Okay, so there are about a gazillion iPod speaker docks out there these days. And to be honest, most of them aren’t worth your time or money. Sure they allow easy playback of your iPod’s music over speakers, but most are ugly (or poor knock offs of other designs) and they rarely sound good. Of course there are exceptions. B&W’s Zeppelin is one good example of a great dock. Its styling isn’t for everyone, but I think it’s a great looker, and definitely a great sounder. Unfortunately that’ll set you back $600! Enter the Vestalife Lady bug.

At only $110, i believe this system represents a great value. The styling is spot on. It’s got the apple-modern-cute quirk, but still looks nice and classy. Nearly everybody who sees the system comments on how nice it looks. Add to that very respectable sound reproduction, and you understand why I think this is a deal. Now obviously, this little system can’t replace full sized speakers, but most people don’t need or even care for full sized speakers. Sound is rich and full enough to function as a great iPod player in a bedroom, or low volume living room setting. Listening to the ladybug now, I’m impressed at the sound quality you’re getting for $110.

On the technical side, the Ladybug has two 1.5″ main drivers, as well as a rearward firing 3″ driver to reinforce the bass frequencies. It accommodates all docking iPods, has an extra line-in input and video out for your iPod. It also has usb connector so you can connect the ladybug to your computer and have the lady bug act as your main computer iPod dock.

Oh, and did i mention it can run off of wall power OR batteries? So you can throw this thing (in its very nice soft pouch that’s included) in your beach bag, and use it on the go even when you can’t plug it in.

Overall, a highly recommended product (and check the awesome old school ipod in the photos :) ). Available from Amazon.com

If you’re anything like me, you love the MagSafe power ports on the MacBook laptops as much for the cool factor as the lowered chance of pulling the laptop off the table when you trip over the cord in the middle of the night. Now you can have this same cool factor on stage, where the chances of violent cord removal are somewhat higher to boot. As a bonus, they remove the popping noises you get while unplugging from a live amp, and the connectors are gorgeous. The Belkin Breakfree releases in September 2008.

If I had a MacBook Air to carry around, I’d carry it in this.

This post is brought to you by the letter “H”.

“H” is for hiatus. It’s been awhile since I’ve posted and for that, I apologize. My last couple weeks have been busy with about 42.4% of that time spent calling every Apple store in the Los Angeles area daily for iPhone 3G availability. I’ve just never seen a product like this so hard to keep on shelves. I know that tech product shortages are nothing new, but everything about the iPhone makes it an odd device to still have 3 hour lines two weeks after launch. First, there’s that fact that cell phones come with a high switching cost for most consumers. With contract dates and early termination fees, moving over to an iPhone represents a heftier decision that just picking up a Wii. Second, unlike any other device, for most users, a cell phone is a decision of mutual exclusivity. Few people own two cell phones and those that do usually are provided the second one by work. Or they are Puff Daddy P. Diddy. Tons of gamers own more than one console. Households often have multiple cars. You might own two GPS navigators, one for each car. But with a cell phone, most people are giving up something to get an iPhone. Third, these things are not exactly being produced in small quantities. When the Wii or PS3 launched, each store had 10, maybe 15 consoles to sell. Big box retailers might have had triple that number. Meanwhile, the Apple stores I’ve called had lines on 200 people on a daily basis for the first week and no one was talking about them selling out until the middle of the second week. The only thing they were running out of was hours in the day. Most locations had to cap the lines around 6 to hope to get through it by closing time. From every angle, it’s just unlike any other product launch I’ve seen.

This leads me to the second prong of this medium-sized rant. I have never worked so hard to give someone $400 ever in my life. When the PS3 came out, I had one on launch. I had a Wii within the first week and beat Twilight Princess by that Saturday. This is not my first rodeo when it comes to product launches and yet, I was thrown from my horse immediately (and figuratively). I had no intention of waiting overnight for this thing; my sleep is valuable and I prefer to do it inside. Alas, that seems to be what it took to score one on launch in LA. I imagine lines were a little friendlier outside of major metropolitan areas, but the city of angels was a madhouse. So after two weeks of moping and looking at my Nokia N75 with disdain (that loveless marriage was taking a turn for the worse), I finally broke down and showed up at the Pasadena Apple store at 6:30am on a Saturday. I ended up being tenth in line and getting into the store around 8:20am to make the purchase. I won’t bore you with the details as you most likely don’t care or have already been through the process, but Apple makes buying a phone a joyful process. The person helping didn’t touch my phone before I did (this is my biggest retail pet peeve and the reason I buy my phones online) and the process was quick. Completely unlike the hour long lesson in upsell you get from entering any of the carrier stores. But then again, you’re buying an iPhone, there’s nothing left to upsell.

Next time I’ll cover my impressions of the iPhone 3G and some of my favorite picks out of the App Store.

Oh and this is what waking up at 5:45am on a Saturday got you in front of:

Like Max, concerned about the accumulation of plastic rubbish and also BPA leaching into my water, I picked up two new sigg bottles. One as a gift, the other for myself. Pretty sweet lookin eh? The one that says “I am not plastic” is a special edition available from mysigg.com. But I just checked, and they have sold out! Boy, that gift just got about 1000 times cooler! These swiss made bottles are simply superb. Great paint and build quality. It really feels like something I’ll have for many years to come.

Anyhow, you can find other sigg bottles all over the net, at local brick-and-mortar stores, as well as at some grocery stores like Whole Foods.

Images from Frog Design

Well, it was time for me to get some new tires. With gas prices being the way they are, I figured I’d try something to increase my fuel mileage. What I ended up doing was getting a tire that was slightly thinner, and slightly taller than the stock tires on my car. For those unfamiliar with tires a tire size usually looks something like this:

The first number, ’235′, is the width of the tire in millimeters. The bigger the number, the wider the tire. The second number, ’40′, is the sidewall aspect ratio. The height of the sidewall is the sidewall aspect ratio multiplied by the width. In this case, the height of the sidewall would be 0.40*235 = 94mm.

Okay, so, I got it in my head that a taller, thinner tire might help my gas mileage. Since I needed new tires anyways, I went and got a set of 225/45 tires to replace my original 235/40 size. That means my new tires were 4.3% thinner, and 1.6% taller. What was the result? About a 9% increase in average fuel mileage from 22mpg to 24mpg.

Now before you all go out and buy new tires, let’s talk about this a bit. There are a large number of factors that could have contributed to this increase in fuel mileage, and to be honest, I don’t know which one is driving the increase.

• Tire Pressure: being somewhat of a car nut, I’m pretty anal about my tire pressures. if you don’t already own one, go and buy yourself a half way decent tire gauge, and keep tabs on your tire pressure. Under inflated tires will eat gas. Anyhow, I kept my tires at 40psi before these tires, and they are at 40psi now. So I think that I can rule out a change in tire pressure being the cause
• Tire weight/inertia: having a lighter tire means that your engine will need to spend less energy getting your wheels to rotate, and consequently less gas getting from point A to point B. In this case, my mileage actually should have suffered slightly, as the old tires were worn out and weigh less than when they were new. But then again, the new tires were thinner. So all in all, it was probably a wash in terms of the weight change from the old tires to the new ones.
• Rolling resistance of the tire: okay, this one is a bit complicated, and I don’t really understand it myself fully. As far as I can gather, rolling resistance is mainly a function of tire pressure and tire width. The higher the pressure, the less the tire deforms and the less rolling resistance the tire has (that’s why you see some road bicycles running like 200 psi tires these days). Similarly, the wider the tire, the less the tire deforms, and the less rolling resistance the tire has. Given what i said in point 1, this means that with these assumptions, my wider tires should have had less rolling resistance. But I’ll be the first to admit that I think there’s something else going on here that I don’t fully have my head around. The compound of rubber will make a tremendous difference. My previoius tires were very high performance tires (Toyo Proxes TS-1), which means they had very sticky rubber. My new tires are less performance oriented (Kumho SPT) and consequently have harder rubber. I think that this may be the main factor in my increase in mileage.
• Gearing: as you may or may not know, between your car’s engine and the wheels there is a set of gears that transmits the power. Shorter gears allow you to accelerate faster, and taller gears allow you to cruise at higher speeds. Taller gears also result in better gas mileage because it allows the engine to run at a lower RPM which will have less losses to the friction inside the engine. Well, there’s one final gearing, and that’s the one between the drive shaft going to the wheel (the axle, or half-shaft) and the road. The taller the road is, the taller your final gearing ends up being. So in this case, by getting a taller tire, I have made my final gearing taller as well. This results in better mileage.

And there you have it, more info than you wanted to know about me trying to figure out why I got better mileage. At the end of the day, I’m surprised at how much better mileage I get (9% is a lot). I may not totally understand it, but the facts don’t lie. I’m getting better mileage, plain and simple. So if you’re in the market for new tires (if you have good tires, it’s not worth it to replace them), and could use a boost in mileage, give this prescription a shot:

1. Get a harder tire: All tires come with a Treadwear gauge. Now these aren’t the most accurate and consistent ratings in the world, but look up your old tires and find their UTQG Treadwear Grade. When you get your new tires, look for a tire that has a significantly higher treadwear, and it will end up being made of a harder compound of rubber.
2. Get a thinner tire: Don’t go nuts. I’d suggest deviating from your stock tire size by no more than 10mm
3. Get a taller tire: Again, no need to go crazy here. As I said, my tires only ended up being 1.9% taller. It takes a bit more math to figure out what sidewall aspect ratio you’ll want given the new tire width, but it’s not rocket science. You really don’t want to go too tall, because you might end up rubbing the tire on something in the wheel well.

Whatever you guys out there do, you do at your own risk. I take no responsibility for any misfortune you might come across for trying this out. Always consult your mechanic before doing anything to your car.

And now for quite possibly the most literal use of this acronym on the internet: YMMV!

[image source: Tirerack.com]

I like backpacks, but I usually travel light. I had been using a bulky North Face number (the Recon), which was a great bag despite it’s habit of getting snagged on things, until I saw this minimalist bag from Built NY. Fashioned from neoprene, it’s nicely cushioned and stretches to accomodate more stuff. While a lone laptop fits in it quite snugly, the fabric will stretch to accomodate a large pile of stuff if you want – and it’ll shrink back down afterwards. There’s actually two main compartments: a top-loading slot for laptops and books, and a side loading slot for the accessories; the two are separated keep things organized but otherwise the same size. There’s also a little pocket in the left strap for phones, keys, etc. I’ve got one, and I love it – the thing is comfortable as hell, and it gets great reactions – mostly people ask if it’s body armor! If that’s the look you’re going for, you can flip it around to the front and people will stare. Actually, the last time I did that someone told me I looked like Jack Bauer.

The Built Laptop Bag runs about $80 from their website, but Amazon is selling them for $60 right now. Be aware that they are not adjustable, and thus there exists a large version for the titans among us. Color options are black, olive, and a wood-grain type pattern in black and grey. Go grab one before Amazon bumps up the price!

6.19.2008 – My Xbox arrives unannounced. I become excited as I realize what is in the box, and the UPS guy backs away slowly.

Here’s what it came back with:

I marked my original unit before I sent it off, so I’d know if I got the same one back. I did (three dots).

There’s a bit of a DRM issue to deal with when you first get a box back. I ignored the instructions, and had to update games as I played them – but it wasn’t a big deal at all, just a one-time thirty-second delay for each game. (Click for a big picture)

The repaired Xbox is working extremely well. Not only is the RRoD issue gone, rendering the unit playable, the sticky drive tray is working smoothly. Overall, the box crashes less. In a way, I’m happy it failed and was repaired since it’s so much better now – even though it was lame to have the thing gone for three weeks. However, having spent $0.00 on the repair and receiving a free month of Xbox Live helps.