Time-shift your
favorite show.
TiVo works fine for recording TV fare, but its hard ware
runs almost $300, plus
roughly $130 a year. Your
cable service likely can do it
for less. Or, for about $150,
Elgato’s Eye TV Hybrid can
turn your Mac or PC into a
digital video recorder.
Popular brands: Elgato, TiVo.
Captain your house.
Keep your wine cellar cool
and your plants warm with
programmable thermostats.
You can even open and close
your drapes from a touch-screen panel. Popular brands:
Control4, Crestron, Home
Automation.
Watch your watts.
Turn on the lights, turn
off the sprinkler, set timers—
regulate anything electronic
via your computer or cell
phone with a remote interface. Popular brands: Hawking
HomeRemote Pro, Insteon, X10.
Launch leisure
central. Make your
digital photos, music, videos,
and movies accessible to
every computer on your home
network by attaching an NAS
(network-attached-storage)
unit to your router; $175 will
buy you a terabyte or so.
Popular brands: Buffalo Tech,
Iomega, Western Digital.
Play tunes and print—
wirelessly. Stream music
to any room in the house, and
send documents from any
computer to your printer. You
may need another router ($50
to $100) equipped with an
output jack—positioned close
to the speakers or printer—that
can boost the wireless signal
from your computer. Popular
brands: Apple AirPort Express,
D-Link, IOGEAR Wireless USB
Audio Adapter.
7
8
9
6
10
E-readers Get Cheaper.
Thank the iPad.
With close to 50
e-book readers crowding the market, a price
war may have been
inevitable. But some
industry observers say
it was Apple’s successful introduction of the
i Pad tablet computer—
3 million sold in the first
80 days—that got
Barnes & Noble to cut
the price of its standard
Nook e-reader from
$259 to $199 on
June 21. Hours later,
Amazon’s Kindle
went from $259
to $189.
The iPad, which can
do much more than
provide reading material, sells for $499 and
up. Those prices, too,
may drop as other
tablets emerge.
ENTER FOR A CHANCE
TO WIN AN iPAD AT
AARP.ORG/TECHSWEEPS.
SEE PAGE 91
FOR MORE DETAILS.
Meanwhile, if all you
really want to do is read
on the beach, consider
that in bright sun
e-readers’ E Ink displays
are easier to see than
the backlit LCD screens
featured on iPads.
Restaurant consultant John Bowler
seemed an unlikely entrant into L. A.’s
thriving food-truck scene, which
depends largely on Twitter to let folks
know where these mobile eateries park
for the day. “I was not into the social-
networking stuff,” Bowler says. “I’m 64
years old. I got all the friends I can use.”
commands thousands of followers, Bowler turned to his college-age
daughter. Once she taught him about the power of 140-character
tweets and Facebook networking, Bowler was in business. His Barbie’s Q
southern-style barbecue truck is now one of some 100 twittering food
trucks cruising greater Los Angeles. You can find movable feasts in
many other cities, too. Go to seriouseats.com and search “twitter list.”
TWEET TO EAT
TK CREDI T
TECHSPEAK
THE CLOUD
A fashionable phrase these days is “cloud computing,” which refers to
everything you can do online —store photos, prepare taxes —that used to
involve going out to buy software on a disk you load onto your PC.
