I was in the market for a small footprint DVD player that would not look obnoxious on a coffee table. I had wanted to get a legendary CyberHome CH-DVD 300S player but it appears they have been pulled off the market due to it’s region free playing.

I was in Walmart and noticed the Durabrand DVD-1002 DVD player. The unit has progressive scan, component video output and coaxial audio output plus composite RCA outputs. The unit also comes with a nice little remote.

This DVD player is a top loading unit and actually feels pretty well built.

All this for less than $30.

Overall I am quite pleased with the unit. I really like the top loading feature and it looks nice on a coffee table. The picture and sound quality are excellent. The remote, though small has a nice feel to it.

This is a can’t miss buy. If reliability ever become an issue who cares ? It’s at a disposable price point.

Allthough we have 4 Ipods in the house I have been quite content with my Creative MuVo 256mb MP3 player. What I really like about the MuVo is that I can just plug it into any USB drive and then drag and drop music onto it. I don’t neeed any special software to move music onto it. It also doubles as a USB flash drive.

I do wish my MUVo had more memory and an easier to read screen.

I did a search and found that the SanDisk Expressâ„¢ MP3 Players may be exactly what I am looking for. What I really like about this unit is cable-less USB connection. This means I can plug it into any PC to copy files. It has a 15 hour rechargeable battery. I prefer a replaceable AAA but I suppose if it charges off the USB port I could live with that. The Sansa is currently available in only a 1GB model but it does have a microSD slot to expand the memory. You can buy 2GB microSD cards for less than $40.

The listed price for the SanDisk Sansa is $59.99. Ad $40 for more memory and you have a killer 3Gb mp3 player with a flash drive for about $100. It’s a definite alternative to the IPOD Nano for less than half the price.

More info here about the new Sansa

If there is any activity which puts a sneaker to the test it’s computer programming and blogging. My current pair of Avia programming sneakers have seen better days. There is noticeable wear on the heel and I’m a little concerned the arch support is not up to factory specs.

Somewhere deep in my mind I always felt Nike sneakers would be a better choice. Maybe I’m just a slave to advertising. I tried the Nike Air Max. I forgot to bring my laptop to the store to really give the Nikes a thorough test. I did simulate the best I could the various positions I undergo while blogging and coding. It seem to me that Nikes are a little narrow and have extra arch support that I find a little uncomfortable. I also tried the latest offerings from Reebok and Asics.

Ultimately I decided to just resort to my Avia 175’s. I was sly enough to buy two pairs just in case of such an emergency.

The Avia’s offer the necessary comfort and arch support that is so crucial for programming. They also perform quite well for blogging. The lateral support is excellent. I have not found any need to use inserts like the Dr. Scholl massaging gel insoles. To be honest I am already quite “gellin” without them.

In the past I would organize pictures on my hard drive by folder name. I always though it was a pretty good system. If I wanted to see 4th of July picture I would simply to the folder called “4th_Of_July”.

One day my wife was complaining about my perfect photo organizing system. She said she couldn’t find anything. I was flabbergasted, how much simpler could my system be ? I asked what she was looking for. She said she wanted to find pictures of her mother. I paused because she had a good point. We currently have at least 3000 photos on the hard drive and we will soon start to scan all of our old photos to place them on the computer. It would be nice to categorize pictures in many different ways without creating all kinds of crazy redundant folders.

I briefly researched a number of photo organizing software. After taking a look at a few different options I came up with a list of key features I think are useful for organizing folders.

• The ability to tag pictures with multiple categories.
• Allow me to still organize the folders on the hard drive in some kind of logical manner.
• Minimize application dependency. I don’t want to waste hours organizing picture in a software package that will no longer be available next year.

One way to minimize application dependency is to write data to the image itself rather than a proprietary database. One such method is called IPTC headers. IPTC headers allow you save metadata right in the picture itself. This would allow other software to read this data. IPTC headers are similar to EXIF data.

Our photo organizer in the past was Kodak EasyShare. The latest version is pretty nice. It allows you to create “albums”. When you place a picture in an album it leaves the photo in the original location on the hard drive. In other the albums are virtual pointers to files very similar to playlists in Itunes. It has some photo editing capabilities.

I also looked at Picasa. I like the fact it is free and it seems pretty quick. Picasa allows you to organize picture by folders and albums. If you move a photo to a different folder it moves it on your hard drive as well. You are allowed to place pictures into multiple albums. Picasa doesn’t allow you to apply multiple terms or folders like “Dad” and “Disney”. Placing pictures in an album does not change the IPTC Keywords in the file. If you want to do that you have to so it is a separate step. Overall Picasa is a good program to organize photos.

Adobe Photoshop Elements

Photoshop Elements is around $90 and allows gives you advanced editing and sharing options.

The tagging feature in Photoshop elements is superior to Picasa. IPTC Keywords are saved to the file at the same time you create the tags in the editor. You simply create tags and then selct the photos you want to tag and then you drag the tag over the pictures. You can add multiple tags at the same time. This workflow is much faster than Picasa’s. Elements also allows you to have subcategiories of tags in Elements.
For Example:
/family/mom
/family/dad/
/places/california/
/places/home/

Photoshop Elements also has a great backup utility.

Conclusion:
For many Picasa would make a fine photo organizer, especially for the price. However when I tested both programs along with my autofeed photo scanner the workflow to import and tag picture was much faster in Elements.

Technically car wax is not a gadget but I figured I share my experience with Eagle One’s Spray NanoWax and Wax As U Dry.

I come from the old school that to get a nice pop on your car you need to spend an entire day doing a 3 or 4 step process of clay bar, glazing, and waxing with a Porter Cable 7424 random orbital polisher.

I have to tell you though these Eagle one products are fantastic especially for those that don’t have an entire afternoon to spend waxing their cars.

The first product I tried was Wax As U Dry (WAUD). After washing the car you simply spray it on the car and then dry with a micor-fiber towel. It leaves a very nice shine and is especially made for touching up between complete wax jobe to maintain a shine. I have used it on my daily driver as well when there was a very long time between waxinmg and it did a nice job. The weakness of WAUD is that is does not last too long, maybe a month or so. But is is so easy to apply it’s not a big deal. It works on windshields nicely as well. It can’t get simpler than this.

The next product from Eagle One I have tried is NanoWax. The Eagle One literature claims they have some sort of a nanotechnolgy that penetrates the surface better which provides better and longer lasting protection. I decided to try the spray version.

Once again the application could not be easier. All you do is spray the product on your car and wipe it off. Unlike traditional waxes it doesn’t seem to haze up, but it will dry clear.

The results were pretty impressive and rivaled products like Meguiars NXT. Eagle One claims NanoWax will hide swirl marks and I have to say it did conceal them to a certain extent.

So the next time your looking for some easy, affordable car care check out these products. They may not replace a 3 step all day process but for the effort they are excellent.

In the US there are three choices in the Garmin C3XX series. The Garmin C320, C330 and C340. It’s a little confusing to decide which one to buy.

I can say pretty confidently to cross the C330 off your list.

The main features that are different on these three units are:
- A built in hard drive to store maps
- Unit Speaks Street Names and POI Names

So here’s how I see it. The only difference between the Garmin C320 and C330 is that you will need to upload maps from your computer to the SD card on the C320. You can buy a 1GB SD card for about $20 which will hold the entire US. That brings the total price of the C320 to $295. Which is $25 cheaper than the C330.

Now that we eliminated the C330 the choice remains of it’s worth $100 to have the C340 say “Turn Left Onto High Street” as opposed to “Turn left in 50 feet”. In very informal surveys friends have said they prefer the unit that would say the street names. Some feel it’s a waste of money.

Personally I live the idea of the unit that speaks the street names. It would mean I could keep my eyes on the road and have some feedback that I took the correct turn if the roads were close to each other.

Like a lot of people I have a ton of old photos stored in boxes. I have always wanted to find some kind of automatically feed the pictures to the scanner like commercial printers have.

I did a Google search for “scanner with automatic feed” and “automatic photo scanner”, “scanner with feeder” etc. It doesn’t seem like there are a lot of vendors that provide this type of product. There are plenty of choices for photo scanners with slide and negative adapters.

It turn out that at one time Epson made a scanner that did exactly what I wanted. It was the Epson Perfection 2480 Limited Edition Photo Scanner

I also found the HP ScanJet 5530 Scanner but it had less than stellar reviews.

I then found out that Epson still has the Multi Photo Business Card Feeder B12B813372 available. I did some searching and the retail price goes for about $149 for the feeder. The feeder works with the Perfection 2480, 2580, 3490 & 3590 Scanners. The only problem is that these particular models are no longer readily available.

I of course searched ebay and scored a Sealed Epson 2580 scanner for $85 shipped. Cool !
So for about $235 I have a pretty cool scanner than can autofeed photos and also scan negatives and slides.

There were essentially no instructions with the automatic feeder. I soon discovered that all the documentation is installed on your computer when you install the software for the scanner. Once I read the Reference Guide installation of the feeder was very easy.

The largest photos that can be scanned are 4X6. Epson says you can stack up to 25 photos in the tray.

So far the scanner has worked perfectly. It sucks the photos in and when the scan is complete it spits them back out. The total time per photo is about 30 seconds. Normally this would be a slow pace to work but you can just set a stack of photos in the tray and go off and do other things. I’m guessing I can scan about 100 photos per hour pretty easily.

I’ll report back in a few weeks once I really start to go to town. I am going to be using Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 to scan and organize the photos.

I came across a gadget that at first had me scratching my head. It’s a USB turntale that makes recording vinyl records to CD easier. It’s made by Ion Audio and can be bought at online stores such as zzounds.com for about $150.

At first I could not imagine owning any piece of vinyl that was not available on CD or Itunes. However this summer I attended a square dance (don’t ask). The “caller” was using vinyl 45’s. he even had modern hits like “Cotton Eyed Joe”. I asked why he isn’t using CD’s and where does he buy his vinyl. Apparently Square dance records is one of the genres that kind of got overlooked by CD’s. As far as getting new songs on vinyl there is a resource in Oklahoma that sells modern songs on 45.

According to reviews people really love this turntable. It simply connects to your PC via the USB port. The turntable comes with software to convert your old vinyl collection directly to CD or MP3. At this point it’s a snap to get it onto an Ipod.

Time to get all your Polka albums onto CD ! What’s next ? An USB 8 Track player ?

I had recently installed Photoshop Elements. The next day I plugged in the Ipod and Photoshop Elements automatically opened up to try to find pictures on the Ipod.

I really don’t want this to happen. The reason it happens is that Photoshop Elements sees the Ipod as a card reader or a USB device.
In the preferences for Elements click on “Camera or Card Reader”. Uncheck the box that says “Autolaunch Adobe Photo Downloader On Device Connect”. Then click ok.

Today apple announced the “Apple iPhone”. This story reported that Apple could not call it the iPhone since Cisco was using that brand name to market their IP phones. We’ll see is there any lawsuits.

I will be the first to admit I am not an Apple fanboy but the iPhone looks very cool indeed. The iPhone runs OSX, integrates with Itunes, had a has a 2 MegaPixel digital camera. The price is $499 for a 4Gb model.

I’m waiting to see if Apple ever releases the rumored iPod Video and will it similar to the form of the iPhone. There has been much debate if a touch screen is the right way to go for an iPod Video. And of course it would probably have to be hard drive based since 4G is rather small for a video device.