Product & Service Reveiws

Hoodman HoodLoupe REVIEW- Great idea, abyssmal product

2007-08-23T05:48:00.000-07:00

I'm ashamed to say I purchased this gimmick product from the manufacturer (http://www.hoodmanusa.com) at a ridiculous $69.99. For an additional $12.95 USPS charge, they did stick, I mean, get it to me second day.

The "HoodLoupe", which is advertised as a "Professional LCD Screen Loupe" is NOT a LOUPE. It does not magnify. On the contrary, it makes things look farther away! How can you name something a "loupe" if it does not magnify? Oh, and what good is it?

IF you're going to tell me the idea is to block out sunlight, this $70 item doesn't even do THAT. The edge of the Hood"loupe" isn't soft enough to form a gasket around buttons, ridges or uneven contours of a camera back to block out light. It is possible that there are cameras out there with perfectly flat backs and raised screens that this hood MIGHT fit to "seal" around the edges and block light, but not even close on my Nikon D70. And by the way, if all you want to do is block out light, SAVE YOURSELF $83 and look at your LCD through a TOILET PAPER TUBE!

Or better yet, buy a real loupe! Look the word "loupe" up in the dictionary: It refers to a device to MAGNIFY! You can buy a simple glass loupe like we oldsters formerly used to look at our Kodachrome slides for about a TENTH of the outrageous cost of the Hoodman gimmick, put black electrical tape around the "hood" of the loupe (leaving a soft edge beyond to gasket against the camera and block light), and get what this gimmick item infers in it's advertising, but does NOT deliver. You need minimal magnification, e.g. 2x. You don't want to see pixel dots, you DO want to see more detail and block out light, which is why the Hoodman product is a great idea, but such a disappointment; --and at $83 an outrageous one.

I am returning this useless gee-gaw, and assuming I actually get my money back, I'll still feel cheated on expensive shipping charges for something that could so easily have been what was advertised, but was in fact, just ad-hyped junk.

Fight Club MOVIE REVIEW

2007-08-13T07:40:00.000-07:00

FIGHT CLUB WORTH SEEING BEYOND THE SURFACE

Fight club is a movie with dark humor, fast paced action, plenty of violence, and a wickedly clever plot twist, which all make for great adult entertainment; and maybe something more. Leave the kiddies at home for this one; especially the teens who would see all the wrong things in it.

The first half hour or so of the movie Fight Club includes a catalog of the protagonist's discontents, checking off a good number of the items on Hollywood's standard list of indictments against America. The leading character presents a series of mostly humorous satirical vignettes illustrating the irredeemable sins of capitalism, apparently as justification for his nihilism and worsening psychological crisis. Materialism, consumerism, superficiality, greed-driven ruthlessness, and inequality are presented, and hit upon repeatedly and even preachily over the course of the movie. A movie viewer reading between the lines of this presentation, however, can easily see a very different picture, literally, than a viewer who takes the movie at face value.

The movie's characters have no relationships, and as such, no responsibility to care for spouses, children, siblings, parents, grandparents, friends, or even pets. Nor is any value assigned to rendering practical service to employer, customer, career, country, community or humanity. Much to the contrary. Over the course of the movie, it becomes ever clearer that the protagonist has, essentially, never matured beyond puberty. Like the world's worst teenager, his egocentric existence is, increasingly, ruled by testosterone-driven egotism, driving him to the point of madness. Albeit a madness that develops into a sort of populist movement based (as populism tends to be) on the childish assumption that it is rules and conventions, scruples, and "authority" that prevent one from a living life of unfettered gratification.

As the movie progresses through it's course, replete with cold sex and increasingly anarchic violence, it culminates in the protagonist apparently killing his pubescent self, bonding (maybe) to a woman, and inferentially, finally becoming a man.

There is so much going on in this story, so many appearances of things which should (I think), lead one to see something else, that there is something here for everybody. Most will see Fight Club as a terrific action movie, with plenty of wanton mayhem and destruction under excuse of politically correct rebelliousness. Ironically, the movie seems (to me) to offer the greatest reward to the kinds of people who would have the most trouble sitting through some of the nastier violence and offensive subject matter. It is they who will most likely be able to see beyond the surface of a plot that is calculated to leave you thinking; reexamining your assumptions about the movie, and maybe, other things too.

VONAGE VOIP SUPPORT

2006-12-19T11:41:00.000-08:00

VONAGE VOIP SUPPORT -- or not...

I signed up for Vonage phone service for my business, hoping to be able to add the dexterity of VOIP to our communications repertoire. It has great potential. Toll free lines, fax, "softphone" (a PC based phone), etc, which can all be configured / managed via the web.

Unfortunately, I had some trouble getting "out" through our firewall which required me to attempt to get VONAGE SUPPORT.

First of all, their website does not provide easy access to documentation. It was difficult, at best, to find any documentation on what one would expect to be a fairly common and frequent issue, - dealing with firewall access. What documentation they offer is mostly shallow, covering obvious, "make sure it's plugged in" type issues, and besides that, their documentation is mixed up pretty randomly for all their different product/service offerings, which aren't necessarily congruent with what one would expect. To find documentation on PC product marketed as "Softphone", you have to figure out, for support search purposes, that they call it X-Pro. Given how shallow their documentation is, you are pretty well forced to their FAQ (knowledge base "forum") which is so poorly structured and managed that it's chock-full of "spam" messages, obfuscating what is already difficult-to-find support information.

I was able to find documentation to get my Vonage phone adapter working, which was no big deal, as it did not have any firewall issues. The "X-pro" softphone was a different story. The documentation I did find, with great difficulty, did not do the trick, so I ended up calling the Vonage support line (which gave me conflicting information). The support number apparently reaches an offshore support boiler room, I would guess (good english, slight asian flavor, all hispanic names) it's probably in the Phillipines. They have a very strict regimen as to how they handle difficult issues. The staff seem to have ankle-deep technical knowledge, and if the issue isn't an obvious "is it plugged in?" type of issue, then they tell you they are transferring up to a higher level support, but in fact, they are simply shuttling you to some other operator of the same ilk (if not in the same room) who is just as clueless. I assume they are graded by the number of calls or somesuch and that this allows them to keep their numbers up without having to tell anyone they simply can't provide support. At any rate, they will do this until they wear you out, or you get cut off (maybe on purpose?), and apparently don't have any means or access to any real in-depth tech support.

Because this leaves me and my business with, effectively, no tech support, I am going to have to go in another direction. I am going to look for other VOIP provider alternatives, and having identified only one serious competitor so far, I am likely to try Packet8 to see if they are any better. I'm also going to investigate the extended services my landline vendor (at least they still provide reasonably competent customer service) might be able to provide to give me the flexible functionality I'm looking for.

Hollywood Costumes Manufacturing

2006-10-17T12:59:00.000-07:00

I placed an order via http://www.HollywoodCostumesandParty.com

Hollywood Costumes Manufacturing
904 S.W. 2nd Place
Pompano Beach, Florida 33069

I got my order in a timely manner, but a piece of the costume was missing, so...

I Emailed them at the address shown on their web site. - The Email bounced.

I called the telephone numbers they show on their site. - The line was either busy, or went unanswered, or simply hung up on me.

I could not find a fax number on their site.

Admittedly, this was mid-October, at the peak of their busy season, but it would seem that they could at least answer their phones and provide some semblance of customer service.

Palm Tungsten T3

2004-10-20T18:48:00.000-07:00

Palm Tungsten T3 Product Review
by Michael Shults

After several years of faithful service by my old Palm VII, a straightforward, reliable tank of a PDA, I finally, grudgingly ordered a new Palm Tungsten T3 to replace it, because it WAS getting a little long in the tooth, and Palm was no longer offering the wireless network support that made it special. I ordered my T3 from the "Palm Store" via the Palm One website, and waited patiently, for about two weeks, for it to come.

Like the form factor and looks. Fits conveniently in a shirt pocket. Love the big, bright color screen, unfortunately, most applications don't take advantage of it! Many software/content providers haven't written for the "big screen" e.g. Avant Go, in fact, they don't even give you fonts for the T3 (keep your glasses handy!). Even PALM's applications aren't written to take advantage of the full screen landscape mode, e.g. drawing.

Go ahead, spend the money, "ya gotta" buy the screen covers. Hard case came bundled, "special deal", protects it in my briefcase, holds (2) mem cards. The palm pops in and out of the case very easily. In practice, I find myself using the case as a storage device.

Love the increased memory! Can have books on tape and a music library in my pocket!
Cries out for better software especially for managing and organizing music files! The tiny speaker is amazingly effective for it's size, but as a practical matter, listening to anything requires an earphone or earphones. A compact set of bluetooth earphones, free of dangling, tangling, catching cords, could be a "killer app".

Like the rocker control, can control it through my shirt pocket, kind of like a Star Fleet Officer, though it would be nice if you could shut off the touch screen and have JUST the rocker controls, since any time I touch the thing wrong I have to take it out and reset it.

Like the expansion card, but DON'T like how easy it is to pop it out accidentally.

New Grafitti - Quite different, and required adjustment on my part, and in my opinion, NOT an improvement.

Telescoping "slide-open" design:
Like bigger screen.
Having to open to get to writing area a pain, though I like the "write-on-screen" feature a lot.
Some applications don't recognize the larger screen.
Don't like how difficult it is to keep the thing open on the cradle.

Proprietary rechargable battery a complex solution to a simple problem. To be fair, it probably facilitates the form factor.

Reliability in question...
First one crapped out in the space of a week.*
Big disadvantage in that, unlike my old Palm VII, it loses it's mind if you run the battery down!
Lost it's mind twice next day besides, wonder if this one's dying too?

SUGGESTIONS TO PALM

Put a door or otherwise redesign the expansion card port so the expansion card isn't so prone to pop out from inadvertant contact.

Update applications, especially the "Note Pad" drawing function, to take advantage of full screen landscape mode (with writing area retracted).

Update Palm OS so that the landscape mode and writing area retraction are set for each application, for example I would like to leave the "photos" application set to full screen (writing area retracted), the note pad set to full screen landscape, and switch from either of these applications to jot a calendar note in normal portrait mode with writing area, without having to reset orientation and writing area settings coming and going.

It's 2004. Why's the internal memory have to be so utterly volatile in this thing?

Give users a convenient option, e.g. by putting an option in the pulldown menu for each Palm application, to "hot sync" JUST that individual application. For example, if you change a couple of phone number in "Contacts", and then want to add a detailed note to as to a conversation when you get back to your PC keyboard, it would be convenient to quickly update JUST the contacts application, rather than having to go through the relatively lengthy and laborious "Hot
Sync" process updating EVERY application on the Palm. Yes, Palm does provide a centralized utility to control "hot sync" by application, but in practice this would require that you click through a full list to set EVERY application on the palm to accomplish what I've suggested here.

*Updated information added 12/21/2007

Since I got the T3 I've had the "crapout" experience repeatedly. Periodically, the T3 will lock up and CANNOT be reset, by any of the documented methods offered by palm. I have found (by virtue of having bought a used backup T3) that if the "locked up" T3 is left to run it's battery down so that it "loses it's mind", it resets itself that way.

A more frequent problem which I have yet to figure out, is that I have frequently experienced the T3 "losing it's mind" when I set it on it's cradle in the morning, sometimes two or three times in a single day. This only happens intermittently, and I have never figured out what causes it. Static discharge? Touching the pins in "just the wrong way" when sliding it onto it's connector? I do slide the Palm onto it's connector very carefully now. This may help, or it may be pure superstition, but in any case, and thankfully, this problem has occured rarely.