I was going to post this sooner, but Mozilla had some minor issues with their servers (they were down). But now everything is back to normal, so it’s time to help them get the world record for most downloads in a day.

You’ll find the download links here. Best of luck to Mozilla in breaking this record!

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My review of the day is of the "La Fresh travel packets" kit. This is a pretty low-tech product but something I’m convinced everyone could use in their carry-on.

The La Fresh travel packets are small pouches with a variety of single use products. They come in 2 versions; one for men, and one for women.

The male version contains (one of each of) the following sachets: 

• Shaving Gel
• Anti bacterial towelette
• Show shine towelette
• Minty Mitt dental cleaning mitt
• Lens cleaning towelette
• Deodorant towelette

The female version contains (one of each of) the following sachets: 

• Makeup remover towelette
• Eye and lip makeup remover towelette
• Anti bacterial towelette
• Minty Mitt dental cleaning mitt
• Hydrating lotion towelette
• Deodorant towelette

The contents of the male (L) and female (R) La Fresh travel packets kit.

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Some of the goodies I’ve got lined up to review this week:

• NEAT Receipts
• Otterbox Defender case for the Blackberry 8800
• Parrot MINIKit Bluetooth carkit
• Nokia N810
• SPOT Satellite Personal Tracker
• Plantronics .Audio 480 headset

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At present I’m in a hotel room with a NovAtel XU870 on AT&T and a Sprint EX720 in a major city that’ll remain nameless. The location of the room (corner room, many buildings around, back-side of the hotel, facing an alley, mid-level floor) ensures ‘interesting’ coverage. So, how do the fabled titans of WWAN stack up?

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The process of removing a laptop from the bag each time it has to pass through the x-ray machine increases the risk of the laptop getting dropped or stolen and is otherwise rather annoying.  So the concept of a TSA-friendly laptop case that doesn’t require the laptop to come out of the bag is pretty appealing.  Two vendors, Targus and Skooba, are on the case, working with the TSA on designs that are supposed to obviate the removal need at the checkpoints.

There’s just one problem with the whole thing - the TSA isn’t actually going to be specifically approving designs.  So, unlike the TSA-approved lock program that specifies exactly what it takes and includes a label to indicate that the TSA actually approves, these new bags will be made “according to guidelines that the TSA publishes.”  On the plus side, the vendors are actually working with the TSA to ensure that their products will be OK before they start marketing them.  On the down side the designs in question are basically clamshells that open to have the laptop laying flat on the x-ray belt, without the protection of a bin surrounding it when the suitcase behind it comes rolling down the belt.

Obviously the manufacturers are hugely excited by this development:

“This could be huge,” said Michael Hess, CEO of Skooba, of Rochester, N.Y. “Anything that speeds up the process and reduces the burden on travelers and screeners will improve the deteriorating travel situation.”

Surprisingly he doesn’t mention that he expects huge revenue from folks buying new bags.

Anything that improves the screening process is a welcome development, but this seems more focused on driving private business than on actually making things work better.

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Here is something to waste 10 minutes of your Friday afternoon on; when searching for something on Google, I ran across this long list of old (as in older than 3 or 4 years) gadgets. Can you count how many of them you owned?

I counted 48…

The Gadgeteer

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Well, they’re calling it the Bold anyways. The latest smartphone model was announced officially overnight Sunday, and it pretty much matches what was expected based on previous Blackberry 9000 reports.

Features include:

• GPS
• HSDPA connectivity
• WiFi
• iTunes support
• 2MP camera

ATT is the US launch partner for the device, which is expected on store shelves later this summer.

With the multimedia support and HSDPA data speeds, this device is clearly a shot across the bow of Apple’s iPhone, though that one also seems to be undergoing a shift in availability and functionality, pending an official announcement, of course.

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I’ve got a desk full of gadgets here, and being the kind sole I am, I’m going to share my experiences with them.

Be prepared for upcoming reviews of a cool notebook webcam, a nifty device that can scan and organize your receipts, a security device built into a USB key, some great travel power gadgets and a way to keep your phone and iPod safe from sand and sea.

And that’s just the stuff I can actually recognize in this huge pile of boxes.

If you have a gadget or service you’d like me to look at, drop me an email.

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Runway Girl is repoorting that Boingo is looking to partner with AirCell, extending their WiFi peering arrangement with one of the major players in the airborne WiFi space.  AirCell is currently providing service to American Airlines and Virgin America.  Back in the Connexion days, Boingo users were able to roam onto that network, and clearly it is something that their customers would demand so it is nice to see them moving in this direction.  Still no word on how much they’ll charge for the roaming, but we can hope that it will be reasonable.

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When you are known by all your friends to be a geek, they also know when to email you when something goes wrong with their PC. Two weeks ago a friend contacted me when his laptop stopped working. Right in the middle of doing something it just turned off, and would no longer turn on.

The following events show just how horrible the current state of consumer support is:

• The first thing he did was contact the vendor (HP). Their support staff verified the serial number and model number, and said that they’d want $175 just to look at it, and that he’d have to pay for shipping to and from them. The machine was 3 months out of warranty and the company that made it doesn’t want to have anything to do with it without being paid more.
• When he came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth getting repaired, he took it to the service technicians at Geek Squad (the in-store BestBuy service). For $70 they would remove the laptop drive and attempt to get his data restored. several days later they contacted him with some bad news; all his data was gone, and the drive was empty!

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