Omega Scientific

This past May, Consumer Reports conducted a study which found that the recent spate of airline groundings is occurring despite a high number of carriers outsourcing aircraft maintenance – something that should be disconcerting to fliers everywhere.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is responsible for airline safety in the U.S. and is the governmental agency which inspects planes and regulates American carriers.  When maintenance work for a carrier is done by an outside company (as opposed to the company’s own facilities), it becomes much more difficult for the FAA to regulate airplane maintenance.  As a result, licensed mechanics may not be doing the actual maintenance work (even though one has to sign the work off).  Even more worrisome is the work may not be thoroughly checked – anything from faulty wiring to obscure technical problems may be present despite an approved “check.”

Aside from bringing more maintenance in-house, industry experts suggest that airlines should utilize new, beneficial maintenance technology (such as an arc fault breaker) and require more thorough, scheduled maintenance checks to avoid grounding.  Further more, the FAA is being pressured to increase certification requirements for licensed mechanics.  

This week I heard of a new product that I thought was pretty interesting.  It’s called the Trackstick, and it uses GPS technology to log where its been.  Its actually pretty cool because you can use Google Maps or Google Earth and it will draw a line down the streets you’ve been to, log the date and time, how fast you were going, and more.

I’m not condoning this practice, but the Trackstick would actually be a good tool for parents who find themselves constantly sick with worry.  I actually knew a girl whose parents trusted her so little, they actually put some kind of a tracking device in her car.  It was a long time ago, so it probably wasn’t a trackstick, and it was probably something a lot more expensive.

Anyway, there probably are some parents out there that have real reason to suspect that their teen is driving recklessly, going to the liquore store, or doing other things that would put them and others at risk.  I’d actually recommend the trackstick if this is the case.  I know I want less drunk teens out there on the road.

Many of you business oriented people that need to stay connected to your work email server 24/7 probably are familiar with mobile internet.  Many people these days are getting it on their smart phone or on their laptop through an aircard their service provider gives them.  But you can now share this signal with anyone you want with a mobile broadband router.

These routers (also known as 3G routers since they work on 3G data networks) accept the PCMCIA cards, expresscards, and USB dongles that your cell provider like Verizon or Sprint give you.  They then turn that 3G signal into a standard Wifi signal that anyone with wireless internet on their laptop can use.  Just imagine being able to travel anywhere and carry a portable wifi signal wherever you go.  Amazing!

There are an increasing amount of sound options out there, and one of them is optical audio.  Optical Audio, or Toslink, uses digital audio signals that avoid noise or the same connection problems that analog audio uses.  The most common audio jack on computers these days is the analog audio mini-stereo output that is usually marked green.  This is fine for when you just need basic desktop speakers, but what if you want surround sound for gaming or movies?

If you don’t want to upgrade your sound card to something ridiculously expensive and you have a free USB port, you can try using a USB to Toslink external sound card.  You’ll of course need a sound system that supports Toslink, but once you have it all set up, you will be glad you did.

You’re probably scared of the new HDMI 1.3 switch, so I’m here to hold your hand while you take the plunge.  What do you have to lose?  Maybe several hundred, or even a thousand dollars, but look at the benefits… new high definition sound from Dolby HD or DTS HD… deep color allowing for a trillion colors, higher bandwidth, automatic A/V sync, the availability of a miniature connector.. what are you waiting for?

If you’re serious about switching, well, you’re going to need a new HDMI 1.3 switch.  We recommend the EXT-GEFENTV1.3-441 from Gefen.

Looking for a way to slice and dice your HDMI signal from a single source to two separate displays? Look no further than Gefen’s EXT-HDMI-142, this phenomenal device will allow you take the HDMI signal coming from a source, like your PS3, Xb0×360, Blu-Ray DVD player, and so forth-and mirror that signal onto two monitors, LCDs, Plasmas, or whichever is your display of choice!

When it comes to display splitters, one must always be wary of getting a passive display splitter, for those devices simply chop the incoming signal in half and send each half to a display, resulting in serious degradation of visual quality due to the signal loss. Fortunately, there are alternatives to passive splitters, such as the EXT-HDMI-142, which is an active signal splitter, meaning that it goes through all the processing necessary to duplicate the inbound signal flawlessly before sending a complete signal to each of the two displays!

This technology boasts a variety of potential uses, from uniting home media stations throughout your house to coordinating the workflow in your office, HDMI splitters are an invaluable addition to anyone’s multimedia arsenal.

So why wait? Heavyweight technology and heavyweight support without the heavyweight price; available today at Sewelldirect.

Since VGA is an analog signal, you don’t have to worry too much about repeaters until you get into the 100 ft. range.  At that point you’ll probably begin to experience some signal loss.

Still, there are advantages to using special components to sending your VGA far.  Instead of getting an expensive 100 foot long cable, you can use Cat5 which is far more economical.  For example, say you get a 100 foot long cable and the cable gets kinked or damage sometime down the road.  The whole cable becomes worthless.  With the EXT-VGA-141SR by Gefen you can send a VGA signal to up to 150 feet.

Not only is Cat5 cable more cost effective and easier to install, the Gefen VGA extender will ensure that your VGA signal arrives to its distant destination without any loss.

Many people are intimidated by the prospect of networking their own home. For some reason, network seems to belong in the office in many people’s minds. But with the widespread availability of NAS devices and media servers, as well as baluns and other tools that let you extend media and other controls over Cat5, maybe it’s time you started considering some advantages of networking your home. Get some inexpensive cat5e and a crimper and hop to!

I can’t believe this thing…It’s so light-weight.

MSN had an interesting article on the Air this morning. I’m interested to see how it will affect it’s laptop competition.  Will they all shrink like this amazing piece?

Being proactive, productive, and following the rules at work can mean the difference between receiving a raise staying where you are.

Unfortunately, you can’t always be as productive as you would like because some tasks take longer to finish. This is especially true of the work policy for record management. Most of us don’t have a few hours in the day to delete all the old, unneeded documents sent in email and saved on the desktop. We may not even know which documents need to be saved on the central server and which copies can be deleted.

To help with this task, there is compliance software. This software ties an invisible e-thread through the documents to help employees easily track the most updated document and save it on a secure drive.

This software won’t interfere with your daily tasks, and will help you be more productive and policy compliant at work. With your important documents securely stored and organized, your boss probably couldn’t be happier.