Under: The Influence

I’m a lousy photographer. I don’t know anyone else willing to admit that about themselves. I suppose I got it from my mother. Just as a tone-deaf person might love playing the violin (yikes!) she constantly took terrible pictures. There were cropped heads. The subjects usually tilted left and appeared to slide toward the edge. They were tiny (she wanted lots of background). She could not be convinced to give this up, and I’m sort of glad she didn’t. A big box of assorted (sordid?) pictures exists and needs organizing. Read the rest of this entry »

I got it to work without help from the techie; I’m so proud of myself.

Pinnacle Systems http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/Support/Consumer+Support/?viewDownload=1downl has a download for the PCTV HD Ultimate Stick.

In my office, I prefer the PCTV HD Card, but there’s no denying the appeal of a grab-and-go laptop and small antenna rig for accessing TV stations in the Boonies and Beyond. Some quick research tells me I could check weather reports in China. If I ever got there… if I spoke Chinese…, I just couldn’t recharge the laptop from a hotel electrical outlet; wrong voltage, boom! I don’t think a surge protector would help that one. Well, it might. Once.

Funny stuff aside, the weather’s getting positively weird, so TV programs and warnings could be vital. There won’t always be internet access. Pinnacle Systems’ nifty little stick won’t add much weight to the luggage. Take it along.

by Brian Underdahl

If you have the money to travel you probably have your share of gadgets, too.  Today’s review tells you about a handy little application that will make at least one of those gadgets into a more useful travel too. It may even save you from an embarassing situation!

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by Brian Underdahl

MP3 players, iPods, and fancy Smartphones make it easy to listen to your music on the go. Given the choice almost anyone would rather listen to some “good” music (no matter how you personally define that) than to some bozo who wants everyone within 25 feet to hear about his inane ideas regarding politics, religion, sports, or whatever. And even if you’re in a no-bozo zone, who wants to listen to the constant din of an airplane, train, or whatever background noise there happens to be?

But there’s just one problem with listening to your portable music player. Could headset wires possibly be any more inconvenient? They’re always in the way or catching on something, plus they make you look pretty strange, too.

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In case you haven’t guessed, we’ve been traveling recently and haven’t had the chance to post our reviews. We have, however, been testing products, so there’s a backlog–stay tuned!

Travel is, after all, a good way to wring out some of the new products. When you’re at home and one thing doesn’t quite do the job it’s pretty easy to just grab something else. But when you’re on the road you’d better hope that you took the right things when you stuffed everything into that one carry-on bag.

Hope you have good summer travels. And I hope our reviews will make it just a bit easier for you to find some great travel companions!

Brian

by Brian Underdahl

A few months ago I tried out the Jawbone Bluetooth headset and loved it. The unit was sleek, it worked great, and the sound quality was wonderful. It was hard to imagine any way to improve it. Boy, was I wrong!

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by Brian Underdahl

Well, it’s getting close once again to gift giving season so naturally people start looking for goodies like digital cameras. But if you’ve tried this recently you’ve probably discovered that choosing a digital camera can be awfully difficult. There are so many choices and unless you spend all of your time on the subject it almost seems impossible to figure out what to buy. I’m going to try and give you a little help.

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Grandma had hutches and hatboxes. I need a safe location for my electronic stuff. No, I’m not comfortable sending the carefully-pruned fruits of my imagination to someone’s cyber barn where they can be co-mingled, examined and possibly eaten. Backup and disaster recovery are important, but I want them home.

I’m in favor of burning DVD’s; I do it all the time. But it’s easy to work for days without backup. Backup is one of those “when I get around to it” (Have you ever seen a round tuit? They’re kind of rare. Some folks have never seen them at all.) things. OK, bad joke, moving on…I need safe storage. I need up-to-date, continuous, storage. Recently, a wildfire started a few miles from our place (it’s an early fire season, but the weather’s weird). Then firefighters came by the house. We didn’t talk about saving documents, we talked about cutting trees in the back yard, but it’s clear I may need to quickly grab stuff one day. I won’t have time to burn a DVD, and I’d likely be too nervous to do it correctly anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

by Brian Underdahl

When was the last time you backed up your files? You don’t quite remember, do you? Sure, everyone knows they should make backups on a regular basis, but almost no one ever does. In a way, backing up your files is a lot like preparing an emergency kit so you’ll be able to grab the important stuff and run when a disaster hits–it’s just too much trouble and besides, it will never happen to you, right?

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by Brian Underdahl

There are times when we take a bit longer to test some of the products we receive here at Under: The Influence. Sometimes it’s a matter of being swamped with projects, but other times it’s because we have a semi-diabolical plot in mind. That is, some products simply deserve to be tested by our most critical testers. Sure, that sounds a little mean, but if a product survives that level of scrutiny you can be sure that it will work well for the ordinary user. I’m happy to say that the Pinnacle Video Transfer not only survived but it even earned the respect of our toughest tester.

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