Wireless SpeeCup plays music from cup-holder
SpeeCup looks like a thermos bottle, but it’s a speaker.
It can sit in your car’s cup holder and pick up Bluetooth music broadcasts from your iPhone, iPod Touch or Android phone. The maximum volume on this is loud enough to hear outside the car, and we thought the quality was decent, too. True, a Beatle’s tune sounded a bit tinny, but classical hits and Elvis Presley songs sounded great.
“But why not just use the car radio?” Bob asked. Well, because the radio doesn’t always play what you want, Joy pointed out.
In iTunes, we have access to a whole list of songs ready to transmit wirelessly through the SpeeCup. We can also listen to audiobooks or lectures. And the cup works with Siri, the voice assistant that lets you command your iPhone. The same holds true for S-Voice, the Android version. Carry the cup from car to office to continue listening where you left off, and use it for hands-free phone calling. The battery is good for 20 hours. Don’t pour coffee in it.
We tried it out in our office and in our minivan cupholder. Both worked great. Though it works wirelessly, you can also connect it by wire to your car’s audio system or home stereo if you prefer.
We tapped “Music” on the iPod Touch and our list of songs started playing. The SpeeCup’s forward and back buttons let us skip songs we didn’t want to listen to. Tapping the top of the cup turns off the music. A small motion — as if you’re screwing or unscrewing the lid — adjusts the volume.
We listened to music from services like Spotify and Pandora as well as our playlist. The design is nice and the controls easy to handle; we have no complaints. SpeeCup is $130 from SpeeCup.com.
HOLIDAY GREETINGS
Buncee.com is a free site for making digital scrapbooks and greetings. What makes it different from a lot of other greeting card or scrapbook programs is the ability to drop in YouTube videos as well as photos from Instagram, Google and Flickr.
Buncee was created when the founder, a woman who lost her first child to a rare disease, wanted to thank 250 people who had attended a medical research conference. She wanted to include conference photos with a thank-you message, but she didn’t want to use Microsoft’s Powerpoint or an online greeting card service. So she created Buncee.
It takes some fiddling to get used to Buncee. When you add text, there’s a tiny “edit” tab to click and it’s hard to see. And moving pictures around is awkward at first.
The only other downside occurred when we created two-page scrapbooks instead of one-page greetings. (Two pages are free; adding more requires a paid account.) Only one of our recipients guessed that there was a page two. The others stayed on page one. The Buncee pages don’t automatically turn the way a Powerpoint slideshow does. That meant our friends didn’t see the hilarious YouTube video of a woman who wanted all Deer Crossingsigns moved away from high traffic locations, where the signs “told” them to cross.
When you’re finished with a Buncee, you get a link to your creation to share in an email. You can also turn it into an online invitation, complete with RSVPs and a list of respondents. If you make your Buncees public, others can comment on them. The paid version, $7 a month, adds the ability to save your creations as PDFs, so you can print them out and snailmail them. Paid users can also add voiceovers. For teachers, there’s a $10 a month version for keeping track of 30 student accounts and posting assignments.
THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT
PC Magazine recently listed the 100 best iPad apps in a multitude of categories. We like the ones listed under “entertainment.” You can find it on their website: PCMag.com.
Among them is Crackle, Fanhattan and IntoNow. Crackle has free movies from Sony. Fanhattan emails you when any movie or show on your watch list becomes available on one of the services you indicate, such as Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, Crackle and others. Unfortunately, due to licensing restrictions, some programs are blocked. IntoNow, which also works on Android phones and tablets, listens to what you’re watching on TV and takes note of it. The name of the show pops up on your phone and you can join a discussion about it.
For music, Shazam identifies the song you’re listening to. We pointed our iPod Touch toward our computer, which was playing Kreisler’s Praeludium and Allegro in the style of Pugnani and it was instantly identified. Vevo streams music videos, and adds trivia, interviews and the ability to build playlists of your favorites.
APP HAPPY
Ebates.com, the website, is now available as an app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It offers rebates from over 1,600 stores and opens up with the “hot deals” of the day. If you wish, your phone or iPod will alert you when a good deal comes in from your favorite store.
ANTI-VIRUS UPDATE
We recently wrote about the free programs, Avast and Bitdefender, just days before the new Avast 2014 came out. The new version is free and instructs you to burn a bootdisk on a CD or DVD. After all, it’s all well and good to have anti-virus protection, but what if your computer won’t start at all? Then you better have a boot disk ready. If you Google “create boot disk,” you can get instructions to burn one to CD or flash drive, but it’s nice that Avast prompts you to do it.
Avast 2014 now comes with a “hardened mode” that blocks files from executing if you’re not sure whether they’re infected or not. And, there’s a plug-in for your browser, whether that’s Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari or whatever, that stops companies from tracking your online behavior. They also ask you if you want to download a free trial of a password manager. We tried it and liked it.
We see no reason to switch from your current anti-virus if your computer isn’t giving you any problems. But sometimes your anti-virus program slows down your computer and you need a lighter, faster one. Avast is a great product with 200 million users.