Popular Science Highlights 16 Innovative New Tech Products

Below are the ones I thought the most of, several would be useful for those in construction.  But the list suggests that “everything has not yet been invented”, and some popular existing products (like the pocket calculator) can still be improved.

Here are links to my selections:

http://www.amazon.com/Ryobi-ES2000-Phone-Infrared-Thermometer/dp/B010MS3PPG/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1451495566&sr=8-3&keywords=ryobi+infrared+thermometer

Ryobi infrared thermometer that in instant, and connects to smart phone through the ear phone jack. $50 -- a decent price

http://www.popsci.com/best-obsessed-2015?image=7

Unique saw that cross cuts or rips and measures

http://www.popsci.com/best-obsessed-2015?image=10

Converts your TV into a Windows Computer, Go ahead and design your PowerPoint in the big screen, comes with memory, windows, and just plugs in simply.

http://www.popsci.com/best-obsessed-2015?image=12

First big improvement in pocket calculators in years, color screen, graphs visible, do all your math homework fast and simple. 

Now if I had only had that calculator in the 60's when I was in engineering !! 

Roach Motel That Works

They check in, but they don’t check out.  In spite of using a professional service, roaches still seem to get in various properties I take care of.  Over the years I have tried several effective sprays on thresholds (Bengal and others) but one that consistently works for me is the Roach Motel TAT  (by Black Flag) – “They check in, but they don’t check out”.  These little boxes are safe, are not bad looking (wood grain disposable cardboard) and you get to see how effective they are by looking in.  Somewhat hard to buy in retail stores, I usually get mine on-line or at an ACE hardware.

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Flag-Roach-2-count-Packages/dp/B007QVRZPE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1451319534&sr=8-1&keywords=TAT+Roach+Motel

$20 gets you 12 motels, less than $2 each, and $20 is only 2/3^rd. of the cost of the monthly professional treatments.  And 12 boxes will last (forme)  6 months or a year.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-of-6-Black-Flag-Roach-Motel-Cockroach-Killer-Bait-Glue-Traps-3X2-Pack-/191701073084?hash=item2ca2463cbc:g:tz8AAOSwx~JWFLO6

Or, 6 for $10 on Ebay, about the same price as Amazon.

Buy the way – Ebay’s new checkout with PayPal is amazing, reducing the steps considerably.  Just basically two clicks “I want it”,  “Yes, use Pay Pay to Pay”.  Then a confirmation pops up “Your order was placed”. Whew, free shipping, 2 clicks to pay, no wonder retail store sales were off 8% over the holidays as compared to last year, while internet sales are soaring.

Are You Getting The Internet Speed You Pay For?

There is a way to test it, here are two websites that help you do that

http://www.speedtest.net/

http://www.timewarnercable.com/en/support/speed-test.html

At my primary (wired) location I pay for 16 Mbps coming down, and about 3 Mbps going up (like uploading home movies to YouTube).  The upload is very slow, of course, sometimes an hour for a 8 minute video.  At another location I use, the WiFi is only 6 Mbps coming down, and .6 Mbps going up. Only a fraction of my normal wired set up.  I have tried to get Time Warner to increase my speed to 30 Mbps coming down, and I am paying for 30 Mbps but it is still only 16 Mbps.  More calls and aggravation is in store, I am sure.

Amazone Prime Drone Delivery Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXo_d6tNWuY

Amazon Prime Drone Delivery Video.  This has a slow start, but the balance of the video is very telling – it is the future, perhaps, of home delivery.

1.     The drone is loaded in an Amazon warehouse, more or less automatically with a special looking blue “Amazon Air” box

2.     The drone then flies vertically out of the warehouse through a hole in the roof.

3.     One up in the air, it switches to a horizontal type propulsion and can fly 15 miles (and back).

4.     The customer puts a special piece of rubber in the yard, with the Amazon logo (and I presume much more inside the rubber, to guide the drone to the precise drop zone)

5.     A notice to the customer’s iPhone or iPad tells them the drone is on the way, so “put out the rubber mat for landing”

6.     The drone, being smart, avoids all obstacles on the way, flying rather low, and then lands on the rubber mat and drops the package onto the mat, then flies away and back to the warehouse for another delivery package.

Watching the process, which I assume is computer animation – is a good experience, now you know how a drone delivery might look – in your own yard.  Assuming you have a yard.  There are many “what ifs” to think about, but the future is always like that.  Be it air travel, or satellite launch, there are always skeptics who say “we don’t need it”, or “it won’t work”, or “it will be too expensive”.

Verizon Reception Inside Home (or office)

Verizon has a new Samsung/Verizon device that is like a mini-cell-tower to cover your home or office, 5,000 sq. feet of it, with decent cell phone signal (picked up from weak signal at some point in your home).  It is supposed to be superior to prior repeater (signal booster) devices.  I ordered one today after Verizon, due to my longevity and loyalty, plus prompt payment record, gave a sizeable discount on the device.  Will be shipped to my home.  I will have to install it. 

If you are having signal problems, you might want to check this out with Verizon in your area. Verizon has both corporate owned stores and authorized resellers. I prefer the authorized resellers, great people, great service.  I had one full hour with my sales and service representative today, for example, plus 20 minutes on the phone with Verizon high level technical support while in the resellers’ office.

Note:  I was told today that about 75% of their customers now opt for the “breakage and theft/loss” coverage on their new smart phones.  I have it, purchased from the Verizon reseller but it is not a Verizon product. The 3^rd. party protection provider had a better deal from a replacement phone point of view.  Check out both types with your provider next time you get a new phone.

Coupons On-Line – a few Tips

There are many websites that offer up coupons and check-out codes to give customers big discounts. This holiday season I have used these sites several times and saved from 20% to 70%.

www.retailmenot.com  is one of them, but there are many others.  www.coupons.com     http://coupons.walmart.com/    For example, I use Kellog cereal and they have a coupon for $1.00 off on 3 boxes at WalMart.  That’s a sizeable saving and I always buy at least 3 boxes at a time. Just Google up something with the word coupon in it, and the name of the store you would like to use.  Such as "coupons and discounts for Snapfish" .  Many choices of sources for the discounts.

Remember $1.00 saved at checkout is multiplied by the savings of sales tax (6% to 8%) and by the personal income tax and FICA taxes.  You have to earn a good bit more than $1.00 to have $1.00 to spend.  It could be more like this “for every $1.00 saved at checkout, you really saved $1.35 in pre-tax income”.   Where else can you get a 35% extra return on your money? In one day? 

Today I found glossy photo paper, highest quality, for 70% off, I bought two boxes to spread the freight to more product. It was on-line.  Amazon. Obviously a close out, from some seller, but why not get more for less?  I have used the brand before, and love it. 

Final hint -- I have discovered that some on-line vendors have two nearly identical websites, but one has the normal prices struck through and a much lower price printed in red.  I suspect this is because somewhere, they have direct-mailed some print advertising to attract some first-time (new) customers, and the URL printed links to the discounted price page. I accidentally found one of those discount type  pages and saved 50% on some printed product a few months ago.  I book-marked that page for future use.  I might save big money again on a reorder. 

CalenMob now called Tiny Calendar

With some updates and a name change, CalenMob seems to be the same as always.  After trying several calendars I settled on this one 2 years ago, and have not regretted it.  Tiny Calendar is the iPhone or iPad version (or display) of Google Calendar.  On my PC I use Google Calendar to add and change events and then they show up on the iPhone and iPad under Tiny Calendar app.  Of course you can add events on your iPhone app but it is much harder to see and do that kind of detailed work. Always it syncs back to Google Calendar.

Note that this (Google Calendar really) shows all holidays automatically, and you can program one recurring event at the top of each week’s display (or just a few days of it) – such as your assigned time to do something at your church, or vacation time share.  That’s very useful for me, because when I am booking something new on a date, I can see, immediately, that it will be a conflict with some recurring event that week.

Functionality is reasonably good, but it is small to read on the iPhone (5-S) screen.  Great on the iPad or the PC.  But, it appears that Google lacks interested in adding features or keeping it up to date.  I guess it is not a revenue builder, but --- it is a vital crutch for many of us, and I am sure we, collectively, would like to see Google pay more attention to this program – more and better color for events, ability to change the default color for an event (it is now blue, and can be changed, but all new events are in blue – very hard to read with black text inside a dark blue bar – I change all mine to yellow, manually, one at a time.  They could fix that, but they don’t). 

Of course a great feature is the ability to put in a birthday of a friend and tell the calendar to repeat that date every year for "X" years.  This is probably one the many best reasons to go digital with a calendar -- repetition is easy and accurate. Not so with paper calendars. 

Productivity Apps for Phones--PC's

Wunderlist is one of the best productivity apps for task-management, especially if you don't need every feature under the sun and are hoping to keep your costs to nil.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2491165,00.asp

Recommended by PC Magazine and Dr. Tom Hill, a power tech user, it is worth checking out.  To-do lists that work across platforms (enter something on the PC, but see it on the mobile phone or vice versa) and other features make such products highly useful as compared to just carrying around a handwritten list.  Those with a to-do list at the start of a day tend to accomplish more (per hour) than those who don’t. As a person grows older, they sometimes lose some short-term memory so these productivity apps could help people over 50 years old remember what they went to the store for, or who they need to call.

Personally, I use Evernote as my productivity App.  I use it so extensively, 20 times a day or more, that I have sort of made it into my to-do list helper as well.  I have a code word I put on a memo “Take To”.  After that word is the store name, or the location name.  For example  “Take To Target”  would be my list of things I need to remember to buy at Target – new items or recurring things I prefer to buy there (expendables).  When in such a store, or before I leave for a visit to a vacation property, I look at the “Take To” file for that location to remember to take the keys, certain items I will usually need there, and so on.  If there is something extra to take, I add it at the top of the “normal list” and then delete it after it is no longer necessary.  

Since Evernote searches on word strings, putting in "Take To" before a store or location will bring that up first on the search list.  This does not solve the daily To Do needs, so for that, I have an Evernote file called To Do  -- often followed by a modifier – like Business Item  or Personal Item  or Long Term Solution Needed.

https://evernote.com/  Evernote – the best memo, and address saver program I have found, and I have had several of them over 15 years. All emails in Evernote are “hot” on both PC’s and phone, all phone numbers are “hot” on the phone.  It also can find text in photographs of business cards or photographs of signs, making searching a real pleasure. Out with paper, in with instant access to photos of that paper.

Transferring Photos From a Smart Phone to a PC (for backup or other use)

http://www.phototransferapp.com/

Not a very unique name, but Photo Transfer App is one of my newest (old) App friends.  I had it on some prior Apple devices and thought it was not working correctly and was slow.  But the new version is worth writing a BLOG post about.

First, what is it?  It wirelessly transfers photos from you iPhone (or your Android, I think) to a “save file” on your normal Windows PC (or your Apple iMac).  This assures you both a backup for your phone photos, so now you can delete recklessly, and not worry about losing some favorite.  It is always on your PC for printing, or sharing. 

How does it do it?  It does it by being on the same WiFi signal (router) as your PC .. it flies through the air (the Wi-Fi air) to your PC and into the correct saving file location.  You can then open the photos in Picasa (a free photo organizer and one of my favorites). From there, printing or emailing is very easy.  As is building slide shows to share with friends and family.

What makes it special (and with hundreds of 5-star ratings by users) ?  Here are some of the key things

1.     it moves (copies)  the photos fast – last night I moved 3,000 iPhone photos to my PC in 20 minutes or less.  That seems to be about as fast as a wired connection. AND – photos move at full quality, not diminished for ease of transfer or “bandwidth conservation”.  Not all backup programs save photos at full quality.

2.     it moves the photos and remembers what it moved (copied) , and so next time will not move it again.  You can move all photos, or select the phones one at a time to be moved. Or other options, such as move and delete from the phone.

3.     It is easy, always ready to go to work for you whenever you like, and the phone is in range that that Wi-Fi. 

4.     I think it works better than manual transfers using USB type wire connect which always gave me trouble (Windows 7) by saying it was done, when it was only half done.  And moving folders and keeping up with folder names was a minor nightmare. I will probably never move photos with a wire (manually) again.

I have an HP “instant ink” printer that will take photos wirelessly from the iPhone and so now printing 8x10 photos from the phone is so easy I do 40 or more a week (no charge for the ink, HP replaces it by mail .. I don’t even have to order it). Now with the transfer/save problem solved, and printing made easy, my phone is just so much more useful as a camera.