With summer around the corner it will be beach season soon, and what makes the beach better? Tunes!
Today I’ll be reviewing the Jawbone Jambox, don’t let it’s size fool you! ( I swear I’ve never said that before)

Let’s start with the packaging, it has a clear case so you can see exactly what you’re getting. Below the speaker is a compartment style cubby that stores all the accessories.

Inside you’ll find

1 Jambox
1 Carrying case
1 3.5 mm stereo cable
1 AC to USB charger
2 USB to micro USB cables

Plus 1 for coolness is the carrying case, it folds up so that you can easily tuck it away and uses magnets to keeps its shape.

This device has two options of connectivity, the first is Bluetooth. The process to connecting is very easy, all you have to do is hold the on switch upward for 3 seconds and let it spring back down. It is now discoverable, now on your music device turn on your Bluetooth and connect to the Jambox.

If it turns out you do not have a Bluetooth function (boooooo) you can then use 3.5 mm headphone plug, either way the Jambox delivers; even up to 33 feet away!!!

At a price point of $199.99 plus tax I was a lil weary but I have to tell you it’s worth it, the sound quality is clean, crisp and surprisingly has a great bass range. It’s actually so deep it physically turns itself around if it’s on a surface that has a low friction coefficient. Bonus! A dancing speaker lol

It is easily is comparable to a Bose sound dock, it fills the room with a 3d’esque effect. Please note that this is the smaller version of the Big Jambox and only goes to 85 decibels. The battery is rated at 10hrs playback and achieves a full charge in 2.5 hrs.

So 199.99 it’s a real great sounding portable speaker…… Butttttt that’s not all!
Another function it has is that it also acts as a wireless speakerphone when using a Bluetooth enabled phone, remember its made by jawbone so it works awsomeballs!!!!

Another great attribute is that it has apps, apps? Really? Yessss, it features voice command applications and also personalization applications. The unit speaks to you as it is completing function, for instance when you turn on pairing the unit actually says “Jambox is ready to pair”. The personalization apps allow you to choose different voices or sound themes that include powering up/down and voice command responses. The unit also allows for software updates from Jawbone so you can have added features.

It is available in 4 main colors (blue,red,black,grey) however they do offer limited edition colors with a cause, currently they have teamed up with Charity Water where $50 of the purchase price goes to help support their staff and operations — allowing them to continue the important work of bringing clean, safe drinking water to the billion people currently living without it.

I’ve used it for phone calls, music, playing games on my iPad and watching movies, all of which were made a greater experience. I highly recommend this speaker but if you’re looking to fill a bigger room definitely check out the Big Jambox (it’s actually called that).

For more info here’s a link http://jawbone.com/speakers/jambox/overview

You’ve seen them on the bus on your way to work, on the heads of people just bopping their heads. I’m talking about those headphones that everyone seems to have or want.

Celebrity endorsed items aren’t a new thing, in fact most fail to fulfill your dreams of making a foul line slam dunk; attract woman to you like Demi Moore on a 20 year old.

Back in 2008 Jimmy Lovine and Dr Dre formed a partner ship with Monster Electronics to produce a line of audio peripherals.

The Headphones I will be reviewing to day are the Solo HD, it’s a lightweight /compact over the head design.

Lets get to the unboxing; the packaging is excellent in that it is a more than packaging. It’s also a display case as well. Inside you will find a storage compartment for the warranty cards, cleaning cloth and instructions. Also included is a handy carrying case with 2 cords, one with control functions for use with iProducts and one standard cord for all other audio players

The headphones are very comfortable all round with great detail to the padding, the ear padding acts much like noise cancellation and is made of very soft leather.

I’m quite happy with the audio quality; it’s clear and crisp with little to no distortion even when I crank up the volume.

Now comes the price, the average price from all your fave stores is about 200-220 bucks. Is it worth it? I was lucky to get my pair on sale at %40 off.  At that price I’m completely sold but I guess these kids have a heck of a lot more disposal income than me (when I was a kid my parents gave me cardboard box to put on my head to sing in)

If you have shopped around for these you may have noticed that there Solo and Solo HD versions, so what’s the diff??? Well lemme tell you!

When originally produced the Solo’s had a matte finish vs the HD’s piano glossy finish!!! That’s it????  but wait there’s more!

A fatal flaw in the original Solo’s was the headband, which was notorious for snapping right above the foldable hinges. Thus we now have the HD’s, with a redesigned headband and new finish. As far as audio goes the non HD’s have a stronger Bass response, the HD’s on the other hand have a great Mid range sound with a lil more treble.

With the popularity of these headphones knock offs have been quite rampant, here’s a few quite tips to avoid getting duped.

The first thing to look for is the images and materials used for the packaging, the images are very low quality as per the examples below. Monster has also provided a link with examples to view of knock offs.

http://www.monstercable.com/counterfeit/

In doing my research I stumbled upon another gem, if you’re looking for the style and audio capabilities of the Beats by Dre headphones check out www.fannywang.com word is the same audio engineer produced these as well but what I think is the bigger selling point is that you can customize the color of your headphones.

Well it came with no announcement what so ever, ITunes Match is available in Canada. Woohooo!

Hmmm so $27.99 a year to have access to my entire music library on any iDevice or iTunes…. Not too bad to lets give it a shot.

Set up was easy, on the left side of my iTunes there’s a link you click on and then it starts by examining your whole list of music in your library and checks to see if they have it. Once this process is complete (it might take a while if you hoard music like me) it then adds any missing artwork. Now keep in mind that if they do have the matching song in the iTunes store they don’t really need to upload yours, they just simply provide you access to stream or download the one they have directly from the iTunes music store. 

So what about all those great DJ mixes and live recordings you have that aren’t on iTunes??? Well what happens they up load it for you and you still get to have access to it ISN’T THAT GREAT!

Now like most people I have more than one computer (i.e. netbooks, laptop) and different music on each one. I simply performed the same process on each one and all my music is in one place. 

One thing I like most about iTunes match is getting re-acquainted with music I have that I have not listened to in a very long time, I also like being able to listen to it on anything I own that has iTunes and an internet connection. Another bonus is that I was able to free up a lot of hard drive space, very seldom am I using my Macbook with out an internet connection and if so I can always download songs from the cloud.

I highly recommend Itunes match 

Magic…. ok maybe it’s not magic but technology can be just as fascinating and full of wonder.

Spotted this on the Apple website and sourced it out at London Drugs, what we have is an inductive charging station for your Apple Magic Mouse.

So what is this inductive charging thingy mahoo? the easiest way to think about this is that it works much like a electric tooth brush (Soniccare, Oral B), normally to charge an electronic item there must be a plug or metal contacts in which the electricity can be transferred.

With Inductive charging it uses an electromagnetic field to transfer energy between two objects, here are some advantages of this:

Get home from work and waiting at my door are my Mix Style headphones, Sweet!

I ordered these on YesAsia.com as they are readily available in Asia, I ordered them on the 16th and they were shipped by the 19th and arrived today the 29th all the way from Hong Kong. Not to bad at all eh? now back to the review.

They arrived in an inconspicuous plain cardboard box wrapped in bubble wrap.

Unboxing:

Included in the box is a 100cm extension cord, Headphones and warranty card.

Sound test and fittment:

The padding on the ear is soft and keeps the sound in, I believe they used actual leather. Sound quality is great for such a moderately priced set of Headphones, comparable to Skull Candy or a entry level Sennheiser.

In doing my research about these headphones I realized that due to their popularity there are knock offs being sold online, here are some things to look for when purchasing.

In the picture above note the Mix Style logo on the side of the Headphone.

Another thing to look for is the branding built into the plastic arm of the headband.

Also look for the holographic seal of authenticity on the bottom of the box.

And the biggest give away is the extension cord, if it does not come with the extension cord it’s not real.

Overall these are a stylish pair of headphones with decent sound, my only concern is the plastic used as it seems it may not last.

Build Quality 3.5/5

Sound 3/5

Price 4/5

Hi hi everyone, as promised my next entry will be a positive one,

Today I will be reviewing the deadmau5 mini speaker thingie, no joke this is the name of the product.

While surfing for a Ipod dock I stumbled upon this product, being a fan of deadmau5 I thought I’d check it out. I read a few reviews online and from what I gathered most people were delightfully surprised by the quality of the sound. With a $19.99 price point I figured I couldn’t lose

I went to the local Best Buy to pick one up which was quite the task, they weren’t able to locate it on the floor so a very helpful rep ran to the back and found one.

The packaging is nice and conveys a laisser faire attitude with humorous comments and references to deadmau5 tracks, inside you find your Mau5 and two cords. One for plugging into your audio device and one to plug into USB for charging.

Setup is quick and easy, once fully charged which can be achieved in less then an hour you plug in your audio device (3.5mm Headphone jack) and turn the switch to on located on the foot of your Mau5. The internal rechargeable battery has a life of 4-6 hours which isn’t bad for a day at the beach.

Now for the sound, I hooked it up to my Ipod Nano and slowly increased the volume. It was like it wanted you to keep going and going, the sound was clear and crisp and there was no distortion at full volume. Don’t get me wrong it’s not like a trunk with two 12″ woofers pounding, but hell it’s pretty impressive for $19.99.

After a bit more internet snooping I found out it is also available in Black, I tracked it down to HMV and purchased one. It was $5.00 more so no biggie, after hearing how loud one sounded I figured two would be just right. To make this work I also purchased a Y splitter from The Source for $7.00, Mau5 in stereo is not to bad.

So here’s the verdict

Build Quality 5/5

Sound 4/5

Price 5/5

Look out for more reviews and take care peeps

Chow Out!

Had dinner with some friends yesterday, conversation was a lil better then the food.  So I sat and listened as two girls complained about about how horrible their boyfriends were and that they were gonna leave them in the very near future.  The gears grinded in my head as my ability to comprehend lessend and lessend with more stories of verbal abuse, infidelity and an overall lack of compassion.  How does one not love themselves enough to rise above and progress,  but to simply excuse their involvement with them as “Being in Love” and having no say in the matter like it’s some Jedi mind trick.

Love is not a feeling, it is a choice; a choice to honour your promises and commitments to one person.  Perhaps my discipline is to much for some, perhaps my discipline is actually the simple formula to being a basic decent human being.  To be with someone great is achieved by being somone great, but maybe the task of looking for more in oneself is also too much for some and it’s easier to go through life always blaming things on everyone else even though you put yourself there.

That is all

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I think I’ve found the answer to all my problems!!!!!! http://www.bullz-eye.com/relationships/double_your_dating/2005/040701.htm . MUHHAHAHAH all the women will be mine!!!!! MUHUHAHHAMUHUHAHAHMUAHAUUAAUA… MU hu…MU …..hu whew…….I’m done

Did alot of handy work today, felt productive. Whatever takes my mind off “things”. Why is that people often misunderstand that facts are not the same as personal opinions, facts are reality, actions, things that actually physically occur. So when someone says they have goals or aspirations but have not taken any steps to reach those so called “goals” you know it’s a bunch of bull$#!T, but for some reason they have fooled themselves into believing that they have acomplished something and try to fool others with cliches and generic statements or just avoiding the subject all together. What so wrong with being honest to yourself?, it’s ok that we are all not the best at everything but we are responsible to try to get as close as possible to perfection; to be truly self aware. To be regret free, being able to make a statement based on experience and not on what we’ve heard from others or have been programmed to believe. Well enough of my ranting and goodnight to all.