Yvette Hazel Lim, blogging about Life and Tech. » Recommendation

Yvette recommends: iPod Nano 5G

yvettehazellim — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 07:53:18 +0000

“Nano shoots video“, as what Apple would advertise to their newest product line. The new iPod Nano 5G shoots video. It has a 2.2-inch (diagonal) TFT display / 240-by-376-pixel resolution at 204 pixels per inch. The video is a H.264 VGA video, 640 by 480 pixels, up to 30 frames per second with AAC audio. It also contain 15 cool video effects: Sepia, Black and White, X-Ray, Film Grain, Thermal, Security Cam, Cyborg, Bulge, Kaleido, Motion Blur, Mirror, Light Tunnel, Dent, Stretch, and Twirl. The effects listed are the same effects as of Photobooth.

It has the feature called “VoiceOver“, you know, iPod telling you the title and artist of the song, which the new iPod shuffle also have. And also the shake feature when you want to shuffle a song. Other features contain the Live Radio with live pause and tagging function, the pedometer that is useful for joggers.

The iPod Nano has 3 built-in games. Klondike, Maze, and Vortex. I only played them once. There are some games in iTunes but they are so expensive… like $4.99 each game.

It has an audio playback for upto 24 hours, and video playback for upto 5 hours… only 4 hours and 1 hour difference with iPod Touch and iPhone. Not bad at all.

We can sync contacts, photos, notes, calendar’s to-do’s from itunes to our Nano. We can also record voice memos with Nano’s built-in microphone.

There is no way to get our recorded videos using iTunes by the way. We need to enable disk use our ipod and click the DCIM folder to see our videos.

Advantages:
- Small, handy, flatty mp3 player
- Shoots video!
- Motion Sensor
- Microphone

Disadvantages:
- Compatibility – for videos, we need to convert the format to mp4 or to any compatible format.
- No available games for FREE.
- Dock connector is on the right side while lower versions are on the left. Some speakers support only lower versions of iPod Nano.
- Cannot add notes/contacts/to-do’s directly from nano.

Rate: 7/10.

Yvette recommends: Nokia 5610 XpressMusic

yvettehazellim — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 09:51:10 +0000

The 5610 runs on series 40, a virus-free phone then. There is still no virus designed for the S40 phones.

It’s a 3G phone so we can use this with the new Red Mobile sim. Unfortunately, we can’t use the front camera for taking pictures. It is only designed for video calling.

The Nokia 5610′s camera comes with a 3.2-megapixel with Auto Focus and a dual LED flash. We can now take macro shots. We can’t use the flash as flashlight unlike other phones (ex. K750i). This phone has a built-in FM radio with RDS support, just so you know. We need to plug in the headset to make the radio work. The headset should have a 2.5mm jack socket. It is not the usual headset that we plug in anywhere. But dont worry, beloved Nokia included the 2.5mm to 3.5mm jack socket converter in the package.

We can browse the web using the pre-installed Opera Mini browser. There are also other pre-installed application to use like the World Clock, Widsets, Yahoo! Go, and etc. Pre-installed games are City Bloxx, Music Guess, Rally 3d, and Snake III.

Advantages:

3.2mp camera with Auto Focus and double LED flash.
FM Radio
S40 v3 (Virus-Free phone)
Scratch-Resistant Screen
Expandable upto 4gb of memory.
“Easy-to-Type” Keypad for big thumbs.

Disadvantages:

Navigation Slider key is breakable. (Well, it really depends on how the users take good care of their phone.)
Its a slider phone (Flex cable may be damaged.).
Fingerprint magnet on the keypad.
2.5mm Jack socket
No Front camera

I personally chose this phone because of the good output of the images taken by this phone. Its like my digital camera. The music is just a plus for me. So, Music + Digital Camera = Nokia 5610 XpressMusic. Yeah!

Rate: 8/10

Yvette recommends: Internet Download Manager

yvettehazellim — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 05:22:11 +0000

Internet Download Manager (IDM) is a tool to increase download speeds by up to 5 times, resume and schedule downloads. Comprehensive error recovery and resume capability will restart broken or interrupted downloads due to lost connections, network problems, computer shutdowns, or unexpected power outages. Simple graphic user interface makes IDM user friendly and easy to use.Internet Download Manager has a smart download logic accelerator that features intelligent dynamic file segmentation and safe multipart downloading technology to accelerate your downloads. Unlike other download managers and accelerators Internet Download Manager segments downloaded files dynamically during download process and reuses available connections without additional connect and login stages to achieve best acceleration performance.

What I really like about IDM is the ability to download youtube videos. Yeah, youtube! and other streaming videos maybe… You just need a module called IDM CC(for firefox only). Right click and choose “Download FLV Video with IDM CC”. Easy as pie! What else? It can grab(download) the whole site. Just input the website you want to grab. It has been always useful to me.

Try it now, click here.

Yvette recommends: Nokia 1208

yvettehazellim — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 03:12:12 +0000

When it comes to backup phones, Nokia 1208 is the answer. It is a basic colored phone with good features. It has a bright flashlight. It has also a distribution list for GMs(group messages). Message counter, to keep track of your number of messages sent and received. The built-in themes are also nice because it can let us edit the colour scheme. This can be owned by anyone because its cheap! Around P1500-P2000 in Mall of Asia (Cellphone Area, particularly HELLO). There are 3 games for this phone: Nature Park, Cricket Cup, and Soccer League. Available colors: Red and Black. I got the black one!

Pros:

Durable
Handy
Good Battery Life
Loud Sound
Attachable Lanyards

Cons:

Difficult to text using one hand. (for big thumbs)
No Radio/Camera. (indeed a basic phone)
No infrared/bluetooth.
Keypads would “bloat” in the future.
No card slot. Only up to 4mb user memory.

Rate: 7/10

Any Nokia 1208 users? Drop a comment!

Yvette recommends: USB Disk Security

yvettehazellim — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 22:38:36 +0000

Tired of those trojans in your flashdrive? Yvette recommends: USB Disk Security by ZBShareware. It is a powerful tool that will help protect your flashdrives from trojans/malwares/spywares. This has always been helpful to me since I plug my usb flashdrive in a computer(school lab) that is full of trojans. Thank God my computer is not (yet? no!) infected.

Rate: 10/10

Tell us your experience with USB Disk Security!