When the folks at CallPod asked me to review Keeper, they also asked if I could review the ChargePod.  This product has been out for a while (at least a year I believe) and I was not quite sure what I could add to the reviews that are already out there.  But I figured I’d take a stab at it, just because I like to be respectful of companies that send products my way.  I’m still too new at this to be inured to all the swag that comes from being a mighty tech blogger.  One day perhaps!

So for those of you who don’t know what the ChargePod is, it is a very simple device.  Basically, think of it as a starfish with charging ports for arms.  Up to six different devices can be connected and charged using a variety of dongles.  And by variety, I mean variety – over 3,000 different devices can be charged using the ChargePod’s stable of available connectors.  The device comes with three different connectors – one Apple Dock connector, one mini-USB connector, and one micro-USB connector.  It also comes with a coupon for a free connector and another for 20% off your first order, so all in all, you can set yourself up pretty well for not a lot of money.  Each dongle is about $10.

From a review perspective, it’s very simple.  The product does what it’s supposed to.  I plug in the power to the ChargePod and plug in my device and the device charges.  Cool.  A product that works as described.  It’s mindlessly simple.  My fiancee and I use it to charge her RAZR, her iTouch, my iPhone – I’m planning to get connectors for my son’s PSP, DSi, a generic USB connector so I can plug my headphone recharger into it….(umm, you folks at CallPod weren’t expecting this unit back anytime soon were you?).  We like the device, needless to say.  And the great thing is that it removes the tangle of wires that connect to my USB hub.  With ChargePod, I realized that 90% of the reason I have a USB hub is so I can re-charge something.  The ChargePod removes the need to keep my hub around.  The only cord I have in there now is for my iPhone so I can sync, and my headphone charger cause I don’t have the USB connector for the ChargePod yet.

The only “complaint” I have (cause no review can be perfect) is that you need a fairly decent amount of surface area to plug everything in.  To give you a sense of perspective, that sheet of paper is roughly 10″x14″.  It’s more elegant than a tangle of wires, but I’d love to wall mount this thing and somehow create a little electronics mandala to help remove some of the horizontal space requirements.  But it’s a minor quibble.  I’m looking forward to the V2 ChargePod, which will allow you to charge a laptop as well as other devices, plus plug in USB drives and the like.  It’s basically a portable universal laptop adaptor on steroids.

So why do I say that the ChargePod allows you to be a hero?  Well, I was in an all-day meeting last week at an off-site with limited Internet connectivity (which you had to pay for).  Almost everyone in that meeting was checking Blackberries every 10 minutes if not more frequently.  And because of that, their little addictions needed to be charged.  I personally was using my iPhone to access the corporate webmail presence, so I’m certainly not innocent.  But the thing I noticed was that everyone was swapping out a single charger between the various Blackberries.  And I thought to myself, if I got like five more mini-USB connectors and brought the ChargePod to my next all day offsite, people would love me.  LOVE me.  Hmm…$32 to buy the affections of a bunch of VPs and Directors…?  Might be worth it…

So I’ve been a little busy at work and the Q-man has been busy with work and school, so we’ve been ignoring the blog for a while.  I’m hoping that this will change in March but won’t be able to tell for sure, since I start teaching a new class at my gym.  Busy busy busy!

Before I got so busy I had a chance to chat with an awesome new company.  tXtBlocker sent us a press release during the CES leadup, and I found them interesting enough to arrange a call with their media relations guy.  I came away quite impressed with their potential.

tXtBlocker provides a service that prevents cell phones from being used under user-specified conditions.  I say service because it’s not software that is installed on the cell phone itself; rather, compatible cell phones are registered on tXtBlocker’s servers and associated with an account.  This allows the account holder to identify and set up rules around when that cell phone can be used for calls and texts.

As an example, consider the very simple rule “no texting while driving”.  By using the tXtBlocker service, the phone is automatically prevented from being used for texting when the service registers that the phone is travelling faster than a pre-set speed.  It is transparent to the user in the sense that the phone just doesn’t text when the condition is met.  At CES, the company was selling this as a service to parents of teens, who are among the most prolific of violators of this particular rule.  However, the flexibility of the service is useful to companies as well.  We discussed many use cases, including:

• preventing calls/texts from a user-defined radius (ie, a school, a church, etc).
• preventing calls/texts before or after a certain time (ie, during school)
• tracking the location of a phone
• preventing texting while driving
• theft deterrence and tracking

Emergency calls to 911 are always available, regardless of whether or not a rule is in effect.  And rules can be added/suspended via account access – they don’t need to have physical access to the phone for rules to be implemented.  So if your phone is stolen, you can log in, prevent it from being used for calls or texts, and track where the phone is.  How awesome is that?  If need be, the phone owner can request that the block be removed temporarily.

In my opinion, the true utility is for corporations.  How many companies give their employees cell phones or Blackberries and only have soft guidelines about using them in inappropriate situations?  I’m honestly not sure why an enterprising lawyer hasn’t sued a major corporation because an employee was texting or replying to email while driving.  Yes, there’s some employee responsibility here but in today’s job climate, it’s very believable that an employee feels the need to always be available and to take unreasonable risks if they think it will help them keep their job.  By activating corporate phones on tXtBlocker, every employee’s phone can be set to prevent use when the phone is traveling over 15mph.  Simple, transparent, and safe.  The theft deterrence and tracking capabilities are a close second in terms of corporate benefits as well – a nice big sticker on the back saying that the phone can be tracked and retrieved will go a long way to removing it as a potential hijack.

Right now, the service is primarily compatible with Blackberries, plus a few other phone models.  But tXtBlocker indicated that by the end of 2010, they expect that their service will be compatible with the vast majority of GPS-enabled phones.  The big exception, of course, is the iPhone because of its walled architecture.  And since Apple sells a competing service (at least in the retrieval area), I don’t know how willing Apple would be to let tXtBlocker gain sufficient access to the background OS processes to make their service work.  I figure we just need a few high profile cases where people cause accidents while typing on an iPhone to raise the visibility of the issue enough that Apple starts looking for a way to do this (or at least allow tXtBlocker to do it for them).

The service has an annual fee with discounts for each phone registered to an account.  I know the last thing people want is another fee in these economic times, but as a parent of a future teen driver, I know I will be seriously considering this service.  The cost is not all that high when you consider what it might be preventing.

The folks at CallPod gave me a license key to their Keeper product and asked me to do a review.  This is a first for me, because I typically only review stuff I would have bought anyway.  I did my best to remain objective in my review – the fact that it was free was tempered by the fact that it wasn’t a product I typically would have bought.  But I did want to make sure I was up front about how I got the product.  OK so on to the review!

———-

There are a  number of utilities that have sprung up of late that are designed to help folks keep track of their various passwords.  We are constantly being given opportunities to create user IDs and their attendant security information, and unless you use the same stable of passwords, keeping track of all of them become difficult.  For sites you visit often, it’s not a problem.  But for occasional use sites (like credit cards, affinity programs, retirement accounts and the like), I always have a devil of a time trying to remember my security phrase or password or whatever.  The tool I use, however, does not sync with the iPhone, so I can’t access my information when I’m away from my PC.  Keeper resolves that disconnect.

Keeper has both a desktop and a mobile component.  The desktop component is compatible with Mac, PC, and Linux, while the mobile component will run on the iPhone/iTouch, Android, and Vodaphone.  I ran Keeper on a Windows 7 laptop with the iPhone mobile component.  The mobile component is free; the desktop component is $19.95 regardless of platform.  I took a quick look at other similar applications available through iTunes to do a price comparison.  mSecure runs $2.99 for its mobile component but the desktop component is $14.99.  And SplashID is $9.99 but doesn’t have a desktop component as far as I can tell.  eWallet runs $9.99 for the desktop component and $9.99 for the iPhone component – you get the idea.  About $20 seems to be the sweet spot for these types of programs.

When you install and launch Keeper, you’re greeted with the above screen.  You pick a master password (preferably a complex one) and enter it twice.  It is critical to not forget this password.  You only get five attempts to log in after setting the master password; after that, Keeper wipes your data.  I couldn’t find a way to change the login attempts allowed to be more than five – if it’s not a feature, I’d suggest making it a future enhancement.  This is very important because the password you set in Keeper desktop has to match the password you set in Keeper mobile to allow syncing to occur.  Complex desktop phrases suddenly become a lot harder to enter when tapping on the iPhone’s virtual keypad.

The data entry interface is pretty straightforward.  The Folder field allows you to group sets of accounts by type.  The Title field allows you to name the specific entry.  The Login and Password fields are self-explanatory and the Notes field is pretty much your catchall for anything else.  A few more fields would have been nice, specifically things like URL and PIN.  I ended up using the Notes field to store those, plus things like answers to security questions.

The Settings allow some level of customization of the data entry fields, as well as timeout settings and data storage.  There is also a way to import and export your password database.  Exports can be for backup purposes, or you can print your database to PDF, text, or Excel.  Only the export to text file option allows for encrypting of the output.

The mobile component is very similar to the desktop component.  Options are limited, but how many options do programs like this really need?  You do have the option of turning off the self-destruct of the database if you fail to enter the correct password.  I thought this was an interesting option – on the one hand, you kind of want the database gone if someone tries to access your info.  On the other hand, I ended deleting my database three times either because I couldn’t remember my master password or because I mis-typed my complex (but easily typed on the desktop) password.  Again, balancing act – complex enough to make it difficult to guess but simple enough to enter easily on the virtual keyboard.  It’s a tough choice.

The login page shown is a bit deceptive because it defaults to numeric entry.  This particular page is only shown when you launch the app for the first time and need to set a master password.  I’d originally set a numeric password when I launched the mobile component, but then later had to reset the master password for the mobile app when I wanted to sync (more on that later).  Once the master password is set, however, you get a more standard login screen with a single password field and the alpha keyboard, rather than the numeric one.

I would suggest that Keeper look at using two different passwords on the mobile app.  The first password should allow access to the mobile app, while the second password should be the one used for syncing, and be forced to match the password on the desktop component.  This way, you can set a simpler password to allow quick entry to the application when you need it but you still retain a complex password for keeping the desktop and mobile versions coordinated.

Callpod will allow a one-time backup of your password database.  You pick a security question and provide an email address.  The mobile app then backs up your database to the Callpod servers.  When you want to restore from that backup, you provide the email address you used when you created the backup.  Callpod emails an access code to that email address, which you then enter into the mobile app.  Once entered, you must provide the answer to the security question you chose when you backed up the file.

But what most interested me about Keeper was the mobile/desktop syncing.  It works over Wi-Fi and it’s pretty slick.  You activate syncing on both the mobile app and the desktop app.

On the mobile app, you get an IP address plus a numeric key.  You enter this information on the desktop component, decide how you want the syncing to be done, and hit the Sync button.  The process is pretty quick and fairly bulletproof.  I tried syncing five or six different times and had only one failure.  I just re-tried the sync immediately however, and was able to sync just fine, so it’s not like failure means hours of troubleshooting.

Overall, I was pleased with Keeper and thought it was a solid product.  If you’re hesitant about buying it outright, the mobile component is a free iTunes download, so you can try it before you buy the desktop companion.  Callpod’s willingness to host a backup instance for free gives you a way to store your passwords securely, so if you don’t add tons of accounts on a regular basis, it’s possible for you to set up all your important passwords on the mobile version, have Callpod store a backup, and be about your merry way.  (Not sure that the Callpod folks are going to be happy about this suggestion!)

The biggest problem with Keeper (and other apps like it) is something they will not be able to solve on their own.  I am referring to the lack of multitasking on the iPhone, which makes products like this totally annoying to use.  I can’t just flip back and forth between Safari and Keeper on the iPhone – instead, I have to log into Keeper every time I want to access a different secure site.  It significantly deteriorates the usability of the application through no fault of Callpod’s.  I think an app like this would be great for the iPad, which is much more intended to provide a complete web experience.  However, the lack of multitasking on THAT platform will also make things annoyingly frustrating.  For a company that talks all about the user experience, Apple is having a harder and harder time justifying the lack of multitasking on its portable products.

Would I buy Keeper based on my experience with it?  Honestly, I’m not sure.  For a long time after I got my iPhone, I was looking for some way to view my passwords for American Express and Ameritrade and the like.  But since I couldn’t find anything that I was willing to pay for, I actually ended up learning the passwords.  If there were an easy way for me to switch between Keeper and Safari, or have Keeper pass URL, user ID, and password information to a Safari session, I think this software would be totally worth it.  But given the frustrations of flipping back and forth between Safari and Keeper, I just couldn’t see myself using it on a regular enough basis to justify its cost.  Your mileage may vary.

Google recently announced that they will be experimenting by building a super fast fiber network. I wrote a post “Why Google Needs to Become an ISP” a few months ago stating that Google needs to become an ISP because their search can be simply defaulted to another search engine. It is a war between tech companies to see who can control the platform and end-to-end services. Apple has devices, software, and stores. Microsoft has operating systems, office products, and mobile OS. Google’s strategy is simply to diversify and unify as much as possible.

Never thought my words would actually be heard from Google. They must have found it through Search

Why is Google building a high speed network? It is because the faster the network, the more people will be online which means the more ads they can display. Furthermore, Google can charge a subscription for access that is competitive to other ISPs. Google can also lease its fast fiber network to other ISPs as well for further revenue.

These days every small thing I can do to eliminate waste is of interest to me. One of the few things that really get on my nerves are batteries. Rechargeable are great, but they are still toxic. And E-waste is getting to be a bigger and bigger problem. So when I saw Adele Peters’ Corky mouse I got pretty excited.

It’s one of 18 finalists in this year’s Greener Gadgets Design Competition. The mouse uses kinetic energy to power it and is also made from 100% recycled plastic components and recycled and biodegradable cork. The Corky mouse uses piezoelectricity to generate energy every time you click, use the scroll wheel, or even move it around.

Plans for the mouse include regional sourcing and assembly, product take-back and recycling, and disassembly data will be easily accessible for recycling centers. So this mouse seems all around to be a more sustainable option. And cork feels nice, doesn’t it? Much nicer than plastic any day.

Go vote for it at Greener Gadgets Design Competition!

Via Inhabitat.com

I have a problem.  I am totally addicted to Bluetooth headphones.  I have no idea how I developed this addiction or what deepseated child neuroses my constant updating of my BT headphones collection is satisfying, but I can’t get enough of the silly things.  My wife is very patient with my obsession, despite how much money I spend on it.  The Jaybird SB1 is the latest addition to my collection.

My previous experiences with Jaybird left me a bit leery of ordering these.  I had purchased a set of their Freedom headphones when those had first come out only to realize when I got them that they were not compatible with glasses.  Which basically meant they were useless to me, even when I was wearing contacts (cause, you know, I have to look cool by wearing shades).  I can’t believe that no one on the Jaybird testing team had this problem.  I don’t know about you, but I use wireless headphones as much as possible.  Years of listening to Air Supply and Barry Manilow at glass-shattering volumes have left my ears unable to discern much of anything, so I don’t miss the ultra-high fidelity that wired headphones bring.  And I’m willing to give up that fidelity anyways because I hate being tangled up in cords, especially at the gym.

I ordered the SB1’s through Amazon, where they were marked as pre-order status (and cheaper than on the Jaybird site itself).  They actually arrived within their customary 2 day window, much to my surprise.  So here are my first set of unboxing pics.

(Man, that guy could be my twin.  Well, at least in terms of the chrome dome anyways).

Nice plastic wrapping.  Could the electronics industry use any MORE plastic?  I mean, I know we have infinite oil supplies, but still.  Sheesh.

Nice and new out of the box.  The manual, by the way, is a marvel of simplicity.  I think there are only fifteen sentences in the manual.  Everything is done through colored pictographs.  My wife was unable to figure out what said pictographs meant, which goes to show you who the target audience might be.

This is the power/control portion of the headphones.  Five buttons.  That’s it.

Pairing was very straightforward.  The phones arrived with sufficient power to turn on and connect to my iPhone without any issues.  Charging took about three or four hours.  It has a nice touch in that the power indicator only glows red until it’s charged up.  When the SB1’s are fully charged, the red charging light goes off.

There is about an inch of extension to the drivers, and the foam is fairly thick.  The controls are covered in a matte rubber, and are easily manipulated even in gloves once you’re used to them.  The big silver power button serves as a play/pause button and the iPhone only allows volume control through BT anyways, so it’s not like I had a lot of choices to make.

The Jaybird people make a big deal out of the fact that the headphone pads swivel in two dimensions.  The amount of play in that swivel is not huge, so I don’t know that I got a lot of additional comfort because of this.  The foam covering the headphone drivers is a thicker version of the foam that come with earbuds.  Jaybird must be expecting that these things will last, because they didn’t provide a spare set of foam covers.  I can see them being torn over time and Jaybird would be well advised to make sure they have replacements available.

Sound quality was good.  Like I said, I’m no audiophile, but I had no issues with the sound level reaching my ears, even compared to my previous Sony BT headphones, which plug directly into my ears.  Phone quality was also good.  Folks on the other end had a bit of trouble hearing me but I chalk that up to the fact that I’m not a yeller – I speak at a normal volume no matter the environment and expect the headphone mic to pick me up.  The SB1’s did that just fine.

In terms of downsides, I had three main issues with the SB1’s.  First (and this will vary based on user), the headphones are TIGHT against your ears.  My ears were sore after an hour or two of use and I don’t think I have a very big head (small brain, you know).  For the more cranially endowed, the SB1’s might be way tight.  I’m sure the plastic headband will expand and loosen over time, but it’s something to keep in mind.  Second, I experienced weird volume issues as the power on the headphones drained down.  It was very difficult to reproduce, so I couldn’t tell if it really was a problem, but for some reason, the volume refused to drop down below a certain (very loud) level.  It was bizarre.  Finally, I noticed that the rubber underside of the plastic headband had started pulling away from the headband at the edges.  It wasn’t horrible, but it was enough that I was concerned.  I ordered a replacement pair from Amazon and this time I’m going to check the edges right upon opening the packaging.  I wasn’t sure if the edges had always been this way or if it had developed over the two weeks I’ve had the headphones.

Overall, the SB1’s are a good set of BT headphones.  They did slide around a bit on my head, which I really kind of chalk up to the fact that I have no hair.  The sound quality is good and the microphone seems to work just fine.  Controls are easy to use, charging seems quick, and overall I’m pretty happy with these.  The specs indicate that these are pairable with up to two devices but when I tried to pair them with my PC, I got all kinds of errors.  Contacting Jaybird support indicated that this was a Windows limitation rather than an SB1 issue.  I will ding them on support though – I asked them another question and I have yet to hear back from them.

I’ll update the post when I get a replacement pair from Amazon.  I’m hoping that these will be my primary BT headphones for the foreseeable future, but I’m sure I’ll fall in lust with another pair.

UPDATE: I received my replacement pair of SB1’s in the aftermath of the East Coast Snowpocalypse.  This time I took a careful look at the edges of the headband where the rubber and plastic meet.  They seem to be just fine, so it makes me think that either I got a defective set or it might be a problem that develops over time.  I’m hoping not because I do like these headphones.  I’ll post another update if I notice that they are starting to pull apart again.  Jaybird does offer a year warranty so you do have some level of recourse.

After watching the series finale of Dollhouse (which made me very sad and also a firm believer that Joss Whedon should finally give the Fox Network a huge middle finger) I found this little treasure, which to me would be exactly the kind of tech that would belong in such a dystopian future.
A grenade shaped USB drive!

It’s tiny and malicious looking, and perfect for the nerdy rebel in me that fantasizes about overthrowing the current corporate paradigm that would allow such destructive tech loose on the planet in order to mind control the populace.
Wait. Sorry. Did I get carried away? Man that show was good.
But back to reality here.

Seriously though. Grenade shaped USB drives that can hold up to 8GB of your most important data. I’m sure Topher Brink would approve.

Via ThinkGeek.com