Hardware Review: SteelPad 5L
Submitted on April 29th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Reviews and Hardware
No. of comments (9)
SteelSeries is a company known for making high end mouse pads. For those of you who don’t who they are, SteelSeries is one of the leading gaming mouse pad manufactures in the world. They started out with the SteelPad 4S model, and now have a full lineup of quality pads to offer. SteelSeries knows about gaming, because they manufacture performance gaming gear, for gamers by gamers. SteelSeries has come out with a new pad to add to their already perfect pad lineup, the SteelPad 5L. They have sent us the SteelPad 5L, and some SteelGear Padsurfer all-round for us to review. The 5L pad is a 5 layer mouse pad, as it combines plastic with cloth for strength and comfort.
Hardware Review: Hauppauge WinTV PVR USB2
Submitted on April 29th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Reviews and Hardware
No. of comments (4)
A lot of people record TV shows these days, while most are using the cable/satellite digital DVR boxes. If you don’t know what you’re doing then the cable/satellite DVR boxes are fine, but for those of us that do know what we’re doing this is for you. Being able to add on a PVR card or USB device to our computers is a nice feature to have. It cuts down on the monthly added expense that the cable/satellite companies charge extra to have DVR. Plus, it makes it able to record your own TV shows and then burn yourself a custom DVD to watch for later viewing, unlike having a cable/satellite DVR box which you can’t do that with. From what i’ve seen those recorded shows are stuck on the cable/satellite DVR boxes until you delete them. Today we have the Hauppauge WinTV PVR USB2 tuner to review. Having a PVR is great to watch all your network channels, plus record them for later viewing. Some people might just use a PVR to watch TV on their PC, while others will record shows and burn them to DVD. PVR is becoming very inexpensive these days that almost anyone can afford it.
Gmail + Growl
Submitted on April 29th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Reviews and Email and Productivity and The Mac Side and Software
No. of comments (2)
I came across this link on del.icio.us. It’s a gMail notifier through Growl which is another notifying program which you can customize to notify you of any changes in any program your running. Unfortunately we all PC users can’t use this. It’s only for Mac users!!! I don’t have a Mac so I can’t even test out Growl or even Gmail+Growl. Someone test it out and tell me how it is. I’m hearing some rave reviews on it, so give it a try.
Growl is a simple tool that allows applications to send out notifications to your screen. Notifications appear as small windows with a bit of text and an icon. Gmail+Growl works inside of Gmail notifier to send Growl notifications whenever new mail is received.
In the case of Gmail+Growl’s notifications, the icon is that of the sender’s Address Book entry and the text is the subject and an excerpt of the message. However, Growl notifications can look very different depending on which Growl display you use.
Quote via wafflessoftware.net
Yahoo! Go beta
Submitted on April 28th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Reviews and Audio and Video and Windows
No. of comments (2)
Yahoo has finally come out with their own all in oneDVR/media software for your PC. I’ve tinkered around a little bit and it’s pretty slick. Very cool and eye appealing user interface but uses quite a bit of your computers resources. Overall this Yahoo Go program can act as your DVR, music player, photo and video player. What I didn’t like was the menu system. It only has a “Back” button which becomes tedious to use once your going through a huge list of folders. They need to actually put a “Home” or a “Menu” button on every page so that it can take your right back to the main menu. Also I tried editing the album art cause it was displaying the wrong one and I couldn’t. By default it will use the image it sees in the directory/root closest to the music track. I didn’t have a tv tuner card to actually check out the DVR functionality of the program. If anyone can give me a heads up on it I’d much appreciate it. Once again go check it out yourself at yahooGo beta.
Parazz Mini Viewer
Submitted on April 20th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Storage and Reviews and The Mac Side and Windows
No. of comments (1)
I know, I KNOW!!! I’ve been talking about photo online services over and over again. But I am a photographer/graphics designer and I’m always constantly looking for places to store my photos. I’ve been using Parazz for awhile because they upgraded my account for free since I was a beta-tester. They’ve got lots of work to do but overall great service/concept.
They’ve recently rolled out a new feature called the “Parazz Mini Viewer”. It’s actually a small Flash driven photo album that you can post on your own website. I’ve posted mine on my blog. You can go check it out by clicking here. They’ve still got some bugs to work out, such as: none of the photos actually link out to the actual image. This service is a work in progress. Much to improve here but they are heading in a good direction. Check them out at www.parazz.com or stop by my album at www.parazz.com/albums/j5uh.
Zooomr
Submitted on April 19th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Storage and Reviews and Services
No. of comments (4)
Zooomr - I just started using this new online photo service about a month ago. Found it on Techcrunch blog. I like it but once again loads kinda slow!!! Tagging feature is awesome, I’d say it’s better than Flickr and Parazz. But I wish they had an uploading program for your desktop so you can just drag & drop photos into the uploader like Flickr and Parazz does. Also Zooomr offers you 50mbs monthly bandwidth. Thats 30 more mbs than Flickr. Check them out.
Hardware Review: VBox Cat’s Eye 150 HDTV tuner
Submitted on April 17th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Reviews and Hardware
No. of comments (8)
HDTV is becoming more and more mainstream these days. There are HDTV TV sets, antennas, pc cards, and your cable/satelite company should offer HDTV channels in a package. The difference between HDTV through your cable/satelite box and just a HDTV reciever is, HDTV through your cable/satelite company requires their box and cost extra on top of your digital cable/satelite package, and just using a HDTV reciever or PC add-on card makes the HDTV channels free since it’s OTA (over the air). Today we have the VBox Cat’s Eye 150 HDTV tuner to review. HDTV is great since you can watch all the local network channels in HD format and record them for later usage. HDTV is one of those things that we’d all love to have in our homes. Problem is HD hardware is too expensive for the average person.
Lack of everything
Submitted on April 8th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Announcements
No. of comments (10)
*Please note that anything I have said about the staff is not meant to be insulting, or hurtful. I was just being blunt about it when I wrote this. If you have a problem with anything please contact me, as some others have done already. Also to the writers of TM, I would like to talk to you, so please email me if you can.*
Contacts:
Mike Raymond: mike at tardmonkey . org
Jay Koby: theblue at wkol . be
Well since it seems that no one from the staff is posting anything, the site seems to be dead. I however have got enough hardware reviews this month to post some stuff, but I know that you the users don’t just want to read hardware reviews. The other thing is that when I publish a review the tag that allows me to have the “Read More” link seems to be broken. When I publish anything the whole review will show up on the front page. I will only publish the reviews like this if need be, otherwise I wouldn’t want to do something like this at all. I don’t know what’s going on with everyone else as I haven’t been able to talk to anyone and the writing staff is MIA.
As for myself I have been really busy trying to keep the site afloat with getting hardware reviews and doing a ton of behind the scenes work. I know a lot of you don’t see the kind of work I do for the site since a lot of it is hidden, but I can tell you that I haven’t slacked off doing my jobs. In the past few weeks I have gotten some amazing pieces of hardware to review for Tipmonkies, but I don’t think my reviews alone will keep the site going as it takes a whole team to complete a job. For this I am sorry to our readers for having to deal with the lack of everything on this site. I will answer any comments that anyone may have for me to the best that I can.
Hardware Review: XTracpads Hybrid
Submitted on April 2nd, 2006 by admin
Filed under Reviews and Hardware
No. of comments Comments Off
Mouse pads are a piece of hardware that we need. Most people have moved to optical mice and feel that there is no need for a mouse pad. However there are many aftermarket mouse pads available on the market today designed for gamers, and designers alike. XTracpads is a well known maker of mouse pads. For those of you who don’t know who they are, you should try out one of their products. Today XTracpads sent us the Hybrid XTracpad for us to review. The Hybrid is unlike the rest of their lineup as it mixes the hard surface pads with the cloth ones. It’s like having the best of both worlds.
