Just another regular dumbphone. Emphasis on dumb.

First off I just want to say, I do NOT like this phone, nor do i recommend it. I mean seriously, it uses a proprietary connection for charging and connecting headphones. ‘Nuff said.  I mean what kind of music phone doesn’t have a 3.5″ plug? How can you advertise it as a music phone if you can’t even use a decent headphone. And come on people, no mini USB or micro USB for connectivity? My old Motorola PEBL from 2+ years ago had that. But don’t stop there, there’s still more crappiness leaking from the phone, even as a regular phone and NOT as a music phone which the phone is advertised to be.

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Popularity: 7% [?]

PortaPro's little brother

Although I love my in ear Skullcandy Ink’d Smokin Buds, they are quite a fragile thing. Almost everyone I know that has bought them has bought more than one pair because they had broken their first pair. After about one and a half year of using it almost everyday, mine finally broke. So as I was in the market to get some new buds, I decided to get a portable headphone instead of an iem (in-ear monitor, eg. smokin buds). My choice was the Koss SportaPro portable headphones. It retails at $30, but can be easily bought for around $20.

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Popularity: 22% [?]

It’s ok guys, I am not dead yet! Neither am I lost, because I have my trusty Becker Traffic Assist Highspeed GPS (Also known as Becker Traffic Assist Highspeed 7934 GPS outside of the US) with me! Well not really because of it but it makes a good intro doesn’t it? So like what you would expect from me I got this gps on sale and it was a pretty good deal. I know it’s not the usual Tom Tom or Garmin (it’s a German brand so it is not as common on this side of the Atlantic) but it’s a pretty good gps overall. The device has a 3.5″ touch screen with a 400MHz processor and an SD card slot for the map and storage and runs on Navteq and Navigon. The device officially can view pictures and play mp3/wma; but if you’re into hacking you can do so much more. More on that later.

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Popularity: 63% [?]

UPDATE: After about a year of use, the keyboard paint on the M-6827 starts wearing off. Both the silver and the letters. The most common buttons, like enter, spacebar, s, e and shift are worn off to the extent that the letters are not visible any more. So if you hate cosmetic defect, here’s one.

A couple of days ago there was this awesome deal on the Gateway M-6827 laptop. It was sold for $549 instead of the regular price of $699 (at Office Depot).  If you haven’t seen the pattern in most of the things I reviewed, it’s the fact that I like good deals. So what makes this laptop awesome? Let’s start with the spec (I promise you, it gets way more interesting):

• 15.4″-diagonal widescreen WXGA (1280 x 800) UltraBright™ LCD screen
• Intel Core 2 Duo processor T5750 operating at 2.0GHz 2MB L2 cach
• 3GB of PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM memory (2GB + 1GB)
• 160GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA (SATA) hard drive
• Multiformat DVD drive with Double Layer support (reads/writes DVD±R/RW, DVD-RAM, DVD±R Double Layer, CD-R/RW); supports disc labeling on Labelflash media
• Intel Pro/Wireless 3945ABG (802.11a/b/g) wireless LAN
• Integrated 1.3-megapixel webcam, for live video chat and still photos
• 5-in-1 memory card reader: reads SD, MMC, xD, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro
• Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 with up to 384MB shared memory

And on top of that, it has a pretty slick and new design. Which leads me to wonder why it was so cheap.

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Popularity: 34% [?]

If you are reading this you are lucky. My hosting provider (Hostmonster) has been very unreliable lately. It was down for almost a day yesterday and still crawling today. I don’t recommend them. Sorry if you weren’t able to reach me then.

Popularity: 1% [?]

For those unfamiliar on February 2009, analog tv will no longer work and you will need either a digital tv or a converter box. Thankfully the US Gov. has set up a program that will let you get a discount of $40 toward a converter box. So I decided to sign up and I got 2 $40 coupon for a DTV converter from the government, presumably from the 100s of dollar we pay to tax. The real price was $59 but with the $40 coupon it was obviously $19. But after tax, the total cost ended up at ~$25. So in the end a portion of their gift was sent back to them. But I digress, So here is a simple video of the un-boxing narrated by ATT Labs text to voice for bonus nerd points.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

Happy almost 1st birthday 53m1/ Canabis Day (No I don’t smoke canabis, unfortunate isn’t it? But if you do, here’s your present. Sorry I couldn’t get you a canabis)! Yes you have stumbled upon 53m1, now renamed “novus.volce”. So After almost a year, I’ve decided to rebrand everything. An evolution if you will. What’s amazing is that coincidentally, this is the 51st post. (more…)

Popularity: 2% [?]

A couple day ago, I finished creating my 2nd tutorial for PSDTUTS, my first being “How To Create An Old-World Map In Photoshop“. So what’s the result? Well it’s the post’s header image. Well it’s not up yet, but just a heads up. (more…)

Popularity: 1% [?]

So yesterday I got a letter from digsby who nicely gave me an invitation to their brand spanking new free instant message + social network + email client. Is it just me or does it remind you of when Jobs introduced the iphone. Let’s see how this baby run. Hopefully this can replace the need for Thunderbird, and my previous client Trillian. By the way, if you didn’t get the memo, I have invitations just for you guys. Just use the code “53m1″.

The First Run

When you first start the software you are greeted with a rather mundane window, or at least I think so. It looks like any other window “window”. Although this allows it to blend nicely with whatever theme you have on your “windows”. Yes this is a window only thing. Of course, digsby has the ability to skin it self. So I went ahead and browsed to their list of skin. They separated the “chat window” and the actual buddy list window. That being said, the chat window had plenty of skin while the actual buddy list window only had 2. Although in each skin they have many variation, mostly being color changes. Right now I don’t see the ability to create my own skin. Other than the eye candy, the client as a whole is functional. Although, If you have a lot of e-mail and Facebook account like me, it can fill up a nice amount of the buddy list window. So far I haven’t found the ability to hide the list. I don’t think it is necessary to see it all the time. In my opinion it’s only needed when you have received a new email.

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Popularity: 2% [?]

A while ago I bought these skull candy earphones at a local Circuit City. These little in-ear babies retails at around $20ish but I saw them for $10, so why not. They fit in my ear pretty well and has a nice look. Sorta like a toned down V-Moda earphones. Of course this one was made with plastic, and has a cheaper feeling. Although not $1 cheap. So as I ripped open the box with “excitement”, I was given an earphones, 3 sets of gel buds (small, medium, and large), and finally a nice plastic fabric case. The case is pretty sufficient and is big enough to accommodate an ipod nano and the likes of these mini mp3. (more…)

Popularity: 15% [?]