Skypad Alpha2 Available on Amazon: http://amzn.to/xmNtaY

I recently purchased this Skytex Skypad Alpha2 as sort of an experiment. I’ve got an iPhone but have always wanted to explore Android OS so I decided to take the plunge and get an Android tablet as well just to learn more about Android and have an alternative to Apple in my hands.

So far, I’ve been reasonably happy with this tablet. The construction of the tablet is solid. It does not feel like a toy at all. I’ve picked up some small tablets that just feel like plastic…not this one. It has an aluminum body.

The placement of the front-facing camera is odd since I usually expect a front-facing camera to be at the top of the device. But I also expect the home buttons to be at the bottom of the device, so I’m not quite sure what constitutes “top” or “left” on this tablet because the camera is at the bottom right of the screen if you have the tablet oriented so that the home button as at the bottom. In this case, the volume rocker and on/off button are on one side of the tablet while the adjacent edge of the tablet has the mono speaker, microSD slot, DC power in, USB, HDMI and headphone jack. The layout of ports, buttons and camera are not in optimal positions but they work where they are, it just seems a little odd and when holding the tablet I am always accidentally hitting the power button.

The tablet starts up briskly and the responsiveness of the screen was actually better than I was expecting. I have not yet noticed-with my limited use so far- any sluggishness whatsoever. Screen sliding is smooth and quick. I have watched several YouTube videos and they were glitch-free. Not the same experience with Netflix however. I experienced really bad pixelation and gradient issues with Netflix as well as some seriously bad sound syncing issues.

The tablet easily and quickly connected to my home network and surfing was very snappy. It seemed on par with my MacBook Pro quite honestly.

I’ve installed a handful of apps so far:YouTube, Kindle, eBay, Google+, Wired, Twitter and so far everything has gone smoothly. The touchscreen is responsive. Sometimes the screen doesn’t reorient when I flip the orientation of the tablet, but that may be due to the fact that some apps don’t change orientation and I’m not exactly sure how to figure out whether it should reorient all the time or not. Yet, sometimes when it is supposed to reorient, it does not.

The camera resolution is dismal but at least there is a camera. Don’t expect much from it though as it’s only 0.3 megapixels.

Obviously, with a tiny, mono speaker, sound quality is not spectacular nor very loud. I’d call the speaker barely adequate. Of course, headphones are going to give you a tremendously better listening experience.

The microphone quality was a big disappointment. Everything I recorded sounded kind of muffled and scratchy. This would not make a very good lecture recording device, for instance.

I do wish this had bluetooth, but I guess you can’t expect everything at the price point. I do miss not having bluetooth built in though.

I can’t say too much more at this point since I’ve not had the tablet very long. Buy my initial impressions are moderately positive and I eagerly await the release of the next version of Android which I will install on the Skypad as soon as I get it and will report back here with my impressions.

This seems to be a great value in a sub-$200 Android tablet worthy of your consideration.

>The Cables To Go 30504 USB 2.0 to IDE or Serial ATA Drive Adapter (Black) (See all Electronics Cable Adapters) is a new tool in my arsenal and it’s made a huge difference in productivity when needing to work with bare drives or do diagnostics/maintenance on hard drives.

Not having to install a hard drive into an enclosure before being able to access the drive is a very convenient thing to be able to do. Previously I would have to use a Firewire/USB/USB 2.0 enclosure that I purchased from OWC in order to access a drive. But now all I have to do is hook up two cables to the drive (a power cable and the actual IDE or SATA output cable) and then hook the USB to my computer. When I’m done, I just unhook everything. It is just that easy.

You really can’t go wrong with this kit from CablesToGo and the price is right.

Here is my video review of the CablesToGo USB 2.0 IDE or SATA Drive Adapter.

The CablesToGo kit is available from Amazon.

The recently published book, WordPress 3 Site Blueprints by Heather R. Wallace and published by Packt Publishing is an ambitious project that belies the slim volume that it is.

According to the author, the book is primarily geared to a “self-learner” or a “WordPress consultant” who is “interested in exploring all that this open source software has to offer…” The book’s premise is to provide a “blueprint” in the design of 9 different types of WordPress websites. Each blueprint or chapter walks you through the process of configuring a sspecific WordPress Theme. The types of sites  (blueprints) discussed are:

1.Migrating a Static site to WordPress
2.Building a Community Portal
3.Building an E-Commerce Website
4.Building a Local Classified Ads Website
5.Building a Consumer Reivew Website
6.Building a Job Board Website
7.Building a Micro blogging Website
8.Building a Local Business Directory
9.Building a Membership Website

In addition to the 9 blueprints, there is an appendix that presents several WordPress plugins that the author feels may be of value such as WP-DB-Backup, Akismet and several others. Another appendix provides a guide to installing WordPress Themes and plugins.

I found the first two chapters to be very helpful. Chapter 1 describes the process of migrating a static HTML site to a dynamic WordPress site. Although the author does not provide specific instruction as how to actually install WordPress, she does direct you to online resources to accomplish that task. A concise discussion gives you the information you need to add appropriate WordPress specific code to your HTML files to turn them into a working WordPress “theme.” Resources are also provided for free and premium ($) themes.

Chapter 2 shows you how to integrate bbPress, BuddyPress and WordPress to enable you to create a community portal site. bbPress provides a forum component, while BuddyPress enables users to interact in a facebook-like manner. The basics are covered but novices may require additional hand-holding to undertake such an ambitious project.

The other blueprints are covered in a similar concise fashion, providing the basic information you would need to get the specific type of site up and running. Each  blueprint presents a suggested way of configuring settings and adding specific plugins suited to the particular blueprint.
This slim volume covers a lot of ground. The author provides a lot of additional online resources which is helpful.

What I found most disappointing was that several of the blueprints require “premium” themes or plugins that cost real money. In some cases the plugins or themes are relatively pricey and this may diminish the ability for some people to carry-out the projects.

Overall, WordPress 3 Site Blueprints gives the reader a good idea of where WordPress can take you. It abolishes the notion that WordPress is only for blogging. In fact, WordPress is fast becoming a viable platform for just about any type of CMS site you can imagine. All it takes is the right combination of themes and plugins.

I do wonder whether the book is going to satisfy the inevitable quesitons that a novice will have while the more adept user may desire a deeper exploration of the mechanics of WordPress and plugins.

I’ve got a 2G iPod Touch. It’s 22 months old. I had been running OS3 on it ever since OS3 was released and my battery life has been quite good. I’d be able to go several days before needing a charge. That all changed immediately following my updating to iOS 4. I was shocked at how quickly my battery lost its charge. I’d notice in the evening that I had 75% charge and in the morning it would be almost nothing. I never completely shut down my iPod but let it sleep instead. I also noticed that startup time took nearly 35 seconds where in OS3 it was more like 15 seconds to startup.

I began to research this issue and discovered a lot of other people voicing similar complaints with iPod’s and iPhones that had been upgraded to iOS 4. And a check in the Apple Forums uneartherd numerous threads with many people also complaining about the greatly accelerated draining of the battery with iOS 4. Here is an excellent forum with extensive discussion on the battery life issue

Numerous suggestions were offered to improve the battery life. Some of the suggestions were…

• In Settings>Fetch New Data, turn Push off.
• In Settings> Wi-Fi, turn Wi-Fi off.
• Make sure you do not have multiple applications running.
• Sync and backup your iPod.  Restore the iPod to factory settings by going to Settings>General>Reset. Re-sync to restore your apps.

Well, none of those suggestions helped improve my battery life. To clarify, if I don’t have Wi-Fi on, my iPod becomes pretty useless for the things that I use it for so turning Wi-Fi off was no solution. Same with turning Push off.

The point is this: with no change in my usage pattern, my battery life plummeted with the installation of iOS4 leading me to conclude that there is something inherent with iOS 4 causing my iPod to suddenly suck battery power. It might be as simple as this… here is what I’ve learned about iOS4 compared to iOS3;  iOS4 has a persistent Wi-Fi mode which means that prior to iOS4, Wi-Fi turned itself off when the iPod Touch was locked. Not so with iOS4… Wi-Fi remains on even when your iPod is locked so that may explain my precipitous drop in battery life. I haven’t had enough time to investigate this further but in the coming days I will try to make sure I turn Wi-Fi off wen I absolutely don’t need it to see it helps. It certainly should because Wi-Fi definitely will use more power than not having it on in the first place. If that turns out to be the main reason, what a pain in the butt it will be to always have to turn Wi-Fi off when not needed in order to save battery life compared to pre-iOS 4 days.

I felt that downgrading to iOS3 would be the most logical thing to do but when I called Apple Support to inquire about this I was told that Apple does not directly provide a way to downgrade to a prior OS. The tech implied that it was possible to do via an unsupported Apple technique but I have researched and concluded that I don’t want to attempt that myself. If you search for it on Google, you’ll find tutorials explaining how to do it but there is some risk that you’ll mess up your firmware and you may not have a positive result. I’d rather not attempt that, your mileage may vary.

I have AppleCare so that leaves me with about 2 months of AppleCare extended warranty coverage. I decided to walk my iPod to the Apple Store near me. Once there the Genius ran some diagnostics on my iPod and concluded that the battery itself was nearing the end of its useful life. I realize that Li-Ion batteries have a limited lifespan that diminishes according to how many charge cycles it has gone through but I just wasn’t completely buying his conclusion since my battery had been holding a charge very well and it was only after upgrading to iOS 4 that the accelerated battery drain took place. The Genius on the other hand smirked at me and told me that my battery was 2 years old and was shot. He felt it was merely a coincidence that my battery life seemed to be less with the iOS4 upgrade. He recommended I replace the iPod and since I was under AppleCare I went with that option.

It’s a fact that eventually my battery will die completely so at least I’ve got a newer battery. After one last sync with my computer and Mobile Me, I handed over the nearly 2 year old iPod 2G and received a new replacement (still 2G though.) That’s a great reason to have AppleCare since it would have cost around $80 to have Apple to replace the battery. The peace of mind that comes with having AppleCare, for me, makes it a good thing to do. And I’ve still got 2 months left so if this doesn’t fix my battery drainage issue, I can go right back to Apple within the next 2 months and pursue this further.

Has it solved the battery drain issue? I don’t know yet. I’ll know the answer to that in a few days and will follow up with an update to this post. In the meantime, I’d like to hear your experiences with iOS 4 and your iPod and iPhones. Have you noticed any difference in battery usage since you upgraded to iOS4?

Nikon Coolpix L110

Several months ago I purchased the Nikon Coolpix L110 camera. Since then I’ve taken thousands of photos and hundreds of videos with the camera. It has proven to be quite a capable camera in its price range with many strengths and few weaknesses.

Specifically regarding strengths of this camera, the Macro mode is fantastic. If you enjoy taking close-up photos of flowers, bugs, fine detail of artwork, etc, you will enjoy this camera as it takes excellent macro photographs and allows you to get extremely close to your subject. The L110 also has an amazing 15x optical zoom. A 15x zoom is equivalent to a 420mm lens and this lets you really zoom in tightly which makes it great for wildlife photography, travel, sports and nature photography. Image stabilization helps you get those zoomed shots by helping reduce hand-held camera shake. Don’t forget to turn off image stabilization if you are using a tripod. Image stabilization is only to be used when hand-holding the camera.

THE 720p HD video capture of the L110 is surprisingly good. While most camcorders in the under $300 price range only provide mediocre at best still photography capabilities, the L110 which provides excellent still photographs also produces excellent HD video. The larger form factor of the L110 makes taking videos a lot easier too compared to holding a smaller camcorder.

On the not so great side the L110 audio quality leaves a lot to be desired. And low light performance, particularly video, is not very good. In low-light situations you will see a lot of graininess in the video and the frame rate seems to drop as well. Still photography is possible in lower light situations since the camera does have a flash. But if you are looking for manual control of your camera’s aperture, shutter and ISO, you will be disappointed in the L110 as there is little manual control available.

I’ve posted a fairly complete review of the L110 on Amazon. If you read my review on Amazon, be sure you also read the comments as many people have asked questions that I’ve attempted to answer as best I can. A lot of information not in the review is presented in the comments. I have also produced this hands-on video review.

Here are some representative photos taken with the Nikon Coolpix L110…

When I’m cycling, I’m most concerned about traffic coming up from behind me. I want to do all I can to ensure that distracted motorists will be able to easily see me. To help make sure this happens, I always use a tail light.

One of the best tail lights I’ve found for cycling is the Planet Bike Superflash tail light. It is extremely bright and can easily be seen even in bright daylight. At dawn or dusk, it is incredibly noticeable.

Typically the light will be mounted on your seat post or attached to the back of an under-seat bag. It runs on 2-AAA batteries and battery life is excellent. I easily get a season out of one set of batteries. It’s diminutive size belies it’s amazing performance. The superflash is about $20 and available from Amazon.com

Here is my complete video review of the Planet Bike Superflash Tail Light…

I’ve got several Sandisk mp3 players… Sansa Fuze, Sansa Clip and Sansa Clip+. They all exhibit a peculiar issue with track listing names. The “problem” is that there seem to be duplicate track names for all the music that I’ve added to my Sansa by dragging the tunes in from iTunes on my Mac.

I was fortunate to have an extremely helpful and knowledgable chat session with a Sandisk support person named “Apollo D.” In conjunction with that chat session and some additional Googling this issue, I have finally found a solution for this vexing problem.

Basically the “._” in front of the track listings is a result of the way that Mac OSX handles filenames. When you drag your iTunes tracks into the Sandisk player, the “duplicate” file names get created as a result of this MacOSX naming issue. What is bothersome is that you cannot delete the files directly from the player because as soon as you click on one of them, the player scans to the next “real” file and begins playing it. So you never get the chance to get to the delete menu on the player to delete the “duplicate” file name. Furthermore, these duplicates are not really music tracks anyway and don’t play. You also cannot see these files when the player is hooked up to your computer so you are not able to delete them this way either.

The solution is relatively painless and here is what you want to do to rid your Sandisk player of these files. If you must know more, then just Google…there are many places that discuss the “dot_clean” terminal command.

1. Make sure that the System Settings > USB mode on your player is set to MSC.
2. Hook your Sandisk player up to your computer via USB.
3. Launch the Mac OS terminal (Applications>Utilities>Terminal.)
4. At the prompt, type in the command:dot_clean
5. Hit the space bar one time to insert a space after dot_clean
6. Locate the icon of your Sandisk player on your desktop and drag the icon of the player into your terminal window. This will copy the path of your Sandisk player into the terminal window.
7. HIt Return
8. That’s all there is to it. You terminal window should have returned you to a new line after completing the command you just issued.
9. Unmount your Sandisk player.

Now after the player refreshes itself after it has been disconnected from your computer, you will notice that all the “duplicate” tracks have been removed.

If you add new tunes to your player after doing this the first time, you will have to follow this procedure again to rid the newly added files of the ._ track names.

I have a love/hate relationship with cycling mirrors. Most of the ones I’ve tried, and I’ve tried quite a few over the years, just haven’t worked out well. I think I’ve finally found one that works pretty well and is fairly flexible in where it can be mounted.

On my road bike I found three areas where it seemed to be good. I mounted the mirror in three different locations; At the end of the bottom of the bars, around the brake hoods and just below the brake hoods on the handlebar. My video review will demonstrate these three positions.

The mirror is very light, weighing about 2 oz. The light weight of the mirror makes it less prone to vibrating. The mirror surface is convex which results in a distorted view and that makes it hard to judge distances using the mirror. However the convex shape gives you a wide angle of view and seeing approaching vehicles is much easier with this type of mirror.

I paid about $25 from Performance Bike and think it’ll do the trick for me.

Some of the other mirrors I’ve tried but didn’t like for various reasons were the…

CycleAware Reflex Mirror: This is a helmet mount mirror and it vibrated quite a bit. Also, it was always getting whacked out of shape when I’d take my helmet off. I found it difficult to adjust and the mirror gives a very small field of view. It takes some getting used to.

Blackburn Road Mirror: This mirror has a bracket that mounts over the brake hood. I didn’t like it. The mirror vibrated and the extra thickness around the brake hood just bothered me.

Everyone will have their preference, but right now I like the Ultra Light bike Mirror by D+D Oberlauda. I got mine at Performance Bike.

Here is my video review…

I’ve been absorbing the most excellent book on CMS Made Simple published by Packt Publishing. Written by Sofia Hauschildt, a tutor, consultant and programmer, CMS Made Simple 1.6 is a beginners guide to learning the basics and so much more of CMS Made Simple, an open-source, content management application.

I first started using CMS Made Simple to build web sites about 5 years ago. I have also used WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, RapidWeaver and hand-coding to build websites. But CMS Made Simple is one of my favorite tools to use because you can get started with it very easily and produce a great website without knowing much about what goes on behind the scenes. Documentation has always been hard to come by though. The wiki and user forums are the best places to visit to glean information and ask questions. But the developers have clearly stated that CMS Made Simple is geared to web developers and not so much to neophytes who need a lot of hand-holding and who need relatively basic questions answered.

CMS Made Simple 1.6 is the book that neophytes need. It takes a very measured and slowly paced approach in presenting small doses of information to enable almost anyone to get the CMS installed and operating in no time at all. This is done as a ‘case study” whereby you build a CMS Made Simple website with a capable tutor by your side… Sofia Haushildt.

The methodology used in this book is straightforward and effective. You are told what you will be doing, you are guided through the process of doing it, then you are told what you just did. It is this repetition of information that facilitates the learning process, especially for block-heads like me. I learn best when I am able to observe someone doing something then doing it myself. That is exactly what this book does… it teaches you by doing. There are ample screenshots at every step of the journey to further illuminate the tasks. Furthermore, there are quizzes that test your comprehension of the material covered. If you diligently follow through in a linear fashion, you will learn all the basics and so much more of how CMS Made Simple can be used to build a great web site.

I was particularly impressed with the aplomb in which Sofia approached Smarty. Smarty is the template engine used by CMS Made Simple. Without an understanding of what Smarty is and how it works in your templates and pages, you would be at a huge disadvantage when approaching a web design project. Her treatment of the subject leaves you with a very good understanding how Smarty functions and gives you many ideas of how you can use Smarty tags to simplify site design by harnessing the power of Smarty.

As you continue through the book you are gently guided into more advanced topics and taught how to incorporate various features into your website such as form pages, inserting YouTube videos onto pages, learning how menus and sub-menus work and are displayed and so much more.

There is an excellent discussion of how just about any web template can be converted to work with CMS Made Simple and it is surprisingly easy when you apply what you learned about Smarty tags to that task. You also learn how to build a template from scratch as well as how to import templates obtained from other sources.

Many code snippets are presented in the book. Unfortunately the book does not include a CD containing code snippets by chapter. But the publishers website has all the code available for download in a zip file so that is a big help since it obviates the need to tediously type error free code from the book.

If you want to learn CMS Made Simple, get this book. It’s as simple as that. What you learn in these pages will save you hours of frustration and question asking in forums. This is arguably the best introduction to CMS Made Simple that you will find. The book is not just for beginners either. People who have been developing web sites with CMS Made Simple already may likely find valuable tips and information that they did not previously know. This book is not a reference book on CMS Made Simple however, so if you are looking for a comprehensive reference book, this will not satisfy that need. In spite of that though it actually is quite comprehensive in that it does cover every important area of using CMS Made Simple in a really well written way. Sofia writes clearly and in a very straightforward, uncomplicated way. I have shelves of computer books and this is what I would consider a top-shelf book.

I’d like to give a plug to CMS Made Simple as well. I know that WordPress is all the rage. I build many sites using WordPress myself. But if you are not building a blog-centric site, WordPress is not always the best way to approach building a page-based website. CMS Made Simple is a worthy consideration. It is very easy to learn and use. It is under continual development and has an active user forum. I like it a lot and it is so much easier to get your head around than Joomla, Drupal and other CMS’s. Check it out and see for yourself.

Now if you’ll excuse me,  I need to try and persuade Sofia Hauschildt into writing a book about Magento…

Osram Sylvania Products Inc 72261 Led Light Flute – SilverWhile strolling the aisles of BJ’s the other day, I discovered this great LED task light called the Light Flute. It’s made by Sylvania and it is just one of the coolest LED lights I”ve seen. What makes it so great is its overall design and functionality.

The case of the light is made of anodized aluminum which is light and strong. It feels very sturdy and the end-cap unscrews to reveal the 3-AAA batteries that power 4-white LED lights. The innovative mounting base allows for several different mounting options… magnetic, adhesive and screw mounting.

The slender light is 8.5″ long and about the diameter of your little finger. It can be mounted just about anywhere and is great for mounting under your desk when trying to re-route cables. It could also be used as emergency lighting, as an under-counter light, closet lighting… the list could go on and on.

The Light Flutes were sold as packs of 2 for about $17 at BJ’s and are also available from Amazon.com.

I haven’t had them long enough to comment on how long the batteries will last, but LED lights are generally pretty efficient so I would expect a minimum of 10-12 hours of continuous light and perhaps much more. I’ll update this post once I have a better idea of battery life.

UPDATE: Several people have told me that they can’t figure out how to remove the cap in order to replace the batteries. I”ve made a short tutorial to demonstrate how to remove the cap. Here is a video of how to remove the end cap of the Sylvania Light Flute.