Wireless Music System - Fun & Flexible

We love the wireless Sonos S5 Digital Music System (www.sonos.com) that we’ve just installed at home. Now we can play music from our computer, any audio source, Pandora or Internet radio anywhere in our home, wirelessly.

The system has integrated wireless units called S5 Zone Players incorporating amplifiers and speakers, and comes with PC or Mac software, including an on-screen controller. Installation was super easy: install the software, power up the Zone Player and plug in the network cable.

Sonos uses its own wireless network that’s secure, matrixed and able to interact with all Zone Players. The Controller provides flexibility and wireless coverage anywhere in your home. Plug a unit into a wall outlet, push the button, and the ZonePlayer automatically connects to the Network.
 

 

Control your music system from your computer, iPhone, Android or iPad, or buy the wireless hand-held Controller. We love the flexibility: Play single songs saved in our computer or play iPod or Sonos playlists. Control zones individually. Play the same selection in a single zone, linked zones or in all zones. Play one selection in one zone(s) and a different selection for another zone(s) or mix and match music from Pandora, Internet radio stations or an auxiliary input.

Independently control volume and equalizations; if you mute a zone, unmuting ramps the volume up rather than suddenly blaring on. One of many nice touches we like. The hand-held Controller(s) and the PC control program display information (including album art) about the selection being played.

We’re enjoying the sound quality, convenience and the compact package that makes up the Sonos S5 Digital Music System.

Easy/Fun Print Projects

One of the fun, useful and often money-saving ways we’ve used our computer is to create print projects. We make greeting cards, calendars, posters, and much more. Some print projects are part of word processing programs, but we like the creative freedom of PagePlus X5 (www.serif.com), a desktop publishing program that lets us make professional-looking stuff - and it’s easy and quick to do.

 
PagePlus X5 has nearly 1,000 templates we can customize, but you can also create your own projects from scratch. We make all our greeting cards with the templates. Just substitute our text, color and font–and Voila! A personalized, colorful card in minutes.

There are lots of projects (flyers, invitations, banners and more), and the color schemes option lets you preview projects with different combinations of colors for text, background, graphics and borders.

Those of you who are more creative will also find plenty of features to make projects from scratch. Place text on a curve, use it in any place or shape, add graphics and photos (sized, shaped and/or altered if you want), or put inside one of the many included shapes. Go wild at will.

Tool tips, onscreen help and video tutorials are there to help, or order the 300-page printed User Guide. PagePlus X5 has dozens of simple, easy projects, but the many advanced features (OK, they’ll take some time to learn) will let you creative types shine big time.

Just Dance 2

Taking advantage of technology makes life easier and more productive, and it can also be a lot of fun too. Case in point: 

Just Dance 2 for Nintendo’s Wii combines music, dance and a bit of competition and uses the hand-held remote controllers to track and score your dance moves as you mimic the on-screen dancer’s moves. Music ranges from today’s hits to yesterday’s favorites, with the artist’s original recordings coupled with choreographed fun dance routines and on-screen lyrics if you want to sing along. Choose from Rihanna S.O.S., Vampire Weekend A-Punk, Kesha Tik Tok, our favorites, Cher The Shoop Shoop Song, Ike & Tina Turner Proud Mary or any of the 40+ included songs. Others available to purchase.

Select Just Dance, Dance Battle or Just Sweat, depending on what you’d like to do. We usually Just Dance--great for exercise and lots of fun, especially when shared with up to four “dancers.” We’re definitely hooked.

Wikipedia 101

Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com) is a free, Internet-based multilingual encyclopedia that has more than 15 million articles and is currently the largest and most popular general reference site on the Internet. The articles are written by registered volunteers around the world and cover an amazing variety of subjects.

The occasional cultural bias, as well as reliability and accuracy, have been criticized, but Wikipedia is supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, and its policies strongly support verifiable information and a neutral point of view.

For Wikipedia on the go, there’s the Wikireader (www.thewikireader.com), a self-contained device that holds more than three million entries from the online site, all quickly and easily searchable. It’s a snap to check out a word or concept by just looking it up on the spot.

Wikireader’s 3.5-inch touch screen has a virtual keyboard and selection and scrolling functions. The text-only LCD screen is easy to read but not back lighted, so you’ll need good ambient lighting to view it. Wikireader is compact, portable, and fun to use. Information has never been easier to find. We like it.

Smart TV

Get ready for the merger of TV and Internet with “Smart TVs.” Smart TVs are television sets that connect to the Internet to access content for entertainment, information and more--without turning on your computer or even having a computer (OK, you do need  a wireless or ethernet connection to the Internet via cable or DSL modem, which may need a computer to initially configure). Smart TVs can also stream videos, photos and music from home media servers or a computer.

LG Electronics (LG) (www.lg.com) will soon ship Internet connected Smart TVs. They’ll have a simple on-screen Home Dashboard, controlled in point and click fashion by a Wii-like remote, to select TV programs and access online content from sources such as Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube, and many others.

The LG SmartTV includes a web browser (so you don’t even need to turn on your computer to access the Internet), which lets you watch news, reviews and more directly on the television screen.

If you have an older, not-so-smart TV, LG has a SmartTV Upgrader that converts your TV set into a wireless Internet connected SmartTV with all its benefits, including easy access to premium content, a web browser and the ability to stream content from any device connected to your home network. Just connect the small Upgrader to an HDMI input on your TV,  and you have a “Smart” TV. Very cool.

2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES)

We were two of the 140,000 people at the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, where more than 2,700 exhibitors showed the present and future in technology. Our impressions:

Cell phones are filled with an ever-growing number of capabilities. Your iPhone using the appropriate app (application program) allows you to check your home security system, control a home-wide music or TV system, turn lights on or off, set your heating or A/C--and much more--from anywhere you can get a cellular and/or a WiFi signal. Android phones promise similar capabilities soon.

The Apple iPad was everywhere, running about anything you can imagine. More than 70 other tablet computers were on display too; some available now in a variety of sizes, more coming soon.

Connected televisions are hot. These TVs “connect” to the Internet via a home wireless network or ethernet cable, showing streaming content from some major providers (i.e. Netflix and Pandora), or from your home media server or PC and can include photos, videos and music.

Excitement over 3D-TV has waned a bit, but we did see some new 3D-TV sets, and at least three companies introduced consumer level 3D HD camcorders. We’re not sure about wearing those 3D glasses; the promised glassless sets may help, but we were not impressed with the one we saw.

Other areas showcased products to monitor health and fitness and those designed for seniors and much more. We’ll cover these and more in future blogs. Check back soon.

HD Radio - What is it?

HD Radio (hybrid-digital radio) provides clear, near FM quality AM radio reception and also provides FM radio reception that rivals CD audio quality. The cool factor is the FM subchannels (not available in AM HD) for carrying content different than the main signal. That means an HD FM radio station could carry soft rock on its main signal, while one of its subchannels carries live sports events. Very cool.

Listening to HD is free (the cost for needed equipment, upgrades and the like is up to the station). There are more than 2,000 HD radio stations and more than 1,000 subchannels in the US.

 
 
You’ll need to buy a HD Radio if you want HD features. We tried a small FM portable HD radio from Insignia (www.insigniaproducts.com, $50), and the local FM HD radio stations did sound clearer than standard FM stations, and we enjoyed having the subchannel content so readily available.





Since almost all HD stations transmit a “hybrid” signal containing both a standard signal and the HD signal, your old radios still works fine, but you won’t have the HD features.

If you want to know more about HD Radio, go to our web site at http://www.norma-tony.com/031010.htm