USB to Bluetooth

By far the grossest part of the mouse is its tail. I mean, the rest of the mouse is cute and furry and small, and then there’s that long, snakey tail. It’s even worse when the tail has no hair. So imagine the benefits of tail-less mice. All the benefits without the grossness (assuming that the mice are plague free).

Interestingly, the same concept holds largely true for the other kind of mice. I mean, imagine how awesome your life would be if your mouse had no cables, no dongles, nothing but your computer and your mouse, living together in wireless harmony. It’s almost a lion and lamb type of situation.

Well, Radtech has done their part for unity in the world by creating a totally awesome 5-button bluetooth mouse. So long as your computer is Bluetooth capable, you’ll never have to look at a mouse cord again. Check it out.

You’re right, this isn’t a hair blog. In fact, I’d like to make sure that this blog never has anything to do with hair. Hair is gross unless it’s firmly planted in somebody’s head. Otherwise, it’s no good. Anywhere. Fortunately, I’m not talking about cheap fake dreads you picked up in the back of the nasty dollar store down the street. No no, we’re talking about extending your TOSLink signal up to 200 feet. This is cool because there are tons of DVI extenders and HDMI extenders.  But up ’til now, there were no really good options to extend digital optical audio. Fortunately, the nice folks at D-Mexx decided that the world needed to be able to extend their audio along with their video. So checlk out their gift to the audiophiles of humanity, the Range-X Standard TOSLINK Cable Extender. And because they like you they made it lightweight, hum resistant (proof, even?), and really, really long.

So there you are, driving down a lonely country road, taking in the scenery and smelling that sweet country air, when *BAM* a meteor hits the hood of your ‘76 Caddy, which erupts into flames. You hurl yourself from your flaming whip and pull out your cell phone to get some help. But what’s this? Out of batteries! Cursing, you realize that your charger is in the car, which now resembles a slag heap on the wrong side of town. You could really use a Battery Backup Mobile Phone Charger.

Maybe next time, you say to yourself, as you begin the long trudge back into town…

Yesterday we charted the single highest day of traffic that Sewell Direct has ever had. This is obviously really exciting for us, and it also provides us a chance to look back and examine the things that have allowed us to get to this point. A couple of things strike me as being major contributors.

First of all, I can’t say enough about the importance of creating an SEO friendly site. We have some great expertise that has helped us to create a site that is well-organized, well-linked, and easy to navigate. This has been nice, because every time there’s a weather update from Yahoo (like the one that just happened) or an algo shift with Google, our pages seem to rank better and better. Some of this can be attributed to luck, but I think that far more of it is a result of the skill and hard work of our SEO.

Another reason I think that we have done so well is that in addition to our site being extremely SEO friendly, it’s also a great user experience. People come to our site and find what they’re looking for, and it motivates them to come back again, as well as suggest it to their friends and family. Another reason for this success is, I feel, due to a diversification of traffic channels. We’ve put a lot of time and effort into developing several different avenues of getting traffic, keeping the ones that work and moving past the ones that don’t. Finally, we have gone to a lot of effort to add thousands of SKUs to our website. Simply put, there are just more things for people to find, and they do. (see SEO) Think of it as “add it, and they will come.”

Ultimately, we’re successful because of our customers. Thanks for choosing to do your business with Sewell. We appreciate your business, and we hope you’ll continue to come back as we continue to seek to provide superior service and selection for you, our customers. Cheers!

I’m kind of a geek when it comes to cars. I love ‘em. I also love gadgets, especially Bluetooth gadgets (hence this blog’s name.) Mix the two of them and I get a little weak in the knees, which is exactly what happened when I saw the Scosche iPod Wireless Bluetooth Car Kit. Just plug this thing into the RCA auxiliary jacks on your car stereo, and you’re done with installation. (You can also connect a microphone. More on that in a sec.) Anyway, once you’re installed, just attach your iPod to the Bluetooth transmitter and as soon as you’re in range, you’ll be able to listen to your tunes over Bluetooth on your car stereo. So this is freakin’ awesome, I’m thinking. I mean, I don’t even have to take my iPod out of my pocket! But the coolness continues. You know that Bluetooth phone you’re toting around? Yeah, you can link that up through this kit as well (hence the microphone.) Ridiculously cool.

(Kit linked to is iPod only…)

So over at Sewell Direct (who sponsors this blog) we have quite the team of musically talented and partially insane. As a result, every so often, we feel the need to record some totally awesome custom hold music for the company so that customers have something a little more interesting (and more blatantly promotional) to listen to. Our first effort was a Jack Johnson-esque riff with some catchy lyrics that we call “Hold Music.” Despite the musical quality and creative name of “Hold Music,” we decided to give it another crack this last Friday, and the result, a folk-style song with a solid message, we have chosen to call “Hold Music 2.” Unfortunately, I have no link to “Hold Music 2,” so you’ll just have to call Sewell and get put on hold. Which hopefully won’t happen too often.

If you don’t mind looking a little goofy (which, I know I don’t) and you love on-the-go movie watching (which, I know I do), then this is the item for you. The iTheater Video Glasses are the equivalent of watching a 50″ bigscreen TV from 8.5 ft. away. Only it’s small enough to fit on your head. It’s light, comfortable, and supports sound as well as video. And before we go any further, an included cable allows you to use your iPod Video with these glasses. Now your video is portable AND enjoyable (goodbye 1″ screen…) Caution: Do not use while walking.

Well, it’s not Bluetooth, but it’s USB and it’s a snake that sounds like it should have blue teeth… Yeah, anyway, basically the SoundTech Lightsnake USB to Instrument Cable is a neat-o adapter cord that lets you plug just about anything with a 1/4″ jack into your computer via USB. Most of the time you have to go through the hassle of connecting up through an exterior audio interface that works the conversion, but now you can do basically the same thing with a basic cable. For the clutter-averse, musically inclined among us, this is fantastic news.

As the schism between regular and high-def TV becomes more defined and as HDTV begins to take dominance, we’re all starting to realize one thing: high def looks a lot better when it’s done right. Unfortunately, there are those of us trying to use our old analog sources, which doesn’t translate real well into high def. You end up getting “jaggies,” blurred images, or worse… *shudder*. Fortunately, there are solutions out there that will automatically upscale your images to better fit with HD displays. Unfortunately, most of these solutions are wicked expensive. Fortunately, DVDO has pity on the common man by providing the (relatively) affordable iScan VP20. This hub/scaler lets you connect your composite, component, S-video, or HDMI sources to your display. It upscales the ones that need it, and switches between them all at your whim. Pretty much it’s an all-in-one solution. Let the healing begin…

Engadget reports that a man has sucessfully been able to cook an egg on the bottom of his MacBook. This reminds me of the time that my buddy and I made a “buddy burner” (my friend’s name for it. What it’s really called I don’t know.) out of an aluminum can and a household candle and managed to cook an egg on it over the course of about 20 minutes or so. I imagine this was a similar, if not much more expensive experience. But to highlight the more pressing problem, imagine what this is doing when it’s on his lap for an extended amount of time! All of a sudden the idea of laptop cooling pads just started sounding a lot better.