Taking a break from the technology overload at IFA, lets concentrate on something more important – like jewelry. More specifically the iNecklace. The iNecklace is an aluminum pendant with a subtle pulsating LED that takes its pattern from the Apple “breathing” LED on Macs. Not only does it fit in nicely with any type of wardrobe, it also puts on full display just how much you love wearable technology.

We have seen USB flash drive necklaces and other types of cheaper quality LED necklaces before, but iNecklace certainly classes up the whole tech jewelry scene and actually comes off as a pricey looking accessory for your neck. The iNecklace will pulse for 72 hours before going dead – but when the lights go out, the style still remains.

The iNecklace retails for $75 from Gizmine.

Thin is in! Feast your eyes on one of the thinnest USB portable hard drives ever, Seagate’s GoFlex Slim 320GB Portable Hard Drive. It’s not only thinner than most any portable hard drive, it’s faster too! It’s a 7200RPM disk drive with a USB 3.0 connector, wrapped in a tough anodized metal casing. Plus it’s both Mac and Windows compatible!

What’s in the box

GoFlex Slim 7200 RPM drive
Pre-loaded premium backup software with encryption & synchronization
NTFS driver for Mac pre-loaded on drive*
GoFlex™ USB 3.0 interface adapter
18-inch USB 3.0 cable
Quick start guide
3-year limited warranty

Design

The Seagate GoFlex Slim is slimmer than a pencil, and it’s barely thicker than the USB 3.0 cable that plugs into it. How Seagate managed to squeeze a hard drive, and a 7200RPM drive at that, into this sleek drive is beyond us! It’s also a good looking drive, and it’s built tough. The drive is encased in a tough matte black anodized casing, but unfortunately it’s pretty quick to show grease and finger prints. Like most of the other GoFlex drives, the Slim has a removable interface adapter, though the stock USB 3.0 adapter is currently the only one available. Removing the interface adapter allows you to integrate the drive with GoFlex Net or GoFlex TV HD Media Player. There is an activity light on the interface adapter itself, right above where the USB cable plugs into. The USB 3.0 cable is an appropriate 18 inches. It weighs 5.6 ounces.

Features

The GoFlex Slim is a 7200RPM USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive. For now it’s only available with a 320GB capacity. 7200RPMs is faster than most portable hard drives, which are generally 5400. Usually if a portable hard drive is 7200RPM, it’s very bulky. GoFlex Slim is backward compatible with USB 2.0, you don’t need to swap the cable or interface adapter. USB 3.0 allows for speeds 10 times that of USB 2.0. The drive comes pre-formatted and ready to use straight out of the box. No Windows drivers were required. It comes pre-loaded with Seagate’s Dashboard software that includes backup tools and file encryption (Windows Only). It also comes with an NTFS driver for Mac so it can be used interchangeably between Mac and PCs. The drive is capable of being used for Time Machine Backups on a Mac, but it needs to be formatted to HFS+ first. The GoFlex Slim will easily snap in to the GoFlex Net, acting as storage for the entire house. GoFlex Net allows you to also access your content anywhere in the world with the use of Pogoplug, take a look at our review for more info. Slim will also slide into the GoFlex TV HD Media Player, allowing you to play all of your media on the big screen.

Performance

GoFlex Slim has two key features: it’s very thin and it’s very fast. If you use it mainly as a USB 2.0 drive, you basically lose the speed feature. USB 2.0 bottlenecks the speed capabilities, and the drive functions the same as any other nice 5400RPM portable hard drive. Using USB 3.0, the drive is noticeably faster. It’s not quite as fast as Solid State Drive (SSD) speeds, but it’s really not too far off. The drive itself is whisper quiet while it’s transferring. You can feel that it’s spinning fast if you touch it, but other than that there is no vibrating or rattling.

Out-of-the-box the drive worked perfectly on Windows. On a Mac, the drive is read-only until the included software is installed. The software bundles Seagate’s Drive Settings with Paragon NTFS for Mac. After installed, a restart is required and the NTFS driver must be activated. After this few minute process, the GoFlex Slim works perfectly on Mac. When running the Mac Installer, you are also given the option to set up the drive as “Mac Only” which allows you to use the drive with Time Machine. This option will erase your drive, whereas the “Mac and PC” option will keep all of your files intact.

On my Windows 7 machine, I transferred a 700MB movie from my internal hard drive (OCZ Agility 2 SSD) to my GoFlex Slim over USB 3.0 and it only took 8.2 seconds, and 25.1 seconds over USB 2.0. It took my WD Passport Portable 5400RPM hard drive 23.3 seconds. I also transferred 500 MP3s (2GB) to the GoFlex Slim and it took 58.3 seconds using USB 3.0, and 1 minute 40 seconds over USB 2.0. It took the WD Passport 1 minute 35 seconds. Over USB 2.0 the WD Passport was a smidge faster than the Slim, most likely because the USB 2.0 write times are slightly faster, whereas the read times are slightly slower.

Over USB 3.0, the sequential read and write times of the GoFlex Slim are 116MB/s read and 102MB/s write, which are near SSD speeds. Compare that to the 37MB/s read and 34.5MB/s write over USB 2.0. The WD Passport was comparable to the USB 2.0 speeds at 36.8MB/s read and 36.7MB/s write.

Conclusion

Had this been one month earlier, the GoFlex Silm would have been the thinnest portable drive we’ve ever reviewed. OCZ’s Enyo Portable SSD takes the cake for thinnest (and fastest) portable drive thus far. Of course, the Enyo is much pricier and offers much less storage, but rightfully so. Seagate’s GoFlex Slim is darn good looking and feels very durable. That said, 320gb is more than most people will need, but we wouldn’t mind some larger drives in the future. Also, USB 3.0 isn’t quite mainstream just yet, but it’s gaining traction slowly but surely. This means that there is a good chance you won’t be able to make use of the performance boost, but this drive is future-proof and will provide more value as more computers are produced with USB 3.0. The Seagate GoFlex Slim is priced at just under $100, which means you are paying a 30-40% premium for the sexiness, sleekness, and speed boost, not to mention integration with the rest of the GoFlex lineup. But that is not a bad deal at all. Seagate’s GoFlex Slim has just been released and can be purchased from Seagate.com (or Amazon.com) for $99.99.

The Good: Fast, Thin(!), Integrates with GoFlex Net and GoFlex TV, Removable Interface Adapter (for future use),
The Bad: Shows Finger Prints, USB 2.0 speeds are regular, Only 320gb Available

The Elgato EyeTV HD for HD cable and satellite TV, is more or less a Slingbox alternative for Mac users, but with a few extra tricks up its sleeve. The EyeTV will let you watch and record TV shows on your Mac. It will also let you remotely watch live TV on your iPad or iPhone. When it comes to recording TV programs on your Mac, no one does it better than Elgato. The Elgato EyeTV HD software is simple and straightforward and the hardware design itself is easy on the eye, with its silver finish and rounded edges,  it actually resembles a Mac Mini.

Set-up

The Elgato EyeTV HD can be connected to a cable HD or satellite TV source via component video, S-Video, and right and left audio, and cables are included for all of these connections. A small infrared remote control, and USB cable for connecting the EyeTV box to your computer are included as well.

Fortunately, setting up the EyeTV HD is pretty straightforward. You’ll need to connect the EyeTV HD box to your TV source and then in turn connect the EyeTV HD box to your computer via USB. Unfortunately the included USB cable is way too short, which means that your computer or laptop will need to be moved close to your cable box if you want to use the EyeTV – or you could just get a longer USB cable.

At first we had some difficulty getting out Time Warner Cable HD DVR box (Scientific Atlantic) to play nicely with the Elgato EyeTV, and it seemed like it just might not work with the EyeTV at all. However, it turned out that all we had to do was hard reset the Time Warner DVR , while the cables from the EyeTV were plugged into it, and then the EyeTV software was able to pick up a signal from our TWC cable box.

Software

The EyeTV’s software itself is easy to use. It automatically provides you with a station guide in one window so that you can see whats on and also schedule recordings. A separate window contains the video feed of the TV show or movie that is currently playing. This window will automatically adjust according to the source you’re playing. So that for example, if you switch to an HD channel, it will switch to a large widescreen window. The EyeTV software also has a small floating control panel that offers quick access to volume, play and pause, forward and back, and record. This little control panel also displays the channel number and station.

Features

For those of you looking for an alternative to Slingbox, the EyeTV doesn’t exactly compete toe to toe. It does let you watch TV remotely – even on your iPad or iPhone, but your Mac needs to be connected to your cable box and turned on in order for it to work. That said, the EyeTV HD does offer some neat features that Slingbox doesn’t have, and that includes the ability to record programs onto your Mac’s hard drive. Once those shows or movies have been recorded, you can export them for playback on your iPod, or iPhone, etc. This is ideal if you want to be able to watch TV shows at times when you know you wont have access to an internet connection, like during plane travel. On the other hand, when it comes to Slingbox, if you don’t have a working internet connection, you’re totally out of luck.

Streaming

Using the EyeTV app, the EyeTV HD is able to stream live TV onto your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad over both Wi-Fi and 3G connections. The EyeTV app costs just $4.99. With the EyeTV iPhone and iPad apps, you can Watch live TV, change channels and browse through the program guide, start recordings on your Mac or schedule them for later, watch EyeTV recordings, view and edit your recording schedules and automatically launch EyeTV on your Mac at home as needed. One thing is for sure, $4.99 is a lot more reasonable than Slingbox’s own $29.99 app. Alternatively, you could also access your EyeTV and your live TV through any web browser by logging onto live3g.elgato.com. This is great for watching some TV while you’re at work. During your lunch-break only, of course.

Conclusion

Overall, the EyeTV HD is fairly priced at $199, although you can pick it up for as low as $169.99 on Amazon. It provides you with several new ways to enjoy your cable TV content, and heck, why shouldn’t you, when you spend a crazy amount of money each month on cable or satellite TV. Furthermore, when it comes to streaming live TV so that you can watch it remotely, the EyeTV HD provides users with plenty of options and good streaming quality. That said, our biggest issue with the EyeTV HD is that it is pretty inconvenient that your computer has to be turned on and plugged into the EyeTV at all times if you want to record, or stream and watch TV.

The Good: Watch and record TV shows and movies onto your Mac – with HD support. Watch live TV on your iPad, iPhone, or the web. Schedule recordings remotely. Playback quality is good.

The Bad: Included USB cable is very short. Your computer has to be on at all times if you want to use the EyeTV HD. Mac Only. Occasional cut-outs while streaming TV.

As the USB 3.0 standard becomes more prominent in laptops and PCs, so will portable Solid State Hard Drives (SSDs). SSDs are substantially faster than traditional hard drives, not to mention they use a lot less power, have no moving parts, and can even be built into smaller enclosures. OCZ, one of the leading SSD manufacturers, has recently launched their Enyo line of portable SSDs. We were lucky enough to get our hands on this blazing fast portable drive. Dive in to see what we thought.

What’s in the Box

The minimalistic packaging includes the Enyo Solid State Hard Drive wrapped in an anti-static bag, one USB 3.0 Micro-B cable, an OCZ sticker, and a user guide.

Design

The OCZ Enyo Portable SSD is shaped unlike any portable USB hard drive you have seen. For starters, it’s very thin with tapered edges, measuring just under a centimeter thick. It is also much narrower than your run-of-the-mill portable USB drive, at 5.5cm wide. It is thinner and narrower than iPhone 4, and just a bit longer. It feels so light you’ll wonder if there’s anything inside the anodized aluminum housing. It’s just 87.7 grams.
There’s no doubt it’s an attractive looking drive, and what makes it even sexier is that it houses an SSD and doesn’t get toasty or humm/whirl/vibrate. There are two small blue LED indicators on the top of the device. The included USB 3.0 Micro-B cable is white, thick, and also pretty long. The cable is so thick and rigid that it may not always allow the Enyo to lay flat. This was one of the very few caveats.

Features

The ultra-portable OCZ Enyo Portable SSD is available in 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB varieties. They all use MLC NAND flash memory and feature 64MB of on-board cache.  While it is a USB 3.0 drive, it’s backward compatible with older USB interfaces. It works with Windows XP/Vista/7 and Linux. It works on Mac, but only USB 2.0 for now–Apple hasn’t adopted the USB 3.0 standard yet, so this is not a surprise. The 128GB and 256GB Enyo drives are capable of hitting 260MB/s read speed and 200MB/s write speed, which is extremely fast. The 64GB model can read/write at 225MB/s & 135MB/s, also extremely fast. The drives can run 10 times as fast using USB 3.0 instead of 2.0. The drives don’t require an external power adapter, they are powered through USB. There is a 3-year warranty included. Some additional tech specs for the Enyo drives: they can withstand shock up to 1500G, the MTBF is 1.5 million hours, seek time is under .1ms, they can operate from 0ºC to 70ºC, and can store from -45ºC to 85ºC, and use 2.4W when operating and 1.1W when idling.

Usability

OCZ Enyo is very fast, very portable, very durable, and cool as a cucumber. The main drawback is that to make the most of the speed performance, you need USB 3.0, which is just starting to gain momentum. For those of us that actually use a laptop on their lap, the Enyo is ideal because it doesn’t need to sit still or lay flat. There are no moving parts so it won’t skip, slow down, or corrupt from movement… plus it has a tight connection that keeping it from easily unplugging. Suddenly, portable hard drives are no longer the delicate flower we know them as. Enyo is tough and can withstand casual wear and tear, even while it’s plugged in. The cable is very thick and rigid, but unfortunately will have some control over how the drive sits. I had no problems getting the drive to work on my Mac (USB 2.0) or PC (USB 2.0 and 3.0). The drive does not require any drivers to use, however the drivers available from OCZ.com will give the drive a very nice performance boost. It comes unformatted, so it will not appear in “My Computer” until it is formatted.

Performance

When it comes to performance, the OCZ Enyo is far from disappointing. That is, as long as it’s running via USB 3.0. Running on USB 2.0, it’s just slightly faster than a regular portable hard drive, the difference is barely noticeable. On my Desktop PC, over USB 3.0, I was getting read speeds of about 171MB/s and write speeds of about 106MB/s versus about 37MB/s read/write for my 120GB WD Passport Portable Hard Drive.

I transferred a 700MB Movie from my internal hard drive (OCZ Agility 2 SSD) to the OCZ Enyo in 8.3 seconds. It took 23 seconds to transfer the movie to my WD Passport. It took 27.1 seconds to transfer 500 MP3s (2GB) to the Enyo, while it took 1 minute 23 seconds to transfer it to the WD Passport.

Conclusion

On Amazon, the OCZ Enyo’s are retailing for $175, $279, and $667 for the 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB respectively. Traditional portable hard drives of the same storage capacities retail for under $100. OCZ Enyo is pricey, but it could definitely be worth it. The transfer speeds are basically the fastest out there for anything portable. Furthermore, Enyo’s aren’t just portable, but they’re very durable, which is certainly a quality we like to see when storing our priceless data. It’s unfortunate that you can’t boot Windows off of USB, because it would be very fast with one of these, though you can still boot Linux. Overall, you may not have a need for a portable solid state drive at the moment, but if you did, the OCZ Enyo would be it.

The Good: Fast, Light, Portable, Durable, Backward Compatible, Power Efficient, Completely Silent
The Bad: Pricey, Requires USB 3.0 for Speed Performance, Can’t boot Windows OS, Read and Write speeds did not reach capabilities

So for those of you that don’t have a Flip, you might just have Sony’s Bloggie. Which is cool, unless you have a Mac computer. Alas Sony has heard your cries and has made available a downloadable version of its Bloggie Touch software that is now compatible with Macs. The upgrade is only intended for the Bloggie models:  MHS-TS10, MHS-TS20 and MHS-TS20K. When the new Bloggie Entry, Bloggie Duo and Bloggie 3D launch, the Mac-compatible software will already be included.

[Via Sony Style Blog]

Microsoft has just released their latest installment of Microsoft Office for Mac. We, at Chip Chick, couldn’t be more satisfied with it. It’s a huge improvement from its predecessor Office 2008 for Mac. Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint have all seen great advancements in features, performance, usability, and compatibility. Microsoft Outlook is a brand new addition to the Office Suite for Mac as well. These four applications, paired with new features like collaborative “Co-Authoring” and Office Web Apps, puts Office 2011 for Mac right on par with its Windows counterpart; some may argue that it’s even better.

What’s New

There are a lot of new features in Office 2011 for Mac. We were very excited to see Microsoft’s Ribbon beautifully integrated in to all of the applications. Ribbon first appeared in Office 2007 for Windows and has since been transitioned into Windows 7. It lays out commonly used buttons and controls in a visual manner. These buttons and controls are grouped in tabs on the top of the window based on functionality. Some people are anti-ribbon; we say give it a fair chance, it might take some familiarizing. Should you choose, you can actually turn ribbon off; this is an option that is not available for Windows users. That said, ribbon for Mac is just like the Ribbon in Office 2007 and 2010 for Windows. This makes the transition from Windows to Mac that much easier.

Office Web Apps is brand new and a lot like Google Documents. Once you create a free Windows Live SkyDrive account you can store all of your documents and presentations online (25gb!) and make all of your edits using just a web browser. Office Web Apps are watered down in terms of features, but they have the essentials.

Coauthoring is another productive new feature where you can work on the same document with friends and co-workers. All changes are made in real-time. You can add audio and video chat to really make collaborative work a breeze. It doesn’t matter if the user is on a Mac or Windows, it’s compatible.

Also introduced in Office 2011 is a new Template Gallery for creating beautifully designed and consistent looking documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. There’s a search box to search for templates using keywords; it even searches online from thousands of templates to find exactly what you’re looking for. Scrolling over the template thumbnail will quickly reveal layouts, graphics, and fonts associated to that template.

The Media Browser is yet another nice addition. In any of the Office applications you can search through your photos, music, and movies to insert into your document. The media browser also includes clip art, symbols, and shapes, but only on Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. Power users will be glad to see that Microsoft Office’s Visual Basic Editor is back. It was omitted from Office 2008. Using Visual Basic, you can create powerful macros to automate nearly anything in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.

PowerPoint 2011

Designing professional looking presentations has never been easier. It takes very little effort to enhance any slide show to look professional-grade. There are thousands of beautiful templates to choose from. Picture editing is a breeze with the ‘Format’ tab on ribbon. Format all of your images using image styles and turn a good PowerPoint into a great PowerPoint.

A new feature exclusive to PowerPoint for Mac is Dynamic Reordering. Dynamic Reordering displays each layer of a slide in a 3D cross sectional view. This allows you to easily adjust your layout and choose how you want your graphics, text, and movies to overlap one another. Video clips are now embedded directly into the PowerPoint project; it will be part of the pptx file. There are brand new slide transitions, animations, and 3D effects to really make your presentation pop.

When you’re ready to show off your stunning looking presentation you can use Presenter view to do so. While your audience watches your slide show in full screen on a monitor or projector, presenter view (on your own screen) will display the current slide and the next slide, the notes for each slide, a timer, and also a progress bar. It’s everything you need to stay on track and deliver an optimal presentation. Alternatively, if your slide show viewers are at a remote destination you can send them a link to broadcast your slide show directly on the Internet. There is no special software required and it only requires a Windows Live account.

Excel 2011

Microsoft Excel has always been the bees knees for creating, analyzing, and managing sets of data. Excel has come a long way from just displaying numbers on a spread sheet. Excel 2011 for Mac has made great progress in displaying figures in a visual and coherent manner. Table styles takes all the hard work out of formatting your data set. Take it one step further and use conditional formatting to format your data set values using rules or conditions. One new example of conditional formatting is color scales: Make use of the color spectrum to highlight larger values in green, lower values in red, and everything else in shades of yellow. You can get very advanced with conditional formatting; it’s a huge improvement from the previous version of Office for Mac.

Sparklines is yet another feature to give your ‘numbers on a spread sheet’ a more visual appearance. Sparklines will insert small graphics, or representations of data, into the actual cell. Data can be expressed through spark lines in bar, line, or column form. It’s a neat way to see trends in your data without having to create charts or graphs which sit on top of your cells. Excel has always been a very powerful tool; Excel 2011 for Mac has made it even easier for anybody to create intelligent spreadsheets that look great and are easy to interpret.

Word 2011

Most everyone that has used a computer has used Microsoft Word at some point. For the longest time it was the go-to word processing application. Now, there’s a decent amount of competition for Word. It’s safe to say that Word is by far the most feature-rich of all the competition. Generally, features (aka bloat) slow down applications or complicate the user experience. This is not the case for Word 2011; there are a ton of powerful features, and they’ve never been easier to find or use (thanks to ribbon!). One of the new features for Word 2011 that has people very excited is full screen. Full screen view dedicates 100% of your screen to your Word document (with black bars on the side if you’re zoomed out). On the top of the screen is a small menu bar with the essential tools. Full Screen enables you to focus on your work and minimize distractions. Another new addition to Word is the ability to reorganize layers in a 3D environment using Dynamic Reordering. This is especially helpful in Publishing Layout where there is overlapping between graphics and text. Publishing View is much like Microsoft Publisher; it’s ideal for creating newsletters. ‘Styles’ in Word has also seen a nice improvement. Use styles to beautify your document with a consistent, recurring formatting. With Word 2011 it’s much easier to keep track of multiple styles using Visual Aids. There are a lot of tools to visually enhance your document, but remember you can make it easy on yourself and choose one of the thousands of templates available.

Outlook 2011

Outlook has made a triumphant return to Mac OS, and this time it’s not the “express” version. It has replaced Microsoft Entourage in the Office Mac Suite. Outlook 2011 manages all of your email, calendars, and contacts. Best of all, it’s fully compatible with Windows. You’ll have no problem migrating all of your mail, calendars, contacts, and settings from a Windows version of Outlook. Outlook offers a unified inbox for all of your email accounts. If you have five different email accounts you’ll only have to check one inbox, not five. It even threads your email conversations into groups under a single subject. This clears up space in your inbox and makes it simple to follow the progression of an email chain. Outlook has always had a very good handle on scheduling, which is why it’s widely used in the workplace. Sending meeting invitations and coordinating with people’s schedules couldn’t be easier. When you get a meeting invite in Outlook 2011 a preview of your schedule pops up to help you determine whether or not you can accept the invite. Outlook was very well integrated into OS X. You can ‘preview’ attachments, backup Outlook with Time Machine, and also use Spotlight to search for messages.

Installation and Performance

Installation was quick and painless. It took about ten minutes to install and there were only a few prompts to get through. You’ll need Mac OS 10.5 Leopard (or later) to install. The performance seems to have been greatly improved. All of my office apps just pop right open in a matter of seconds. The applications are all very speedy, even when they’re all open at once. The only time I have noticed any lag at all is while sifting through all of the fonts. I was a little disappointed to see that there are no real-time font previews (or style previews) when hovering over the font (or style). This was one of my favorite Windows features. That was really the only feature I felt Office 2011 is missing.
Tested on: 13” 1st Gen Unibody Macbook 2.4ghz, 4gb ram, 100GB OCZ Agility 2 SSD

Conclusion

It’s no exaggeration to say that Office 2011 for Mac is a gigantic improvement from Office 2008. I personally found Office 2008 for Mac to be unusable (having been accustom to 2007 for Windows). The toolbox was always disappearing, the menus and controls were confusing, and it was slow. iWork is usable, but lacked the features I’ve grown to rely on. Although Office 2011 may not have a consistent design with other Mac applications, it has an extremely familiar feel if you’ve ever used Office for Windows. Office 2011 is very fast and very powerful. It does not take a lot of effort to make eye-popping or mind-blowing presentations and documents. Everything can look professional-grade with a bit of effort. We couldn’t be happier that Microsoft has made Office 2011 very compatible with Windows and Windows Users. There are two versions of the Office Suite for purchase, and no upgrade prices. Microsoft Office for Home and Student includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for $119 for a single license or a $149 for the family version with three licenses. Microsoft Office for Home and Business includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook for $199 for one license or $279 for two licenses. If you have to wonder whether or not these prices are worth it, then yes, they’re worth it. If you don’t need Outlook then buy Home and Student; the only other difference is instead of a year of technical support, you get 90 days with Home and Student. You can purchase Outlook as a stand-alone application at a later date if necessary. My Mac finally feels complete now that it has these superior office applications.

The Good: Finally on par with Office for Windows, Fast, Great online/offline Template Gallery, Ribbon is well integrated
The Bad: No upgrade pricing, no real-time font previews when hovering

Can’t afford a real DeLorean time machine for yourself? Here is the next best thing. The Back to the Future II DeLorean Vehicle is an exclusive from Entertainment Earth. It’s got special wheels that pop up for “flight mode”, the wheels also spin, the gull-wing doors open, and it has got electronic lights and sounds to complement all this action. The description even says that the car can fit in 3 3/4 inch scale action figures such as Hasbro’s G.I. Joes and Star Wars lines. Hey, at least your action figures will be able to time travel now. The Exclusive Back to the Future II DeLorean Vehicle is up for preorder for $34.99.

The FreeAgent Theater HD Media Player is a pretty unique product, and in some ways it’s the first of its kind. There are an assortment of multimedia hard drives out there that are designed to carry multimedia content like videos and music from your computer that will play on to your TV. However, with these types of products you are locked in to that specific hard drive. The FreeAgent Theater on the other hand is just a hub. In a way you can think of it as a DVD or VHS player with its own built in software that plays movies off of a medium. In this case, the medium’s format is actually the popular Seagate FreeAgent Go Harddrives.

The FreeAgent Theater hooks up to your TV to play video, photo and audio files off of a docked FreeAgent Go Hard Drive. So lets say you downloaded some videos (torrents, cough) that you would like to watch on your TV instead of being constrained to your computer, all you have to do is sync the video or photo or audio file on to your FreeAgent Go hard drive and then dock the hard drive in to the FreeAgent Theater which in turn connects to your TV. If you have several FreeAgent Hard drives, you can easily swap them out. Want to set a side one FreeAgent Go hard drive for photos, while another one just for your Dr. Who collection? You can keep it organized in that way too and when you’re ready to play the files, just plop it in to the FreeAgent Theater. You can even rip DVDs on to the hard drive so that you can essentially play DVDs on the FreeAgent Theater, complete with menus and subtitles. The FreeAgent Theater also sports an impressive amount of support for different file formats. Here are the specs from Seagate themselves.

Supported Formats:
Video: MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (AVI/VOB/ISO), MPEG-4 (AVI/DivX /Xvid)
Subtitles: SAMI(smi), SRT and SUB
Video resolutions: NTSC 480i/480p; PAL 576i/576p, supports video (HD and upscaling) up to 720p/1080i*
Audio: MP3, AC3 (5.1 audio – Dolby® Digital) WMA, WAV, OGG
Photo: JPEG files up to 20 megapixels
* supports MPEG-4, Xvid up to 1280 x 720 60fps and supports MPEG-2 and photos up to 1920 x 1080i 30 fps

Design:
The FreeAgent Theater itself is easily portable, and pretty lightweight. It’s got a glossy black exterior that wlll blend in well with most home theater systems, yet it’s much smaller than your average home theater component – size-wise it’s on par with that of a portable DVD player. You can easily transport it to a friend’s house and share your videos and multimedia, by just hooking it up to their TV. A small black remote is also included with the FreeAgent Theater.

Set-up:
The FreeAgent theater comes with simple fold out set up guide and a software disc containing Windows-only software. The FreeAgent Theater software lets you manage the different FreeAgent Go drives you may be using with the FreeAgent Theater. It also enables you to easily sync your media files on to a FreeAgent Go Drive, automatically or manually. The software is straightforward and easy to use. However, Mac users are out of luck. Also, even though the device supports VOB files from DVDs, the system does not come with DVD ripping software, so you’ll be left to your own resourcefulness if you want to transfer the contents of a DVD on to the FreeAgent Theater.

Interface:
The interface is clean and very easy to use. It is designed much like other Media Center software, though not quite as sleek as something like Windows Media Center. Even novice users will be able to get up and running with the interface right away.

Video Quality:
The device has the ability to playback HD videos up to 720p/1080i via upscaling. In practice, video files and photos – especially HD video, looked good on my 42″ 720P Samsung Plasma. We played back a 720P AVI file that had been filmed on a digital camera and also tested a HD DIVX movie file. Both played back without a hitch and were pleasant to watch on screen. Photos looked good on screen as well. The FreeAgent Theater will automatically turn your photos into a slideshow.

You can connect the FreeAgent Theater to your TV via Composite, S-video, or Component video connections, and for audio – the FreeAgent Theater provides Stereo, and coaxial S/PDIF connections. AV Cables are included to connect the FreeAgent Theater to your TV. However, if you have an HDTV – you’re gonna want to use component cables if you really want to experience the best image possible.

Conclusion:
Another notable feature of the FreeAgent Theater to its credit, is that it can connect to other drives via a USB connection. However, one aspect of this system that does concern us is that while the FreeAgent Go Hard drives do have a solid shelf life, eventually the FreeAgent Go hard drives will be updated with new models. So our question is, what will happen when you want to buy additional hard drives to use with the FreeAgent Theater for docking? We hope that Seagate has the foresight to make future hard drive models compatible with the system as well.

The FreeAgent Theater HD Media Player delivers an easy to use home theater experience for those who want to easily playback their multimedia files on their Televisions. It’s a great affordable alternative to complex media center PCs and other wireless solutions. The device is easy to set up and to use, and it also is conveniently portable. Unfortunately we’re disappointed in the lack of Mac support and we long for at-least a native resolution of 720p and an HDMI port so that users could really appreciate the advantages of bringing their multimedia files on to the big HDTV screen in their living room. That said, we imagine that the FreeAgent Theater will be popular with pack rats who have a lot of saved and downloaded media that they’d like to unlock off of their PCs and experience on the big screen. Also, in a way, the FreeAgent Theater is the answer to a modern day projector. Thus, it should also be popular with families who want to easily share and present movies, photos, etc without too much expense and complication involved. The FreeAGent Theater HD Media Player retails for $129.99 without a FreeAgent Go hard drive. Packages with a 250GB drive and a complimenting FreeAgent Go dock are available for $229.99 and a version with a 500GB hard drive retails for $279.99 .

The good:
Very easy to use, Solid amounts of files supported including Divx support, can play off ripped DVD files, portable, good video quality, good user interface

The Bad:
Software not available for Mac, would have liked to see HDMI included.

Update 03/09/09: While the FreeAgent Theater does not support MOV formats out-of-the-box, third-party software is available to convert MOV (H.264) video to either MPEG-2, Xvid or DivX format which can then be viewed using FreeAgent Theater. The FreeAgent Theater media player also supports MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 formats, and DIVX files with video resolutions for NTSC, PAL and HD up to 1080i and even provides support for subtitles.

Update 03/17/09: It turns out that Mac users are not totally left out in the cold if they want to use the FreeAgent Theater. If someone wants to use their Mac with the FreeAgent Theater – they must connect a hard drive to it that is a FAT 32 formatted drive. In which case they could connect an external hard drive via the USB port on the FreeAgent Theater, or they could reformat a FreeAGent Go drive to Fat32 and then be able to use their Mac to drag and drop files on to it.

Indeed – There are so many job classifieds web sites out there, who has the time to sift through all of them daily? Not only does Indeed let you search through popular job posting sites, it also offers free daily alerts based on your keyword and location. So every time a job posting for an “executive blogger” comes up, you’ll be notified right in your mail box of that days related job postings.

Fatwallet – If you’re going to buy something online, whether it be business cards at VistaPrint or a new Macbook from the apple Store (granted, if you are able to afford to buy anything at all), then you might as well make back some money on your purchase. Fatwallet offers money back from most of the popular online retailers. Cash back rates vary from one e-tailer to another, with most just a few percent – but you’d be surprised how much money that ends up accumulating over time. And either way – it’s extra money in your wallet. Since being a member in 2005, I’ve made almost $600 is cash back payments. FatWallet also has a strong user forum where people posts great coupons and steals. Other notable (and very addictive) sites for great bargains that we recommend is BensBargains.net, TechBargains.com and SlickDeals.net.

Emurse – Emurse is a free resume builder which provides all the tools you could possibly need to present a professional and powerful online resume. You get a customized web address for your resume that offers visitors the ability to save your resume as a Word Doc, PDF, text file, HTML file or you can offer potential employers the option to subscribe to it via an RSS feed. Emurse also offers instant notifications when potential employers view your resume.

Media Convert – Whether you need a screenshot of a web site or you need to convert a Word document in to a PDF, don’t fret if you don’t have the money to shell out for the necessary software. This site will take care of all of these things for you for free. Media Convert offers an assortment of useful services such as converting a Powerpoint presentation in to a video, generating image thumbnails, and combining multiple video files in to one – as well as many, many more useful stuff.

Hulu – In case you’ve missed the commercial with Alec Baldwin playing an alien, then allow us to introduce you to Hulu. Hulu offers free streaming episodes of popular TV shows as well as some movies. We’re talking big time network shows like the Family Guy, Battlestar Galactica, and Saturday Night Live – you know, the good stuff.

Mint – Mint is an all in one finance service which is aimed at helping you manage your money and manage your debt. The site helps you figure out your taxes, keep track of your transactions, and stay in control of your budget. The service will even send you emails and SMS alerts when there has been a change in your finances.

txtdrop – Practically every wireless provider has recently raised their text messaging rates. And lets face it – all those texts add up on your bill. Save some money easily by using this web site to send messages. The site also offers a Mac OS X Widget, Vista Gadget, and an iPhone optimized version of the site. However, if you’re an iPhone or iPod touch user, we recommend trying out the Pinger Textfree app which lets you send and receive text messages for free.

Weebly – Perhaps you’re looking to become your own entrepreneur and start your own business or maybe you already have your own business but don’t have the collateral available to hire a web designer and make your own web site. If that is the case, check out Weebly which is one of the best and easiest to use web-based web site creators. What especially sets them apart is that they also offer free domain hosting, so your site will have a professional .com address as opposed to some ugly yourcompany.freehosting.com. Of course, you will have to pay for the domain name, but those are usually just $10 a pop at GoDaddy.

If anyone has any other great recession helpful web sites that they would like to recommend, please let us know!

Spring is in the air, so why not add some tulips to your desk and you won’t even have to water them. The USB Tulip Hub has to be the cutest USB hub I have ever seen and we have seen quite a few in our day.  The tulips stand proudly in their plastic white flower box waiting for someone to plug a usb cable into its petals. It can handle up to 4 USB connections and will work with either PC or Mac. The USB Tulip Hub retails for $22 at Fredflare.

Last September we reported on the Aexea KeyXpress USB Key that actually looked like a ‘key’. Well who knew the firestorm that would incur, blogging about what ended up being labeled a ‘crapgadget’.  Just released today, the iamaKey and itsaKey ( unique names ) come in 4GB and 8GB capacities from LaCie and your eyes aren’t deceiving you – they look like real keys!. The third addition to the line is the the PassKey which is a microSD card reader. Designed by 5.5 Designers. The ‘keys’ are designed literally to look like metal keys you would use in a typical lock and each will fit nicely on to a key ring or in a pocket. The keys are made to be durable like its real counterparts, being able to withstand various conditions. The gold SIP connector on the iamakey is both water and scratch resistant. The LaCie iamaKey, itsaKey and PassKey can be used with both PC and Mac and are available now, starting at $9.99 at LaCie .

The Sonos Multi-Room Music Digital Player system is for people who love music. Not just like music – LOVE music. It is meant to fill your home with it no matter where you go. In the living room, kitchen, bedroom, or den. Just about anywhere you might be at a given moment – you can have access to your entire media library.  The Sonos gives you the freedom to stream not only your media files but internet radio or local radio channels.

Setup:
When we first received the Sonos we almost passed out by how many boxes there where. Not that I’m put off by the quantity of boxes, but I certainly had in the back of mind that this was not going to be easy to setup. However I was wrong! The unpacking took me longer than actually setting the Sonos up. We got a chance to review the Sonos Speaker Bundle 150 as well as some extras which comprised of the Wireless Controller, Zoneplayer 120, Zoneplayer 90, 2 Sonos Loudspeakers, Sonos Zonebridge, and a cradle for the controller. Like I said – that is a lot of boxes. Once unpacked it may seem a bit overwhelming as to where you should put all these pieces. The first thing I did was decide where I would put the Zoneplayer 120 along with the speakers. Granted I don’t live in a huge luxurious home so it took some finagling to decide where I would put and keep the speakers since the Zoneplayer 120 does need to be connected to a router or modem via ethernet. So that was a bit tricky. Luckily, all the components of the system have a streamlined design that any Mac owner would appreciate. They blend into your home without looking like an eyesore. The ethernet cables also have a flat design to make it easy to blend on to walls for decent wire maintenance. Another nice feature is that both the Zoneplayer 90 and Sonos Zonebridge are both wireless so they can be placed anywhere in your home so that you can really complete that experience of having a fully amplified musical abode.

Installation:
After placing the Zoneplayers were I wanted to them to be, the next logical step was to install the software. I have an iMac and the installation was done in 10 minutes. You follow the onscreen prompts and the devices are picked up around your home. You’ll have to repeat the steps to have the computer recognize the other Zoneplayers scattered about but with just the press of a button on each player the software picks it up and installs it. You can label each player for the area its in. Lets say the Zoneplayer 90 is in the living room – so you can label it living room etc… this will allow you to control that device when you are in the room or not by giving it a name associated with its location. Once the devices were picked up it was time to import my MP3s….that is where I hit a snag. Everything was going too perfectly! I repeatedly kept coming across the same error over and over about how my files couldn’t be imported followed by the file name. After spending some time on the Sonos Support forum I downloaded the newest version of the software and tried again….Still no luck. So again…I headed over to the forum and it seemed to be only a problem with those who have Mac computers and not so much with a PC. After additional digging, I found a suggestion to change my file sharing settings and modify my file name of the location of where my MP3’s were coming from….it was becoming a big hassle.  Finally, finally after changing just one more permission under the Security Settings and then Firewall settings I was able to access my files. This was after three hours. I was a bit upset that this wasn’t something that was mentioned in the manual or easily accessible on the forums unless you dug through and found it.
However setting up the radio functionality was a lot easier. It took 2 seconds, it asked you where you reside and then a whole list of stations pops up for you to listen to. Of course there is the ability to preset the stations you love. I was finally ready to begin my Sonos experience.

Interface:
The Sonos controller is just like it’s other components sleekly designed and easy to use. Everything is very visual and doesn’t require a graduate degree in engineering to figure it out. The right side of the device resembles a iPod scroll wheel to obviously scroll through the menu options or songs available on the system. Its big bright LCD screen makes it easy on the eyes as you scroll through your options.
The first place I wanted to play my music was in the kitchen. Nothing gets you in the mood to make a meal like a little Andre Boccelli. I selected kitchen and the Zoneplayer I set up in there started to play music through some desktop speakers I connected to it. Standing in that room I gave the controller over to my co-editor who was itching to listen to a little Alanis and she started her Zoneplayer in the living room. So at one moment we had different music playing in two different parts of the apartment. In a smaller space than an average home, music from one room can over power the other room. So be careful when you set it up, that you take into account sound absorption so that you don’t irritate another Sonos listener.
When the controller was given back to me I decided I wanted all the rooms to listen to my fave song that just came on and very easily I was able to make that happen by selecting all the Zoneplayers to play the same song. The controls were super easy to navigate and a nice new feature is that you can now control it from your iPhone or iPod Touch via a free Sonos app. So there is no need for me to keep passing the Controller around and around to operate the system. Once the app is downloaded onto your iPhone you can easily do all the same functions. So it’s like having another controller in the room without having to pay extra for it. Again the interface is sleek and extremely easy and with the ability to see all the music and FM stations available on your system to control.

Conclusion:
The Sonos Multi-Room Music Digital Player is perfect for those who have large homes and want the ability to have music playing in random parts of your home that suits your own personal taste. No more telling mom or dad to shut off Frank Sinatra or vice a versa about your loud heavy metal. It’s also perfect for businesses like restaurants and spas that want to give customers a more personal experience as well as save money with unnecessary and costly wiring for other complex systems that do the same thing but on a different scale. I was extremely happy with my time with the Sonos and except for that little snafu with importing my MP3 library, it was overall a great experience. However I would have liked if the Zoneplayers did have a built in speaker so that you had the option to not attach external ones. This takes up space that sometimes you just don’t have, as well as creating more visible wires.
Of course such a luxury music experience doesn’t come cheap, the Sonos BU150 Multiroom Music System bundle typically starts at $999 and up. But sometimes the cost of music is priceless.

The Good: Very user-friendly. Excellent design concept and software interface. Perfect for large homes or businesses looking to add a personal touch. Liked the iPhone app a lot, saves money on having to buy additional controllers.

The Bad: Would have liked to have had a bigger troubleshooting section in the manual for possible Mac problems importing your MP3 library. You have to attach speakers to every Zoneplayer to hear music, would have liked built-in speakers. A bit pricey but you get what you pay for.

Going for a Mammogram is no fun, in fact it could be downright painful. Siemens has just announced a new MRI breast scanner, the Magnetom Espree-Pink that will not only reduce the pain but specifically focus on being a dedicated solution for breast examinations. The machine is big enough for those being examined to feel comfortable but small enough to give accurate results. Another nice touch is that the MRI is indeed pink. There was no word in the press release of when it would be coming to hospitals in the states but I hope it makes it way here soon.