ie8 fix

battery

Power your iPod for up to 8 hours with $5.99 disposable battery

Ick! Did I actually just write a headline with the words "disposable" and "battery"?! Let's see...yep, I did. But before you get your environmentalist dander up, consider: one, I recycle; two, I use compact fluorescent lightbulbs, and three, I have a relevant story to share.

About three years ago, at a CES show in Las Vegas, a PR flack handed me a Cellboost disposable battery for my Treo smartphone. "You never know when you might need it," she winked.

Flash-forward to three weeks ago, when my phone (it's a Centro now, … Read more

High school students stand up for privacy, refuse to take military test

Teens may have a better understanding of privacy issues than the adults around them. Unfortunately, when you are a high school student, your personal judgment can still be challenged by an unsympathetic principal.

The Raleigh News & Observer reports that at Cedar Ridge High School in Hillsborough North Carolina, more than 300 juniors were given the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB). The military provides and administers the tests without charge, and in return the scores and students' contact information are sent to military branch recruiters and the school.

Cedar Ridge Principal Gary Thornburg was willing to sign on to this deal to get access to what he views as a valuable career assessment tool. There is supposed to be an opt-out procedure, but three students who refused to take the test were sent to the in-school suspension room to take it--not as discipline, according to Thornburg, but because the in-school suspension teacher was available to supervise them while other students were taking the test. Sounds like a blatantly disingenuous answer to me. In my experience as a student and teacher, when you send students to in-school suspension, it is going to feel like a punishment and be perceived that way by others. Surely their well-equipped media center could have handled three students for independent study.… Read more

Survive power outages with $29.99 battery backup

One of the nice things about using a notebook is that if there's a sudden power outage, you won't instantly lose your work. Desktop users aren't so lucky, which is why it's essential to plug everything into a battery backup (aka uninterruptible power supply). If the lights go out, you'll still have a few minutes in which to save your work and power down the machine safely.

Best Buy has a CyberPower battery backup on sale for $29.99. It includes six wide-spaced outlets, all of them surge-protected and three of them powered by the … Read more

JOBO introduces new line of rechargeable batteries for digital cameras and camcorders

JOBO introduced today its Energy Premio line of replacement rechargeable batteries, designed specifically for use with digital SLR's, compact digital cameras and camcorders. Sixty of the most common battery models will be available for 400 popular camera models. The JOBO batteries are packaged with an easy-to-match color-coding system, making it easy for consumers and retailers to find the right replacement battery for their digital cameras or camcorders. JOBO Premio batteries do not have a memory effect, are high current capable and quick charge capable. They provide a constant capacity across many charging cycles, 300 to 500 depending on usage. … Read more

Israel launches electric-car program

Correction 10:35 a.m. PST: This blog initially misidentified the prime minister of Israel. He is Ehud Olmert. It also misidentified the person whose speech can be found on the Project Better Place Web site--it is by Shai Agassi--and as such an earlier version of this post also incorrectly attributed a quote from that speech.

Renault-Nissan, the government of Israel, and an electric charging station start-up founded by Shai Agassi are mounting an effort to make electric cars part of ordinary life in Israel in the next decade.

Project Better Place, Agassi's organization, will try to build 500,… Read more

A defensive look at the MacBook Air battery

The new MacBook Air laptop has one killer feature, the non-removable battery. Killer as in deal-killer. As in why would anybody use a laptop that has to be shipped back to the vendor to replace the battery? It boggles the mind. Here's why.

Have any sensitive files on your computer? Files you'd rather other people not see. Many of us do. Do you like the idea of your sensitive files sitting in a package on a UPS truck? Or being in the hands of a company Apple sub-contracted repairs to? Of course not.

Remembering to remove all the … Read more

Apple's MacBook Air: A design review

As usual, there were many specific rumors about what Steve Jobs would be announcing at MacWorld Expo this week. Several were reasonably credible, but Apple runs a tight ship; there's really no way to be sure what will come out at any given show.

At the beginning of the year, based on the better rumors and some discounting of existing Mac products, I was pretty sure we'd see four things: new Mac Pro workstations, a refresh of the MacBook Pro line with Blu-ray optical drives and Intel 45nm processors, minor improvements for the iPhone, and a new subnotebook.… Read more

Found at CES: ... a sewing machine?

Sure there are flashy tvs, phones that vie for the iPhone's status, more flat screens than you can shake a stick at, but at today's CES sneak-peak, I noticed some of the more random things at CES 2008 that caught my attention:

Juice This!

Duracell, battery manufacturer galore, is making plugging in easier with these plug-in-able packs. Maybe it's me, but with brown-outs, black-outs and white-outs lately, it may be worthwhile to think about.

Sew This!

Maybe it's Project Runway's fault, but I even saw Brother sewing machines at CES. Maybe they're Wi-Fi enabled … Read more