Many times on this blog I have stated that I believe the American Express Platinum Card is the best credit card for any frequent traveler. I use the numerous benefits of this card on a weekly basis. One of the most attractive benefits of the Platinum Card is the airport lounge access program. Up until today, Platinum Card members had access to the Delta Sky Club, Continental President’s Club, and the American Airlines Admirals Club. You could access these lounges, your day of travel, when you were flying the respective airline. That last sentence is key: “when flying the respective airline.” For example, you could not access the Detla Sky Club with your Platinum Card if you were flying Airtran Airlines even though they often share terminals.
Today, American Express announced that all Platinum and Centurion (black card) members will be able to access the US Airways Club! Better yet, unlike with the Delta, Continental, and American clubs, you DON’T have to be flying US Airways to access the lounge; you can be ticketed on any airline and still be granted complimentary access with your Platinum or Centurion card. This is a major travel benefit, and I am glad to see that American Express is adding more benefits to the Platinum and Centurion cards. which makes the annual fee easier to swallow during these economic times.
Follow me on Twitter for updates regarding the American Express Platinum card.
I am always in the market for a pair of quality headphones, so I recently picked up a pair of “Diddybeats” High Performance In-Ear Headphones with ControlTalk. You can see my unboxing video here. I purchased them from Best Buy for $149.99. They are in the same product line as the “Beats by Dr. Dre” from Monster. I want to give you what I see as the “pros” and the “cons”.
Cons:
I had a slight problem getting these headphones to stay in my ear (as compared with the Bose in-ear headphones and the standard Apple ones). They seem to slip out very easily. I even had one (of the many they give you) ear pieces get stuck in my ear, the left headphone itself slipped out, leaving the foam ear piece in my ear. All this being said, it could just be me and I doubt this is a widespread problem.
Pros:
The design of these headphones are simply beautiful. I don’t know if I have seen any other in-ear headphones of the build quality as the Diddybeats. Monster spared nothing in ensuring that these headphones were stylish and of excellent build quality – they do not feel cheap. The sound is excellent (though nothing to get too excited about) and the ControlTalk feature is a huge “win” with being able to control the music on my iPhone and even use the Diddybeats in place of the white Apple in-ear headphones when wanting to do hands free calling.
I have throughly tested these headphones at the gym, around the house, at the office, and in the car. My conclusion is that they are great headphones, but the price point is too high at $149.99. I believe these headphones should be closer to the $99.00 price point. The sound is great, but nothing spectacular. In the end, you are paying for the brand and build quality and less for the sound quality in my opinion.
Posted by admin | Posted in Family, Olivia | Posted on 18-06-2010
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On Wednesday night, Ruth and I welcome our daughter Olivia Evelyn Banther into the world! She is a month early, but perfectly healthy. Thank you to everyone on Twitter & Facebook for the well wishes!
I have decided to try and create a live streaming environment in my office. So what does this mean? I plan to “stream live” from my office, Monday – Friday, 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM EST. Of course, this will not always be an interactive stream as I am at work. There will be times when I am not there, and times when I have to mute the audio. I have had several people ask me to do this, so I thought why not try?
You can watch the stream at http://www.davidbanther.com/live or directly through my Ustream page. There is a chat room as well, you can interact with chat on the two linked pages above, or if you are using an IRC Client the room name is #DLB1752-live (chat hosted by Ustream). As this is all very “beta” I am open to an suggestions, just e-mail me at davidbanther@gmail.com.
I am not an environmentalist, and I do openly support *appropriate* off shore drilling, but this is just a hot mess. I live on the gulf coast (Tampa Bay) of Florida, so this could become a reality for me real quick. Absolutely crazy.
Having used Flip’s previous products I wanted to give Kodak a try. I purchased the Zi8 and have used it for about two months. While I like many of the features, I have had some sound and video quality issues. Last week I got ahold of Flip’s MinoHD and I must say I am already in love! Which do you think has better quality? Judging by my YouTube comments Flip is the winner. Below are the two test footage videos.
A client of mine had their iPad 3G, and all the accessories, shipped to my office where I set everything up for them today. I must say, if I did not have my Verizon MiFi card I would be envious of the 3G version. I think I would recommend the 3G version to all clients and friends now, especially since the plan is month to month.
What better place to write your iPad review than at 35,000 feet using your iPad with inflight WiFi! The iPad makes for a great travel companion with GoGoInflight’s WiFi service, but I will talk more about that later. I have had the iPad for about a week now and I am absolutely floored at not only the features of this device, but more so the future potential of the iPad. Calling this just a large iPod Touch is absurd. The large screen real estate, speed, and portability of this device opens up whole new doors to application developers. Like with the evolution of the original iPhone, I can’t wait to see what this device is like two to three years from now.
The best way for me to sum up my review of the iPad is that it has replaced my MacBook Pro for casual browsing, entertainment, and e-mail. I have found myself not using my MacBook Pro when returning home from work unless I want a live stream on in the background. The iPad allows me much more flexibility when wanting to be online, like lounging in the lazy boy or laying on the couch (admit, you do it too). At the office I no longer have to disconnect my MacBook Pro to take it with me for staff meetings, I just grab my iPad and go.
I could list many more examples, and list the various technical aspects that I like, but you all get the picture. The iPad is not a killer device, but rather a device that is going to change the way we do portable and casual computing. I cannot wait for the OS 4 improvements that are coming this Fall, multitasking is much needed for this device to truly be an industry leader. Back to my earlier point, this device is an inflight computing dream and will do wonders for inflight entertainment (that is the travel geek in me).
Saturday is a major day for all Geeks and Macheads! Even if you do not plan to get an iPad on Saturday, the excitement is very contagious. For those getting an iPad, I want to know, what are your plans for iPad day? Will you be doing anything special? Making videos? Live streaming?
I am having my two iPads (one for me, one for the wife) being shipped to our office, so after acquiring some delicious Dunkin Donuts iced coffee I will be in my office awaiting UPS. I will definitely be doing an unboxing video immediately upon delivery, and then possible a live stream. Afterwards I will head home to give the wife her iPad where I am sure I will have 1,000 questions to answer!
We all use Twitter, right? I have been active on Twitter, under my current handle @DLB1752, since October 2008. I have found Twitter to be the most valuable social networking service in my everyday life. Below are some tools I use every day.
Education:
If you are new to Twitter, I recommend purchasing Chris Pirillo’s new e-book 140 Twitter Tips [he was kind enough to include several of my submissions in this e-book]
I personally use Tweetie (the paid version) on Mac OS X and Tweetie 2 on my iPhone. If you have a need to manage separate columns in Twitter I recommend TweetDeck both for the desktop and the iPhone.
For searching for anything on Twitter, I still use the website search.twitter.com. For keeping track of who is following me that I am not following back (and vice-versa) I recommend friendorfollow.com.
What Twitter tips do you have? Leave a comment. I am always looking for something new to try.
A local social magazine called “Tampa Bay Magazine” has a section called “Celebrity Travelers” where if you take a picture of yourself, with an issue of Tampa Bay Magazine in a foreign/exotic place, they will include you in this section in an upcoming issue. While visiting my brother in Amsterdam we took such a picture, and I made the recent issue!
I recently did an unboxing video for the “Beats by dr. dre (Solo) Headphones“. As promised, I would like to give a quick review. As stated in the video, these are replacing my Beats Studio edition. I loved the Studios but they were very bulky, and as I primarily use these for travel, were a major space hog in my carry on. However, I LOVED the sound quality and design of the headphones. When I heard the “little brother” Solo edition was coming out, I went to Best Buy and purchased a pair.
After using these for a week, I fell in love and sold my Studios on eBay. While the Solos are not as big as the Studios, I see no major difference in sound quality, they are much more portable, and just as comfortable on the ear. I hear a lot of people talking about these headphones breaking, which if mine do you will be the first to know on Twitter, but I have a large head and have had no problem thus far. Bottom line, if you are not in need of the noise cancellation feature, and want more portability, go with the Solos!
Yes, that is what Southwest Airlines refers to large people as – “Customer of Size”. I think the term “Southwest Two Seater” is more appropriate (I place myself in this category). This past week a PR firestorm irrupted for Southwest Airlines when, through a series of events, a well known movie director was removed from a Southwest flight for being too large to fit into one seat (flight was full, no spare seats available). Needless to say he was not happy, and made it well known in real time via his Twitter account. You can read the news article here, Kevin Smith’s blog post about the incident here, and Southwest Airlines open apology here, you can be the judge.
I was obviously not there, and I do hold the position that if you do “spill over” into a second seat you should be forced to purchase a second seat, but I do believe (as I wrote in a past blog post) that Southwest Airlines is famous for arbitrarily picking out large customers and asking them to buy a second seat without letting them prove they can fit into one seat. The situation with Kevin Smith seems very shady (after reading statements from both sides), so I would place my bets that Southwest Airlines was just doing what they are becoming famous for: singling out large customers and making knee jerk decisions before examining all the facts.
Today I want to “spotlight” Kevin Nunez from MacSlice. I have known of MacSlice for sometime, but just recently started actively following the blog. Kevin started MacSlice, an Apple/Technology blog, in December 2008. He has now grown MacSlice to include 27 bloggers. MacSlice has a clean and fresh design, and is updated daily with useful news and reviews. This is a “must bookmark” for an any Apple fan. Kevin has done all this while still in high school, I can only imagine what is down the road. I also like the fact he is open about being a fellow “die-hard” conservative (we make the best Apple users)!
Watching Jon4Lakers latest video “Android Gets Well Endowed“, where Jon talks about the addition of multi-touch to the Nexus One phone, I thought to myself, as I have many times when watching videos of so-called iPhone killers, “wow, big deal, the iPhone has had that feature for several years – where is the innovation on these phones?”. Don’t get me wrong, the Nexus One seems like a good phone, but the point is it does not raise the bar, it simply meets the bar. However, all the anti-Apple fanboys will get a little wet spot in their pants raving over some feature addition that is so passe.
I chose the title “Nexus What ?” because that is what I felt like asking after the announcement of Apple’s iPad, where all the tech news has since been focused. These so-called iPhone Killers (Palm Pre, Droid Phones, etc.) come and go (in hype and excitement) one after the other, while the iPhone (my preferred device, though far from perfect) remains the standard bearer. Just look at the pathetic sales of the Nexus One, I think the market is telling us something! Leave me your thoughts in the comments
I would like to start a series of “spotlights” where I share about people I have met online who are entrepreneurial and/or making a difference. Many you may already know Danny Minick of Kansas City, some may not. He is a an Apple/Tech enthusiast, and runs several websites including AppleAero.comExpertsUpdate.com & his personal site DannyMinick.com. He is also a fellow blogger for Chris Pirillo’s Lockgergnome Network. Make sure to check out his content, and follow him on Twitter, he tweets some stuff that will have you ROFL.
Air France has joined other airlines in implementing an extra seat fee for “obese passengers”, according to a story in the UK Telegraph. I wrote a blog post on my travel blog “The Forward Cabin” that I believe passengers should be charged a fee only if they can prove that they can’t fit into one seat.
It appears, according to this article, that Air France agents will be making a judgement call and not give passengers the opportunity to prove that they can fit in one seat. I understand that there are some passengers that it would be obvious they cannot fit into one seat, but there are many passengers who would fall into that grey area and should be given the opportunity to prove they can fit into one seat. Thus, I do not think agents should be making arbitrary judgement calls on all passengers. What do you think?
I have made some changes to my site. Switched from Squarespace to the new “Premium Lockergnome” service which has partnered with Page.ly to provide a seamless WordPress experience. I strongly recommend anybody that is currently self hosting WordPress to consider this service. More to come here real soon, this new site will be much more dynamic than my last site. Looking forward to the conversation!
