for super quick access without having to open an app first. And it’s just as easy to “un-pin” them when you’re done with them.
And now, with Windows Phone 8, you can resize the tiles. See those four small tiles at the top? I want those to be easy to get to, but I don’t need them to take up a lot of real estate, so I made them small.
The Twitter and Facebook apps right below them? Those I want to be big so that I can see what’s on the live tiles. Besides showing me how many mentions or messages I have, they flip over and show me the latest posts. And the calendar app shows me my next appointment.
And while the XBox app probably doesn’t have to be that big, I like watching my avatar play around on the screen. :-)
I’ve mostly grouped my apps according to what they’re used for. That row under the XBox tile? Those all have to do with going somewhere.
The two handsome guys in the big tiles are the two people I call, email, and text the most. Instead of opening the phone app or text app and then having to search for them in my contacts, I just click on their tiles and all of the choices are right there.
My grocery list has to be easy to get to because I use it all day, both on my phone and computers (and thanks to SkyDrive, the list stays synced on all of my devices).
All of my favorite picture-related apps are grouped around my photo gallery. Tools are all grouped together, like calculator, flashlight, stopwatch – the kinds of things I would shove in a drawer together.
I post a lot of pictures right from my phone, so my WordPress app for my Pictures and Videos blog is right there, next to a shortcut that opens the Pictures and Videos dashboard in Explorer (any web page can be “pinned” for easy access).
And down there at the bottom, taunting me, is my favorite exercise app, Runtastic.
I have tons more apps than these, which are easily accessible by flicking my start screen to the left, but these are the ones that I use the most and want the easiest access to.
I’m so thrilled with this start screen. I can’t wait to try out more apps and see if they deserve a place there!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 1. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Content and/or other value provided by our partner, Windows Phone.
Tags: HTC 8X, Windows Phone 8
Lenovo’s New Windows 8 Devices!
Oct 11, 2012 tech
The other night I went to an event put on by Lenovo, highlighting their new Windows 8 devices. I checked out 3 rather unique PCs and two tablets. (I have no idea in the pictures below of the Yoga computers which is the 11 and which is the 13 – without comparing them to each other I can’t tell. Sorry!)
My absolute favorite was the Yoga 11. This PC has a 360-degree hinge that allows you to use it like a regular laptop, or one of three screen-only modes: stand, tent, and tablet. Plus, thirteen hours of battery life!
It’s light (under 3lbs), thin (under 2/3 of an inch), and the touchscreen is very responsive (five-point multi touch, meaning if you drag four fingers and a thumb on the screen, they’ll all register).
My next favorite was the Yoga 11’s big sister, the Yoga 13. But the 13 isn’t just bigger: it’s in a completely different power category – more of an Ultrabook than a pc. It runs on an i5 or i7 Intel processor, has up to 8GB of RAM, and up to 256GB of SSD storage. It also can be used in the same four positions as the Yoga 11, and has ten-point multi touch. The only reason this one isn’t the one I’m drooling over is that I’m typing this post on my almost-new Sony Vaio Z, an Ultrabook in the same category as the Yoga 13 – I wouldn’t need another. If I were looking for a new Ultrabook, this would be at or near the top of my list.
The Twist seems like a good machine, and is just a tiny bit thicker and heavier than the Yoga 13. But it’s nowhere near as sleek as the Yogas, and the twisting motion that can convert it from a laptop to a tablet just doesn’t appeal to me as much as the Yoga hinge. But if you’re looking for a laptop that’s geared towards business, and you need a PC that has disc drives, you should give the Twist a look.
The Lynx is an interesting machine. It’s a tablet with a dual-core Atom processor, and it’s very light and thin: .37 inches, and less than a pound and a half. But you can also buy a keyboard dock for it. This isn’t some kind of flimsy afterthought of a keyboard, either: once you snap the tablet into the dock, it feels like a solid laptop – you get the best of both worlds. Plus, with the dock you double the battery life from 8 hours to 16. And it can run up to Windows 8 Pro.
Last I checked out the Thinkpad Tablet 2. At 1/3 of an inch and 1.3 pounds, it felt great in my hands. It has everything you’d expect from a good tablet: dual cameras, stereo speakers, and Gorilla Glass. As the only stand-alone tablet I checked out last night, I felt like it was missing something – a dock, a weird hinge hiding a keyboard, something – but it’s just a tablet, which many people seem to like. I think I just do too much typing to ever buy something without any kind of physical keyboard. But if you’re looking for a Windows 8 tablet, this was fast and responsive, and the Windows 8 tiles looked gorgeous on it.
I was very impressed with the selection – there seems to be something for everyone. I especially can’t wait to see how they hold up against the Windows Surface tablets. These products are all coming soon, with the release of Windows 8.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
It’s a Windows Phone. And it’s big
Nov 7, 2011 Around NYC, Posted From My Phone, tech
This is crazy. Microsoft has set up a giant Windows Phone in Herald Square to celebrate the launch of Windows Phone 7.5, also known as Mango. They’ve already ordered pizza from it and there’s been a marriage proposal on it. Each live tile is the size of a shipping container. I wish I could’ve stuck around longer to see what else it can do.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom, from Amy’s cell phone (so please excuse any weird formatting). All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 8. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Mango, NYC, Windows Phone
Today’s Agenda: Tech porn edition
Nov 7, 2011 Posted From My Phone, tech
I’m at a Microsoft event right now, looking at some great new products and getting more familiar with some older ones. This is the kind of thing that I love. I imagine this is how a lot of people’s brains feel when they watch sports.
Gathering some great ideas for holiday shopping, can’t wait to share!
Heading to lunch with Microsoft next, and that will be difficult, because honestly I’d rather spend my calories on something I make at home, where things are more controlled. I know that some day I’ll be able to go out to eat and enjoy myself, but not yet – it’s just too early!
Enjoy your Monday. :-)
Originally posted on Selfish Mom, from Amy’s cell phone (so please excuse any weird formatting). All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 8. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Shopping, Weight Loss, Windows
How to wrangle your google calendar for a trip to another time zone
Aug 2, 2011 tech
So in January of 2010 I landed in Las Vegas for my very first Consumer Electronics Show. I’d booked wall-to-wall appointments for three days straight and had the most impressively color-coded and organized google calendar ever. So it was quite a shock when I checked the appointments on my phone for the next morning, only to discover that all of them had been shifted three hours earlier! A breakfast appointment for 7:30, which was already way too early for my taste, was now listed at 4:30am. I was having lunch with a website rep at 9am and cocktails at 3pm. What the hell?
My newish-at-the-time Droid had never been off of the east coast, so I hadn’t encountered this before. I had the phone set to automatically change to local time, and when that happened, google shifted all of my appointments to local time. Which would have been great if they were conference calls with people back in NYC, but pretty useless since they were local appointments.
I switched the Droid’s settings so that I could manually change the time zone, and in the end left it on east coast time – I thought it would be easier to mentally figure out the correct local time than to figure out the correct time of the appointments. I kept my computer on east coast time as well.
It wasn’t until about halfway through the trip that I had time to sit down and figure out what I’d done wrong. And there, at the top of the event creation page, was something I’d never noticed before: a time zone setting.
All I had to do was set the time zone for each appointment to Pacific time – something I should have done when I was entering them originally (new appointments default to whichever time zone your calendar is set to at that moment).
That way, I was able to set my phone and computer to local time, and my appointments adjusted themselves accordingly: east coast appointments were shifted earlier, and west coast appointments were right there in local time.
So, here’s a day with some east coast and west coast appointments, with my calendar set to east coast time. You’ll notice that “Microsoft Breakfast” appears to be at 11am; while I wish every day started that late, that appointment and all following are in Pacific time. The kids’ camp times and the 9am (fake) conference call are both NYC-time appointments.
Once I get to San Diego and set my laptop to west coast time, that same page will look like this. If that conference call were real, I would know that I had to get up very early to talk to somebody back on the east coast, and also that my husband will be getting Jake onto the camp bus not long after I’ve gone to bed.
If you want to schedule something that crosses time zones, like an airplane flight, you can even use split time zones. This is especially handy if you share your calendar with others and want to block that time off as unavailable. Or if you have an itinerary that lists local times and you don’t want to do the math.
So, the flight is listed as having the correct duration on my calendar and I can be careful not to schedule anything during that time.
And there you have it. Just remember when making appointments that happen in another city to ask yourself if they’re in another time zone, and mark them accordingly. That way, everything will be in order when you land, no mental gymnastics required!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
