Stateside With Rosalea: The AntiiPhone

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With the Apple uNowot being released on Friday, I thought I'd give you a squizz inside Rosalea's gizmological universe, where no bank robberies, contracts or monthly subscriptions are required.

Just $3 gets you the AudioSolutions scanner radio. It comes preloaded with thousands of Radio Worker Beings who are only too happy to program your listening choices without any effort required on your part. Just click the big silver scanner button when you get bored and it moves you to another station. Also a clock (with an optional hourly chime), stopwatch, alarm, and calendar. Excellent sound quality, and because of the AudioScanner I'm now a totally committed fan of KCSM Jazz Radio. No better soundtrack for my morning and evening commutes!

For a mere $5 you can be the proud owner of the link*it audio broadcaster, which allows you to transmit the crappy digital audio from your LCD monitor--on account of you couldn't afford matching external speakers--to yer olde stereo system, which produces immensely superior analog sound with a kickin' bass courtesy of its homemade woofer.

Still spending only single digits ($8), sleep with the wonders of science right next to your pillow--a travel alarm that synchronizes itself to the radio time signal generated by NIST's atomic clock in Colorado! Besides displaying the time in big numbers (that light up in the night if you just hit the snooze button on the top of the clock), the Ravinia's face also shows which time zone it's giving you the time for, the temperature, and the day and date. You can set two alarms. It is a model of function simplicity and style, destined for a design museum some day or my name's not Helvetica.

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We're up in the double and triple digits now, with the RCA rabbit ears setting you back about $15 and the Tivax digital TV tuner costing.... well, I don't know how much it costs, because it was a "gift" I chose when I donated $150 bucks to KCSM. With just the rabbit ears and the Tivax, I can get 10 free-to-air digital stations, many of them public service stations that have programming other than the incessant violence, sex, and celebrity-seeking trash that's on the national networks. (Analog signals will be turned off in the US in February 2009.)

Last but far from least, my beloved Sony Mylo Communicator, which I've had for nearly a year now. It costs $350 and allows you to glom onto WiFi networks to surf the web, read your email, and make VOIP phone calls. (Many, many places of business, public libraries, and some metropolitan areas have free WiFi now--BART and AC Transit are even providing it on some train and bus services in the Bay Area.)

You can also set up a Mylo to Mylo local network so you can share files with friends. It stores photos, MP3s, and MPEG4 videos. But best of all, for me, it allows the creation of text files, so you can store your shopping list or write a novel on your lengthy way to and from work. The soft keypad is a delight to use, even when standing on a train holding on to the back of a seat to stay steady with one hand and just using one hand to text.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, yes that is a VCR and it still works, but I also have a DVD player/recorder attached to the TV.

So, there you have it. How to have fun without putting a hose into your wallet so some corporate giant can suck everything out of it once a month.

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

--PEACE--

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