Category: Gear

  • Kindle or no, we still need great book stores

    (UPDATE: In October, 2008, new ownership promised to maintain the store’s essential character – phew!) Woke up and received a slight slap in the face as I read the morning paper today. Seems that Frank Kramer, owner of the very fine Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Ma., is planning to sell his establishment. Make no…

  • Cheaper noise cancelling head phones work pretty great

    Last year I bought my wife a pair of pretty high-end Sony MDR-NC50 noise canceling headphones to take on airplane (business) trips. They are amazing — pristine sound quality for your music (or anything else on your iPod) while tuning down, down, down environmental sounds like jet engines, train whooshing or even construction equipment working…

  • That terrific, cheap Flip video camera’s getting updated

    I was checking out a post over on CNet’s techno trends blog and I came across an item about the cheap-o digital video camera called simply The Flip. It reminded me to rave about ours, which my wife ordered a few weeks ago from Amazon for $150. This tiny cam runs on a pair of…

  • Great stuff in June Wired Magazine but where’s the web extras?

    Wired Magazine has gone through many phases since 1993, when it seemed like the greatest and most original periodical of the day. Over the past few years, I’ve been feeling less excited reading the issues — it was getting a little stale, kind of predictable. But the June issue, which arrived on Saturday, stunned me…

  • What to pack in your computer bag?

    Dan Frakes has an awesome piece over at Macworld’s “Mobile Mac” blog today about gadgets and junk that he carries around with his laptop. I hadn’t seen Kensington’s rechargeable Portable Power Pack for Mobile Devices before. Only $60 and 3.5 ounces for 14 hours of additional VIDEO playback on my iPod? Sounds like I need…

  • Apple’s big new Back Bay store

    As part of the day job, got to attend the press preview of Apple’s new store in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood. It’s on Boylston Street across from the Prudential Center Mall. It’s also Apple’s biggest. First floor is all Macs, second floor is for iPods and iPhones while the Genuis Bar and room for training…

  • John Markoff needs a new job or at least a new beat

    Ever know someone who got laid off or otherwise had an involuntary job change mid to late in their career and ended up feeling re-energized and renewed at their next job? Happened to my dad, thanks to Newt Gingrich becoming Speaker of the House, but that’s another story. It’s that time for New York Times…

  • Apple’s Time Capsule plays nice with Verizon’s FIOS

    Wow, that was easy. Sometimes Apple’s auto-magic, self-configuring stuff works just as advertised. Sometimes, it’s Apple’s penchant for knowing how to simplify the front-end to hide the wacky back-end that carries the day. In the case of the new Time Capsule wireless base station with hard drive, it’s both. Phew. I’ve been using OS X…

  • More info about what’s running and in the running

    For the past few years, I’ve maintained a few pages describing gear and gadgets I use off of my other site, aaronpressman.com, starting with this page called “Tools I use.” It’s not the best set-up as those pages are created with Dreamweaver and then have to be uploaded by FTP. It can be time consuming…

  • Three friggin millimeters, Steve Jobs, is all I ask

    (Updated 1/25) The more I think about the new uber-thin Macbook Air, the more confused I am about one design decision in particular. I can get over the lack of ports, the add-on optical drive, the wimpy graphics. But I keep coming back to the dreadfully small hard drive which maxes out at 80 gigabytes.…