TekGems Blog

This is the kind of thing I've been looking for to transfer digital camera pictures to my website or computer automatically. I can literally take a picture of something and do very little to get it online. I only need to select what pictures I want to upload, and bam, I'm done. The tedious ask of removing the SD card from the camera and loading on to the computer is over.

Surprise, surprise! FedEx is raising Express rates in 2008. Really, it should come as no surprise to anyone that with fuel costs and the always sensible profit motive, rates are raised. I'm sure UPS and DHL are not far behind in their announcement. Thankfully, the US Postal Service at least goes through rate changes less frequently.

Wow, this is excellent. Gmail is finally offering IMAP! From customer service point of view, this is an extremely easy and free way to distribute customer service loads and/or delegate tasks to others. If all your inbound come into your inbox, you can move specific messages (tasks) that you want to hand-off to someone else via IMAP. It could be your co-worker sitting at the desk next to you, or a virtual assistant in India or China. I find the process of delegation much easier with IMAP. It is possible with POP, but it is not 100% reliable as you can not see the message made to the desired inbox. Of course, the usability and details are always in the e-mail client you use and how Google implemented IMAP. Beggars can't be choosers - I'm just glad IMAP is offered. It is more resource intensive than POP3, but if anyone can offer it reliably - it is Google.

Here's another PC-to-TV device from SanDisk called the Sansa TakeTV that attaches a 4GB flash drive to a slot that feeds to your TV. Includes a remote for the typical couch potato. At 4GB, you can squeeze one uncompressed DVD (VOB), or several AVI files compressed with XVID. But being a flash drive, how long is the flash drive going to last? Personally, I prefer the idea of a hard drive better. But something compact like this makes it portable and easy to share if you happen to go see a friend and want to watch something you ripped or downloaded off the Internet.

Publishing return rates on specific SKUs can build consumer confidence, but also has an industry it may reduce sales of that specific SKUs if your web store or site has enough authority (visibility, web traffic, etc). InternetRetailer discusses one web store implementing "return-o-meter". We have been toying with the idea ourselves. We would just call it a bland "return rate". Returns may be high on products with poor quality control (e.g. Made in China), but products are also often returned due to poor design, poorly written manual, or difficulty in using. Return rates need to include meta-data (why the product was returned) to make it a useful statistic.

Another good read related to the computer industry is the return rate computation from one of our competitors, Directron: http://www.directron.com/rates.html

Wouldn't it be cool if you could watch video files on your widescreen TV? There is so much free and legal online video online that you can watch in comfort instead in front of your computer. Broadband is very inexpensive now as is hardware that allows you to watch computer files on your computer. The Tvisto is like a giant 100-DVD video jukebox in a small enclosure.



The biggest concern for me is will the Tvisto be able to play all the different video files since they will be encoded with different codecs. I bought a DVD player from Circuit City with XVID capability, but it ended up not being able to play all the files I burned on to the DVD. XVID is the most popular codec for automatic play on newer DVD players, but there are some old video files that I also want to be able to view. Ideally, whatever I can view on my computer - I want to view with the Tvisto. The other concern is being able to get content to the Tvisto easily. Some media players are WIFI so they stream directly from the computer, but with this one, you would have to copy files on to it. For half the price of a network media player, I don't mind using my laptop as a proxy to transfer files from my trusty SAN drive (Netgear SC101) to the Tvisto via USB.



My third concern is being able to flip through video without having to get up, but the remote control is taking care of that. :)

PC Mag has a slideshow on how to convert your old vinyl into a digital MP3. Its easy enough to do if you have a turntable with a line-out. But most turntables have phono out which means you usually have to run the turntable through an amp before connecting it to your computer's line in.

Alternatively, ION has released a USB Turntable that makes conversion of vinyl extremely easy (see picture on left). The USB connection means you have a digital transfer from the turntable to your computer eliminating any "noise" that you would have had transferring from the turntable, to the amp, and any sound interference from the computer itself.





Once you have converted your vinyl to digital format (WAV, MP3, FLAC, OGG, etc) you can the burn the MP3s to these nifty CD-Recordables. They have that same cool look at vinyl, they are CDs! :)






Here are the links to buy these items:

ION Portable USB Turntable - Record Vinyl to WAV/MP3
http://tekgems.com/Products/td-ion-iptusb.htm

e³works 52x 700MB 80-Min Vinyl CD-R Media 50-Piece
http://tekgems.com/Products/et-23611-med-52xcdre3.htm

PC Magazine has a great article explaining the difference between DDR, DDR2, and DDR3. They also explain memory timing (latency) in an easy way. PC Mag also has a great slide show on how install a memory chips on your desktop.Publish