All Gadgets Aside...

Last night I went out to a club I had neglected for a little while to see the internationally famous BT. It was one of the best nights I have ever had in my life. I FOUND MYSELF AGAIN while listening to a friends DJ set of hard breakbeat electronic music. A strange soothing calm came over me and I knew that my streak of despair had ended. I ran into every person at the club that I would want to see and be around and even though some people had some sad issues in their personal lives I feel that my amount of happiness was enough to rub off on them. The music was incredible last night. A lot of it I had heard but I once again felt at one with the music even though I wasn't performing myself. Life once again became beautiful. Everything seemed to continue to align as we even decided to hit an after party where the oddest mix of people that I know came together in some sort of symbiosis that worked perfectly. Junglists were hanging out with house heads and hippies were hanging out with young ravers and every single person had a big smile on their face.

Of course seeing my family yesterday was probably what initially spawned me finding myself again. It was my brothers birthday so my parents had come to pick me up and we hit up a restaurant on the way home, then I made fresh guacamole and Mango/Black Bean Salsa. We had a dinner of tacos, I made mine fish tacos since I am a pescatarian (vegetarian that eats fish and/or seafood). After we all ate me and my brothers did something I hadn't done with them for a long time...we busted out some fireworks and blew stuff up .

It's really strange how things go around and how one second you can feel horrible and then out of the blue you get smacked across the face with the giant salmon of happiness and you feel better than you ever had before. I have a feeling that from this point on things will continue to be great.

Apple has just released new specs about the AppleTV in addition to a projected release of February. The price will be $299. Some of the details(new and old) include:

-720p HD Compatible
-802.11b,g,n Compatible
-40gb HD
-HDMI
-USB 2
-Compatible with Apple remote
-Videos,Music and photos can be shared from 5 computers

Unfortunately there comes a time in the life of every gadget when you have to set it aside and upgrade to something new. Well for me there were a few reasons for me to upgrade my Mobile to a new device so I searched high and low for the right device for me. I am a rather picky person when it comes to mobile phones mainly because of the fact that I have been spoiled by using a Sony Ericsson S710a for the past year. When it came down to the features and price that I was looking for I ended up going with the Nokia 6270 (Nokia, if you are listening, I will gladly accept an N73 for reviewing purposes). One of the main factors that I look for in a phone these days is whether or not it can run the applications that I use regularily, so basically it needs to run Opera Mini.

Upon Opening the box I was greeted by a sleek looking phone, squared off edges, slider, nice large screen, dark brown aluminum exterior. Starting up the phone was a snap, I started off by inserting the SIM card, the included 128mb memory card(can take up to 2gb MiniSD Card) and battery then pressed the conveniently hidden power button(located on the top of the phone). The phone greets you with some friendly Nokia hand holding intro and then you are off. The Series 40 interface is very visually pleasing and is very easy to navigate. One of the main things I was curious about was the active standby mode so I scurried over to the settings and turned it on. Active Standby is basically a way to display important information on the main screen including the calendar, notes, music currently playing, current radio station and shortcuts to frequenly used applications. The Active Standby made going from application to application and song to song a breeze.

As far as music goes on the 6270, I would say it that this phone qualifies as a great way to listen to your favorite tunes. On the exterior of the phone there are two speakers to give you stereo sound. I was skeptical of the external speakers at first but after taking a listen to a few songs I quickly change my mind. Although the speakers don't offer much in the way of bass(what do you expect?, they are tiny) they do offer some pretty incredible stereo seperation for being so close together. When you plug the headphones into the pop port you get sound that I feel is very comparable or better than the iPod. Plenty of volume is cranked out through the headphones and there is an Equalizer to fine tune the sound to your liking.

The camera was one of the main reasons I decided to pick up this handset and so far it's been great. The camera on the 6270 is a 2 megapixel camera with flash as well as video capabilities. When taking photos with the phone you hold it sideways like a digital camera and the button to take the shot is located on the top, the camera will start up automatically when the button is pressed. Unfortunately I haven't been able to take too many photos with this handset yet. The photos that I have taken have come out very well, great color, nice contrast, decent night shots. As I take a few more photos and videos I will update this section.

Overall I would say this is a great handset and would recommend it to anyone looking for a full featured phone that can't or doesn't want to spend $450USD or more on the next step up. I do have a couple gripes but nothing that would deter from the overall experience. The first complaint is that the sliding feeling is a little less solid than the S710a that I was used to using(like I said, spoiled). The second would be that it seems that the battery runs down pretty fast, I haven't run it down to dead yet but it looks like you wouldn't get more than a few days out of a charge. I tend to plug my phone in every night anyhow.

I do have bad news for those people living in the US, this phone is not currently available in the US but you can always track one down Unlocked.

Nokia 6270 Product Page

So Anycom got this marvelous idea in their heads. They decided to take what they do best, which is make bluetooth products, and create a bluetooth adapter for the iPod Nano named BluNa. You might say that transferring music to your iPod via bluetooth would be slow, and I would agree. But imagine using wireless headphones and connecting to your stereo from wherever you are in your house(BluNa is compatible with a variety of bluetooth devices). The absolute beauty of this product is that there is so much potential. This is a huge step beyond all those RF wireless adapters that are so hokey. The device is said to be selling for $119.99, which is a little steap at this point but I wouldn't be too suprised if that price dropped over the next few months. For more information check out the product page here: BluNa

Hmm? Yes you heard me right, take all that cuteness and stick it in your ear. Sega Toys is going at it for another round of ipod inspired and cute items that you can use to listen to music(see iDog, iFish). This time instead of bugging your fellow terrestrial beings with some barking from your deprived iDog you can listen to the music yourself through the arms of a robot that looks like something from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Sega Toys is coming out with a little robot guy that just so happens to be name Mu-Bot. Much like the stretch armstrong toys of yesteryear, you can stretch the arms of Mu-Bot out but this is so much more functional in the fact that Mu-Bot's arms are really ear phones. And buried in the underside of one of the robots feet is the plug to plug into any audio source. I for one am all about gimmicky little tech items like this so I give this item, despite knowing the sound quality, 2 thumbs up. How can you go wrong having a little robot thinger as your headphones?