ON COMPUTERS | BY BOB AND JOY SCHWABACH
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December 2007, Week 3 |
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INTERNET RADIO
We've been playing with the Phoenix Wi-Fi Radio recently, and it's a lot
of fun. It's also expensive: around $200 from discounters. That's pretty
darned pricey
The only thing it needs is access to a wireless Internet connection.
These days, wireless hubs are all over the place, from coffee shops to
some neighbor down the block.
Once the radio recognizes a Wi-Fi connection, you can start tuning in.
The company claims you can bring in over 7,000 stations, from
Afghanistan to
Internet radio has a major difference from regular radio because you can
listen to podcasts and small, very local stations. It turns out there
are lots of broadcasts you can get only through the Internet, and many
of those are pretty darned interesting.
The New York Times, for example, has a daily podcast of front-page news
and a weekly one called "Tech Talk." We also found the president's
weekly radio address and business news podcasts from The Wall Street
Journal and Business Week magazine. Coming down the road: audio books. A
particularly neat feature is that you can fast-forward through a podcast
if you're bored with a part of it.
The sound quality on the Phoenix was excellent. There was none of the
static you frequently get with regular broadcast radio and as we said,
it was a lot of fun going through the dial. There are eight preset
buttons you can use for going to your favorite stations.
It's best to use the present buttons for music or talk radio, not podcasts, which have a specific date. For example, if you set a preset button for The New York Times news show, the button will forever link to that day's (or week's) news.
We found just one other problem: There's no on/off switch. The radio
runs on batteries or an adapter. When we wanted to turn it off, we had
to pull out the adapter and (or ) detach the battery cover to break the
circuit. Tech support told us it's supposed to be always on, and when
you're not listening, it's on stand-by. OK, but we like to have a
switch. More info at: WiFi-Radio.biz.
NOTE: You can also listen to radio stations from all over the world
through your computer, using AOL's radio service, Yahoo, Google and many
other services. Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia also lets you tune in
stations from all over the world. The difference with all this is that
you have to listen though your computer, whereas the Phoenix radio is a
stand-alone. COUPONS ONLINE
DealLocker.com has online discount coupons for 4,500 retailers and
18,000 products and services. For instance, there's a coupon for free
gift wrapping at Nordstrom upscale department stores. A PR guy we know
told us he saved $365 on 21 baskets of goodies from Mrs. Beasley's using
coupons from DealLocker. This was a much better deal than we found going
directly to Mrs. Beasley's site.
We have been pitched coupon sites before, but they didn't work well;
this one seems OK. Not every coupon is a good deal, however. When we
looked at Dell laptops, the coupon savings from DealLocker wasn't quite
as good as the discount being offered by Dell itself on its Web site.
SEWING CLASS
A sewing machine that embroiders clip art from your computer is a pretty
cool way to jazz up pillows, children's clothing and T-shirts for the
holidays.
We used a Singer sewing machine model CE 150, since we figured this is
an
It sounds like a way to make money, selling things such as specialty
clothing, towels, napkins, etc. Because of the costs involved, we don't
think this is feasible, but it's an entertaining hobby.
The Singer machine came with a CD of basic designs, but you have to buy
extra AutoPunch software to convert your own images -- such as those you
get off the Web -- to embroidery. The conversion software costs $299,
which is an absurd price. How they can charge this is beyond us since
the software is so old it calls for saving things to a floppy disk. Most
people haven't seen a floppy disk in years.
To get a clean image, it helps to convert your images to WMF format. We
used an older version of Ulead Photo Impact that we bought on the Web
for $5, and it handled the conversion.
Machine set-up was difficult, and making sure everything was locked down
before embroidering also proved to be a problem. Unlike hand
embroidering, which can be tied off for each section and then begun
again, the computer-controlled machine keeps right on sewing, and you're
left with a lot of cross-over threads to cut out and clean up.
Next problem: You can use only one color at a time. Each new color
requires a new spool of thread and winding a new bobbin. This turned out
to be more trouble than we would have believed before we started.
Bottom line: If you're really interested in an embroidery machine, buy
one that's dedicated to that purpose. These run from $400 up to $3,000
for units that can handle 20 spools of thread, changing colors
automatically without stopping. Bob says he would pay any price rather
than go through this again.
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