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New Camera!

February 21, 2011 by Mayde | Leave a comment

Because of our work schedules, Dan and I celebrated Valentine’s Day a little late this year. We went out to dinner last Wednesday and after enjoying a great meal, we exchanged gifts.

I got him a limited edition, signed copy of an art book he’d been lusting after. He got me this:

Remember when I mentioned that I needed a new camera, because my old one was on the fritz? Well, Dan remembered too, and picked up this beauty for me.

(I know, the color’s a bit shocking, but in his defense, it was supposed to be red. It’s not; it’s a bright, vibrant pink that will take some getting used to. But, as Dan pointed out, it will always remind me of our first Valentine’s Day as a married couple. Aw…)

Since I’ve only had the camera for a few days, I haven’t had too many opportunities to use it and test out all of it’s awesome features, but I’m definitely liking what I see. It’s auto-intelligent scene selection is spot on, and my pictures look great every time. I’m particularly enjoying the panorama mode, though it took some trial and error to get it to work right.

As I continue to use it more and more, I’ll be sure to keep you posted about how this camera’s working out for me. In the meantime, here are some photos I’ve taken with it in the last few days. (Click each image for a larger version.)

So, what do you think? Do you want to see more photos on this blog? How about video? Do you have a good digital camera you would recommend? What did you give/get for Valentine’s Day? Let me know by leaving a comment.

I’m Loving Mint.com

February 9, 2011 by Mayde | Leave a comment

Mint.com is a personal finance website that allows you to pull in all of your banking data and view it in a new and eye-opening way.

I’ve known about Mint since it won the TechCrunch40 Best Presenting Company prize in 2007, and since then, I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. Sure, there’s been some skepticism about how safe a site like this could actually be, but I trust Intuit and I trust lots of other people who trust Mint, so I figured I’d give it a try.

As part of my new year’s resolution to save money, I’ve been super vigilant about how I spend every nickle and dime. I’ve even come up with a game plan that will allow me to pay off my student loans and save up enough money for a car by the end of the summer. But in order to pull this off, I knew I needed some help in monitoring my spending. Enter Mint.

When you first sign up, you enter your bank account information, along with any credit cards, loans and investments you might have. Using this information, Mint calculates your personal worth, and presents you with advice on how to get the most out of your money. While I haven’t actually followed through on any of Mint’s advice yet, I do take advantage of their transaction tracking tools. You can categorize every transaction you make, and then see your spending trends displayed using neat little pie charts:

You can also set up budgets for yourself and savings goals you’d like to reach. For example, here’s a quick little sample budget I threw together for this post:

Frankly, I can’t say enough good things about Mint. It’s definitely helping me reach my goals, and I think it could be useful for you. I was in no way compensated for reviewing this site, I just think it’s neat. Since I’ve been using it a lot lately, I figured I’d write up a little blurb about it to see if anyone else is enjoying it as much as I am.

So, tell me: Have you ever heard of Mint.com? Would you trust a site like this to manage all of your financial data? If you don’t use Mint, what do you use to monitor your spending? Let me know by leaving a comment.

Product Review: The 1Bud Classic Earbud

June 24, 2010 by Mayde | Leave a comment

In the last couple of months, I’ve been watching a lot of Hulu and listening to a lot of Pandora, and I found myself using only one side of my headphones more often than not. Whether I was at work or hanging out with friends, I typically need to keep one ear open and was getting really frustrated by the extra, dangling earbud that kept getting in the way of my keyboard, my lunch or whatever else was in front of me at the time.

So, I started to wonder if anyone makes single-sided headphones for just this purpose. Turns out, they do!

Scan Sound is an electronics company that specializes in one-sided headphones, among other things. Targeted at people with single sided deafness or unilateral hearing, these headphones work with both mono or stereo sound and can be worn in either the left or right ear. Plus, you can order extra eartips, which come in a really small size and fit great in my tiny ears (this is a huge selling point, as almost every pair of rubber earbuds I’ve tried will not fit properly!).

The only other alternatives I’ve found have been single-sided headphones designed for use with mobile phones, and they almost always include a microphone on the cord, which would be just as annoying to me as an extra, dangling earbud.

I’ve had my 1Bud Classic for just over a week now and absolutely love it. It’s comfortable, works great, and was definitely worth the $13 I paid for the earbud + eartips combo pack.