“Hey Joe, where you goin’ with that gadget in your hand?”
It happens all the time: You’re using an iPhone app and you accidentally press the Home button, which takes you home whether you like it or not. Here’s an easy trick to undo an accidental Home key press:
Keep the Home button held down, then touch and hold on the screen for two seconds then let go of the Home button. You stay in the app rather than go home.
UPDATE: Listen to the segment here The Rude Awakening 07-01-09.
On Ocean 98.1 The Rude Awakening (98.1 FM WOCM in Ocean City, MD) at 8 AM to talk about Green Gadgets For Dummies.
Excellent story in the New York Times about advances in making it easier to properly dispose of unwanted or hopelessly useless consumer electronics products.
Read the full story at: A Green Way to Dump Low-Tech Electronics – NYTimes.com.
My new book, Green Gadgets For Dummies, is now available in paperback and Kindle editions.
Below is a brief description of the book, followed by the book’s foreword by Tom Zeller Jr., editor of the New York Times Green Inc. section.
Thanks to everyone who provided so much support and assistance throughout the writing of the book.
(Special thanks to Wiley project editor Nicole Sholly, who made the process a learning experience that set me up for my next book, Macs All-in-One For Dummies (2nd edition).)
Continue reading ‘Just released: Green Gadgets For Dummies, by Joe Hutsko’
After accidentally knocking my original iPhone off my desk, which caused the glass screen to smash into a pretty spiderweb-like pattern that, thanks to my Invisible Shield screen protector, allowed me to continue using the smart phone as I stood in line to buy an iPhone 3G when it went on sale the next day, I decided it was time to surround the new one with a protective case.
Although I initially went with InCase’s leather-wrapped Slider Elan, I later chose the InCase black Slider (pictured on the left) as my iPhone 3G’s protective partner. The case’s tight fit adds minimal thickness to the 3G, and its lightly rubberized finish provides just enough grip to prevent accidental sleights of the hand, so to speak. I’ve also used Griffin’s Clarifi for iPhone 3G, but only on the couple of occasions when I needed to take a close up snapshot, thanks to the Clarifi’s built in lens, which corrects the iPhone camera’s farsightedness.
InCase recently sent me their new Bamboo Slider for iPhone 3G, and having just finished Green Gadgets For Dummies, I welcomed the new model’s reduced carbon footprint, thanks to the case’s composition of 40 percent recycled bamboo, 60 percent polycarbonate construction.
InCase says the bamboo pulp used to create the case comes from “reclaimed bamboo shards of materials such as construction scaffolding and chopsticks.”
In hand, the Bamboo Slider feels like plastic, though a deep whiff of the case’s backside betrays plywoody hints that evoke memories of under-construction new homes and lumberyards.
Bottom line: The inclusion of bamboo is an interesting novelty, but the case’s less grippy finish was reason enough for me to stick with the lightly rubberized Slider that’s served me well since acquiring my iPhone 3G.
I used the Energy Detective, left, to monitor the energy-consumption profile of my various appliances.
Although home energy tracking devices like the single-outlet Kill A Watt or the whole-house Power2Save unit are gaining popularity in this energy-conscious age, I hadn’t tried one out until my electric bill topped out at $150 in January. That prompted me to invest in anEnergy Detective, a device that retails for $145 and promises to give homeowners a telling glimpse into their personal energy.
Over on sister site gGadget.org, MNN.com tech blogger Karl Burkart’s interview with me about Green Gadgets For Dummies at the Greener Gadgets 2009 Conference in NYC.
Link to full story: Green Gadgets for Dummies … and smart people, too | MNN – Mother Nature Network .
By now the new Xbox 360 you buy will be built around a chipset known as “Jasper.”
Jasper 360s feature a redesigned motherboard with 65-nanometer graphics and processing chips. The cooler running, less power-hungry sum-of-parts is meant to make the infamous Red Ring of Dead a thing of the past.
My Xbox 360 arcade, purchased in October, was acting weird – mainly lockups when sending messages to Xbox Live buddies. Having purchased the Product Replacement Plan with the Xbox 360 from Tim at the Hamilton Mall’s downstairs Gamestop last October, I returned with the console for a replacement. There was Tim again, smart and friendly as before, but unfortunately he was out of 360 Arcades. He checked with the store upstairs, nada, then called the Shore Mall store, where Travis told him he had one left, and yes, he’d hold it for me.
I drove to Travis’s Gamestop, gave him the dud machine and inspected the new one to make sure it was a Jasper unit, and repurchased the $19.99 Product Replacement Plan for the new one, in case something goes wrong between now and this time next year.
How did I know it was a Jasper? As reported for months, the thing to look for when buying a new Xbox 360 is a power spec of 12 volts, which you can find by inspecting the box’s serial number cutout hole. It may take some finger wiggling to reveal the power rating – assuming, of course, the person selling you the unit allows you to handle the box in the first place.
Unlike the Xbox 360 Arcade it replaces, the Jasper version doesn’t come with a 256 MB memory card. That’s because Microsoft soldered the memory onto the motherboard, making the card unnecessary for saving settings and game progress. With my initial purchase of the optional 120 GB hard drive ($140), the total cost for my 360 was $340 – $40 more than the Xbox 360 Pro, which comes with a few things the Arcade doesn’t: A 60 GB hard drive, a chrome-finished disc tray door and button, a headset, a standard and HD video cable, and, at present, different bundled games. Since I already own a wireless headset and HD cable, doubling the hard disk size for only $40 was worth more than the only thing my 360 was missing – chrome-accented disc door and button.
The new Jasper 360’s 150-watt power supply is lighter and absent of the visible fan found on older, higher power versions, and maybe it’s a placebo effect, but to my ears my new Jasper-equipped Xbox 360 runs quieter, both with and without a disc spinning inside.
Summary: Pretty much the same Xbox 360 as before on the outside, albeit with quieter, more energy efficient components running the show on the inside.
An old HP workhorse notebook that survived Hurricane Katrina and miscellaneous other hard knocks stopped working on account of a loose power jack, which wiggled and jiggled like a baby tooth ready to say goodbye.
Nearby PC repair shops quoted a minimum of around $150 just to “look at it,” to which they’d stack parts and labor costs to fix the ol’ girl – assuming they could.
Enter Pomeroy Computing’s $65 flat-rate DC Jack Repair service. I was skeptical at first, exchanged a few emails with Steve, the guy who does the fixes, then decided to give it a go.
I squeezed the hulking HP Z7000 series laptop into a Priority Mail flat-rate box (less than $10 to ship), dropped it at the Post Office, and within four days (owing to the weekend; the site says you can expect 3 – 5 days turnaround) I received the repaired notebook with the new power jack firmly in place.
Conclusion: This guy is like a seasoned dentist, he does so many of these things he could do them with his eyes closed.
Highly recommended.
UPDATE 12-10-2008: Check out this story on Play.tm to see the new Jasper-equipped Xbox 360 and find out what to look for when seeking a Jasper Xbox 360 of your own.
According to the Xbox 360 DVD Drive Database, it appears Xbox 360s outfitted with the much-anticipated Jasper chipset have finally started showing up in stores and at online retailers.
The key things to look for when buying a new Xbox 360 with the Jasper chipset is a manufacturing date (MFR) as early as 2008-08-06, Lot 8031 and up, and Team CSON. (You may have to bribe your local GameSpot salesperson to poke his or her finger through the serial number window of 360 box to inspect the manufacturing date.)
For those unfamiliar with why Jasper’s such a big deal, the chipset features 65nm (nanometers) GPU and CPU chips that require less power and are expected to offer cooler, quieter operation – and consequently fewer RRoD (Red Ring of Death) failures.
Here’s a link so you can check out all of the details for yourself: Xbox 360 DVD Drive Database.
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