Hardware Review: Pebble Steel Smartwatch

About a month ago I took my first steps into wearable tech and asked for a Pebble Steel Smartwatch for my birthday. For those of you who don't know about the Pebble it is a Smartwatch that communicates with your smartphone via bluetooth to perform various functions while your phone remains in your pocket or across the room. It was the most successful kickstarter project ever raising in excess of 10 million dollars. The steel is the second version of the Pebble.

Image found on SmartWatching.com

What does it do?
The main purpose of the pebble is to have certain functions of you iPhone available on your wrist without having to remove your phone from your pocket, or go across the room to check it. It comes out of the box ready to receive notifications, control your music, and set alarms. Oh and it also tells time! There are also a bunch of different apps you can install to increase the functionality.

To many people having notifications on their wrist doesn't sound like it would be that useful, many friends have told me they don't have a hard time pulling out their phone. That was my original feeling when the pebble launched but then I heard many people say it was actually way more convenient to have it on their wrist than they thought it would be.

Hardware Review: Jot Stylus

Update: The Jot Classic that I refer to in this article is no longer available from Adonit, the other versions of the Jot are still available.

Finding a stylus that works well on a capacitive touch screen has been a challenge since the first iPhone came out. Prior to that time most people's experience with touch screens was in the checkout line at Walmart signing their name, or if they were either an important CEO, or just very nerdy with a palm pilot. I was a nerdy kid who did not buy much so my experience was in the latter. But these two touch screens shared a commonality that has never been present it the iPhone, they used a stylus to write and tap on a resistive touch screen. If you wanted to use your finger you couldn't, the best you could do was your finger nail.

Enter the iPhone, the first widespread device with a capacitive touch screen. Steve Jobs gambled that people actually did not like tapping around with a stylus on a Palm Pilot, or hunting about with a BlackBerry scroll wheel. He thought they would like to just be able to touch the screen with their fingers and have it work. It turns out he was right.

But a problem has remained since then and that is the trouble with hand writing on an iPhone or iPad (or any capacitive touch, rip off phone that has followed). It's not that people haven't tried to create styli for touch screens, but almost all have tried from the same basic concept: lets take something that feels like a finger and put it on the end of a stick for people to write with.

This concept has resulted in many cheap, and even some expensive, rubbery tipped styli. None of which work well. The problem in that they have no precision at all, they are the touch screen equivalent of drawing with a blunted crayon.

Enter Adonit. A creative team of thinkers who looked at the problem in a new way and came up with the Jot stylus:

Their idea was to make a stylus that felt like writing with a ball point pen, something no one had ever done before because even the old resistive touch styli felt more like a pencil.

The Jot uses an innovative concept to accomplish its goal. It is tipped with a metal ball covered with a conductive disk. The ball presses down on the disk to activate the screen with much more precision than either your finger or a rubber tipped disk. The disk is clear so that you can see what you are drawing.

Their are certain apps that have been optimized for the Jot to make it even more precise, but it works well even in apps that haven't been. I have found the Jot to be the most natural writing experience I have ever had on the iPad or iPhone. I have owned two Jots for several months now, both the Jot Classic, and the Jot Flip (which reverses to a normal ink pen).

The main complaint that I have with the Jot and that I have seen other have is that sometimes the disks that come on the Styli become "loose" and loose their precise nature. This has been the case on my Flip almost from the beginning and finally two weeks ago the disk fell off completely making it useless until I get a replacement disk.

Other than that it is one of the best companion products you can have to the iPad. Their is a large selection of Jots available now, including some that use bluetooth to increase accuracy and all for natural writing with the wrist down (I have not tried these).

Since its invention others have made precision styli but I have not yet had the chance to try any of those. If you are looking for a good stylus I highly recommend that you check out the Jot, especially if you were thinking about getting a rubber tipped that cost $10 or more you might as well just spend a little more for the much more precise Jot Classic.

Thanks for reading, that's all for now, but remember, live better.

If you have questions or comments about the jot please leave them below or tweet them to me @halduauthor

You can order a Jot from Amazon here (affiliate link).

Hardware Review: Karma hotspot

Name: Karma Hotspot
Stars: 4
Hardware Type: Cellular Hotspot
Price: $99 (when I bought it it was $89)

It's hard to be productive these days if you don't have internet. A hotspot lets you get internet wherever you are.

The Data Dilemma
My internet tends to be a little on the temperamental side, meaning it does not always like to work. Sometimes it likes to work only for specific devices and only in certain spots in my home. Unfortunately I don't have control of the router, my landlord does. That does have the plus side that I don't pay for my internet, so its not all bad. What is bad is that it tends to go out at the most inconvenient times, like right when an assignment or paper is due and the library is closed.

Because of this schizophrenic internet service I decided a cellular hotspot might be in order for emergencies. The problem is I hate data plans, I think they are the biggest ripoffs in the world. Can I tell you what I hate most about them? Ok, I will, you pay for data you may NEVER use! That thought just makes me sick in the heart. So I searched and searched and searched through every possible hotspot option available from the major carriers and the major prepaid brands. Everybody had activation fees and expiration dates.

Enter the Karma.
Karma is a new idea, and a breath of fresh air in the world of cellular data. The folks at Karma believe that you should only pay for data that you actually use, and they also believe that you should be rewarded for sharing with others.

You pay for your hotspot, they give you one gig of data free, you pay $14 for each additional gig, your data NEVER expires, every time someone new gets on your hotspot they get 100 free MB and you get 100 free MB for sharing. You never pay for other people's data usage, you only share your connection.

Features
Ok, so that probably sounded like a sales pitch, which it was not, I am not affiliated with Karma in any way. Let's examine some of the features to see how good they are.

• Coverage: the best pricing does you no good if you don't have coverage, and this is where Karma loses a star. 
• They cover 80 major U.S. cities. 
• Fortunately for me Provo is at the tail-end of the Salt Lake coverage.
• The coverage we get is pretty stable, just a few spots around that have a problem.
• If you live or travel in cities where there is coverage then its good deal, if not than its probably not for you.
• Social data: this is Karma's big push, share with others and get free data.
• Anyone around you can get onto it.
• Up to 8 devices
• They have to sign up or sign in with their own Karma account
• which automatically gets them 100 free MB
• And automatically gets the Karma owner 100 free MB
• It works if you are somewhere where a lot of people are looking for a free wifi connection
• Battery Life: Karma claims between 6-8 hours
• Seems to work fine for me
• I rarely charge the device, but I don't use it for extended periods of time very often.
• Size: the Karma is half the size of your smartphone
• It easily fits in your pocket allowing you to take wifi with you anywhere.

Conclusion

If you live where there is Karma coverage you can't get a better deal, unless you actually use several gigs of data every month in which case some of the major carries might be slightly cheeper on data prices. But Karma has sales almost every holiday dropping the price of a gig into the $10 range.

If you have any questions about Karma or choosing a hotspot please feel free to ask them in the comments below. Or answer this question: what would you find most helpful about having a cellular hotspot?

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Thanks for reading, and remember, live better.

You can purchase the Karma from Amazon here (Affiliate link)