Category: Product Reviews (Page 2 of 7)

As part of our Geek Gear series, we’re happy to let you know about Gamecom 780. If you’re looking for a headset for both work and pleasure (a.k.a. games), it’s the perfect combo. We tested it out on everything from Skype to World of Warcraft, and this baby is a keeper.

The GameCom 780 has a retro look, a bit bulky, but it’s surprisingly light weight. The nice thing is that it’s not flimsy. We like the high quality construction — the materials are superb. It feels great to put those cups over your ears, like you’re heading off to another world.

Under the hood, the Dolby Headphone and Pro Logic IIx compliment the set’s twin 40mm drivers. With 7.1 surround sound, you’re totally immersed in whatever game you’re playing. This headset isn’t wireless, but I actually prefer it that way. No radiation to the head and no finicky bluetooth to worry about.

The easy pivot microphone contains multiple sound sensors enabling active noise cancellation to your speech applications. This is wonderful if you’re in a noisy office and trying to talk on Skype to your developers overseas. In addition, the body is made with rotating arms that allow the headset to be stored flat for travel or storage. Clearly, Plantronics thought of everything.

If you’re looking for a single headset you can use for work and play, I’d start here.

NOTE: We received free samples of their products for this review.

by Naomi Kokubo, Cofounder of Founders Space

Founders are always travelling, and the worst part about travelling is flying.  I’ve been searching for the perfect earphones to take with me on trips.

I hate hearing the airplane rumble.  I can’t watch movies or listen to music or catch nap with that noise, unless I crank up the volume on my iPhone and that surely isn’t good for my eardrums.  Thus, I went searching for the ideal pair of travel earphones.

Here were my top criteria:

• Must have great sound quality
• Must have have excellent noise-isolation
• Must be small enough to fit in my pocket
• Must be affordable

I finally found an earphone that meets all of those.   It’s the hf3 by ETYMOTIC, which is not your typical earphone company. They were founded by Dr. Mead Killion, an audiologist and jazz musician.   Over the years, they’ve filed 100 patents on their inventions.   The result is a pretty amazing set of high fidelity noise-isolating earphones.

I tested these out, and they worked like a charm.  I’ll never go back to regular earphones when travelling. They really do block out the ambient noise, like the rumbling of the airplane engine or traffic on a street. They also have some nifty features, like ClearVoice, that makes all speech picked up by the microphone clearer and easier to hear.

They even let you download an app for your iPhone or Android that does all sorts of amazing stuff, including…

• Maximizes awareness for any situation (commuting, outdoor sports, work/office communication)
• db Meter – measures outside noise levels
• Vibrate/Noise Alarm
• VoiceOver UI
• Mic Pad/Boost
• AutoPause – pauses when outside noise exceeds a threshold you set
• AutoSet – monitors the sounds around you and sets microphone threshold to make sure you hear anything above the background noise
• Ducking – lowers music when mic is triggered

I could have gotten one of those big clunky cans that fit over your ears.  Some of them are amazing, but they’re so bulky I wouldn’t want to travel with them.  The nice thing about the hf series is that they’re tiny. The hf3 also comes with an assortment of noise-isolating eartips that fit a variety of ears. Let’s face it, not all ears are the same size. I had no problem finding a tip that worked for me.

Probably the best thing is that the company prides itself on making a quality product.  You can tell by everything from the packaging through to the design that all their earphones are produced with care and attention to detail.

He’s a more comprehensive list of features:

• 85%+ response accuracy
• 105 dB SPL sensitivity at 1 kHz at 0.1 mV
• Accu•Driver™ high performance, precision matched, balanced armature driver
• Frequency Response 20 Hz – 15 kHz
• Transducers – High-performance balanced armature
• Noise Isolation 35-42 dB
• Impedance (@1 kHz) 16 Ohms
• Sensitivity (@1 kHz) SPL at 0.1V 105 dB
• Maximum Output (SPL) 120 dB
• Cable 4 ft with 3.5 mm plug
• User Replaceable ACCU•Filters™
• CUSTOM•FIT Option
• Kevlar-reinforced cable for durability
• User-replaceable filters

Best of all, they come with a 2-year replacement warranty. So if you break them while travelling, you can get a new one. And the cost is very reasonable.  They are $125 on Amazon.   All in all, I highly recommend these for any founders who need to travel, which is most of us!

NOTE: We received free samples of their products for this review.

by Naomi Kokubo, Cofounder of Founders Space

In our iPhone 5 upgrade frenzy, we wanted something to show off at parties, besides the iPhone itself. Low and behold, the XtremeMac™ Tango™ Air, a party making machine. It’s a jewel — beautifully designed and wonderfully powerful.

The XtremeMac features five active drivers and one passive radiator for ear-pounding sound quality in a relatively compact-sized box. I can’t express how much we love the box itself, with its piano gloss finish and satin plated buttons. Those are the touches that make this a true sibling to any Apple product.

Now let’s discuss portability. This is a box you can take with you to parties in the backyard, over to a friend’s houses, or when you travel. No need to settle for the iPhone’s diminutive speakers when you can enjoy blasting your tunes far and wide without distortion.

XtremeMac’s flexible design maintains its audio integrity whether the speaker is positioned vertically or horizontally — a good feature that other boxes lack. It also offers built-in AirPlay technology. The simple plug & pull setup works with iOS 5.0 or greater. This makes it a no brainer to access your entire music library through your wireless network.

Another nice thing is that the XtremeMac works with pretty much everything, including iPhone, iPad, iPod, Macbooks, etc.   And if you use the AUX input, you can even use it with an Android and Windows PC.   For $299, this is a wonderful product.  It’s really all most people need when it comes to music at home or a party.

Feature Overview:

• Premium sound configuration includes two tweeters, two full range drivers, one subwoofer and one passive radiator
• Rear USB slot charges your iPod®, iPhone® and iPad®
• Auxiliary line-in provides flexibility to listen to music on any device that has a headphone jack
• Works with devices that support iOS 5.0 or greater

NOTE: We received free samples of their products for this review.

Magic Members is a fantastic solution for turning your WordPress blog into a full-fledged membership site.

We installed Magic Members in just 6 steps. If you’ve ever installed a WordPress plugin, you shouldn’t have any trouble with this.

After installation, you can get started customizing Magic Members. With a few clicks, you’re able to set different membership billing options, including an unlimited number of subscriptions. You can also specify whether to charge daily, weekly, monthly or annually. Magic Members gives you complete control over how your members pay for their subscriptions. For example, a ‘Standard’ membership may pay monthly, while a ‘Premium’ membership might pay annually.

Magic Members also lets your members to pay with almost all the major providers, including 1ShoppingCart, PayPal Standard, PayPal Website Payments Pro, PayPal Express Checkout, 2CheckOut, CCBill, Authorize.net, ClickBank, WorldPay, MoneyBookers, iDeal, Epoch, Payza, Ogone, SagePay, eWay, PagSeguro and Manual Pay. And if you want to accept payment only from one payment gateway, simply deactivate the payment modules you don’t want to use.

In addition, Magic Members gives you the ability to use different payment gateways for different subscription packages. It truly makes setting up paying memberships a breeze.

Next you can control how long memberships are valid with a membership expiration. Want your “Basic” memberships to expire after two week? You can do that. This feature works great for limited or trial memberships.

Magic Members also allows your users to purchase more than one membership level. This way you can increase your income while providing greater flexibility. Users can view and manage all their subscriptions on their Membership Details page.

One feature we really like is that Magic Members let’s you integrate with Amazon S3. Even if your files are on Amazon’s servers, Magic Members will protect them. Audio, Video or any other files will be secured. You don’t need to pay extra for Amazon S3 protection.

Coupons are another cool feature. They can be generated to either offer a fixed price or percentage discount on current or new subscriptions.

You can also control what your members see with the built-in Sequential Course Delivery System (Drip Feed). This feature allows you to create delays (in days) before your members see certain content or articles. Sequential Course Delivery System allows you to develop your content and make it available to your members on a weekly or monthly basis.

If you have different levels of membership, you will appreciate the Controlled Content Access. Control what the different levels of memberships see. If you want your “Standard” or “Basic” members to have limited access, just “hide” the information you don’t want them to see.

With the Import module, you can import your previous members to your site. The import module supports both .xls and .csv files. You cannot only add new users, but also update the existing users’ data. With the Export feature, you can export all your users and their membership and profile data with it.

Control exactly how much content and information you want members and visitors to see with Magic Members’s [ private ] [ /private ] tags. These tags allow you to hide information within content and articles, and then make the content viewable based on permissions assigned to the different membership levels. This feature is particularly useful in providing “teaser” articles that give just enough information that will make non-members want to become members.

Allow even more flexibility with the Pay Per Post access feature. Magic Members provides you the ability to allow free memberships to purchase content or articles on a per post basis. Even better, each post can be assigned its own price and your members can purchase as little or as much content as they would like.

Do you have a video site and you want to charge your members per video they view? Then pay per view feature is for you. You can set the access limit to 1 (if you want, you can change this number), so the user who paid can access the page only 1 time. After that his access will be disabled.

Magic Members allows you to completely prevent guests from accessing information available to members only. Anytime a guest tries to access a page or category that is specifically for members, they will be redirected to log-in. Once the guest is logged in, the content is made available according to the levels of permissions you have assigned. This method makes Magic Members a very powerful WordPress subscription plug-in.

You will also have built-in Roles and Capabilities module. You won’t need to install other plugins and experience compatibility issues. You can create custom roles and attach them to any subscription pack you want.

If you don’t want your users to go through the registration process to order your posts, the guest purchase feature is for you. When you enable the guest purchase feature, your visitors can purchase the post and access right away with the token provided.

Lastly, Magic Members allows you to see all of your members, their status, level and other information in one easy to read location. You can easily upgrade, deactivate or delete a member – which allows you complete control over your membership site.

Even with all of this, we didn’t cover everything. If you want to get a full picture, just visit the Magic Members website.

Suffice to say, with all these features at a very affordable price, we highly recommend this software.

NOTE: We received free samples of their products for this review.

As part of our Geek Gear series, we’re shining the spotlight on new gadgets and accouterments that any geeky founder would die for!

This week, we want to tell you about the Music Strap from Lucky Bums.  It’s wonderful.  When riding your bike to work, you aren’t allowed to have headphones on.  It’s actually illegal.  But you can use these speakers on your backpack.  Just plug them into your iPhone or iPod and away you go.   You can hear everything from  your favorite bands to audio books (only true geeks bike to audio books).

I use them almost every day.  I love them so much, I bought two sets (they’re only $30).

I’m always looking for ways to both sleep better and sit better. I’m not a good sleeper, and I slouch.

That’s why when I saw BackJoy at a recent startup event, I jumped on it. They’re a startup themselves, and they’ve got two pretty cool products.

First I’ll start with their SitSmart seat that you can use with any chair. It’s surprisingly comfortable. And it’s supposed to help improve your posture and lessen back strain. I’ve had back issues, so I’m always looking for innovative solutions. I found that SitSmart works best on hard chairs. If the chair is too soft, it doesn’t work quite as well.

Overall, it’s a very well made product. I’ve been using it for a couple weeks, and I’m happy with how it feels and supports my back. One thing though, it hasn’t kept me from slouching. I need to find another solution for that.

Next comes the pillow that aligns your back when you sleep. I’ve been using it for the past two weeks, and it’s really nice. Very well made, comfortable, and just the right height. Many pillows are too thin or too thick, and they put your neck at an awkward angle. BackJoy’s Pillow solves this problem. See the diagram below…

NOTE: We received free samples of their products for this review.

WishList Member is pretty amazing.  It transforms your WordPress blog into a full-blown membership site, allowing you to create free, trial and paid membership levels — or any combination of the three.

We were impressed from the start. WishList Member is a snap to install. Just download a typical WordPress plugin and follow the instructions on their site. Within minutes, you’ll be able to start customizing your memberships. You can create “Silver”, “Gold”, “Platinum”, or any other “levels” you want. Then you can charge more for higher levels of access – all within the same blog.

You can easily upgrade members, move them to different levels, pause their membership, or delete them entirely. In addition, you can set WishList Member up so that it graduates your members from one level to the next. For example, after 30 days, you can automatically upgrade members from a Free Trial to the “Silver” level. That’s pretty cool!

Next you can structure the content on your site. Just click the “Hide” button to protect exclusive content for members of a particular level. Create “modular” memberships and hide content from other levels.

If you plan on selling content on your site, WishList Member seamlessly integrates with the most popular shopping cart systems, including PayPal, ClickBank, and many more. Plus, WishList Member™ now integrates with Cydec and Infusion. This makes turning a blog into an e-commerce portal and snap!

You can even give your members access to multiple levels within your membership. For example, create a central download location with access granted to members of all levels. And you can determine exactly what content your members can access.  You can even drill down and grant access to specific posts, pages, categories and comments for each membership level. The possibilities are endless.

We like the fact that WishList Member enables you to protect specific content. It is extremely easy because everything after the “more” tag is automatically protected for members only. So an eye-grabbing post title, combined with a compelling opening paragraph is more than enough to wet the appetite of non-members. You can also control the length of time each member has access to your membership site. You can automatically expire a membership after 3 days, 7 days, or whatever time period you want.

You can secure RSS feeds, allowing members to view their membership material in their favorite RSS reader. But, it also gives you complete control: non-members can’t access the feed. If a person stops paying, their feed automatically stops working.

As you can tell, WishList Member is pretty robust. It has practically every feature you could want, and we didn’t even cover them all in this review. Check out the WishList Member site and see for yourself how it works.

All in all, we highly recommend this package!

NOTE: We received free samples of their products for this review.

Everyone I know with an iPhone is constantly complaining about running out of juice. I’m no exception. I finally threw in the towel and decided to get a removable battery case, so I can extend the life of my phone.

I read a number of online reviews, and the ibattz Mojo REFUEL and REFUEL ARMOR Removable Battery Cases came highly recommend, so I thought I’d start with them. I’m happy to say that they lived up to my expectations. The design is solid, and the battery case is light and slim. Taking the case on and off is a breeze. ibattz also improved Mojo’s battery, replacing last year’s 1700mAh replaceable batteries with 2200mAh batteries.

If you go for the ARMOR version, which costs more, you get a choice between a super rugged case that looks like you can drop it off a cliff without a problem, and a slimmer case that I actually prefer. In my opinion, the rugged case is just too thick and awkward, while the slim case fits nicely in your hand and pocket.

If you’re like me, you can save some money by buying the ibattz Mojo REFUEL, which comes with only the slim case. However, if you don’t mind spending a few extra bucks, then you can easily switch between the two cases depending on what you’re doing with your phone.

From my simple tests, the 2200mAh cells delivered at least a 100% (or 200% total) recharge for a fully discharged iPhone, which is pretty darn good. This means the Mojo Refuel delivers more power with just one of its included batteries than a more expensive Mophie Juice Pack Air.

The only downside I can see to these cases is that they aren’t as sleek and beautiful as other cases on the market. They are by no means ugly. In fact, the slim case looks nice. But it’s safe to say that ibattz put more TLC into the functionality than the style — especially on the rugged case. So if you prefer brawn over beauty, this is the battery case you should go for.

NOTE: We received free samples of their products for this review.

If you’re making a video for your startup, you need to check out CrazyTalk Animator 2. It’s amazing. You don’t need to hire a professional animator to get professional quality animations. Anyone with some talent and a good artistic eye can create an animated video in a few hours.

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CrazyTalk makes it drop-dead simple. You can literally drag and drop characters onto a background and then begin animating them with pre-made templates. I have to tell you, it’s not work… it’s fun! If you have a creative streak, like me, you’ll find animating with CrazyTalk a joy. They have so many cool little features that make your characters come alive. Just talk into a mic and it automatically lip syncs. You can also change the facial expression by simply moving your mouse about the screen.

If you’ve tried the original CrazyTalk animator, what makes version 2 so much better is that you can now animate your characters in 3D. It’s really cool. It makes any 2D animation turn into a semi-3D animation.

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Now, if you get serious and want to create your own characters, you should buy the Pipeline Version. This makes CrazyTalk Animator 2 into a powerful tool that rivals the most professional animation software out there.

Here are a few of the advance features:

* Create custom multi-dimension characters from scratch
* Design characters and props compatible with 12 render styles
* Import any 3D motion via iMotion format
* Connect with any 3D motion source

All in all, CrazyTalk Animator 2 does an amazing job of appealing to novice animators and professionals alike. It’s so easy to use, yet incredibly powerful once you go deep. Try it out! There’s a free demo on the Real Illusions website.

NOTE: We received free samples of their products for this review.