Although it may be a bit scary giving your credit card information to a company in Hong Kong, we have had good luck with Cellular Nationwide Network (http://cnn.cn/). They sell replacement parts for all kinds of phones -- and not just chargers, cases and adaptors. We've purchased a replacement casing, a replacement track ball (both for a Blackberry Pearl) and a charging port (for a Nokia). They also sell replacement screens -- and that is the actual LCD part, not just the clear plastic cover (which they also sell).

The Silicone Baking Cups are intended to be reusable cupcake liners. According to the box, there is 'no greasing' required and your cupcakes will 'pop out easily.' After destroying practically every cupcake in an attempt to taste their chocolaty goodness, it is safe to say that these baking cups are one of the worse kitchen gadgets to clutter your cabinets.

http://www.crateandbarrel.com/family.aspx?c=555&f=22640

The SOLE Softec Shoe Inserts by NatureWorks replace the inserts that come with off-the-shelf sneakers. They improve comfort, balance, alignment and pressure distribution by giving extra arch support, and can help flat-footed people. Besides being Eco-friendly (they are made of corn and not petroleum) these inserts differ from others in that they can be heated in your kitchen oven so they will form to the shape of your foot. 
After a recent visit to an Orthopedic Doctor I found I was flat-footed and he suggested trying a pair of arch supports. I have always had issues finding sneakers that were comfortable and now I know why. Placing the inserts into a pair of practically-new Nikes made the sneakers the most comfortable pair of sneakers in recent memory. Running and walking is much more comfortable. Considering the product is basically a sheet of plastic with a soft covering, the $45 price seems a bit high but the comfort is very welcome.
 

If you are going on a short plane ride, we suggest instead of plugging in, you just bring fresh batteries and maybe a backup. You cannot guarantee the plane will have power, and getting it to work requires even more hardware, wires and luck.

• Choose the Right Seat

Planes do not have a power adaptor at every seat, so when booking a flight and you are prompted to choose a seat, go to www.SeatGuru.com, look up your plane and locate available seats with power. SeatGuru indicates seats with power by a black dot. You may be warned that not all versions of your plane are have the same and may not have available power.

It was time to update my original Garmin GPS and I had two options. I could get a Garmin that read street names or, for the same price, a Garmin that has US and European maps. Since I had a vacation to Germany planned in the near future I opted for European maps that come with the Garmin 260.

Apparently there are "maps" and "Detailed" maps and the Garmin came with "detailed" maps, which appears to be true. All the tiny little streets (some only a block long) all seemed to be there in the various towns I checked.

• Works well in open areas, but not in narrow streets

Many of the streets in the 'Old' part of towns are very-very narrow (Just a few feet wide in some places). Although the buildings are not tall (mostly 2, 3 or 4 stories) there is not much clear sky and unfortunately that seems to be enough to block the satellites.

• Doesn't work well turning it on and off

Since I didn't want to approach the end of the day only to find my GPS was dead, I would only turn the GPS on until I had a clear shot to my next location. The problem with this is that because of the poor reception it sometimes took 10 min before it had a lock on the satellites. That is a long time waiting, or a long time heading in the wrong direction.

At $20, these are going to some of the cheapest noise canceling ear buds you can buy. If you were considering picking up a cheap pair, don't. They do practically nothing for canceling airplane engine noise. In fact, I would argue they make engine noise worse by adding to it a high-pitched hum -- even when there is audio input. They are cheaply made and the control box is unnecessarily large.

The Panasonic RP-HC30 noise cancelling earphones remove some of the persisten background noise from your environment.  The $40 RP-HC30 ear buds are not as good as $400 over-ear headphones, but they do work well and they easily fit in a pocket or carry-on. Where more expensive over-ear headphones block out virtually all airplane engine noise these ear buds mostly take the edge off of the droning of the engines.

My Nikon D70 has been sitting around unused since I bought a Nikon D300.  To make it useful again I decided to convert it to an infrared camera.  After doing some research, I found that Lifepixel.com will convert your camera for you or sell you a filter to do the conversion.  Feeling adventurous, I decided to do the conversion myself.  Life Pixel's site offers decent directions and assures you that the Nikon D70 is relatively easy to convert.

Digital camera sensors are inherently sensitive to infrared light--they have a low-pass filter that block most of the infrared light from reaching the sensor.   You can take infrared pictures by putting a filter in front of the lens that block the visible light and just lets the infrared light through to the sensor.  The disadvantage of this is that so little light reaches the sensor that you end up with a very long exposure times.  Also, with SLR's you can't really compose using the viewfinder anymore since so little light is going to the viewfinder.  Life Pixel replaces the infrared filter in front of your sensor with a visible light sensor so the camera's viewfinder still works and the exposure times are normal.

Life Pixel offers 3 different Infrared filters, Standard IR, Enhanced Color IR and Deep BW IR. They also offer clear sensor filters and original Low-pass filters in case you scratched your filter and wanted to replace it. I chose the standard infrared filter. The filter replaces the stock low-pass filter that the camera comes with. By removing the Low-pass filter and replacing it with an IR filter, the camera is as sensible to IR as it was for normal photography. The major benefit of this is that you can see through the view finder and easily compose your shots. There is also no need for long exposure times, and no need for a tripod. This is a huge advantage over the standard way of doing Infrared photography. Life Pixel has filters for quite a few cameras. For the complete list check out their web site.

When switching from BIS to BES on my Blackberry I had some issues that I was not able to find easy answers for on Google, so I thought I'd pass it on to you incase anyone has the same issues (and so I have it written down). My internet didn't work, my personal email didn't work and I ended up with duplicate Calendar Entries.
1. My bookmarks did not work. I had to:

• Edit each bookmarks from "Internet Browser" to "Blackberry Browser".
• Set the default browser to "Blackberry Browser" (Options->Advanced->Browser).

2. After setting up Exchange I was able to get my Exchange email, I did not getting my Yahoo/Gmail email. I also could not get Google Maps or Blackberry Maps to work, I had to:

ColorMunki Photo is a color profiling tool that offers monitor, printer and projector profiling technology for a reasonable price.  Although the price is reasonable, it uses the same high end spectrophotometer found in the high end profiling devices sold by X-Rite.  A significant advantage over similarly priced competition is the ability to create custom printer profiles.  The ability to create printer profiles is important for digital photographers to allow them to create color accurate prints of their images.  ColorMunki also has color creation and communication tools that allow you to grab colors from virtually anywhere, including your entire image library, preview your color palettes under different light sources and even preview for PrintSafe production under a variety of different printing methods.