Posts Tagged ‘Reviews’

Just a quick question… How “Saving Savvy” are you???

I´m asking because after careful deliberation I have arrived to the conclusion that I am not “Saving Savvy” at all… I used to be… Well… that was before I got married and had kids…

So I have a quick question for you. How do you manage to save money (do you????

One of the ways I have never explored before was using online vouchers (I am now a Burger King special offers subscriber… hehehe).

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Hey you sporty types!!! Are you running track and field?? Are you wearing North Face’s Hedgehog GTX?? No?? Then you’re doing it wrong!

No seriously… I am not a sporty type any more… I am an Adventure Race Marshall whenever I can and that’s that really… but if you ever competed you will know the importance of wearing the right pair of trainers…I am a sucker for track and field ones… and I appreciate comfy shoes… and that’s why after spending the past couple of weeks test driving North Face’s Hedgehog and I seriously recommend it.Well… the video bellow should tell all…

The Hedgehog is a great buy for all you sporty types… but it is also a great buy for the normal(ish… in a way of speaking) run-off-the-mill Joe like moi! If you want to go crazy and find out all the Tech Specks of it visit this page for the Hedgehog GTX and knock yourself out.

You can find the Hedgehog for sale at fitnessfootwear.com from £76.45 (they are doing a special offer for the Women’s Hedgehog for £44.95!! so hurry while it lasts!!! )

Remember… NEVER STOP EXPLORING!

Another Review by the UrbanVox HQ, powered by Fuel MyBlog

A Special one for you that want to get rid of the hair clogging your bath!!

You can find the  Turbo Snake for £9.99 in www.jmldirect.com and retailers like ASDA, Robert Dyas, TESCO and Wilkinson.

Another Review by the UrbanVox HQ, powered by Fuel MyBlog

That is when you press the on/off button on the TV remote…

The moment the Energenie people asked me if I’d be interested in reviewing a couple of gadgets that help you save energy I remember thinking “ummm… that has potential…” the moment they told me that one of them powers down the whole home entertainment system at the touch of the TV’s stand by button, I thought “yayyyy I can now be lazy and just turn the TV off at the remote!!!” (admit it… who likes to have to walk wall the way to the TV to turn on/off the button every time? Doesn;t it defeat the point of having a REMOTE control???)

And I was right!!!

They have sent me a some of their stuff to play with and let you know how it works.

The first one to come out of the box and to be connected to the TV was of course the AV Automatic Standby Shut-down that does just that: Turns off the equipment you left on standby (not just the TV, but everything connected to it) whenever you put the TV on Standby.

It was pretty easy to install, just plug the TV, DVD player, Freeview/Cable box, games consoles etc into one of the controlled sockets of the Standby Shutdown (if there’s any equipment that needs to be plugged in constantly there is an extra socket for it on the unit), stick the IR receiver on the front panel of the TV and start the power learning sequence.

During the Power Learning mode the unit will learn how much energy the equipment plugged into it spends so whenever you put your TV on standby and the unit will shut down the rest of the set in 1 minute.

Instant power saving without having to get up to push the button on the TV.

The only problem you might have is if your beloved wife still insists on turning the button on the TV set off…

Simple uh???

The other one they sent me was the Appliance Power Meter.

The Energy Saving Power Meter will measure the energy use (and calculate costs) of running household appliances. This helps you lower your power bill and reduce carbon emissions, as you discover which appliances are the worst energy offenders and then work out ways to limit their use.

I have to admit that I am not disciplined enough to use that one and make any sense of it as I usually assume a more live and let live posture to life… but The Wife LOVED that one out of the 2 gadgets the Energenie people sent. Yeah… She’s the one that does all our account balancing, document reading and reviewing, etc etc etc… I’m useless at that…

So I am going to use her own words to describe it after she test-drove it:

I don’t understand what it is supposed to do either. I suppose it is great if you want to measure and compare 2 ways to use an appliance. Am I right?

In the words of the Master.

But I am supposed it is a great tool in a “go green” house… not that we don’t go green… we recycle and we are venturing into cloth nappies… and we are growing our own veg… see… we are green…ish… don’t judge!

Energenie has a whole range of other products that you can fin on their website (www.energenie4u.co.uk) and the AV Automatic Shutdown sells for £15.99 and the Appliance Power Meter goes for £10.99 and they are really great buys if you are really considering to go green!

Hasta La Vista.

Those are the contents of my pockets at any given day.

I absolutely HATE to carry things on my hands and unless I’m out to take pictures, to meet a client or to one of our family adventures (in which case you can be sure I’ll be taking some sort of camera with me anyway) I avoid at all costs to carry bags, rucksacks, etc etc etc…

Let’s just say I like to travel light, so last month when I was on a contract to diagram a whole magazine working half from home and half from their offices I was daunting having to carry one of my external hard drives (which is attached to the big monster machine in the most difficult way there is to unplug it) as well as the laptop (yeah… they didn’t set up a work station for me there… saving money by not buying an extra licence for inDesign… go figure).

The solution believe it or not came in the form of a pen drive.

Yeah I know… now you are gonna ask me what’s so great about this pen drive… Well… YuuWaa is not just a mere pen drive, it combines 4GB flash drive bundled with up to 20 GB online storage space which you can access from any computer connected to the internet and if you are like me and you keep forgetting things on top of the table I have some great news for you: YuuWaa automatically backups the physic memory into the online storage so all you need to do to get the files you’ve stored into your pen drive is log into your YuuWaa account from any browser you like and retrieve it.

The interface you use to access files (both online and inside the pen drive) is very easy to use and it comes with some other funky features, like for example, if you want to share a folder or a file with someone else without sharing your password for the service, you can simply create and send them a ling to the files you want them to access and all pretty straight forward through the YuuWaa interface.

I have to admit that I was a bit sceptic with it all when I saw my wife using it and thought “fair enough… it is like having an FTP account on a pen drive… I wouldn’t buy one” but then I got to try it myself and well… I was wrong!

It simplifies things quite a lot with all the automatic update features and if you lose the pen drive you won’t lose the files you had in it which believe me, it can be quite handy.

The retail price for the YuuWaa starts at £19.99 (at Amazon) for the 4GB YuuWaa GO version and with it you get:

• The first flash drive to include online storage, backup and sharing services
• Combination of 4GB flash drive bundled with up to 20 GB online storage space
• Access files anytime, anywhere on our secure server via any Internet connection
• With the purchase of this product, get online services for FREE for 6 months (but maintaining your account after the free 6 months starts at £1.80 for a month’s storage with YuuWaa Go and £4.51 for a month’s storage with YuuWaa Plus and the more time you purchase in one go, the cheaper it gets. Ah… and YuuWaa are giving away an amazing 2400GB of storage.* Simply visit www.youwinyuuwaa.com before 30 June 2010 to try your luck and play the game.)
• Storage: YuuWaa Plus combines a flash drive with expandable online storage space
• Backup: Thanks to an automatic backup of your flash drive files, you never lose data
• Sharing: Easily share data with family, friends and colleagues with a simple drag and drop
• 128-bit-SSL technology for secure data transfer
• YuuWaa is provided by Gemalto, the world leader in digital security

And if you like free stuff, YuuWaa will be giving away 3 YuuWaa Go to the readers of the UrbanVox HQ. To enter is simple: just leave a comment or post a tweet linking to this post saying I want a yuuuuwaaaaa!!!

You can even do both to maximise your chances to win!!!

Simple right??? Now go on… leave your comment, share it, tweet it, etc etc… you have until Sunday 27/06/10 to do it.

Good luck!

Hasta La vista!