Mom's Gadgets

My husband and I just got got back from a trip to North Carolina.  We flew there but then after landing got a rental car and drove the 20 or so miles to the convention center to the conference I was attending.  This was new unchartered territory for us, so we had taken my husband’s TomTom GPS system along.  Boy, was I glad we did.  The ever familiar, robot like voice of the TomTom assuredly telling us which left or right to take was a welcomed sound in the tiny little rental car.

I have been repeatedly impressed with this gadget as we have used it on a couple of family vacations, and other trips around.  We purchased it after I had a horrible experience getting lost in New Orleans, and after returning there with good ole Tom, I was glad to have made the purchase.  Tom will definitely not allow you to get lost.  Its touchscreen and easy use features are a must for anyone who travels.

In fact, the only issue we’ve had with Tom is keeping him charged up so that we can enjoy his presence throughout the trip.

There’s nothing yuckier than drinking lukewarm coffee or tea. I like mine piping hot but sometimes that’s hard to achieve when you’re on the road. So, in comes the fully programmable thermal auto mug. This sleek and stainless steel 16 oz mug with integrated heating element and insulated interior construction is powered by your car’s lighter adaptor. It is safe and convenient to use with an automatic shut-off function. It comes with a sure-grip handle, safety sip lid and a non-skid bottom. You can preset temperatures and it has an easy-to read digital LCD display for you to monitor the temperature and it also alerts you when your desired temperature is reached.

As you’ve seen on this blog I sometimes like to take lots of screen shots. I just love them. To me nothing can better help people understand than screen shots or videos. I have lots of stuff I’d like to show my friends or put on the blog that’s from my Palm yet, none of the screen capture apps really worked for me.

I decided to get ZGrab - a free screen capture app for Palm. It’s a little odd to use because the screen capture button is the off button. So you literally turn the unit off to take a snap shot. But hey as long as it works and I’ve tried Snap and all the rest. Only this one worked for me.

It does save in the odd .pcx format so you have to convert it before you can share or post to your blogs. Not super handy if you’re posting on the go, but what I grab the file from my Palm, open it with IrfanView - another excellent free image viewer and simply save as Jpg. Easy peasy.

The colors do look a lot brighter and not quite what I see on the PDA itself. But at this point I don’t really care much about that. All that matters is I can take a screen shot.