I received a pair of Razer Kraken headphones yesterday to replace a much cheaper pair of Logitech USB ones that I had to replace due to a faulty USB connection (yes, I may have dropped my laptop a few times with them connected).  I’m not going to lie, one of the main reasons that I bought this pair of headphones was because it was on sale for just under $50.  The other reason, though, is because of the good name that Razer has in the hardware industry.  They make great mice, so I figured I would take a chance on their headphones.

Out of the box

There wasn’t a ton of packaging, as one might expect with a set of headphones.  Simple clear box that you just tear apart to get at the goodies inside.

What’s inside?

• Headphones
• 3.5mm extension cord
• Instruction manual

How they perform

The computer I’m using is a Sony Vaio laptop which is great for media consumption and has a great NVidia powered soundcard.

I initially tried the headphones out with a couple of movies I had on my laptop.  The sound was…less than impressive, I’m going to have to say.  The sound was a tad on the tinny side.  I alleviated this a little by increasing the volume, but at low volumes, the issue remained.   I’m not saying they sound terrible, just not any better and, in some cases, worse than my older cheaper Logitech USB headphones.

Now, these are called Analog Music & Gaming Headphones, so I shouldn’t judge them on TV alone.  So, I moved on to listening to some music on rdio and music is where these headphones really begin to shine.  I decided to start with Daft Punk’s Tron Soundtrack and the sound was instantly much much better than my initial experience with video.  Rich sounds, deep bass, and just crystal clear audio.

Overall

I haven’t yet tested these headphones with any games yet, but my main usage will be video and music so I’m just going to leave the review with the information above.   Overall, while I was a little disappointed with the Razer Kraken headphones while watching video, I’m more than happy with their performance with music (which I assume will also be the case with gaming).

For the price I got them for (less than $50 on sale), I can’t complain at all.  They are a good, if not great, replacement for my previous set.

The post Razer Kraken Headphones Review appeared first on 2BlueSolutions' Tech Blog.

Personally, I love Kickstarter projects that marry technology with education for toddlers.  Having one toddler and one ‘soon-to-be’ toddler makes me keep my eyes open for new and interesting ways I can share my love of technology with my little ones.  This past week, I have found two projects that really piqued my interest (enough to write this post).

The previous one was Bridging Book mentioned in another post.  The latest one is My Little Geek, showcased in the Kickstarter video below.

My Little Geek is all about educating pre-school kids in a tech-savvy world.

My Little Geek is all about educating pre-school kids in a tech-savvy world. Our first book taught kids the alphabet using Electromagnetism and Zombies and sold thousands of copies all over the world. Now that we’ve proven this can be a success we are ready for something even bigger but we need your help!

We are creating two new books called Nerdy Numbers and Sci-fi Shapes, plus an iPad app.  The app will have digital versions of these two new books and the original My Little Geek alphabet book, plus a dozen educational mini-games.

Books and Apps

You can learn more on their Kickstarter campaign or on their website:   http://www.mylittlegeek.com/

This seems like a great little educational product that I would love to test out on my kids when the time comes.

The post Kickstarter: My Little Geek appeared first on 2BlueSolutions' Tech Blog.

Bridging Book from Engage Labs looks to be a brilliant marriage between your iPad and a children’s book.  The best way to describe this is by having you watch the video below.

How does it work?

The book works by interacting with the iPad in a slightly unusual way.  Magnets in the book, which give off a varying magnetic field depending on which page is being read, interact with the built-in digital compass on the iPad.

Personally, I love inventions such as this.  Being able to amaze my child with technology is pretty much my life-long dream and this experimental product showcases the many possibilities available to us in the future.

To find out more – Engage Lab

The post Bridging Book – Interactive Books For Your iPad appeared first on 2BlueSolutions' Tech Blog.

I’ve apparently been living under a box for the last few months considering I am just watching these trailers for Superman – Man of Steel now.  So, I thought I would gather them in one place to show you as well…in case you missed it as well.  It’s an origin story, but it appears to be a star studded and action packed movie.  I’m really excited.

Superman – Man of Steel – Trailer #1

Superman – Man of Steel – Trailer #2

Superman – Man of Steel – Trailer #3

The post Superman Man of Steel appeared first on 2BlueSolutions' Tech Blog.

I was recently asked to investigate why someone’s emails were being marked as spam.  Here is what I learned:

Don’t Make Your Signature Too Complex

The more complex a signature, the more likely it is to be marked as spam.  So, don’t make your signature heavy with links and images.  Keep it simple.  Instead of multiple links pointing towards Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc…make one link that points to a service such as about.me which gives you a ‘one-stop’ / ‘central’ location for all your online contact information.

Keep Imagery To A Minimum

Don’t include a ton of imagery and/or don’t make your whole email only an image.  These are common spammer tactics and can lead to your emails becoming falsely marked as spam.  Instead, use a mix of quality text and imagery to get your point across.

Use A Personal From Address

Don’t use a ‘from’ address like store@yourstore.com.  Instead, use something more personal such as dave@yourstore.com.  This gives the email a more personal feel and it will be less likely to be marked as spam.

Use Clean Subject Lines

Avoid using ‘spammy’ subject lines.  Think of spam you usually receive and avoid these mistakes

• Don’t use ALL CAPS.
• Avoid punctuation such as exclamation marks, dollar signs, and anything else ‘spammy’.
• Avoid phrases that include common spam words such as ‘free’, ‘win’, ‘earn’, etc.

Keep Your Body Clean

Follow the same rules as subject lines, but also avoid using fancy colours.

Conclusion

Keep it simple and you should be okay.  There is nothing you can do about a recipient marking your email as spam, but just be assured that that one person marking you as spam has no great effect on your overall email marketing plan.

The post Help Prevent Your Emails From Being Marked As Spam appeared first on 2BlueSolutions' Tech Blog.

Each year, I use the great Rdio service to create playlists of the top 5 or so songs from each band that I can find so that I can give a good listen to everyone playing.  It really helps with planning out what you want and do not want to see.

This year is no different.

2013 Playlists on Rdio

Friday

Saturday

(link)

Sunday

(link)

Coachella 2013 Announcement Poster

The post Coachella 2013 And RDIO Playlists appeared first on 2BlueSolutions' Tech Blog.

On Friday, January 11th, Aaron Swartz committed suicide.

For those that do not know Aaron Swartz was, among many things, a co-author of RSS (ie. those feeds you subscribe to on all those blogs you read) as well a co-owner of the immensely popular Reddit forums.

The Story

I have to admit, I only vaguely recall Aaron Swartz from when he did the initial download from the JSTOR repository a  few years ago. It kind of got lost in the ‘heat’ of the Wikileaks releases that were still ongoing at the time in 2010.

When I had originally read about the article, I could see where the guy was coming from.  Many taxpayer-funded research articles not being freely available seemed counter-intuitive to me. Of course, there are better ways to petition for free access to the documents then to knowingly break the terms of service of JSTOR and download their entire database in one go. That’s probably what separates little old me from a passionate activist.

Aaron Swartz’s main argument was “ opposing the privatization of knowledge”.

The Crime

A great write-up of what Aaron Swartz was accused of can be read here:  http://tech.mit.edu/V131/N30/swartz.html

If you don’t want to read the whole story, the short version is:  Guy hooks up laptop to MIT network (which is extremely fast) which runs a script which downloads the entire JSTOR archive over a few weeks.  Due to the intense speed of the downloads, MIT is blacklisted a couple of times by JSTOR (which is why MIT is involved in the case).  Security finds hidden laptop, sets up a hidden camera, identifies Aaron Swartz as suspect, arrest is made.

The twist, in the case, came when MIT pushed to have charges laid even though JSTOR did not.

The scope of the download was a violation of JSTOR’s terms-of-service agreement — users are typically limited to a few downloads at a time — although Swartz had legal access to all of the articles through his database account. JSTOR decided not to pursue any civil case against Swartz and urged the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Massachusetts to abandon the criminal case against him. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose computer network Swartz used to download the documents, did not do so

Another quote

According to the indictment, Swartz’s laptop had been using MIT’s network to rapidly download articles from JSTOR. JSTOR is an archive of academic journals to which many universities, including MIT, pay large amounts of money for access. The indictment describes these events as the final phase of Swartz’s three-month JSTOR downloading operation, bringing his total count of acquired JSTOR articles to 4.8 million. MIT valued that information at $50,000, according to the Cambridge Police incident report.

So, two very aggressive lawyers under the office of US Attorney Carmen Ortiz began pushing for what amounted to a prison sentence of decades for this ‘crime’. When the primary victim (JSTOR) dropped the charges, the lawyers decided to pursue the case. What role MIT played in this is yet to be determined. MIT themselves have appointed an internal investigator to probe their role.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Scott Garland and Stephen Heymann, working under Ortiz, filed 13 felony charges against Swartz, seeking decades of imprisonment. While Garland was formally the lead prosecutor and both men have a long history of prosecuting Internet activity, it was Heymann who handled all negotiations with Swartz and his attorneys, according to those lawyers. In vain, Swartz sought to reduce the charges.

Summary

The issue, to me, isn’t the crime but the “disproportionate reaction” by the lawyers.  It would appear that I am not alone in my thoughts.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation is pushing for changes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) that allowed the lawyers to push for such severe penalties in this case that caused such little harm to society.

What can be done?  A couple of things.

• You can sign a letter that will be sent to your representative in support of changes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)
• You can also sign a petition to hold Carmen Ortiz accountable for the actions of her office

The CFAA’s vague language, broad reach, and harsh punishments combine to create a powerful weapon for overeager prosecutors to unleash on people they don’t like. Aaron was facing the possibility of decades in prison for accessing the MIT network and downloading academic papers as part of his activism work for open access to knowledge. No prosecutor should have tools to threaten to end someone’s freedom for such actions, but the CFAA helped to make that fate a realistic fear for Aaron.

Links:  HuffingtonPost, International Business Times, Wikipedia, The Tech – Online Edition, Slate, EFF

The post Aaron Swartz – The Death of an Internet Pioneer appeared first on 2BlueSolutions' Tech Blog.

After years of hearing from our American friends how great Amazon Prime is, it is now available to Canadians.

What Is Amazon Prime?

By subscribing to Amazon Prime, you get access to:

• FREE Two-Day Shipping on millions of items
• No minimum order size
• Unlimited instant streaming of thousands of movies andTV shows with Prime Instant Videos
• A Kindle book to borrow for free each month from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library

Sounds great, right?  Well, actually that is what American members receive.

Amazon Prime For Canadians

So, what do Canadians get?  Still a pretty decent deal if you order a decent amount of product from Amazon.

• FREE Two-Day Shipping on millions of eligible items to most cities in Canada
• Discounted One-Day Shipping for as low as CDN$ 3.99/item
• FREE Standard Shipping where One-Day and Two-Day Shipping are unavailable
• No Minimum Purchase – don’t worry about meeting a threshold to get free shipping

So, as you can see, Canadians miss out on Amazon Prime Instant Videos which is Amazon’s version of Netflix which is no great surprise considering the video licensing mess in Canada.  I am disappointed to miss out on the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library, but I assume it is another licensing issue with Canadian publishers.

Is It Worth It?

Amazon Prime for Canadians is $79/year.

Do you spend more than $79 / year on shipping from Amazon?  Personally, I do not.  Without the added benefits of Amazon Prime Video and the Kindle Lending Library, the cost just isn’t worth it to me.  Products ship extremely fast to me as is, so even the two-day shipping option isn’t much of an incentive.

Overall, it’s a great first step by Amazon, but it either needs an adjustment on price or services on par with what American customers receive already.

Link: http://www.amazon.ca/gp/prime

The post Amazon Prime For Canadians appeared first on 2BlueSolutions' Tech Blog.

Right away, it appears the app is a little broken for Canadians. If you try to download the first free bit of content from within the app itself, you get a “This is not available to Canadians” message.

So, you might think the app is broken (well, it is because it has a broken link in there). The real issue is not that the content is unavailable to Canadians, it’s just that the link in the app is incorrect.

You can still grab the items yourself from the store. For example, today’s broken link is for a Maroon 5 EP. Just search for it in the iTunes Store and download it for free yourself.

Problem solved.

The post Apple’s 12 Days of Christmas App for Canadians appeared first on 2BlueSolutions' Tech Blog.

An interesting new Kickstarter campaign for a very MS Surface-like keyboard for the iPad

Features

These are the features  of the new NIBIQÜ keyboard for iPad:

• Ultra thin (the keyboard is 3.5 mm, 0.14”, thick). Its design allows the integration and perfect fit for the iPad (second and third generation, fourth coming soon)
• The support system, using magnets, allows one to change the tilt of the iPad.
• Magnetic connection directly with the iPad, using the \”L connection piece\”, avoiding the use of additional batteries for the keyboard.
• The iPad can be placed both in landscape and in portrait mode.
• Lightweight, weighs only 200 g.
• Available in 5 colours to suit different styles (Black, white, pink, blue and green).

Opinion

Typing on the iPad isn’t always the easiest thing to do and, the problem is, I’m doing more and more of it lately.  I’ve tried apps such as SlideWriter to help ease typing and I’ve also looked into gadgets such as Touchfire which are supposed to make typing easier.

Now, along comes the Nibiqu which seems to satisfy many of my requirements.  First and foremost is the the keys on the keyboard actually have ‘travel distance’.  They move up and down like a real keyboard!  One of the main reasons I really liked the Microsoft Surface was due to this feature of having a cover that actually looks AND feels like a real keyboard.

Link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nibiqu/nibiqu-the-thinnest-keyboard-for-your-ipad

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