October 3rd, 2008 by admin
Coosh headphones and headsets boast comfort and wear-ability along with full-bodied sound so it was time to test them out.
Contained in a reusable jar, the Coosh headset already looks promising and when removed, the soft flexible silicone earrings certainly strike you. The original silicone design is durable and is so light weight that I hardly feel as though I’m wearing a headset at all. For the fashion conscious out there, the silicone earring is detachable and interchangeable so if you want to change the colour of the earring or just use the earbud by itself, then the choice is there. Not only are the earrings detachable and interchangeable but they are wearable all day long and actually fit securely, whatever activity you may be doing. The Massive Monkees, a dance crew crash test them to prove the security.
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Posted in A/V Devices, iPod Devices | 1 Comment »
September 19th, 2008 by admin
There’s many reasons not to choose the Sports Deluxe Game Console over the Nintedo Wii, which it is similar to and there’s one main reason to choose it in ADDITION to the Wii. It makes a good traveling companion that you can trash or lose without worrying about having to replace the expensive gaming console that you leave at home.
Let’s face it. The Sports Deluxe is a Wii Knock-off. There’s no denying it. But that’s not a bad thing. The SDGC has a wireless interface and, similar to Wii Sports, you play such games as baseball, boxing, bowling, golf, and even tennis on it. And you can work up quite a sweat while doing it. And the specific sports aren’t half bad, with the exception of baseball which is fairly limited to pitch and hit. I found the most fun was had bowling and playing tennis. Boxing is boxing and some just aren’t thrilled with that. Although it does let users employ the “katana” extra that plugs in via USB to record the activity or your other hand. The best sport, though, hands down is tennis, followed by Golf. But the funny thing about the Golf game is that there’s a lot of spelling errors in the notes that the game sends you. For instance, you end up hitting the ball in the water, you’re hitting a water haZRad. Pretty funny.
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Tags: Wii Knockoffs
Posted in Gaming reviews | No Comments »
September 19th, 2008 by admin
When we broke the news at Coolest Gadgets of the AudioVox Homebase at CES last year, I thought this was perhaps the coolest home kitchen idea to make family life easier. The idea was simple. A digital frame wrapped around an acrylic base which also serves as a whiteboard for notes and digital recorder for voice messages. The LCD screen looked to show pictures from SD cards and promised slide shows and other options that would make looking at digital stills quite enjoyable.
Then I got the real McCoy to test last week. By the end of the afternoon, I was ready to pack it up and send it back. Not because it’s easy to use, which it is, or that it’s design is a lost cause – which it isn’t. But because the parts AudioVox used in building the Home Base are just plain disappointing. The LCD screen resolution is around 1st generation digital frame quality and the microphone which is used to record the digital memos makes playback sound like the drive-through at Jack in the Box. And on top of that, AudioVox seems to think that using sponge tape to affix a three or four pound electronic device to an refrigerator door that opens and closes is going to be a secure system for protecting it from falling and breaking into thousands of pieces. Well sorry, but that’s a recipe for disaster. These kind of shortcomings only prove the old adage that designers don’t work on their own cars.
But in this case, designers don’t use the stuff they design. And they should, if they plan on charging $200 for them. If AudioVox is willing to put a little more into this design to make it both safe and high quality, even if it costs $10 –20 more, I’m sure people would pay the difference to get what Audiovox first promised. And therein lies the hope, because it’s just a great idea for digitizing people’s busy life.
Posted in A/V Devices, Household Gadgets | No Comments »
September 12th, 2008 by admin
Welcome to Coolest Media. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
August 25th, 2008 by admin
I’m a bit behind the curve on this one – Monster Cable teamed up with rapper Dr. Dre a while ago to introduce the "Beats by Dre" headphones. I’ve been giving them a bit of a workout over the past few months, so how do they stack up?
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Posted in A/V Devices, iPod Devices | 1 Comment »
August 6th, 2008 by admin
There are many accessories for a camera that are considered must haves. The extra set of batteries, the backup memory card, a Skylight filter for protection, a tripod and even a long range flash for those zoom shots in low light. But if you told me that I’d make the Storm Jacket one of those must have things for the camera bag should the weather go south, I’d look at you like you grew a third head. A raincoat for a camera? But it makes perfect sense.
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Posted in A/V Devices, Miscellaneous Reviews | 1 Comment »
August 6th, 2008 by admin
Computing outside can be a real pain in the thumb drive. The ambient light blaring up against that LCD screen can make it darn hard to see. Sure, you can try using a bellows, or even some sort of screen shade, but as the light shifts throughout the day, sooner or later you’re going to find yourself playing cat and mouse trying to see, unless you bury your head inside the bellows and then it’s darn near impossible to read, much less type like that.
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Tags: PC protection
Posted in Miscellaneous Reviews | No Comments »
July 31st, 2008 by admin
This was an interesting review to write – there are only a limited number of things you can do to review a breathalyzer and I don’t have access to sophisticated test equipment. So when it came to the operational review I had to resort to the “manual” approach with the aid of Mr Jack Daniels. Ahh, the things we do for science!
Before we get to that though, a quick overview. The BACTrack is designed to detect the presence (and amount) of alcohol flowing around your bloodstream. The value it gives is in the form of a Blood Alcohol Concentration (or BAC)%. It does this by measuring a sample of your breath.
Even a small BAC% can impair reaction times and judgement (try playing a video game after you’ve had a few beers if you don’t believe this) but the real danger is that you may feel OK to drive “the morning after the night before”, whilst still having a level of alcohol present in your system.
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Posted in Health /Fitness, Miscellaneous Reviews | 1 Comment »
July 29th, 2008 by admin
The Ion Audio ITTUSB turntable let’s your mom and dad’s old vinyl albums to your PC and hear what they were groovin’ to during the Summer of Love. Now sure, this unit has been around for awhile, but Ion has turned things up to eleven with some very notable improvements. First off, they’ve added two additional models which bypass the PC altogether and allow users to rip directly to either their iPod or burn straight to CD. That’s an awesome feature that’ll make it easy as pie for the convenience oriented consumer just lookin’ to preserve their old favorites without having to shell out an additional $20 for CD or $10 for downloads.
Those who don’t mind the nostalgia that comes with the cracks and pops of playing the album while capturing can look to the LP Dock or the LP 2 CD models for convenient digital transfer. However, those audio obsessed who wish to clean up the recording and play “sound engineer” can simply get the ITTUSB model and capture the album all at once using the included open source software called Audacity. Audacity does take some getting used to, however, and is not for the weak of heart. It’s open source development make it free to use (you can download it on the Internet), but the learning curve may be steep for the “blinking VCR crowd.” Still, the journey will be worth taking and your patience will be rewarded as you learn to clean up those old albums and restore them to practically new but in a more updated digital format.
Thankfully, Ion also includes some notable utilities that can make the process more automatic and streamlined. EZ Vinyl Converter 2 for PC (EZVC2) and EZ Audio Converter for Mac (EZAC); the best way to record and convert vinyl directly to iTunes. EZVC2 features Gracenote® MusicID technology, which analyzes your vinyl and automatically retrieves album, artist and song information for you. EZAC also lets you easily enter track information.
The Ion Turntables are completely plug and play and you can pick up a refurbished model for under $100. The LP Dock and the LP2CD models, however, will run you a bit more, around $250 for the iPod model and $400 for the LP2CD (which isn’t bad considering it has a CD burner built in).
Is it easy to use? Absolutely. Especially the LPDock and LP2CD which will rip and record directly to digital with no worries of connection or humming issues. And when you consider the cost of replacing all those LP3 to CD or even MP3 download, the investment is more than worth it. And considering that many classic albums (like those recorded in 78 RPM) simply aren’t available in a more current format (like those Japanese bootlegs you have hidden), the ability to rip those old albums to mp3 become even more important.
Consider investing in these, and it’s sister product the Tape2PC – which will rip cassettes to mp3 tracks as well.
Too bad there isn’t an 8Track2PC available. I’ve got hundreds of cartridges just waiting to be digitized!
Posted in A/V Devices, iPod Devices | 1 Comment »
July 29th, 2008 by admin
If there’s one tech company that completely “gets” the whole fair use thing, it’s Ion Audio. First they came out with the ITTUSB turntable which allows users to rip old vinyl albums (what are those?) to mp3 and now they have done with same thing for cassette tapes thanks to Tape 2 PC.
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Posted in A/V Devices, iPod Devices | No Comments »
