High-Tech Turkey Day

Don't let the suit fool you: Every night that thing is off and I'm cooking dinner for the wife and kids. Thanksgiving is no exception, though I do get a bit of help for holiday meals.

Still, I'm a high-tech kinda guy, obviously. Here's what I use in the kitchen for both everyday meals and the big extravaganzas.

* Chef's Choice Model 130 Professional Sharpening Station (pictured) - I use a regular sharpening steel from day to day but when knives get really dull I turn to an electric sharpener. I've got the Model 110, but the new Model 130 has an easier time at guiding the blades through to get the perfectly honed edge. Carving a turkey with a dull knife is not just hard, it's dangerous.

* Taylor #9842 Commercial Anti-Microbial Instant Read Digital Thermometer - How do you know if the turkey or the prime rib is done? Slicing into it is a fool's errand. The Taylor instant-read thermometer registers quickly and includes an anti-bacterial sheath to keep germs away. Cheap, too.

Read more

How to Clean Your LCD Screen

Old CRT-based TVs and computer monitors were tough. For the most part, you could spritz them with Windex and wipe them down when they got dirty. I never had a problem getting a TV clean.

But now the world has moved to LCD, plasma, and other flat-panel technologies. And with laptops especially, screens are very prone to getting filthy because people just can't keep their fingers off of them. But how do you clean an LCD? Here's what I do.

For starters: No Windex. While LCDs have glass inside them, they are coated with an optical film, and the chemicals in glass cleaner (namely ammonia) can damage that film. That film can also be easily scratched, so don't use paper towels or any dry cloth other than microfiber or other lint-free cloth either. Also, as with a TV, be sure to turn the device off before you try to clean it and until it is totally dry, as any liquid can cause a short.

Personally, I now use a commercial LCD screen cleaner (the kind that comes in a spray bottle and includes a special cloth) for all my LCD monitors, LCD TVs, and laptop screens. I've never had a problem (though I've read reports of people who've had discoloration due to these cleaners), and my screen always comes out sparkling. You can usually find them near checkout at any electronics or computer store, or get one online. Check out these examples. That Belkin cleaner looks just perfect. Klear Screen is also commonly recommended, but it's much more expensive.

Getting the Good Word on Portable Player Terms

When shopping for MP3 players, the following terms may pop up either on the box or the advertisements. You might already know what some of them mean; others might be completely foreign. Either way, here's a translation of what you could encounter.
Skip protection

When you shake a CD player, the laser read head inside moves, making the sound skip. So, those clever engineers added skip protection. When your CD player starts reading the CD, it reads some of the song in advance, storing it in memory that isn't affected by movement. Then, should the little laser doohickey get jostled, the player reads the music from the memory - the buffer. Skip protection technology keeps the song playing smoothly.

Sometimes skip protection is measured in seconds - the number of seconds of music that's read ahead. Other times, skip protection is measured by the amount of memory used to store the music. Either way, the larger the number, the smoother the song plays under rough conditions.

Microphone

Everybody stumbles on a key thought from time to time that could change their lives - if only they could remember it when they got home. So some MP3 players add a microphone for recording those thoughts that seem so important at the time.

Beware, however: MP3 players don't record sounds in MP3 format. They record them as a WAV file. An MP3 player also records sounds in a low-quality format that's fine for speech but lousy for everything else. Most limit the recordings to a few minutes, as well. Even if you do smuggle one into a concert, you'll get only a bad recording of the first part of one song.

Read more

Selecting a Phone Based on Its Camera

First off, understand that the vast majority of the cameras on cell phones are awful, and that a slim majority are barely passable. Fortunately, most new handsets now have 1.3-megapixel cameras in them instead of the 0.3-megapixel cams that were common as recently as 2005, so more phones are moving into the barely passable category. Still, choosing a phone based on the quality of its camera will likely be an exercise in frustration. With few exceptions (which I'm getting to), know that most cell phone cameras are pretty much the same.

To answer your latter question, megapixels are more important on a cell phone camera. Why? Virtually no camera phones sold in the U.S. have optical zoom at all (some overseas models do). What you might be hearing about is digital zoom, which isn't zoom at all but rather a method for cropping and enlarging a picture while it's still in the camera. Digital zoom doesn't make a photo any closer at all, and most users disable digital zoom because it can actually decrease the quality of the resulting images.

Now let's get down to your real question. If you don't want to carry a separate camera (which will give you much better results), I have one phone on the top of my list for you: The Samsung SCH-a990 (pictured), which has the best camera of any U.S.-marketed cell phone, featuring a whopping 3.2-megapixel camera and a design that actually makes it easy to take pictures with it. (The phone has a screen that flips around and covers up the numeric keypad, making the phone look and feel just like a standalone digicam.) Per the previous paragraph, though, even the a990 doesn't have optical zoom. However, I've used the a990 extensively and can vouch for its impressive abilities. You won't find a better cameraphone on our shores today.

Read more

Wi-Fi Hotspot Primer for the Uninitiated

We've written a lot on Yahoo! Tech about how to find Wi-Fi hotspots, but for anyone who is unsure of how to go about linking to a Wi-Fi network with a laptop, or if you're worried about security issues that may come with accessing the Internet in a public venue, check out this aptly named primer on Small Biz Resources, The Definitive Guide to Wireless Hotspots.

Warning: It goes into a lot of detail, much of which many of us know. But for those who have basic questions about working with a public wireless network but are too shy to ask someone because they think they should be in the know, it's helpful. You'll find a rundown on how to hook up to a wireless network if you're laptop doesn't search for one automatically and learn about the different paid and free Wi-Fi plans offered at restaurants, coffee houses, and book stores.

The advice on security concerns is particularly useful. David Haskin writes that it is imperative to have one or more firewalls on. First, make sure your Windows XP firewall is on. But you can also use additional firewalls, such as Zone Alarm.

Digital Versus Optical Zoom

With so many new cameras available at great prices for the holidays, you'll undoubtedly be making comparisons on all sorts of features. One question I recently got was about the difference between an optical and a digital zoom.

First, the camera basics: A lens focuses the light from the scene onto the sensor. The sensor used to be a piece of film, but in digital cameras it's a light-sensitive circuit. People are often comparing cameras by their sensors (it's the sensors that are measured by their megapixels), but the lens is an equal partner in producing an image, and lenses haven't received much critical attention.

With a zoom lens, you can change the field of view without having to walk closer to or farther from the scene. When a zoom lens is in its "wide" setting, you get the largest area of the scene, and as you zoom "in" you continually look at smaller and smaller areas of the scene, revealing more detail.

Most of today's consumer digital cameras have an optical lens zoom. The range of the lens is the ratio of the length of the lens when zoomed in all the way versus its length on the widest setting. Zoom lenses with 3X or 5X range are very common. The greater the range of the lens, the more options you have each time you take a picture—zoom out to show the whole family group, or zoom in for a head shot of the wailing baby. Zoom out for a mountain scene, or zoom in on the wildlife.

Because today's cameras work with digital images (they actually contain a small computer), it's possible to use digital image processing to zoom in a bit more once the optical zoom has reached its limit. Typical digital zooms give you an additional 2X of range. The problem is that the image processing has to work hard to create more information than was originally present in the sensor. Digital zooms often make images look pixilated since they are putting in "the zoom" with digital effects and not a real lens.

The zoom you really want to pay money for is the optical zoom. And don't be misled by thinking the two are cumulative. A 3X optical zoom with a 2X digital zoom does not mean that you're getting a 6X zoom. My advice: When comparing cameras, only pay attention to the optical zoom—it's the one that you'll be using 99.9 percent of the time.

Read more