I just recently bought the new LG Dare phone.  With my new job I was not able to check email or be on IM so I decided that would be the deciding factor between getting this or a regular phone. 

I read a bunch of reviews about the phone because Laura was the first to bring it up.  They are referring to it as the iClone.  While its not quiet the iPhone, and the browser leaves a little to be desired and doesn’t support JavaScript it certainly gets the job done.  I picked up a 4GB SD Mini card at Microcenter and plugged it in for a little extra capacity.  Also the benefit of doing this is I can load content easily to the phone by taking out the SD card and putting it into a laptop and loading information then putting it back on the camera. A really nice thing about this phone is it has a 3.2 Megapixel camera which is super nice.  It has a virtual QWERTY keyboard which is super easy to use and I like it better than the iTouch keyboard.  It has a little forced feedback as you press the keys.  The only issues I seem to have with this phone are when I try to scroll a webpage or list it seems to have a few issues, but I am sure that is more user error than anything. 

I have high expectations for the phone as LG hasn’t let me down to date as this is my 3rd LG phone.  Form factor is great and phone is easy to hold

I wasn’t aware that Asus was coming out with a small affordable desktop solution to complement the Eee Laptop.  This thing sounds like it would be perfect to shove into you entertainment center and give your plasma/LCD screen some very nice Internet connectivity.  It even has built in Wi-Fi and all the ports you need for basic use.  The main gripes about the box are that it doesn’t have an optical drive or HDMI out, but you have to cut the costs somewhere plus really are CD’s/DVD’s really going to be in our future? I think the price point is just dead on at $299

Wow why can’t I like things that are cheap?  These watches are amazing and I really really need one.  The best part is the ad that Tag has on their site starts off with an R8.  What can I say we are made for each other.  Check out the images from Autoblog and then Tag’s site below.

Autoblog 
Tag’s Site

Belkin is notorious for making a good easy idea a very expensive little toy.  Take the iPhone headphone adapter I bought for my car that was $12, $12 for a plug…nice and sadly enough I paid for it.

Amazingly enough this great idea of convergence is only $25 which is very well priced for a Belkin product.  I like the idea of being able to charge gadgets via USB via a power outlet rather than a computer.  The only bad thing I have read about this product is it is a little heftier then the pictures make it look so its not ideal for traveling but I just want something I can charge my iTouch, iPod, and PS3 controllers on.

Belkin Mini Surge Protector with USB Charger

So I finally purchased a cover for my iTouch that I won back in January.  That is one good thing about not having to pay for the original toy is I can buy some accessories for it and not feel too bad.  The case is exactly as described and works very well.  My only beef with the case is that they don’t mention that regular headphones will no longer plug in with this case because it recesses the headphone jack.  It is easily solved by buying an adapter but something I wasn’t expecting to deal with.  Other than that this is a great case and matches a similar one I bought for a 30GB 5G iPod.  The best part about the casing is it doesn’t add too much bulk to the iTouch it still fits in my pocket easily.

Another unexpected bonus was the nice letter that came in the well packaged product.  It was just a little thank you for purchasing our products and how they are a start up company.  Amazing how far a little communication back to the end user can go!

IvySkin.com

I hate to say it…yes HATE…but I must admit that this little thing is pretty awesome.  With the new iTouch I can access my email, check stocks, check the weather, browse the Internet (sorta) with a little hand held device.  This is great for things like when I just want to check my email and not deal with turning on a computer.  The integration with Yahoo! mail is great it is a realtime look into your folder any emails you delete, respond, forward, read are marked accordingly in Yahoo.

I did come upon this by winning it at a convention for work that I went to so the price couldn’t be much better ($0).  I won the 8GB model which holds enough music to keep me happy as that is about 2,000 songs but not my full library (running about 33GB).  I also, for my birthday, received my car connection bridge from my girlfriend so now I have it directly connected to my car and that is really nice.  No more dealing with changing CD’s and I got the connection cable that plugs into the headphone jack so I can plug into any MP3 player not just iPod.

I have it synced up with my outlook calendar which is linked through Plaxo to my Gmail account so now it is easy to see what meeting I need to be at next for work.  It is also synced with my Yahoo! contacts.  The web browser is alright and gets the job done but I wouldn’t surf the net for long with it.  Also Safari doesn’t support flash so anything with flash doesn’t work on the device but I just read something that said this will be changing soon.

For a first generation product I am very impressed.  But as usual Apple always kills the early adopters and added a 32GB model and rumors are they are going to drop the 8GB version and drop all prices by $100.  Right now the 32GB version runs $499 which is a lot of money but I would expect the price to drop to $399 in the near future.  As long as you find a way to work around iTunes, get the album art, update iTunes, get your MP3 tags inline and download your MP3’s the iTouch gets a very positive review

There is a competition to make the end all card reader and as of today this one takes the cake.  it reads 80 different flash media types and costs a whopping $17 not a bad deal considering the one I bought at Best Buy the other day was $25 and that read only SD cards.

This is a great idea for those of us who have killed every house plant they have ever owned.  A small sensor on the end will tell the LED at the top to turn on when the soil gets too dry.  Pretty simple idea!

Costs $10/sensor or you can get bundled ones for a discount

Looks like Linksys finally decided to make their routers look like something that you would actually want to put in plain sight, which would make sense as that is the best placement for a router.  I constantly hear from my girlfriend how ugly our router is with its high gain antenna’s sitting on top of our nice cherry wood entertainment center so I think I might have a better chance of her being alright with the new router (WRT310N and WRT160N) pictured above next to my close friend and current Internet router (WRT54G)  No pricing available yet but the WRT160N is supposed to be sub 100 while the WRT310N isn’t probable because of some features such as QoS and fun stuff like that.

Looks like they managed to stretch the OLED TV’s to 27 inches at CES 2008, it will be interesting to see if this technology takes off.  One thing that is amazing about these TV’s are their super slim profiles along with their amazing contrast ratios of 1,000,000:1.  Just like its 11 inch mother this toy is from Sony and will cost $2,500 with a resolution of 1920 X 1080 (1080p)

The thickness of the TV is equal to three credit cards stacked! amazing!