This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Tony’s Pizza. All opinions are 100% mine.
Today I did something a little different. Tony’s Pizza gave me a bunch of free pizza to have a pizza party, so I invited some local techies, grabbed the pizza, chips, and soda, and had a techie pizza party with some help from my awesome wife and generous use of the home of my friend and business partner, Adam. For those of you unable to make it, I’ll be giving away some pizza coupons right here on JoeTech.com and one lucky reader of one of the four participating blogs will win a $500 tech prize package!
Tony’s Crispy Crust Individual Pizzas, Robots, Phones, And A Movie
Tony’s wanted to get opinions on their Crispy Crust individual pizzas. Although I was able to get plenty of Cheese and Pepperoni, I was unable to find the Supremes anywhere in phoenix this weekend. Because of this, it should be noted that the Supreme I provided for the party was a couple three serving 10″ pizzas. The two larger pizzas, along with eight individual pizzas turned out to be just about right for the nine people there.
To add a little tech to the pizza party, I brought along some of my review items, including a couple phones, a netbook, and a robot that turned out to be a lot of fun. In addition to the toys, we threw in the 1995 sci-fi thriller, Johnny Mnemonic. Looking back at what they thought the future of technology would be like provoked some funny remarks, but it’s still a fun tech movie. As the party went on, we all chatted, ate pizza until it was all gone, and geeked out.
When the movie had ended, the pizza was gone, and the party began to wind down, I gathered opinions from everyone on their favorite of the three pizzas and what they liked or didn’t like.
As well as the opinions expressed in the video above, a couple more people liked the supreme pizza the most and said that the sauce was a little too sweet, but liked the thin crust. I, myself, was a big fan of the thin crust and preferred the pepperoni the most, while my wife didn’t care for the pizza much. The pepperoni seemed to had a good helping of pepperoni on it and tasted pretty good. The pizzas are cheaper than delivery and were ready faster, too.
Win $500 Or Some Free Pizza
On top of providing the pizza for my tech pizza party, Tony’s sent me some coupons to give away. Each coupon gives you up to $1.75 off a Tony’s personal pizza and when I bought them at my local Fry’s grocery store, they were $2.00 each, but it really depends on where you buy them. I have eight to give away and will give them away in four pairs, so four of my readers who tweet or comment will not only be entered to win the $500 tech package, but will also have a pretty good chance at some free pizza. For a chance at the $500 tech package, just comment or post according to the contest rules and that’s it!
Good luck, everyone, and thanks to Tony’s Pizza for the pizza and the contest!
In a world of touch screen phones, it’s hard for a phone to stand out when there’s more emphasis on the keyboard than the screen, but the Nokia E72 takes up the challenge and found it’s way to me recently from Europe for a review.
Business Design With Style
The most immediate thing you notice about this phone is that it has a smaller (2.36″) 320 x 240 QVGA screen compared to some of the larger touch screens on the more popular smartphones. This is to make room for the full QWERTY keyboard designed to make messaging and email a snap. The phone, itself, is very sleek looking mixing mat black and chrome with accents that let me know that they gave some thought to style. The battery cover on the back, for example, ignored the easy chrome or flat black for a nice stripe design that stands out only as much as it needs to in order to look good. Sandwiched between the screen and the keyboard is a series of navigational buttons, including the Optical Navi Key, which is a button that is sensitive to slight directional movements. The Navi Key is bordered by a squarish ring for more deliberate directional navigation. Each side of this middle section includes two action and selection buttons that sandwich two more buttons for one-touch actions. The left side provides quick access to Home and the calendar while the right wastes no time getting you to your contacts or email.
The right edge of this phone contains three silver volume and selection buttons, which felt a little left-handed to me. In the center of the top edge of the phone lies a recessed power button as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack. The left edge of the E72 includes the micro SD slot and micro USB port. As well as the phone’s aesthetics, Nokia gave some attention to the oft overlooked headphones. The headphones accompanying the E72 are stylish by comparison and have their own controls so you can keep the phone in your pocket and still adjust music volume or answer a call. As well as the headphones, this phone came with a wrist strap and a case, although I don’t imagine either getting a lot of use. The case, in particular, doesn’t have a means of attaching it to your belt, making it only useful in scratch prevention and general protection. It’s more than other phones offer in the box, but would better as a full belt-clip case.
All things considered, the E72 comes in a business-stylish, yet slightly daring package worthy of a couple oohs and ahhs, but not flashy enough to disrupt that big client meeting.
Features and Functionality
My favorite thing about this smartphone was the QWERTY keyboard. Beyond just being complete, it was easy to use with the raised keys and it has a few very userful one-touch keys. While looking at the keyboard, I noticed the space bar key has an image of a flashlight on it. Holding the key down for a second confirmed my hopes and on came the camera’s LED light, working as a nice little portable flashlight. That was something I’d not seen on any other phone. The other one-touch keys offered quick access to Bluetooth and muting. The middle keys of the E72′s keyboard double as numeric keys, organized like a telephone keypad, and the center (5) key has a tiny little raised nub on it to help you find it quickly in the dark.
This phone is also media friendly. In addition to the camera and music player, it has Real Player and comes with a built in voice recorder and a Radio. I’m not sure why more manufacturers don’t put radios in their phones, but it’s nice to see it offered here. Voice commands is another feature that should be standard in all phones and was not skipped over in the Nokia E72.
To keep you online, this device has built in WiFi and it’s pretty easy to set up, although it did ask me if I wanted to “connect offline” despite my available WiFi connection in my office and then let me get online anyway. For business users, syncing with a calendar and access to email is a must and is included in the E72, along with a web browser for any research or casual browsing. The whole interface can be changed to another theme to suit your preference and a different sound profile can be applied to suit your environment.
Final Thoughts
The E72 is ready for a full day of business and being professional and still has enough energy left at the end of the day for a night out with friends. It’s a great phone for anyone looking to stay professional with all the usefulness of a Blackberry (maybe more), but want a little more style. This device isn’t for the iPhone addict who needs all the apps and gizmos, but it is well-suited to the professional on the go.
I love to tinker and open things up and make them do different things, fixing what’s broken, if I can. In 2008, my wife’s digital camera screen got smashed up and I opened it up and replaced the screen, so when her parents came to stay and brought with them this smashed up Blackberry Storm road kill, asking if I could fix it, I began to think about it seriously.
What Happened?
Almost immediately, my father-in-law explained that he was joking and that it wasn’t even his phone. He found it out by the water near his condo back in Michigan. By the looks of it, it had been run over, rained on, stuck in the snow, and run over again. The screen is completely smashed beyond any hope of repair, the back plate won’t even go on anymore, and it almost seems to be held together, ironically, by the screen protector. This phone, clearly, was left for dead and unrepairable.
But It Still Works!
Although the request for repair was a joke, I decided to make it a challenge. While I didn’t want to spend any money on it, I did want to see how much I could get out of this poor little device destined for the trash bin. The first thing I did was pull out the 8GB SanDisk MicroSD card. Thanks to being snugly behind what was left of the back plate, it seemed almost untouched. I was able to easily pull some music files off it. Next, I decided to plug the phone in directly. Not only did it light up, but it connected as a removable storage device and I was able to see all the basic file storage folders, though they were empty. My favorite recovery software, Active Undelete, proved that the storage on this phone had been almost completely unused since purchase. It seemed that the owner of this phone didn’t have it long before tragedy struck.
Finally, I decided to install the Blackberry desktop software and see if I could connect to it to sync. Not only did it connect, but I was able to upgrade the phone’s software and install additional applications. While playing with it, I was able to get it to audibly prompt me for voice commands, which delighted me. This phone, beaten and smashed, seemed to work save for a screen to help make use easier.
Final Thoughts
I admit, I haven’t been a fan of the Blackberry Storm from day one. All I heard from friends who bought one is how annoyed they were with it’s use. After a while, these same Storm owners seemed much more content with it. This experience has given me a new respect for the Storm. I baby my iPhone for fear that a little rough-housing will leave me with a paper weight, so I’m pretty impressed with the durability of the Storm.
Last summer, I reviewed the Tonium Pacemaker, which is a great little tool for a new DJ or hobbyist. Recently, I got my hands on some more serious hardware, the EKS Otus.
What Is EKS Otus?
The Otus is a way to get more hands on with your digital DJing. I see a lot of DJs with software and many with traditional decks, but how many mix the two? I don’t know, but that’s just what the Otus does. For DJs comfortable with their craft and who have good software to mix their music, the Otus gives them hands on control. For people like me, it makes DJing easier.
What It Does And How To Us It
EKS has some pretty user-friendly instructions on their web site to get everything set up, but I still had some problems getting it going, even after I realized that I needed to map all the channels per the instructions. Eventually, I found that I just needed to make sure I started the EKS Midi Agent first, then Deckadance, then plugged in the Otus via USB. The USB is also the power source, so my testing consisted of just my laptop with it’s power cable, headphones, USB to the Otus, and the Otus, itself. For such a device, it’s really portable for a DJ who travels. The Otus should fit nicely in a backpack with a laptop.
Some of it’s capabilities, it seems, are going to depend on the software you pair it up with. As long as you have the right software, however, it does just about anything I could imagine a DJ needing to do with music. The most prominent feature is the 7.5 inch jog wheel that lets you adjust pitch by touching on the outside or scratch by touching the surface while spinning. To the left of the jog wheel I found the master volume and cross-fade control knobs. Above those were the left track control knobs for bass, mid, treble, and headphone volume. The top right of this device has the same four knobs for the right track. Below the right track control knobs are seven loop control buttons to trap or release a loop and control how long or short it is. Below these knobs is a pitch ribbon with a button to adjust the scale. On the bottom left, opposite the pitch ribbon is a set of general playback control buttons, including three to remix on the spot. Dead center at the bottom is the layer control button and directly above it at bottom center is a touch pad with two mouse buttons and a set of six programmable action buttons. On the back is the USB connection, headphone jack, analog RCA outputs for both virtual decks, and S/PDIF outputs for both virtual decks, as well. The whole thing rests on four pointed rubber feet to minimize vibration interference.
For this review, I downloaded and installed something called Deckadance (per instruction from the EKS web site), which was only a time-limited demo. I’m not sure if it’s the Club or House version, but either way, the purchase price of $99 or $179, respectively, seemed worth it. It would be nice to see some basic free software packaged with the Otus, but I imagine this device’s target customer will already have something like Deckadance in use. A professional DJ might also have been able to do a lot more than I did with the Otus, but I still got plenty of action out of it.
Of course, there’s the basics, like messing with the EQ controls, cross-fade and cue points, but there’s also some pretty cool controls like the three buttons to the left of the play/pause button that accessed randomly configured reloopers which could also be mapped out very specifically if needed via the software. I was able to program each differently for varying effects. With Deckadance, I was able to have six different reloopers set up, three for each deck. The loop control buttons also made it very easy to set up a loop, and adjust the length as it loops. Between the reloopers, the jog wheel, and the loop controls, I was able to create some familiar effects that actually sounded decent, if I do say so myself.
Everything is lit up green or red, depending on what track you’re controlling, and looks pretty cool. It would also be very helpful in a dark club, especially since some of the control buttons are pretty small and close together. One of the more unique features of the Otus is the four control wheels placed handily at its corners. They can be programmed to meet your own needs such as rapid movement through a track, file and folder selection, pitch and volume. While I didn’t use these a lot in my testing, they came in handy when I did use them with one exception. I found myself turning to the track pad to mouse through my track lists rather than use one of these control wheels because it was faster and felt more natural.
Also programmable, as mentioned previously were the six action buttons. I used these for recalling cue points, but they had far more possibilities, many I didn’t even have time to touch on. These were actually touch pads rather than buttons, so you had to either hear what you expected or watch for it on your laptop. Similarly, the pitch ribbon was a touch sensitive pad, which made precision a little tricky.
Final Thoughts
Although I was able to keep the EKS Otus for a lot longer than expected, holidays and other circumstances prevented me from giving it the time it really deserved and after using it, I really wanted to hold on to it longer. What I did experience was nothing short of magical, even if it could use a couple minor adjustments like the placement of the headphone jack or the tiny loop control buttons. For the price, it’s worth it, but only if you’re going to put it to good use as a pro or just have the money to spend. Portable, powerful, and good looking, I’d say any professional DJ should add this to his or her arsenal.
