Tech2

It’s rare for any company to discuss a health problem associated with their industry. This makes V-MODA’s new line of Fader earplugs a welcome curiosity.

They claim to be “designed and tuned by professional DJs, producers and doctors.” As in, not the hard high-end cut offered by foam earplugs.

Ok, sounds like something I’d like, but where to test them. . .

Initially, the Tablet S was supposed to be part of our big tablet roundup. Requests for review samples repeatedly ignored, so we went ahead and forgot about them. 

Well you’d never guess, but comments like “if you’re looking for the perfect tablet, you have two choices” tend to get to get a company’s attention. At least, when that company isn’t one of those two choices. 

Shiny new Tablet S in hand mere days later, I set off to find out if it could be a worthy contender against the Fire and iPad.

When I attended my first Consumer Electronics Show in 1990, Microsoft was a relatively small company that had had one real hit (MS-DOS) and was struggling to gain traction with its other applications. I don’t think the company even exhibited at CES back then.

Every year, magazine editors around the world solicit ideas from their writers for the compulsory “holiday gift guide.” Every year, we scrounge the Internet in search of items we think our editors will go for. ’Cause the more gift ideas the editors buy, the more money we make.

I HAD AN EPIPHANY of sorts last week when I was doing lab measurements for our review of the Creative ZiiSound D5x. Pretty as the product is, it took me about 45 minutes to get it to mate with Creative’s supplied USB Bluetooth dongle. Then it took me another 30 minutes to get it to mate with the DSx subwoofer. In the latter case, I’m still not sure what I did right — it just suddenly started working.

As I was going through some old trade show photos earlier this week, it dawned on me that a lot of the products I’d photographed and subsequently reviewed turned out to be quite different from what I’d been led to expect by the demo. Sometimes products that sounded amazing at a show didn’t sound so great when I actually got a real production sample into my home.

Everyone else is doing those Black Friday shopping guides. We do things a bit differently here at the Tech2 shack on the S+V compound.

Knowing how many people have smartphones, and would rather look at them then stare at the schlub in front of them in line, we present “Stuff to Read While Waiting in Line.” Or, to translate for the New Yorkers out there: “Stuff to Read While Waiting on Line.”

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll burp turkey from yesterday.