EngelFish.Net

Taryn & I have shiny new toys!  Actually Taryn has a new toy and I’m waiting on mine to arrive.  We both want to say thank you to our generous benefactor for them.  They Rock!  While Taryn wasn’t all that keen on having one, yesterday I heard her call it ‘my baby’, or was it ‘my preciousssss’? It is a really sweet piece of technology, and consolidates her e-collection (Palm Lifedrive, Casio Exlim camera, iPod, and Motorola Razr cellphone) into one light & easy to use tool.  Setup was a breeze, and use is very intuitive.  We’ve got three complaints thus far: 1) everything stored on her old phone is now inaccessible (contacts, movies, and pictures), and 2) with only 8GB of non-expandable memory it’s not going to hold much of her music collection, and 3) the typepad isn’t designed for the thick-fingered among us.  On the upside: 1) the camera is excellent, 2) the screen’s quality blows us both away, 3) the internet access (while slow) is very convenient, and 4) it’s very easy to sync your outlook/music/calendar/photos (even on PCs).  I’ll have to wait and see how the screens hold up to daily use, and we’ll have to find good cases to protect them.  I haven’t been able to connect it to our wireless network at home yet, which I am pretty sure is due to user error.  It’s also kind of funny how it tries furiously to connect to every wifi access point it finds as you’re driving through a residential neighborhood.  On that note, here is an article on how the iPhones are wreaking havoc on the Duke campus wifi network.  Here, buggy buggy buggy!
 

I already posted about the Drobo “robot”, but here is a video worth watching…

While I’m not much of a woodworker, and I don’t even own a table saw, I did a double-take when I watched this video. Most new inventions are cruddy takes on a useless concept, but this one is pretty impressive in my opinion.  Both Taryn’s father and grandmother have lost either fingers or parts of fingers in woodworking accidents, and something like this would have been a godsend in those situations.  The video explains how it works, but the basic concept is “when it senses a finger, it stops”.  Watch the video and see how impressive it really is.