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Newstips Electronic Editorial Bulletin Issue # 2010-06b
Ready to raise our flag to news
In this issue:
Single rail PSU meltdown on video... New Mythos XTR-50 bends
physics to get flat... Fixmo gives BlackBerry powers others
lack... Franklin Discover series adds magnifiers... Brookstone
multiplies Boogie Board orders... Tiffen adds prompters...
Special Report: Un-vitamin D3 & UVB... Reviews: Brookstone Grill
Gauge, Switch Sound File Converter, Verbatim Titan XS, Coby Snapp
HD Camcorder, Grill Daddy... PR twits at Twitter... plus our
commentary on serving from within
Single rail PSU meltdown on video
http://www.youtube.com/user/watchAntecTV#p/u/2/RdqsUX6fMj4 shows
a competitor's PSU (single-rail design with no overcurrent
protection) dealing with a short by melting a circuit board
connector. A forum challenge to Antec's "Myth Buster" series plus
undiagnosed PSU problem reports from some media folks led to the
lab bench & showed the real danger of a PSU running without an
OCP "seat belt". Older Antec PSU models have OCP set at 22-25A
per rail & newer ones at 50A but competing PSUs with single rail
designs have none. This endangers graphics cards & mobo (each
costing more than a PSU). Contact: Veronica Feldmeier, Antec Inc.
(Fremont, CA) 510-770-2150 vfeldmeier@antec.com
http://antec.com
New Mythos XTR-50 bends physics to get flat
In audio, flat is good, because it means no emphasis on bass,
mid-range or treble at the expense of less response elsewhere.
Around a thin TV panel, flat is a design mandate. In the new
Mythos XTR-50 speaker (each $699), they managed to fit 7 drivers
into a wall, shelf or floor stand mountable system that's only
1.5" thick. An aluminum dome tweeter at the center is surrounded
by 6 drivers pressure coupled to 4 aluminum dome base radiators;
the rear of each driver is sculpted into the flush back panel of
the 27"x6"x1.5" aluminum enclosure. Reviews are possible.
Contact: Paul DiComo, Definitive Technology (Owings Mills, MD)
410-363-7148 paul.dicomo@definitivetech.com
http://DefinitiveTech.com
Fixmo gives BlackBerry powers others lack
Will an iPhone or Android get you to think twice before sending
your boss a flame message? Will they give you an early warning
before you run out of battery or memory? Will they remember to
silence the phone during meetings when you forget? All it takes
for a BlackBerry to do all these things & more is Fixmo Tools
BlackBerry Edition ($20 with a year of updates). Contact: Rick
Segal, Fixmo (Toronto, ON) 416-414-9726 rick@Fixmo.com
http://Fixmo.com
Franklin Discover series adds magnifiers
We told you last time about the new Franklin Discover series of
reading enhancement products, starting with new Firefly LED book
lights (in 2-, 4- & 5-LED designs. LEDs also light up 3 new Spot
Magnifiers: a SLM3002 2-LED model with a 3.5" 2.5X lens & a 5X
inset lens ($14 online), a DLM3006 6-LED 1.5" 5X model (online
$16) & a DLM3012 3.5" 2.5X 12-LED model ($23 online). Each is
powered by a pair of AA cells. Ask Aline. Contact: Aline Boutin,
Franklin Electronic Publishers (Burlington, NJ) 609-386-2500x4434
aline_boutin@franklin.com http://franklin.com
Brookstone multiplies Boogie Board orders
We don't usually get into numbers, but for a clever new product
(Boogie Board) in its first brick & mortar retail placement
(Brookstone) as a Father's Day special, you might regard these as
interesting. While the initial order was for only 7,500 units,
the orders to date total (last time we checked) more than
100,000. This Boogie Board isn't made for the beach; ask Kevin to
get you one & see what all the excitement is about. Contact:
Kevin Oswald, Kent Displays (Kent, OH) 330-673-8784x161
koswald@kentdisplays.com http://KentDisplays.com
Tiffen adds prompters
Tiffen just took over the manufacturing, marketing & distribution
of Listec Video products, meaning a wide variety of reasonably
priced video prompters including products for Mini DV camcorders,
See http://listec.com & ask Hilary. Contact: Hilary Araujo,
Tiffen Company (Hauppauge, NY) 631-609-3216 haraujo@tiffen.com
http:/.tiffen.com
Special Report: Un-vitamin D3 & UVB
Our focus isn't health or medicine but more usually gadgets,
end-user tech & improving productivity, all of which led us down
the path of D3, which proves to be a hormone, not a vitamin.
Health & productivity are both adversely affected by D3
insufficiency; current advice is to have 5000 IU per day. The
natural source of D3 is exposure to the sun, specifically the UVB
erythermal action spectrum. With 10% of skin exposed & no sun
block applied, each minute in the sun should produce roughly 71
times the UVI (standard index, scale of 1-10) in D3 at 100% skin
exposure; the actual mechanism creates a substance on the skin
that takes 48 hours to absorb & convert, so bathing can reduce
that effect. At a dangerous UVI 10, with arms & legs exposed
(shorts & T-shirt leaving 50% of skin exposed), your day's-worth
of D3 takes 15 minutes, at which point sunburn is inevitable for
most of us. At a relaxed & moderate UVI of 2, same clothing,
you'll need an hour & a quarter of outdoor time. We found some
reasonably priced sun exposure meters (http://solarmeter.com)
that can help you husband exposure & we encourage your further
investigation of D3 insufficiency effects.
Special Report Bonus Review: Brookstone Grill Gauge
The busiest times of year for BBQ propane refills are Memorial
Day, Independence Day & Labor Day, followed by the clambake
season. We've managed to get through whole years on one tank, but
not trusting to luck, we got in a Brookstone Grill Gauge for
review. It connects between the tank & the regulator. After 15
minutes or so of use, the face of its dial tells you whether
you've got plenty of gas for now, not quite enough or its time to
move the food to the George Forman until you can get the tank
reloaded. Triple scale markings adjust your readings for cold,
cool or hot days. The manual also explains a simple procedure to
check the line from the tank to the grill for pressure leaks.
Bottom line: the Brookstone Grill Gauge propane gas monitor is a
simple, dependable way to avoid grilling on empty.
Special Report Bonus Review 2: Switch Sound File Converter
The batch audio file format converter offering from NCH is Switch
Sound File Converter Plus, which we tested on a collection of
80s-vintage promo jingles & the entertainment snippets we all
used to use in place of standard Windows sounds. A few of our
files had been corrupted by many transfers across many drives
over the years; that didn't stop the batch; it just flagged them
& noted the problem it had. The files converted quickly (not
instantly). Like other NCH offerings, the biggest annoyance
involves the harping to buy more stuff, from the splash screen to
the menu items to the help files. Bottom line: NCH Switch Sound
File Converter Plus does a good job of getting your audio files
into the format you want to use to play them.
Special Report Bonus Review 3: Verbatim Titan XS
Somebody at Verbatim had the clever idea of housing a raw 2.5"
drive (adapted to integrate a USB port on its PC board in lieu of
any other port) in a full-body rubber sleeve, about 1 mm thick on
the side walls & about triple that on the rounded sides. The
Verbatim Titan XS portable USB hard drive still fits into a
pocket but it's a lot less likely to fail if it falls from one;
rubber & all, it's still only about half an inch thick. Bottom
line: Verbatim Titan XS portable USB hard drives pack plenty of
protection plus prodigious capacity into a pocket.
Special Report Bonus Review 4: Coby Snapp HD Camcorder
We asked to review the Coby Snapp pocket HD camcorder, which uses
a 5Mp (2592x1944) sensor for better stills; that's more
resolution than it needs to shoot (1280x720) 720p HD video, which
it does at a full 30fps frame rate. H.264 compression lets it
deliver good quality (over HDMI) while still fitting an hour in
4GB, so an 8GB SD card lets you shoot for 2 hours. That's also
the runtime of its removable LiIon battery, giving you an option
to buy spare SD cards & batteries & keep shooting all day. On the
downside, the LCD is extremely hard to read when outside or in
bright lighting & the digital zoom degrades image quality so much
that we wish there were a way to permanently disable it. Bottom
line: the Coby Snapp HD digital camcorder provides an easily
totable way to snag HD videos or good-resolution stills
Special Report Bonus Review 5: Grill Daddy
Sometimes the things you don't expect to work surprise you. Grill
Daddy is a grill brush with a hollow handle that you fill with
water. A petcock turns on water flow to the brush; apply the wet
brush to a hot grill to add steam cleaning to the scrub. This
could have gone wrong a lot of ways, but the quality of the main
& scraper brush heads (which are removable & dishwasher safe) is
outstanding & the swoop of the handle with a pistol grip at the
top & a leverage knob halfway down makes it really easy to
manage. Clean-up of our first burgers of the season was so fast,
we got it done, turned everything off & brought dinner inside in
about 30 seconds. Bottom line: Grill Daddy adds steam cleaning to
a superior brush head in an outstanding combo for the grill that
we're happy to recommend.
PR twits at Twitter
We've been getting slammed with spam that claims to be from
Twitter (where we do not have an account), so we asked them to
confirm that they are not (accidentally or on purpose) behind it.
Their reply: "At the moment, we are not making our user
statistics public."
Serving from within
Remember that Yippie series from earlier in the year, when we
built a silent server around an Intel Clarkdale Core-i5? We
finally found the time to complete it & move our domains onto it;
we also updated the Newstips Web site. Site updates now take
seconds instead of minutes, our weekly issue gets published
faster & we can make fixes or changes as we need them. We don't
recommend in-house hosting for every small business, but we're no
longer ISP clients. If you see a difference (good or bad), drop
us a line. Contact: Martin Winston, Newstips (Novelty, OH)
440-338-8400; marty@Newstips.com http://Newstips.com
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Newstips Bulletin [Novelty, OH] +1.440.338.8400 http://Newstips.com
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