If you’re a resident of California, I’m sure by now you’ve heard the news reports, radio commercials, etc.. about the handset law that is being put into affect July 1st. On that day, if a police officer sees you driving with a mobile phone stuck to your ear you will be pulled over.
I’m lucky enough to have a built-in solution in my vehicle, however, for those trips where I’m not in my car, I’m still searching for the best bluetooth headset to use with my current phone. I’ve reviewed the nxZen Plus in the past, and I wonder if Gennum has anything new to offer (if you’re a Gennum employee, send me your latest goodies for review, please :))
Today I received BlueAnt’s SuperTooth headset — a hands-free device you clip onto your vehicle’s visor. Expect a review of the SuperTooth appearing here in the next few days.
Being in web development, I’ve had a few years worth of data on one of my external hard drives. Now, when I upgraded my computer, I forgot to select that drive to be backed up. BIG mistake. The drive, which lasted approximately two years, decided it did not want to work when plugged into my computer. When I power cycled the drive I would only hear loud clicking sounds.
Needless to say, I needed to find a better backup/storage solution because I HATE backing up to DVDs. I’ve opted to use MozyHome as my backup solution. It’s cheap ($4.95/mo) for unlimited backups. That’s one hell of a bargain! I’ve got both my computer and my laptop hooked, selected which files/folders I wanted backed up, and that’s it..Mozy’s software does the rest.
Ever since the gas prices have rocketed upwards (my last fill up was at $4.83/gal — the most I’ve ever paid) I’ve noticed I subconsciously started to take routes to my destinations where I encountered the least amount of traffic lights, stop signs, and also used as many right-turns as possible. This is what UPS uses when planning the routes their delivery trucks take.
Have you done the same? What are your driving habits like now?
At work we’ve had some issues with a few contractors that were brought on board and then later let go. One of the problems is that the coding style everyone has is a bit different; so we’ve set out to write a style guide (you know, where to put the brackets, etc..). When looking at code, what do taste/style mean to you? What do you like to see in code and/or design?
Okay, so this issue was bugging me to no end. After tinkering with the filesystem myself I came across a post in the Apple Discussion Boards which confirmed my findings. There is a bug in Safari on the iPhone…well not really a bug, it’s a permissions issue. The Cookies directory does is not writable by the default “mobile” user.
Here’s a quick fix if you don’t want to scroll through the link above:
- SSH into your iPhone as the root user.
- Type the following commands:
- chown mobile /var/mobile/Library/Cookies/
- chown mobile /var/mobile/Library/Cookies/Cookies.plist
That’s it. Safari should now be able to retain your login details.
Which would you choose? Either way I’m opting to wait for a few months to see how things go. I’m still interested in playing with an Android-run phone (hint hint to any carriers — send me a phone to review and throw up on HardwareGeeks).
Many have written asking what happened to HWG. Unfortunately a fire broke out at the DC where our server is located. The DC folks are working hard to bring everything back up. More info will be posted as news is available.
Interesting name for a restaurant in Beverly Hills eh?
I received Maximo Products’ iMetal iP-HS1 and iP-HS2 headsets designed specifically for the iPhone early last week. The iP-HS1 and iP-HS2 feature a lightweight alloy metal body and a “high definition” microphone sensor. Both feature neodymium drivers and similar Sensitivity and Frequency Response numbers. I decided to try each of the products out for a few days each. In this review I’ll break down a few pros and cons I observed over the course of the past week for both items .
Maximo offers the iP-HS1 headset for those individuals who do not want to block out their surroundings whilst wearing headsets and the iP-HS2 headset for those who prefer to block out everything else. I tend to be of the latter set of individuals — specially when I am at the office and want to focus on my task without being distracted by inter-office chatter and the occasional loud phone conversations people have.One of the things I enjoy about my iPhone is that I can listen to audio on my iPod and switch to making/answering calls, and Maximo’s headsets make that transition really easy with the click of the soft-touch button which can be used to answer incoming calls as well as pause/start song playback.The quality of sound is great on both headsets during the song playback, but the iP-HS2 seemed to have a richer richer output compared to the iP-HS1. During the phone calls I made on the iP-HS1, though, I heard quite a bit of background noise and static, this was not the case on the iP-HS2. The callers could hear me clearly on the iP-HS2 and there were many points while using the iP-HS1 that callers complained that my voice volume was fluctuating. The microphone on both headsets are not noise-cancelling, so any background noise is easily heard by the callers.
In terms of comfort, I prefer the iP-HS2 by a long shot. The earbuds on the iP-HS1 were large and started to get uncomfortable to wear after about an hour of use. The iP-HS2 earbuds (as you can see in the image above) are small and I wore them for a straight 4 hours in one coding session without any discomfort. Kudos to Maxmo for that!
Bottom Line:
At a cost of $69.99 each they may be a bit pricey, but are worth the cost if you’re looking for quality replacements to the stock headphones that come stock with the iPhone.
I give the iMetal iP-HS1 a 3/5 and the iMetal iP-HS2 a 4/5. On HWG, I gave these headsets the must-have award.
Have a Gmail account? Forgot to send grandma a birthday email? Gmail has your solution. You can now set a custom timestamp for the email and it will appear in the recipients inbox based on that time. Kinda shady eh? The help page about it has hilarious beta user testimonials:
“I just got two tickets to Radiohead by being the ‘first’ to respond to a co-worker’s ‘first-come, first-serve’ email. Someone else had already won them, but I told everyone to check their inboxes again. Everyone sort of knows I used Custom Time on this one, but I’m denying it.”
Click the link above and read the others.
Yes, I know it’s April 1st. 
