Frankie Ballard's Country Debut - Tell Me You Get Lonely

Frankie Ballard is a West Michigan guy trying to make it big in country music.  Here's his single Tell me You Get Lonely.  This dude's got a good future ahead of him.  Buy the song, listen and you'll see why.  You can follow Frankie Ballard on Twitter too.

Earbud Review

I have accumulated several different styles of earbud headphones over the past year. When I run I listen to music, and many times I forget / misplace / lose them so I get new ones. So I thought I would do a review on the ear buds that I have. I have a bit of cauliflower ear from grappling so comfort and fit is very important to me and I tend to stick with the smaller form ear buds. I typically stay away from the more expensive models since I lose so many headphones.

Apple I-Pod ear bud headphones
Model: Standard Apple Ear Buds that come with IPod Nano (2nd Gen)
Manufacturer: Apple
Price: $40.00
Overall: Poor

Review: The Apple ear bud headphones came with my iPod Nano that I bought a few years ago. The ear bud design for me is horrible, although it is better than the first gen as they are actually kind of wedge shaped. Sometimes the speaker actually sits flush on my ear when inserted and I cannot hear the sound very well. They become extremely uncomfortable after they have been in my ears for more than about an hour. I find myself adjusting these quite often when I'm forced to use them. Sound quality is mediocre at best, the bass is there but distorts fairly quickly at higher volumes. The cord can become tangled easily. As far as activity, these ear buds will stay in my ears while running - sometimes. It depends more on the proper orientation of the ear buds in my ear than anything else. I keep them as a backup pair. It is actually surprising to me that Apple would even package ear buds like this with a product like an iPod. My recommendation - use these in a pinch.


Sony MDREX36V/BLK EX Earbud Headphone (Black)
Model: MDREX36V
Manufacturer: Sony
Price: $30.00
Overall: Excellent
Review: I have purchased three sets of this model so far. Out of the four headphones reviewed the Sony ear buds receive my pick. First the ear bud is angled which makes it fit very nicely. These ear buds come with different sized rubber fittings so you can adjust the snugness of the ear bud depending on your ear canal size. I can wear these ear buds all day long and never have any discomfort and they stay in during activity that requires a lot of movement. The headphones handle high volumes very well and the bass response is good. There is a volume slider on the cord which is handy when you keep your music device out of reach. You can crank the volume on your MP3 player and control the output easily from the headphone cord. These are the only headphones reviewed that have a volume control inline. For the price you cannot beat these headphones. My only complaint about the headphone is with the cord. The cord can get tangled easily, especially during storage. I have to use a cord wrap to keep the cord in check.

Skull Candy S2INBB-BR Ink'd ear bud headphonesModel: S2INBB-BR
Manufacturer: Skull Candy
Price: $20.00
Overall: Very Good

Review: The Skull Candy ear buds, like the Sony have rubber fittings of various sizes. The bud profile is straight and from the tip of the rubber fitting to the back of the headphone is a comfortable distance. In other words, the headphones don't stick out too far. The opening in the rubber fitting is larger than the other headphones tested, which probably helps with sound transfer. The overall sound quality of the Skull Candy headphones is the best of the reviewed earphones. I really like the tangle free cord. The cord is just stiff enough to keep it from tangling, and I can wrap it up in itself when I'm done using the headphones. The single drawback that I have with the Skull Candy ear buds is that when I run I get a metallic popping sound. This appears to be caused by the ear seal. I can make the popping disappear with enough adjustment. for anybody doing activity, you might experience this problem.

Rocketfish RF-MEP3L ear bud headphones - LimeModel: RF-MEP3L
Manufacturer: Rocketfish
Price: $10.00

The Rocketfish ear buds are a straight ear bud like the Skull Candy headphones. There are multiple rubber fittings as well. The Rocketfish ear buds are comfortable and they also have a tangle free cord, and come in some cool colors. They are priced lowest out of all the ear buds at $10.00 they are almost a steal. The major drawback to the Rocketfish ear buds is the sound quality. The bass response is quite poor, and very noticeable if you have listened to any headphone with decent bass response. For the money these are ok, but I would spend the extra $10 or $20 for a pair of headphones with better sound.

Overall Assessment
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Best: Sony MDREX36V ear bud headphones
Better: Skull Candy S2INBB-BR Ink'd ear bud headphones
Fair: Rocketfish RF-MEP3L ear bud headphones - Lime
Poor: Apple I-Pod ear bud headphones

Blackberry Presenter review

We recently purchased a Blackberry Presenter. Over the past several years I have been on a quest to find an easier way for our presentation teams to setup for presentations quicker and easier (giving them more time to do the presentation itself). I have tried various devices, from projectors with memory card readers to several devices that connect to the projector. The Blackberry Presenter device allows you to connect(wirelessly through Bluetooth) your Blackberry Smartphone to a projector for presentations. This is a really cool concept, as one of the biggest complaints that we get from presentation teams is the amount of time that it takes to setup the laptop, especially when there is a short amount of time for the interview. I had purchased a similar product (Impatica Showmate) a few years ago, but the maximum resolution was 800x600 and for us, not sufficient so it was never deployed. The Blackberry Presenter will allow you to present several different document types, images, and Powerpoint presentations (with transitions) to a projector or other device that supports the resolutions that the Presenter supports. The price tag of the Presenter was $199.

First look - Specs - Requirements
The Blackberry Presenter is small about 3" x 2.5" x 1" and weighs about 6 oz, there is a Blackberry button on the top, and on the side in a cutout is a VGA, SVideo, and Micro USB connection. There is also a switch for PAL/NTSC format. It comes with a leather carrying case as well as a USB cable and power cable. The Presenter will display at 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768 resolutions. Blackberry lists the following smartphone compatibility: Bold 9000 & 9700, Curve 8500 series, Curve 8900, Tour, and Storm. The Blackberry must be running version 4.6+ device software, and have bluetooth enabled.

Setup
Setup if easy if you follow the directions provided. The following steps are required to get rolling with the device. CDs are not included with the device. All software is downloaded from the Blackberry website.

• Install the Blackberry Presenter software on the Blackberry Device
• Update the firmware on the Blackberry Presenter

Using the DeviceTransfer the file that you want to display to your Blackberry. I just use a USB cable and transfer the old fashion way, but I suspect that you could email, bluetooth, bb messenger a file to your device as well.

• Make sure that Bluetooth is running on your Blackberry.
• Open the Blackberry Presenter on the Blackberry. Browse to the file that you want to display (any previously viewed file will show in the opening screen). The file will first load into the Blackberry. It took 60 seconds on mine to load a 28MB powerpoint file. More on file size later.
• Pressing the menu key will give you the option to Present, selecting this option will bring up the available devices. Make sure you can see the Presenter splash screen on the projector/screen because it has a passkey which you will need to connect(your Blackberry) to the device the first time.
• After selecting the Presenter, the first slide will start to be transferred from the Blackberry to the Presenter.
• The menu button gives the user several options such as loop, blank screen, and slide navigation. The user can also use the trackball or space bar to transition between slides/pages.

Supported file typesThe Presenter software will recognize Powerpoint and PDF files. The device will not display image files (in their raw format), video, web pages, etc.
Pros

• The Blackberry is very compact
• For road warriors, this would be an easy alternative to using a laptop for presentations as long as they use simple(small) Powerpoints or pdfs
• Easy, easy connections
• Innovative and sleek design
• Supports most slide transitions
• Device stays cool

Cons

• Large files take a very long time to transfer from the Blackberry to the Presenter. The 28MB file that I transferred earlier took approximately 5 minutes to display the first time. On the second try, it took 1 minute to display the first slide.
• Some images in powerpoints did not display. At this point I'm not sure why.
• Maximum resolution is 1024x768. This can be an issue for wide screen format.
• Does not support display of raw images such as .jpg or output of a screen such as a web page.
• Does not display video files.

SummaryThe Blackberry Presenter is a really cool device if you have simple presentations and small files. For larger presentations that cannot be compressed to a smaller size (2-5MB), the Presenter might not be the best option. It would be nice if you could pre-load the presentation on the Presenter memory directly or if it incorporated a card reader so you could use a micro-SD memory card. It would also be nice to be able to display images directly from the photo browser, this seems like a no brainer to me. I plan to show the presenter to some of the people in our office as an option for presentations.