Gadgets

When Red Digital Cinema first announced they were looking to build a phone many people were very interested. The idea that the company who turned the world of cinema cameras on its head taking on the stagnant world of smartphones with mediocre cameras was a big one. Sadly, after the announcement there were significant delays for the new device. Happily, for the rest of the smartphone world, newer generations of cameras and camera software began to up their game on what we can do with our smartphone cameras. Still, this is Red we are talking about here, so despite these advances they were sure to have a significant product. If you read most of the “reviews” out there you would not think that was the case. Personally, I was not deterred by the reviews as most of them came off as incomplete. I decided to take it for a spin, but not a quick 15 minutes, but a 30-day plus test run including taking it around to get reactions from other people. So, with that in mind, let’s see what we found.

The market for hands-free devices is growing very quickly. This growth has been driven by multiple factors including legal ones. In some states they are required for driving which has been pushing the market forward. Sadly, the market has not really moved forward over the last few years. The devices have gotten smaller, but the feature set and battery life has not changed much. Jabra has been working on changing that over the last year and have come out with some great new hands-free kits including the Jabra Eclipse which is what we are taking a look at today.

Connected products are a big thing now and have been for a while. We have seen everything from lightbulbs to egg trays that have some sort of internet connection and notification service. We have been very concerned about the rapid growth and relative insecurity of these products for since they hit the scene. Recently we read about a new connected product from Char-broil that caught our attention. It is a WiFi connected smoker line. We were very intrigued by this for multiple reasons and reached out to them to see if we could arrange a simple of one. Char-broil was nice enough to send us their Simple Smoker to play around with. We took it for a spin over a weekend and can give you some insight into how well they work.

Connected devices are becoming the wave of the future. We already have TVs, refrigerators, and even cars that can call us and let us know how they are doing. These devices reach out through the internet in most cases and talk to applications on our phones or they allow us to dial in and see what is going on. Now while these devices are nice, what do you do if you do not own one of these? How do you get your car to talk to you when it has no built in Bluetooth? PAPAGO! has an interesting option to give you a look into one of the many systems on your vehicle if it is not capable of communicating to you on its own. We will be taking a look at the PAPAGO! GoSafe TPMS 500BT (Tire Pressure Management System) and see just how handy it is.