Optimus 9" Digital Photo Frame

I remember a long time ago reading something about Bill Gates having moving pictures or picture slide show frames of art throughout his home. At the time I thought that was an awesomely cool thing to have. These were the closest thing I could come up with to fulfill that desire. The bevel edged frame gives a clean contemporary look as it can hang from a wall or sit propped on a table with its built in stand. The stand rotates to accommodate landscape or portrait orientation. The maximum memory it can hold is 2 GB (plenty for photos) and it can read xD, SD, MMC and MS memory cards. This makes it very easy to transfer photos from cameras, computers and other devices.You can freeze the frame to one specific photo or give a random slideshow of all loaded .jpg photos. I have 3 of these, 2 above my monitor (to expand the visual experience of the 32" NEC 3210). Those two are loaded with family photos and concept/sports car photos. The third is in my bedroom on my dresser and it displays friends, my graphics work and girls in bikinis. They come with a remote control so you may control the display of the photos without handling the frame itself. The only drawback is these will not fully operate without the supplied power cord with is only about 10 feet in length. Its one thing to have a few family photos hung on your wall ... Its quite another to have one or more photographic slideshows hanging on your wall.

Samsung BD-C6900

  Smart 3D Blu-Ray Player With Wi-Fi 

 

 

The player itself is not much to look at ...
But get a load of the menu dashboard in the photo below.

This has to be the "must have" appliance of the decade as it has increased the entertainment value of my home audio video system tremendously. In addition to accessing my NetFlix account there are a ton of free services and Samsung apps available. I watch free movies on Crackle. I like playing Texas Hold 'Um Poker and Darts, there are many other free games. Nothing for the hard core serious gamer but entertaining none the less. You have limited web access like YouTube and cannot surf outside of sponsored turf (seemingly). When I search for eBay the only results I get are YouTube videos with eBay keywords for example. The addition of a black box can be easily obtained to overcome this shortcoming. In my case simply connecting to my server via the Wi-Fi feature gives me full web access. You can access the major social media sites like Facebook and Twitter if that's your thing. Another shortcoming, if you will, is that the remote is not back lit so it is hard to see at night or in a dimly lit room. To round out the audio portion of my audio video system I patched a Pioneer stereo receiver between this, my monitor (NEC 3210 with OEM speakers) and Bose 501 Tower speakers to get studio like sound. This player plays .avi and many other video files directly so there is not much need for conversion of computer movie files. It has a front load USB port for ease of watching media from computer files via a USB thumb drive. I am assuming you can attach an external USB hard drive of any size (full of media - wink). Not only does it play Blu-Ray & 3D disks, it plays Blu-Ray & 3D files as well. The instructions were very clear and concise ... Setup was a breeze. DVD's load in a motorized front slot and controls on the front are touch sensitive (no buttons). In the future I plan to add an equalizer (packed away somewhere in my closet) to fine tune the sound. The street price (including used) for these is between $80 - $100 ... Retails brand new for about $180, if you can find them as they do not usually stay stocked very long. Big thumbs up for this Samsung product as with many of their other very fine line of electronics products.

I Don't Have To Try It To Tell You About It

Great news folks ... well perhaps. I've decided that I will not only post products that I have used, but also new products that I haven't used. There are a lot of new products that I've seen that are very interesting. There is a new pen (writing pen) that has built in spell checking for example. It occurred to me that even though I don't have or have not seen or tested these products, some of you may have them or seen them in action or conversely you may not even know that they exist. I welcome your comments if that is the case.

Wacom Intuos3 Digital Graphics Tablet

 

I just got a new toy about 2 weeks ago. For us graphics heads and those on the inside track of the graphics game, it is no secret that Wacom is the leading manufacturer of digitized graphics tablets. This is the first one that I've owned and I must say that I am more than pleasantly surprised. As far as accuracy goes ... It is the most accurate pointing device that I've ever used. Sensitivity, again very high on the utility/usefulness scale. It has a simple USB plug and play connection. It is even supported by USB 3.0. The included software drivers offer a variety of settings to adjust sensitivity, speed, pen clicks, pressure, eraser, and mapping. I found it to work very well with MS Paint, Adobe Photoshop, and G.I.M.P. <== The open source Photoshop alternative. One of the really neat things that I've done is create a hand written signature and I use it as the footer for most of my personal email. Now when I use the brush function in photoshop, the pen that I use feels more like a brush than the mouse does. It's little things like this that go a long way in graphics production and possibly creativity conveyance. There are many models to choose from including ones with large digitizer pads (big bucks) and some smaller. I found this one, model PTZ-431W which is 4 X 6, to be just right for my cluttered desk and strapped budget. If you are a serious graphics arts designer ... one of these tablets is a must have.