Men Who Won't Ask for Directions

Ladies, how many times have you wanted to smack your husband upside the head with a map when playing co-pilot on vacation? Or better yet, how many of you have driven around aimlessly for hours on end because your husband refused to stop for directions because, "We're not lost, I know where we are...."? Yep, I thought so.

A number of years ago, we got a rental car wiith a GPS unit while on vacation. The soothing sound of the strange, yet familiar woman's voice politely (no screaming or map-bashing involved) telling us to turn right in 200 feet had the most amazing calming effect on our travels. In a nutshell, we will never travel with out a GPS unit again. In fact, we've thrown caution to the wind and left our maps at home - who needs 'em when you know that the lady in your GPS will get you there, and you'll be calm and collected at that!

We sell a wide variety of GPS units from simple models, to models wiith more bells and whistles. The Garmin nuvi 660 is just one example of a great unit that will save your husband from map-bashing-related injuries!

Tivo turns me on to IO Pen

Every couple of days I will sit down in front of TIVO and 'catch up'. I'll scan for new shows from my huge wishlist (Anthony Hopkins, Sean Connery, Shirley Maclaine -- don't laugh), review the Showcase areas for new movies, and read new TIVO messages.

It's interesting to observe the interactive advertising TIVO presents. TIVO sent me a new message with an attached 3 minute video clip about a really cool new product called the Logitech IO Personal Digital Pen. I watched the video and immediately wanted this item. The pen has a digital processor inside, and when you write on the IO specially encoded paper, it records everything that you write. You can then upload it to your PC via a USB connection. The pen holds up to 40 pages of handwritten text. How cool is that? I immediately thought of my neice who will be heading off to college in the fall.

The pen runs around $189, but I think the turnoff is the cost of the paper that is required, which runs about $24 for 80 sheets. Apparently every pixel of the paper is somehow encoded and the pen records this as you write. Maybe if you write really, really small....?

The TIVO video got me really psyched because it provided a web address and indicated that TIVO was giving away these pens to TIVO subscribers. I rushed to my computer to snatch up my free pen, only to discover it was a contest, not a freebie for everyone. It also looks like we're out of stock on this item right now, but it was so Jetson-like I couldn't resist talking about it.

Customer reviews are mixed, but it's definitely a fun to have, interesting item for those 'ahead of the pack' technophiles.

Longing for a long lens

I'm into photography, and since I've gone digital, I take pictures constantly. Believe it or not, I was a freelance paparazzi for ten years. Now that I'm old, married and a mom, my photography is all kid-based.

As you may have guessed, I have a number of SLR and digital cameras. My Sony Mavica FD-95 was my first digital camera. It's a fantastic camera but definitely on the big (i.e. inconvenient) side. Since I got it three years ago, I haven't found any digital cameras on the market with a comparable zoom lens -- until lately.

The Olympus Camedia C-730 has a huge zoom range -- and -- it's small! I've been wanting this for quite some time and one of these days I'm going to break down and get it. I've pored over the customer reviews and I get relatively good vibes from them, although of course there are a few unhappy campers (there's always at least one in any bunch).

When contemplating a purchase like this, I always get that nervous feeling that as soon as I buy it, a bigger, better, and of course cheaper model will come out. Of course if I keep waiting, the price will come down, but the technology will become outdated.

Maybe after tax time.