My Brother turned me on to this site. Mostly guy stuff. Apparently the site owners filter over 1000 different tech sites and pick out only the stuff they think is cool.

And yes, it is awesome.

I‘m pretty obsessed with gadget technology. Unfortunately, most of it gets classified as “a want” vs. “a need” by my financial planner (i.e. my wife) and for good reason. I could easily go broke keeping up with the technology equivalent of the Joneses. I mean seriously, some this stuff is pretty frickin cool.

1. Laptop sexy: Onyx Adamo or a Inspiron Mini 9 (Hackintosh!)
2. Hardware Firewall: Open Firewall Pico by Yoggie
3. Trash your remote pile: Logitech’s Harmony One
4. Tune in Tokyo: Yaesu’s FT-857D (not a Ham? Become one!)
5. Tough enough: Olypus Stylus Tough-8000
6. Solar ftw: Solio Magnesium

So I’m hooked. I gotta get the new [iPhone 2.0]. Problem is, every store in Atlanta is sold out and nobody has a clue when the next shipment will arrive. I had a shot on Saturday but missed the last one by 15 minutes so now I’m going crazy from [instant gratification withdrawl].

My buddy [David] had a similar experience this weekend but managed to squeak in under wire. I think my next best shot will be tomorrow at 9am – one of the local store reps swears the shipment that didn’t arrive this morning will be available for tomorrow.

Fingers crossed.

Update:

Well, my quest for a new iPhone is over. I’m not eligible for the iPhone “upgrade” until Dec. 18th, 2008. Sure, I can still buy one – I’ll just have to pay the full $399 price for the 8GB model.

Now I’m bummed.

Update 2:

David just suggested I head down to the local Apple store and buy one there. Apparently, they’ll sell me an 8GB iPhone for the $199 price and activate my service – this might bypass the contract “eligibility issue” the AT&T store claims I have. I’ve got another way around this if the Apple Store Bypass doesn’t work but I can’t attempt my hypothesis until Mel & I move back to Florida.

Now I have a glimmer of hope.

About a year ago as the first iPhone was coming online and it seemed like the entire world was standing in line to get one, I made a decision to wait. Partly because I couldn’t afford ~$400+ of my own money on a new phone no matter how frickin’ cool it looked or how revolutionary everybody claimed it would be. Yea it had a really slick user interface, and it rolled your iPod, cell phone, video player, web broswer, and picture frame all into an uber-thin package but it was new. Not new like a new car new but new like “nothing Apple or anybody else has ever done before so it’s really new“. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned supporting new technology these last few years – no matter what the manufacturer claims, you’ll always run into ver. 1.0 problems.

Needless to say, I’m glad I waited. Almost within the first week, users starting reporting some very interesting issues with the new iPhone: battery failures (non-user replaceable btw), sign-up difficulties (not to mention locking yourself into a two year contract with AT&T), defective units right out of the box, zero SDK support and no third party software apps, security flaws within the [iPhone Safari browser], etc. The list just seemed to go on and on as more people dug into it. Hell, within a month of release somebody had already [cracked] it so you could use it on other networks (Apple retaliated by [bricking] your iPhone if you tried to run any future updates on it via iTunes).

Well a week or two ago and the release of ver 2.0 finally arrived – [the 3G iPhone] will hit stores on July 11th. At ~$200 for the 8GB version, it’s got me interested all over again. The only decision now is, is it still [new] or just improved?

If you’re in the market for an entry level digital SLR, I would highly recommend the [Nikon D40]. It’s already been replaced by the D40x and the newer D60 but [Ken Rockwell's Nikon D40 review] lays out a pretty good arguement on why you should save your money and stick with the D40.

So far my wife and I have been very happy with the shot quality and the ease of use over our Cannon Digital Elph. It has enough buttons, knobs, and settings to satisfy my gadget lust without being completely overwhelming for a novice as I learn more about advanced photography. You can pick up a decent D40 kit (body, lense, etc.) for ~$499 or so online and with the extra money you save over the D40x or D60, grab a [Nikon SB400 Speed Flash] or a decent entry level zoom lense like the [Nikkor AF-S DX VR 55-200mm].

We’ll still use the Elph for pocket grab & go shots but for vacations, birthdays, parties, etc. the D40 will be great.

I finally had a chance to run my latest gadget through it’s paces this weekend. My brother and I hiked the 8.8 mile [Gahuti Trail Loop] on Saturday so it was a perfect opportunity to test the GPS receiver / Satellite transmitter part of the [SPOT™]. The trail had a good mix of ravine, ridge, saddle, etc. hiking and looped around the entire compass. I had it attached to the outside of my backpack – clipped to the top lip of a pocket with the receiver tilted upwards at about a 60 degree slant.

With the “track progress” feature enabled, the product specs claim the device will send a location message out every 10 minutes or so when it has a clear LOS with the satellite network. You can tell when the device is sync’d properly because a pair of LEDs blink in unison but since I had it attached to the back of my pack, I couldn’t monitor when and where it was sync’d – I just trusted it to send out a location track whenever it could. I’ve uploaded the 4 tracking messages my web site account shows as being received for the entire 4 hour hike – I have a feeling the GPS portion of the device is much more tolerant than the satellite simplex link because my handheld GPS never skipped once during the entire 4 hours.

My “check in” message at the end of the day went through just fine but I was hanging out along a ridgeline with almost 100% horizon visability so it’s not surprising. I’ll still carry it as part of my safety kit and it’ll be nice to keep my family informed during our hikes but I’ll stick to my handheld GPS for accurate tracking and waypoint marking.

Gahuti SPOT Tracks