Fly! Be free!
Don't keep all of your music locked up in your computer! Yeah, sure, you download songs to your iPod, but that just feeds your antisocial tendencies. Your music yearns to be free, free the way it used to be, on your stereo, man.
A number of companies are making devices that use your WiFi network to channel music from your PC to your stereo or other multimedia devices. Netgear's MP101 is a WiFi box that you connect to your stereo, just like any other stereo component, but this one allows you to play tunes that you have on your PC. Oh yeah, that's the stuff.
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Details: Netgear MP101 Wireless Digital Music Player, $149.99. Requires a PC running Windows 98 or better with a WiFi 802.11b or 802.11g wireless network. Available at Best Buy and CompUSA. For more, go to:
www.netgear.com/promotions/mp101_promo.php
Universal appeal
A new Web-based service is targeted to those of us who are interested in stargazing but aren't interested in investing a lot of time and money in it.
If you fall into this category and you want to experience the excitement of looking at live images of celestial objects, perhaps the Slooh Live SpaceShow is for you. This Web site pulls original, live, celestial images from two robotically controlled refractor telescopes (14-inch and 85-mm) located in a mountain observatory in the Canary Islands, where 80 percent of the nights are clear enough for crisp viewing.
The site offers group missions with preselected targets and accompanying preproduced narratives and lectures on astronomy, and there are solo missions in which you schedule viewing times to look at specific objects.
Details: Slooh Live SpaceShow; memberships, which start at $7.95 per month, include access to all group missions and limited solo time. To learn more, go to:
Take note
NexConcepts is touting its Mobile NoteTaker as the “ultimate handwriting capture device.” At the very least, it sure is cool.
The NoteTaker is a little box, about the size of an eyeglass case, that clips onto a pad of paper.
The unit tracks the movement of the NoteTaker pen on the paper using a set of infrared sensors.
As you write on the paper, the image is duplicated on the LCD face of the NoteTaker in real time. The result is a system that electronically captures your handwriting as you write on paper with ink. Captured documents are saved to Flash Memory cards and can be downloaded to your PC via USB.
Details: NexConcepts Mobile NoteTaker, $169. Requires Windows 2000 or XP. Available online at:
www.bestpcw.com/MobileNoteTaker.asp
For more, go to:
www.nexconcepts.com
Having everything just so
You've got too many cables on your PC: power cords, phone lines, modems, ethernet cables and on and on. WiFi and Bluetooth have yet to put a dent in your cable nightmare. What can you do?
Employ the Complete Cable Manager. This system from Cable-Safe can help you secure and organize that snake farm you call the floor under your desk. The Cable Manager is a modular rack of little frames and straps that hangs beneath your desk to tie up and hide all of that unsightly cordage.
Details: Cable-Safe Complete Cable Manager Kit, $34.95. Available online at:
www.cable-safe.com/products/cm.htm
David Shein has been a freelance technical writer and reviewer for the Web and print media since 1998. He also is a contributing editor to and can be heard on “What the Tech?” on WXXI-AM (1370).
