Archive for November, 2009
Holiday Shopper Review: Plantronics Discovery 975 Bluetooth Headset Aims for Simple Operation
A Bluetooth headset is a gift sure to please the frequent traveler. But Santa’s task of picking which one to stuff in the stocking isn’t easy in the crowded field of hands-free communication.
Plantronics positions the Discovery 975 as “ingeniously simple.” And with gadgets adding more features and getting more complicated, simpler can be an advantage. Many of the Bluetooth headsets I’ve used in the past left me thoroughly confused as they beeped and flashed.
The Discovery 975 aims to simplify things with only two buttons on the headset, one LED light and voice prompts. One button turns the headset on and off. The other controls the volume and mutes calls. Some of the beeps still left me wondering at times, but the voice prompts speak up when the headset is muted, the battery is low or if the connection to the phone is lost.
The desgn features a small microphone boom that extends about an inch and a half from the earpiece. The two microphones deliver very good audio quality and are designed to reduce noise. The microphone boom uses several different methods to block wind noise, but the WindSmart feature isn’t perfect. A friend I called could hear lots of wind noise when I was outside in a 15 mile an hour breeze.
The range is normal for a Bluetooth headset. Indoors, I could walk to the next room without dropping the connection. Pairing is quick and, yes, simple.
The silicone ear tip, with a patented design, is comfortable and stable and made to stay out of the way of glasses or sunglasses. Three sizes are included for a comfortable fit.
One feature I really like is the carrying and charging case. It can keep the headset from being broken or crushed in a pocket or bag. But the case does much more.
It also has a built-in battery which can be charged before leaving on a trip. Then, the headset plugs in and charges inside the case, which can eliminate the need to carry a charging cable. The case battery holds enough power for two full charges.
The Discovery 975 works with most Bluetooth-enabled phones. The list price is $129.99.
Aside from the convenience of a Bluetooth headset, some states are cracking down on handheld cell phone use while driving. In six U.S. states, it’s illegal to use a handheld phone while driving. A hands-free headset solves that problem.
Plantronics is a trusted name in communications headsets, with nearly half a century of experience. The Discovery 975 builds on that experience with a headset that doesn’t skimp on features—and proves Bluetooth doesn’t have to be complicated.
Posted by JohnG in Business Gear, General Gear, Travel Light on November 30th, 2009
Mojito Micro Wallet from Malcolm Fontier
I doubt I’ve ever been mistaken for a metrosexual, even when I lived in New York City, but I’ll grab onto any fashionable item that is also functional. When form and function come together, it’s a beautiful thing.
So I like the line of accessories from Malcolm Fontier, including this cool little Mojito micro wallet. The idea is this: when you go out for a night on the town, do you really need a wallet two inches thick that has your cards from Costco, the grocery store, and the gym? Take cash, ID, and a credit card and you’re good to go. You can fit up to six cards in this little wallet though, with an elastic strap holding them in. On the side is a pocket for your folded up cash, billed as “a money clip without the clip.”
It comes in four colors and it’s stylish, but it’s also really practical as well. I’ve used it around town a few times in the past month and managed one weekend trip with only this along. I’m off to Vegas for a conference next week and this is what will be going with me every time I leave the room. (Unfortunately, I’m not blessed with a roll of hundred-dollar bills to gamble with, sigh…) I think this thing gets a bit ungainly if there are more than two credit cards and an ID in it, but most times that’s plenty anyway.
The Mojito micro wallet retails for $20, though be advised the construction is tagged as “animal-friendly,” which means “not leather” (and not likely to every biodegrade either since it’s synthetic). Follow this link to see more photos and even a video of it in use. They also make a similar larger case to hold your iPhone. You can get their stuff online or take a look at their retail store locater. Go to the Malcolm Fontier site to see the whole line of striking cool but functional bags and accessories. Need an incentive to click over? Well, there are videos of naked people…
Posted by Tim L. in General Gear, Travel Light on November 29th, 2009
Solid Perfumes for Travel Ease
I’ve already sung the praises of traveling with non-liquid toiletries to take up less space when you’re carrying all your bags on the plane. After all, the more solid soaps and such you can stash in the main compartment of your carry-on, the fewer items you need to squeeze into your quart-sized clear plastic “liquids” bag. So, clearly I dig the idea behind solid perfumes, as well — particularly since a broken bottle of cologne in your carry-on or checked bag would be particularly disastrous.
crazylibellule and the poppies (yes, lowercase is the proper spelling), is a perfume, er, parfum, brand from France. Its creator is the founder of the wildly popular Sephora beauty retailer (which she sold back in 1997). Translated, the company name means “crazy dragonfly and the poppies,” and its chief product is the Crazy Stick, or parfum solide en stick.
Each stick comes in a squat, cylindrical cardboard container and you twist the perfume up like lipstick (more like Chapstick, since the perfume is flat on top). The stick only holds .17 ounces of solid (compare that to the 2-oz tin below) and each retails for $18 on sites like Sephora.com — but you can find them for $13 on Amazon.com
I was sent four fragrances from the company, one each from four different collections, each of which contains six or seven different sticks). My favorite by far is Toi, mon Prince (aka “You, my Lord”) — a strange name from a collection that I frankly have no idea how to translate (my French education stopped at 10th grade): Les Divines Alcoves. Regardless, the blend of mirabelle plum (again, I have no clue what this is) and patchouli (which I typically associate with incense and headshops) works for me. I’m thinking I”ll start wearing “You, my Lord” daily.
My second favorite is from the Shanghaijava collection: Musc & Patchouli. Again, I am surprised that a product with patchouli appeals to me so much, but perhaps I’m more of an earthy- and spicy-scented gal than I thought I was.
For sure, the Vanilla Lemon Pie fragrance from the Poule de Luxe collection and the Rose a Saigon from the Les Garconnes collection are too fruity sweet for me. Funny, of the five scents, my husband most liked the Vanilla Lemon — go figure.
Regardless of what scent you choose, the solid perfume slides over skin smoothly, and a little goes a loooooong way. I think these Crazy Sticks would make lovely gift for any sophisticated female traveler, particularly a Francophile.
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For a much less expensive, hand-made version of solid perfume, considering checking out the options on Etsy.com, an online shop that connects people who create things with buyers. These folks typically — though not always — work out of their homes, so overhead is low.
Karina of Soap that Makes Scents, makes 2-oz solid perfumes in small tins that slide nicely into a purse or carry-on bag. Right now she has seven different scents for sale. The scent I received to review, “Love Me,” is too sweet and fruity for my liking — no surprise, since the fragrances in it include “Asian mandarin, brown sugar, Tahitian vanilla, and blends of juicy berry and pineapple.”
In reading about the other scents, I like the sound of “Jump Up and Kiss Me,” which is decidedly less fruity overall, with jasmine and violets as its base, and I’m guessing I’d also wear the “Chanel No. 5″ knockoff.
Since each perfume tin only costs $5, the solid perfumes from Soap that Makes Scents won’t put too big a dent in your pocketbook if you do choose a fragrance you don’t love. You can always go in with a friend and buy a few and then split them according to your tastes when the box of goodies arrives.
Posted by Kara in Travel Light on November 27th, 2009
Cruising Caddy Water Bottle Carrier
Now that the bottled water industry has successfully convinced everyone they need to be peeing non-stop all day to be sufficiently hydrated, the water bottle carrier has extended beyond the fringe of hikers and all-day explorers. The tourist and the water bottle are now joined as one. So if you’re going to carry one of these around all day every day on your trip, why not make it work for you?
That’s the idea behind the Cruising Caddy, a water bottle holder that goes beyond double-duty. It’s got an open pocket with elastic on one side to hold items that aren’t valuable, a Velcro closure one on the other side to hold things you can’t lose, a hidden smaller pocket inside that, and a metal carabiner clip on the side to hold your keys or to clip the whole thing to a belt loop. Oh, and it holds a water bottle—up to 1.5 liters. There’s even a water bottle cooler sleeve included that you can wrap around to keep the bottle cold longer or keep your hands dry.
This water caddy feels rugged and durable, with double-stitched seams, thick nylon, steel D-rings, and a rubberized interior. It sells for $20 (plus shipping) on the company’s own website and comes in red or black. It has that made-in-China chemical spill smell to it that is always a bit worrisome, but hopefully that will go away after I’ve used it a few times.
Even if you have no intention of ever stepping on a cruise ship, the Cruising Caddy is a water bottle carrier that will earn its place in your bag when traveling. Just do the planet a favor and fill it with a reusable bottle, okay? Buy a Steripen if you’re going to developing countries.
There’s also a Fitness Caddy meant for the gym and a Golf Caddy meant for the greens. See the whole line of water carriers at BVT Products.
Posted by Tim L. in General Gear, Kids and Family, Travel Light on November 26th, 2009
Fotobox Plus Slideshow Maker From Honestech
When Honestech approached me about reviewing this little Fotobox Plus slideshow maker, I wasn’t sure what need it met. “Why wouldn’t I just use a slideshow software program that’s already on my computer?”
It turns out this device really does more than most of those in the features department, but the more important aspect for travelers is that you can plug this into any Windows computer and make a slideshow. So if you’re using Internet cafes instead of a laptop, you can create the slideshow by just plugging this into any USB slot and then inserting the memory card with your great new travel photos. You can then save the slideshow to the Fotobox itself—well, as long as it’s not more than 512MB. Otherwise, upload it somewhere.
This is a pretty cool little gadget I must admit and designed well for travel. It unfolds when you’re plugging in the memory card, but then swivels back to be protected the rest of the time. Easy to carry and pack.
For me, “plug and play” didn’t happen the first time. I had to go into the folders of the device and find the Fotobox Manager application file to get it started. Then when I put in a memory card, it imported all but one photo, then got hung up and I had to shut it down with Windows Task Manager. Not a good sequence of events for a non-techie to figure out. It also seems to get freaked out by a memory card with both photos and video on it: that usually initiated an error message while importing, followed by a shutdown. I had to do a workaround, saving the video on the computer I was using then erasing the video from the memory card.
Obviously I hit a lot of bumps before I got the quirks figured out, but I forged on. After hours of practice, I can now put a good slideshow together. One of the main frustrations is that after you add music, nothing happens. After looking at page 68 of the instructions, I found that you have to take another step—dragging that music down onto the first slide where you want it to start. I never would have guessed that without looking it up. My other huge frustration is that controlling the order of the photos is a real pain. If you want to change the order of photos it takes several steps to move each one: only nine at a time are displayed, so you can’t go back or forward further than that to place a photo in one step. So if, for instance, you want to move photo #40 to the #1 spot, you can’t do that without spending several minutes dragging it up 8 or 9 spots at a time. When you add photos to the slideshow, it automatically puts them at the beginning, not the end, so there’s a lot of time wasted moving photos in this linear fashion.
Once you get the hang of it though (or read the whole long instruction book before starting), you can put together some really nice slideshows, then save them in a variety of formats. Just look at all these formats it will accept:
* Video Input : AVI, DV-AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, VCD, SVCD, DVD, MOV, WMV, DVR-MS
* Video Output : AVI, DV-AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VCD, SVCD, DVD, WMV
You can upload straight to Facebook or YouTube and you can save what is now a video file in the right format for whatever device you’ll put it on, like the Sony PSP or the iPhone—of course for the latter it needs to be short and compressed since that device doesn’t have expandable memory. You can also burn the video onto a DVD and show it on a regular TV.
As for the shows themselves, you can pick the easy mode to keep it simple or choose the advanced mode to take more control. In this post are two slideshows I created, intentionally going nuts with the transitions (and in the Galapagos one, a cutesy theme) so you can get the general idea of what’s possible. I added music, but didn’t go all the way and do all you can do, like adding a caption to each photo or put in transitional title slides.
The Fotobox Plus lists for $80 (but $62 at Amazon with free shipping), so it depends on how much you like to make slideshows as to whether this is worth it for you, but it would be a pretty cool gift for someone relying on Internet cafes instead of their own laptop or netbook. Just make sure that’s someone who is patient or will keep things short. Now that I’ve put in my hours of trial and error learning, I kind of like this thing and my last airplane seatmate thought enough of it that he wrote down the name of the product after seeing the slideshow I put together on our flight. Not a bad endorsement.
See the full specs and screenshots at Honestech’s Fotobox page
Posted by Tim L. in General Gear, Travel Light on November 25th, 2009
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