I would estimate that I wear headphones on average about 6 hours a day. I wear headphones not only because I love to listen to music but because headphones are my only salvation to drown out noise of my office. I recently switched to the in-ear style of headphone in the hopes of better noise cancellation. The key test to determine if a set of headphones are good is if they can drown out your noisy cubicle neighbors and these headphones passed easily.

The Shure E2c headphones are a great choice for those people seeking great sound while also blocking outside noise. These headphones are ideal for portable MP3, DVD, and CD players as well as all other audio sources. My favorite features of the E2c headphones are:

Sound Isolating Technology – The E2c’s in ear design works …

I have to say this is an improvement. This is a Skype compatible VoIP Phone from Keyspan. You can call PC to PC or PC to Phone, and do pretty much everything you need to with using Skype from the phone – except leave the room.

Skype was a big deal at the last eBay developers conference, and I asked one of the Skype reps (all of which had some fancy European type accents) about taking the phones away from the PC or Mac. You see, if you have never used this, up until now it only worked when you had the phone physically connected to the machine. This is nice if your sitting at your PC and you want to talk into a phone instead of trying to fumble with speakers and mic’s and trying to master the full duplex …

Intel’s latest processor for notebooks, the Core 2 Duo which was previously code named “Merom”, has started shipping in with the leading notebook manufacturers including Dell, HP, Gateway and Apple with the MacBook Pro. This new processor promises 20% more processing speed than the previous Core Duo. So, basically this means that the your notebook battery lasts just as long and your legs won’t melt any faster.

The Core 2 Duo processor can achieve such great speeds because it has 2 processing cores that allow it to do multiple tasks simultaneously. This might make things a little tougher for AMD’s Turon.

I started using this mouse a few days ago and I am pretty happy with the results. I’ve been using a wireless mouse for a few years now and I decided to give a laser mouse a try. The problems I had with my previous mouse were pretty insignificant and were mostly related to battery life.

The MX1000 comes with a rapid-charging base station and a lithium-ion battery that never needs replacing; making battery life a non-issue. Another benefit is the laser which provides additional tracking power over the optical sensors found on optical mice. Gamers who are traditionally adverse to using a cordless mouse may find this a suitable gaming replacement.

Other features include:

Universal page forward and back, plus an application switch that quickly moves between open windows.
A tilting wheel for side-to-side scrolling.
An illuminated 4-level battery indicator to monitor …

According to the Helio TV ads, calling it a “phone” is a misnomer, and they really don’t want to be compared to other mobile phone providers. Probably the most significant feature that separates this device from the others is it’s integration with MySpace.

With Helio, you can do a number of functions to interact with your MySpace account, including post photo bulletins, mail, comments, add friends and more. Helio boasts having the only device that is built around interacting with MySpace.

Helio offers something called Speedy 3G that gives high speed internet to the device for getting the “Helio On Top” news streams, surfing, games on a QVGA screen, video and music as well as messaging.

Gift and Beg is an interesting feature, were you can either “gift” someone a ring tone, video or game, or you can “beg” for one from someone.

At the time …

I purchased the Garmin eTrex Legend Cx GPS a few weeks ago for some trips I have planned this summer. It has everything I wanted in a GPS; it has a color screen, small footprint, light, easy to use, and most importantly, it tells me where I need to go. I planned on using this device specifically for hiking and bicycle touring but it works really well for navigation in the car too. Here is a rundown on some of the main features:

256-color, sunlight-readable TFT display (176 x 220 resolution) with adjustable brightness level.
MicroSD card slot for storing MapSource data. Mine came with a 64mb card.
36-hour battery life (I use Energizer Rechargeable AA Batteries).
Mini-USB port for map uploads and downloads.
Turn-by-turn directions with alert tones (when navigating on streets).
Preloaded Americas …

Playaway has come out with the newest version of books on tape. These are actually little, digital books! They are about half the size of a deck of cards, have the cover of the book on one side, and the 8 button player control on the other. It runs off of one AA battery that comes with the device, and if you keep a charged battery in it you can listen to the book as many times as you would like. The Playaway “books” also come with a set of headphones and a lanyard to hang it around your neck if you would like.
These little digital books are available from Playaway’s online store, and they are also at a few nationwide retailers, including Borders, OfficeMax and of course Barnes & Noble. Most books price from …

When I first heard of podcasting, I immediately figured it had something to do with the iPod and something to do with radio, but when I looked into it this really isn’t the case. Although you can listen to podcasts with the iPod and get them from iTunes, you can also listen to them with almost any other similar device, and you can get them from many, many sources. It just so happens that the iPod was the most popular hardware at the time and so the phrase was coined.

Podcasts are basically the same medium as any song would be, often an MP3 file, and usually are not songs but are news, interviews, comedy or any other audio distribution.

The Podcast Directory is a great source to find all kinds of different podcasts, and of course if you do have an iPod, …

I picked up the 4GB iPod nano not too long ago. I got the black iPOD, which was a little harder to find but I really like the look of it. What really got me was how small this thing really is. They put the dimensions on the add and on the box, which shows 3.5 x 1.6 x .27 inches, but it never really hits you ’till you get one in your hand. This thing is small.

Aside from the size, the another feature I really liked about iPod nano right away was how easy it was to use. Within minutes I had the thing hooked up to my PC and was downloading songs from iTunes. Other attractive points to me were the accessories. There is a multitude of accessories for these things now everywhere, including stereo’s you can dock with, …