Nikon COOLPIX P80
Nikon COOLPIX S550
Sprint Instinct
Ubisoft’s My Weight Loss Coach for Nintendo DS
Panasonic SC-BT100 Home Theater in a Box (Blu-ray Player)
Panasonic VIERA LCD TV TC-32LZ800
Arrow Backpacker Pontoon Boat
Fremont Pontoon Boat
Steve’s Book GADGET NATION
You can’t hit the road these days without packing thousands of dollars of electronics, and opening yourself up to a serious loss. But there are some easy ways to protect your belongings—and help recover them if they disappear.
If you’ve ever left a cell phone or digital camera in a cab or on the subway, you know how tough it can be to find it again. Make it easier for a Good Samaritan to return your belongings with a system like GadgetTrak. They supply heavy-duty, metal stickers to place on your treasured belongings, each with a unique code and an 800 number and website address the finder can use to connect with you and reunite with your gadget.
Laptop theft has become a huge problem—nearly one million of them will be stolen this year alone. But there are a few ways to trace your computer and get it back, with a little help from law enforcement. Computrace’s LoJack for Laptops installs software to your hard drive that can trace your computer when it’s logged into the internet again—and will pass on its location to law enforcement. If you’re more worried about protecting sensitive files on the computer than the computer itself, consider Laptop Cop. The software not only tracks the laptop’s location, but it enables you to log into your computer remotely (and surreptitiously) to access your files, copy them to another computer and then delete them from the stolen laptop.
Of course, there’s the constant problem of missing luggage. But if you throw a Zoombak A-GPS Universal Locator into your bag, you can log onto the Internet or call customer service and get real-time information on where your bag ended up—though odds are, you’ll be hard pressed to get an answer from your airline as to why your bag ended up in San Diego instead of Santa Fe. —Lisa Milbrand
I took about 500 pictures in the first 30-odd years of my life—and about 3,000 in the last three, thanks to the ease of digital photography (and to my photogenic daughter). But managing several gigabytes worth of priceless memories can be a challenge—especially when most of us end up leaving the images right on the card in the camera.
Usually, I can muster the energy to get the images onto my computer—I use a Mac, so once I plug my camera into the computer via USB, iPhoto automatically opens and with a single click, the images are downloaded. But if that’s too much effort, you can always get an Eye-Fi – an SD card that automatically uploads your images to your computer and your favorite photosharing site (including Flickr, Kodak Gallery and Facebook) once you hit your Wi-Fi network at home. The latest incarnation, Eye-Fi Explore, takes it one step further, allowing you to automatically upload photos on the road from Wayport Wi-Fi hotspots (you’ll find about 10,000 scattered around the US).
Generally, though, once a photo makes it onto my computer, it stays there. I’ve made several cool photobooks and slideshows using the iPhoto software—our favorites are the wallet-sized softcovers, which allow doting grandparents to whip out pictures of the little ones and show them to anyone within sight. Kodak Gallery also offers mini brag books, as does Flickr’s Qoop.
I aspire to make the rich scrapbook pages and cool, easy-to-embed blog slideshows I’ve seen produced by Smilebox, but their software is PC only at the moment. Photobucket also offers some cool slideshow options—and lets you store up to 10,000 photos for free—an excellent backup in case you ever experience a hard-drive failure.
But why stop at slideshows? Moo cards, available at Flickr, are pint-sized business cards that feature your favorite images on the back. (They’d be perfect “personal cards” to hand out to fellow mommies at the playground to set up future playdates.) Or turn a favorite image into actual art—Photowow will blow up a high-resolution image and put it onto canvas for you. They can even turn your portrait a Warhol-esque pop-art masterpiece. —Lisa Milbrand
The Saudis are opening the spigot to the tune of another 500,000 barrels a day. Yoo Hoo!
But the experts agree it will have little effect on gas prices and the first hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico will blow away any savings we’ve been able to wring out.
The Saudis are concerned that continued price escalation could cut demand and impact the world’s economies. Price escalation also makes alternative energies more attractive and would adversely affect their profits.
Rather than drilling in the environmental zones like Alaska and continuing our dependence on oil why don’t we take this opportunity to put our full weight behind alternative energy that is cleaner? We can’t walk away from oil overnight but any drop in imports will make the oil we do import cheaper. Inflationary pressures will ease and we will all be able to breathe a little easier.
Wouldn’t it be great if the mark of a successful post-fossil fuel country would be its beauty?
I like Obama. And I see that some people are hurting. They are making choices between gas and food. A million homes are in foreclosure. The war is draining our resources. Businesses are laying people off.
Fortunately Obama wants to cut taxes for the people who need it most. And this past two months’ history shows those people will likely put that money right back into the economy by spending it. (Unfortunately, it won’t go as far as it would have if they weren’t paying $4.50 a gallon for gas.) And that’s great for Wal-Mart and the other value stores but what about Macy’s, Nordstrom’s and others? The economic pick-up is limited and what does that mean about its sustainability? When the stimulus checks have all been cashed, what then? What happens next summer?
Experts recognize that the credit markets will continue to sort themselves out through ’09 (and likely into ’10) and although the cost of oil may pause and even dip world oil demand will increase by 70% by 2050. Any relief in the near-term will be temporary. Our economic problems are not going away.
Will we continue to get stimulus checks throughout 2009? Not likely. Then what will happen to those who need it most? At that point, will there be more people who need it most? Logic says yes.
The BEST thing we can do for those who need it most is to create jobs. Why not make it advantageous for business to hire? Don’t just cut the corporate tax but cut it in direct relation to the size of the company and the number of employees being hired.