Category: Gadgets

How to Travel Germ-Free: The Sleep Sack

Post author By web gangsta
Post date April 21, 2009

As we’ve all seen the local news stories during sweeps week, or on practically any episode of CSI – some hotel rooms can be filled with nasty germs and bugs.

That’s where THE SLEEP SACK comes in.

You always see a few people in the airport, carrying their own pillows with them. For them, either the hotel pillows are never good enough, or perhaps there’s a hypo-allergenic reason to bring one’s own pillow with them.

And while travellers often fear the pillow bug, for the most part, one never thinks much about the hotel room’s bed linens. Sure, the coverlet may be a little nasty, but you’re not supposed to use that as a blanket anyway. Just throw the coverlet on the floor like everyone else does. The sheets should be clean, right?

Right?

Tags bed bugs, gadget, germs, How To, shopping, Travel

Disney Gadgets Internet Travel

Disneyland iPhone Application

Post author By web gangsta
Post date April 12, 2009
1 Comment on Disneyland iPhone Application

I know what one of the first applications any new iPhone-owning Disney fan is going to want to go out and buy from the iPhone Apps Store: the DISNEYLAND PARK PLANNER from HyTech Professionals.

Sure, the park planner has the basics down that any decent park planner would have: scrollable/zoomable map, restaurant menus, park and show hours, attraction descriptions, FastPass locations, etc.

But where the “DPP” shines is with special features that utilize two built-in features that the iPhone has: geotargeting, and interactivity with the Internet.

The geotargeting app is handy, as the DPP can pinpoint your location within the park and then direct you to the nearest restroom, restaurant, attraction, or food stand that you are looking for – the ultimate Disney tour guide in your pocket.

But even better is when you use the DPP to tell you what rides have the shortest wait times. Sure, Disney has come up with a way to do this with their Official Cell Phone Sponsor, Verizon – available for all Verizon subscribers in the parks – but the DPP opens up this information to everyone who is using the DPP.

To better describe how this works, let me explain how Disney calculates their ride wait times:

Tags Disney, Internet, iPhone, theme parks, Travel

Gadgets How To Websites

How to Easily Interpret Text Messages

Post author By web gangsta
Post date February 26, 2009

Do you have friends who text-message you a lot, each time with more and more obscure abbreviations and short codes that are beginning to annoy you because you don’t know what they mean?

I know, it would be easier for your friend to just call you or send you a normal email instead of trying to thumb their way through a cell-phone keypad to tell you where to meet them for dinner.

Luckily, you can pop over to TRANSL8IT, type in the message you received, and have the site convert the undecipherable message for you into ordinary English. Plus, if you have text-addicted friends and you want to look like you have a clue about how to text yourself, you can type in your plain-English message and have the site convert it into text-speak.

Tags gadget, How To, website

Gadgets Websites

iPhone: Ocarina

Post author By web gangsta
Post date February 24, 2009

I love how creative people can get when given access to the iPhone developer application.

Here’s a video of someone using the iPHONE OCARINA APPLICATION. An ocarina is a small flute-like instrument, sort of a cross between a fancy kazoo and one of those recorders you played in kindergarten.

So some dude figured out a way to turn the iPhone into an ocarina. The touchscreen is a reasonable fascimile of the finger holes on the ocarina itself, but you make music by blowing into the iPhone’s microphone. Brilliant!

Tags gadget, iPhone, website

Gadgets Websites

TrapCall – Caller ID Unblocker

Post author By web gangsta
Post date February 17, 2009

It’s quite possible that TRAPCALL will be disbanded in the near future due to privacy concerns, but until that happens cellphone users who hate answering calls from blocked or private numbers may have a workaround.

TrapCall is free, and is currently available only to AT&T and T-Mobile users (with others signing on soon).

If you have your phone blocked to Caller ID, have you noticed that when you call your credit card company (or other 1-800 number), that they know your number? This is the loophole that TrapCall takes advantage of to expose a blocked number to the recipient.

All a TrapCall customer needs to do is forward those blocked number calls to TrapCall. The call then gets looped back to the cellphone, with the caller’s number displayed.

Time will tell how long TrapCall will be allowed to be active.

The company behind TrapCall has been thrown in hot water before with their phone number manipulation tricks – they have a way to fake the Caller ID display to be any number the caller would like it to be. But the company has come under fire for this product as it began to be used for crime, felonious pranks, and identify theft.

Tags gadget, website

Gadgets How To

Home Improvement Tip: How to Fix A Garage Door Light That Won’t Go Out Automatically

Post author By web gangsta
Post date January 8, 2005
3 Comments on Home Improvement Tip: How to Fix A Garage Door Light That Won’t Go Out Automatically

Non-Illuminated Doorbell or Garage Door Button

The other day, Web Watch experienced the same problem other home owners have run into: the light on our automatic garage door opener would not go out.

The opener itself was working perfectly fine. The door would open or close when requested via the remote or the wall switch, but the lightbulb would not turn off after the 5 minute timer expired.

And Web Watch is seemingly not alone in this problem. Other websites that specialize in home improvement tips have either left the question unanswered or said that the problem is with the garage door opener’s logic board that prevented the light from automatically turning off.

Tags gadget, home improvement, How To

Gadgets Websites

Time Scout

Post author By web gangsta
Post date August 1, 2003

Just in time for back to school is a revolutionary new gadget that is sure to please moms and dads everywhere: THE TIME SCOUT.

If your kids (or husbands) are watching too much TV or playing their video games all night, why not turn those activities into a true reward? Plug the selected device into the Time Scout and give your children their own “charge card.” When the child swipes their card through the Time Scout reader, the TV or video game can now be used for a preset amount of time.

Now you can reward your children with an hour of television for a week, and they get to choose how and when they use it. They can use the time now, use it later, or even save all their earned time for a party at the end of the week because that’s what they earned. And when their time is up, it’s the Time Scout that turns into the bad cop, not you.

And yes, there is a parental bypass for those late-night games of Ratchet and Clank.

Tags gadget, website

Gadgets Websites

The Whirlpool Polara Oven

Post author By web gangsta
Post date March 1, 2002

Remember Jason Alexander, the actor who played the character “George” on Seinfeld? One of his first acting roles — if you can call it that — was for the famous McDonald’s McDLT. Let’s take a look:

Why do I bring this up? because when it comes to keeping the “hot side hot, and the cool side cool”, nothing beat THE WHIRLPOOL POLARA OVEN. It’s a refrigerator…inside your oven!

It’s like a big giant crockpot, designed with food safety in mind. Just put your raw food into the oven, and tell it what time to start cooking. Your food will be kept safely refrigerator cool (no e.coli here!), and will be almost done cooking by the time you make it home from the office.

And to think that watching this fancy stuff on The Jetsons was all futurey and stuff.

Tags cooking, gadget, website