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Key Ring App

If you’re like me you have loyalty and membership cards to grocery stores, gas stations, retail stores, and the gym. Unfortunately, these cards take up space on car keys or stuffed in your wallet. Because of this I tend to leave these cards at home or in my car and never seem to have them when I actually need them.

A new app has been released that remedies this issue. Key Ring allows you to scan the barcodes from your loyalty or membership cards and store them in your phone. When you are checking out at the grocery store or walking into the gym, you simply open the Key Ring app, select the appropriate barcode and allow the person/machine to scan it as if it were the actual card. The app is free and available on the iPhone and all Android phones.

iMac

Months ago, the Macbook Pro received an upgrade to Intel’s i3, i5, and i7 processors. Today, the iMac line was finally given an upgrade to the i3 and i5 processors as well as receiving improved graphics cards.

The new iMacs also support dual internal hard drives. Which means you can now have an SSD as your boot drive with a secondary drive of up to 2TB for storage.

iMac

The Mac Pro also received an upgrade to an Intel Xeon 2.66GHz processor available in a Quad-Core ($2,499), 8-Core ($3,299), and a 12-Core ($4,999).

Mac Pro

iPhone vs Nexus One

After almost 3 years of owning 3 generations of iPhones, I recently decided it was time for a change. The release of the Nexus One finally put me over the edge. I received my Nexus One in the mail a couple days ago and was able to compare it head to head with my iPhone 3GS. The iPhone does have features I will miss, but overall I am much more impressed with the Nexus One.

Benefits of the Nexus One:

• When connecting both phones to the same WiFi network and visiting the same sites at the same time it is clear that the Nexus One is typically loads web pages 1-5 seconds faster than the iPhone 3GS.
• Despite having more powerful hardware, the Nexus One is actually thinner and lighter than the iPhone 3GS.
• The clarity of the AMOLED screen on the Nexus One makes the iPhone’s LCD screen look washed out and cheap.
• The Nexus One’s casing and screen is MUCH more scratch resistant than the iPhone. Click HERE for a demo.
• The built in “Voice To Text” feature is extremely accurate and translates your speach into text allowing you to text without actually typing.
• The Android operating system is much more customizable than the iPhone’s operating system.
• Like many others, I have all my contacts, calendars and e-mail synced with Google through Gmail. Since this phone was made by Google, constant syncing of all of this information is much more fluid and easier to setup on the Nexus One than it was with the iPhone.
• T-Mobile offers $6/month insurance for the Nexus One which covers losing the phone, theft, and physical damage. Neither Apple or AT&T offer any sort of insurance like this for the iPhone so if you lose or break your phone you are “S.O.L”.

Benefits of the iPhone:

• Built in “Visual Voicemail” enabling you to see your voicemails on the screen and listen to the ones you choose while ignoring others. ** T-Mobile offers this feature for the Nexus One but they make you jump through hoops to get it activated.
• The speaker is located on the bottom of the phone allowing you to hear when someone is calling or texting even with the phone laying on its back. The Nexus One’s ringer is on the back of the phone and while laying on it’s back, the ringer is impossible to hear. This design flaw has forced me to miss a few calls already. ** The simple fix is to lay the phone on it’s face when you set it down.
• There are over 90,000 apps available for the iPhone. There are only 20,000 available for the Nexus One.

Kingston SSD

Kingston has released a 30GB SSD drive for $80 ($110 before rebates). This drive would work very well if you intend to use it strictly as a boot drive. I’d imagine that the prices will just continue to drop as more SSD’s infiltrate the market over the next 12 months.

Personally, I’m going to wait until the 256GB+ drives drop to $200 or less.

Source: Kingston

Lexar Media Echo SE/ZE

This micro USB drive can store up to 64GB of data. It’s a perfectly discreet backup device for the traveler. The Lexar Media Echo drive ranges from capacities of 8Gb up to 64Gb and will continuously backup your data while you work. No pricing has been leaked but they should be released sometime in February.

Source: CrunchGear