Mother’s Day is this Sunday! But don’t panic and start throwing elbows in the greeting cards aisle of your local CVS just yet; Zang has a solution that not only allows you to stay indoors, but you don’t even need to have actual human contact with Mom at all!
Withings isn’t exactly a household name outside of the fitness world, but they make fitness trackers, blood pressure cuffs, baby monitors, scales, and similar devices that all work together under the same ecosystem. That ecosystem has a new umbrella today, as Nokia announced they’re acquiring Withings and diving into the fitness tracking world.
Kellogg’s has never had a great reputation in the allergy world. For example, Kellogg’s would not tell someone if their allergen is in a product if the allergen is not required to be labelled by the FDA. Now they’re really getting dangerous, though, with the addition of peanut flour into various savory and previously nut free crackers.
I reviewed Screwpop’s keyring pliers and utility knife a few months ago, and was extremely impressed with the combinations of low price/high quality/good utility. They’re even closer to putting an entire toolkit in your pocket with their new Kickstarter campaign for the Wishbone Wrench!
I decided to give up my iPad this week in favor of an LG G Pad X8.3 from Verizon. Ironically, what set everything in motion was my wife’s iPhone 5C taking a swan dive out of the car and into certain death at the hands of the pavement. Likely out of embarrassment that it was an iPhone 5C.
The only thing worse than a sick toddler is taking a sick toddler’s temperature. It’s easy if they’re sleeping, but once the sick kiddo is awake/grumpy, all bets are off. We’ve survived our first year of my son’s preschooling with the requisite colds, so when Kinsa offered to have us review the Smart Thermometer we were all over it! The Kinsa Smart Thermometer looks like a cross between a regular digital thermometer and a headphones cord. You plug the thermometer into a compatible iPhone or Android smartphone, and use the Kinsa app as the interface to see your child’s temperature….
If you’re on Verizon, use Android, and have a phone and bank account compatible with Android Pay, you should whip out your shopping list and phone and get to tapping. For a limited time, three uses of Android Pay will net you an extra 2GB of data for your wireless account, good through mid-June!
I never really warmed up to bud-style headphones. I’ve used them when necessary, but given the choice I always prefer over the ear style instead. Skullcandy sent me their Grind Wireless headphones to review, and these tick off everything I like — over the ears, comfortable, stylish, with quality sound, AND Bluetooth!
If you have a Netflix subscription and haven’t watched “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” and “Orange is the New Black”, please head off to binge both immediately. We’ll wait here. If you’re back, keep reading, because the tribute video of your dreams was released by Netflix yesterday, where the ladies of Litchfield celebrate the upcoming Kimmy Schmidt season 2 release with “Honey Jar” (a tribute to “Peeno Noir”)
Seaworld has been under a great deal of pressure since the release of the documentary “Blackfish“. The film focused on an orca at Seaworld, and why it’s a bad idea to raise and keep killer whales in captivity. It led to a groundswell of pressure on Seaworld, and they’ve finally announced an end to the orca breeding programs and shows.
The Verge reported on some ominous news from Pebble today; they’re apparently laying off 25% of their staff. Combine that with a competitive wearables market, and it doesn’t look great for Kickstarter’s biggest success story.
How much do you think about your grocery budget? We think about ours a fair amount, since we hardly eat out anymore. But even for people who cook at home, what you buy and how much you spend varies wildly, as seen by this really interesting experiment conducted over at The Simple Dollar.
Do you have Amazon Prime? If you do, you probably take advantage of Prime videos and certainly use the free shipping. But it seems like Prime Music tends to be the forgotten child of Amazon’s services, especially in the face of competitors like Spotify, Pandora, and Apple Music. But Prime Music is free with Prime subscription, and it’s rapidly improving!
Do you remember the USA series Weird Science? It ran in the mid-90s and was based on the John Hughes film of the same name. I loved that show because it came on every Saturday night after the kids I babysat for went to bed. So when I found it on Hulu, I dropped everything to relive the 90s!
Fitness apps are a growing business, but not all of them are created equal. Some offer great tracking for running and biking. Others offer a few broad cross training choices, but nothing more substantive. Pear Sports aims to be a bit of everything, from cross training to cardio, with training programs and experts from multiple fields all in your pocket!
Running in good weather is easy. All you need is shorts and a t-shirt and off you go. Rain and cold are a bit tougher since you need to balance comfort with layers. Brooks, whose motto is “Run Happy”, wants you to be comfortable in all weather, and they asked us to test their Seattle Shell jacket for that reason!
My wife Sarah usually carries her wallet, phone, and keys in the backpack we use as a diaper bag. Sometimes, though, she just needs to grab and go, and the enormous backpack is too much. When we were offered the chance to review the Peralta Abby iPhone Case, I asked Sarah to give it a whirl.
When it comes to fitness trackers, you can usually follow the age-old adage “cheap, fast, or good” with a few modifications: “cheap, feature-filled, or attractive”, pick two. Depending on what you think of Fitbit’s style, maybe not even two. The LifeTrak Zone R420 aims to change that with an attractive design, a slew of great features, and a wallet-friendly price!
Well, civilized world, we had a good run. We created airplanes, built skyscrapers, and put men on the moon. A few years ago, it seemed like the technology of Star Trek was finally coming true, from Bluetooth headsets to iPads. It’s over now though, because our engineering prowess is being used to build things like the Flip-It 4-in-1 Selfie Case.
I tested the LifeBEAM hat last spring and was quite impressed with the accuracy of their heart rate monitor. They’re expanding their market beyond hats and helmets, putting their heart rate tech into wireless headphones powered by Under Armour and JBL!
I am a big fan of time travel stories. Earlier this month, I saw a cool looking time travel book called Unhappenings by Edward Aubry was free on Amazon Kindle, and it was one of the best and most creative time travel tales I’ve ever read!