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Category Archives: Reviews

Device, Software & Book Reviews

Book Review: The Lobster Chronicles, by Linda Greenlaw

  The Lobster Chronicles : Life On a Very Small Island by Linda Greenlaw, picks up where The Hungry Ocean leaves off. Linda has decided to give up her life of 19 years as a swordfish boat captain and move back in with her parents on the Isle Au Haut, off the coast of Maine, [...]

Best J2ME mobile applications

This is a list of the J2ME applications that I use and like. To make the list they have to be free to use and not have annoying advertising (open source is also a plus).
NOTE: If I do not list a URL Link, but instead just have a number in parenthesis such as (7223) the [...]

LG CU-500 Mobile Phone Review (Cingular)

The LG CU500 Phone is one of Cingular's new non-smart 3G phones, and can be purchased relatively inexpensively with a contract. (Amazon sells them for 0.01 with a 2 year contract, cingular charged $50 the last time I checked.) Although it doesn't have a mini-qwerty keyboard and good email support like the Blackjack, 8525, [...]

D-Link DWL-G122 works with Mandriva Linux

I purchased a D-Link DWL-G122 802.11g USB Adapter to use with my Mandriva Linux based router and was pleased to find that it worked out of the box. (I was also pleased to find a desk dock for USB sticks included in the box.) Mandriva installed a wireless Ethernet device named "rausb0" which worked [...]

Book Review: The Merchant’s Partner by Michael Jecks

The Merchant's Partner by Michael Jecks is the 2nd book in his "The Knights Templar" series. Set in the Medieval West Country of England, it follows the local bailiff Simon Puttock and Sir Baldwin Furnshill, Keeper of the King's Peace, as they attempt to solve the murder of a local midwife, widely believed to be [...]

e-Book Review: Geek Mafia by Rick Dakan

GeekMafia is self published by Rick Dakan. Right now, you can buy a paperback for 5 USD or download the PDF for free.
I really enjoyed this e-book (aside from reading it on my laptop, time to get an e-ink reader…). It's not a work of great literature, it's a geek escapist beach book. If they [...]

Review: PaperbackSwap.com

PaperBackSwap.com is a website for people who want to trade paperback (and other) books. It allows you to post the list of books you have available to send. When somebody sees a book they want, they send you a "credit" to mail it to them. You can then use the credit to order a different [...]

Cingular Blackjack (Samsung SGH-i707) impressions

The Samsung Blackjack is a nice piece of hardware. The screen is beautiful, it is well proportioned and fits well in my hand, the scroll-wheel makes it easy to select from menus, and it's thin enough to be carried in a hip pocket despite the factthat it's wider than most phones. The camera is [...]

Logitech Webcam for Notebooks Pro on Linux

Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks (USB) is the USB web-cam I use. I like the small size and the clip on mounting system works great with the IBM X31 Thinkpad. Mandrake 10.1 includes PWC (Philips Web Cam, the chipset that is used) support out of the box, but it only supports QCIF images (176×144, [...]

Motorola V330 (a.k.a. V551) with GPRS / EDGE & bluetooth mini-review

Note! This phone works better than my previous phone but the user interface is somewhat kludgy. Once you work around its misdesigned phonebook and confusing and inconsistent menu system it does work without crashing (as my sony T610 was prone to do whenever using bluetooth). I’m willing to trade some UI uglyness for a phone [...]