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Healing Rhythms

Zack Stern — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:21:59 -0500

You can practice meditation techniques with biofeedback from these sensors.

To us, biofeedback has always seemed like the natural direction for input devices, where sensors can hook up to your body and read subtle changes in brain activity that would control what’s displayed on the computer—or, in our most advanced sci-fi fantasies—what the computer does. Companies such as NeuroSky (www.neurosky.com) are developing EEG brainwave-reading systems to control machines. These applications could eventually lead to a retail product that lets you move the cursor with your mind. Healing Rhythms introduces us to a few other biofeedback sensors designed to teach users about meditation and quieting the mind and body. The hardware and software don’t control the Mac otherwise, but instead monitor your responses as you move through various exercises. We got a kick out of watching the software change with biofeedback, and we even learned a few useful basic meditation techniques in the process.

The Healing Rhythms hardware-and-software bundle includes three sensors that attach to your fingertips. These clips measure your skin conductance level and variations in heart rate. Skin conductance changes with subtle variations in perspiration. When this factor rises and falls—almost instantaneously with your emotional state—the software interprets it as an increase or decrease in stress. Heart rate variability marks the subtly fluctuating time between heartbeats. This measurement also changes with emotional states and might indicate your ability to control your normally autonomic circulatory functions during a meditation session.

While we’re naturally skeptical, Healing Rhythms seemed to accurately, though subtly, monitor our stress level. Celebrity healers Deepak Chopra, Dean Ornish, and Andrew Weil introduced us to breathing and meditation techniques, while the onscreen display showed us our levels of agitation or calm. While we didn’t notice a change in the display with every thought, one demonstration raised animated balloons when we thought of something exciting, and let them drift down when we thought of nothing. Another lesson challenged us to keep an even temperament, stacking animated stones if we maintained that balance.

Dozens of short exercises guided us through this introduction to meditation. We liked the way the real-time, onscreen feedback tempered the occasionally broad statements about meditation. We’ll leave it up to the yogis and doctors to determine if, as the manual suggests, “Studies [indicate] that when you achieve a state of positive, balanced energy, those vibrations ripple outward…even affecting the brainwaves of anyone you touch.”

The bottom line. We’re not sure if Healing Rhythms will lead to enlightenment, but despite our initial skepticism, we enjoyed the calming meditation and onscreen biofeedback.

COMPANY: The Wild Divine Project

CONTACT: www.wilddivine.com

PRICE: $299

REQUIREMENTS: 800MHz G4 or faster processor, Mac OS 10.2.8 or later

Biofeedback sensors seem to gauge emotional state. Many brief lessons and open-ended sessions. Some lessons translate biofeedback into onscreen animations.

Proprietary interface is occasionally confusing. Some lessons grow repetitive.

Cintiq 20WSX

Zack Stern — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:27:50 -0500

Take your photos and illustrations in hand with this gloriously large and responsive LCD tablet.

Digital Artists, Designers and photographers need a way to edit photos, draw onscreen, and edit their designs and images. Without a pen tablet, clicking and drawing with a standard mouse can feel cumbersome and imprecise. With Wacom’s gorgeous (and pricey) Cintiq 20WSX, you can banish your mouse and write, scribble, and sketch onscreen with a stylus instead. This 20.1-inch drawing tablet merges a bright LCD with a touch-sensitive surface, giving amazing control in the apps that graphics pros use most. The result feels nearly the same as actual pencils and brushes, but with all the benefits of a digital workspace, like undo, layers, and scripts.

We breezed through setup, planting the 1680-by-1050-pixel display on its sturdy base and installing the included software. We liked the included base’s smooth adjustment. The Cintiq works well as the only display or as a secondary display. After the quick “tap-here” calibration, we tried that configuration in our favorite graphics apps.

In Corel Painter X and Photoshop CS3, the spot-on stylus response gave us delightfully nuanced control. The display tracked our movements across the entire surface, keeping the cursor aligned with the tip. The device registers 1,024 levels of pressure, bleeding a heavy touch wider or darker than a light stroke. Even angled swipes are recognized. The specific app and brush you’re using respond differently to these variables, adding new abilities that a mouse simply can’t touch. Even in Photoshop, brush opacity shrinks with a lighter touch.

The stylus and tablet surface each feature handy buttons. Flip the stylus over, and the eraser end scrubs out mistakes. A two-position rocker switch gives a few other functions, like Control-click. The left and right tablet edges have seven programmable buttons for quick key commands. We were pleased with the rear placement of the scroll-style touch strips on the Cintiq, which kept us from accidentally grazing them. Too bad it still feels slightly jittery and unpredictable.

The bottom line. The Cintiq 20WSX fits all your palettes onscreen and packs enough resolution for detailed work. Pros can easily justify its cost.

COMPANY: Wacom

CONTACT: www.wacom.com

PRICE: $1,999

REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.3.9 or later, DVI or VGA connection, USB port

Accurate stylus tracking easily beats mouse control. Pressure- and angle-sensitivity give new life to art applications. Big size provides ample room to work.

Touch strips feel less precise than a simple scrollwheel. Top edge of screen gets noticeably warm in use.

Belkin Mini Surge Protector

Stephan Somogyi — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:11:55 -0500

The Mini Surge is incredibly handy for recharging your USB devices while traveling.

Back when FireWire was first introduced, one of its coolest features was that it delivered power and was a fast data conduit. At the time, USB’s trickle of electrons wasn’t enough to power much of anything. As devices became more frugal with their electricity, USB slowly turned into a recharging standard for many small gadgets.

But there’s one major difference in how Macs handle these ports while asleep: FireWire ports continue to receive power, whereas USB ports don’t. So you can recharge a FireWire device while your laptop is asleep, but not a USB device. You have to leave the whole system running just to charge your iPod.

Enter the Belkin Mini Surge Protector. It’s a small, three-outlet surge protector with two power-only USB ports. It has a clever plug that rotates in 90-degree increments to orient the unit relative to the power socket it’s plugged into—this comes in very handy when you’re trying to plug into a two-outlet wall socket that’s got something else plugged into the other outlet.

We weren’t able to conjure up an electrical storm to test its surge suppression capabilities, but we did use the Mini Surge’s USB ports to recharge a BlackBerry Pearl, a fifth-generation iPod, and a Jabra Bluetooth Headset, all with their stock USB cables (two at a time). This process went so well that we found the Mini Surge to be super useful at home as well as when traveling, since it allows you to retire unitasker power bricks and use the standard USB cables instead. Sure, the Mini Surge consumes some standby power when sitting idle, but it’s probably a lot less than the combined total of the replaced power bricks. It’s 110-volt only, but you can use standard converters if you’re traveling overseas where the voltages and plug types are different.

The bottom line. If you travel in the territory of 110V power, you should get a Belkin Mini Surge Protector. And it’s useful even if you’re stationary in 110V-land.

COMPANY: Belkin

CONTACT: www.belkin.com

PRICE: $29.99

REQUIREMENTS: 110V power

Well thought-out industrial design. USB charging is very useful, even at home.

Only works with 110V power. Draws some standby power.

Griffin GarageBand Microphone Cable

Tom Lassiter — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 13:00:20 -0500

The GarageBand Microphone Cable is a lot cheaper than an XLR converter box.

If you’re a podcaster who wants good voice audio in your podcasts (and who doesn’t?), you need to use an XLR microphone. Macs don’t have XLR connectors, but you can use Griffin’s GarageBand Microphone Cable, which features an XLR jack for your mic and a stereo minijack so you can plug into a Mac’s standard audio line-in port.

The GarageBand Cable has a sturdy cast-metal XLR connector, not a cheap stamped-metal connector. After connecting the cable between the mic and the Mac, we adjusted the Mac’s Sound preferences to use the audio-in port for input. The GarageBand Cable brought in the XLR mic’s full, rich sound. Connected to a field mixer on a video shoot, the GarageBand Cable piped the audio directly into GarageBand on our MacBook Pro, eliminating the need to dub in the interviews later. Sweet.

The bottom line. Would you rather spend $15 on Griffin’s GarageBand Microphone Cable or $200 for an XLR converter box? We thought so.

COMPANY: Griffin Technology

CONTACT: www.griffintechnology.com

PRICE: $14.99

REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.3 or later, audio-in jack

Very affordable. Works well with Griffin iTalk for recording with an iPod.

Only 10 feet long. Somewhat light-gauge cable.

Optek Music Systems Fretlight FG-431 Vintage Electric Guitar

Perry Mosdromos — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 14:13:21 -0500

Touch it, love it. The guitar gods compel you!

Sliding around the living room in your underwear with a hairbrush for a microphone might be cool…wait, wait, wait…that was never cool. If what you really want to do is learn how to play an instrument, it seems that starting with one that’s got a built-in cool factor is, well, cool.

Which is how we ended up with the Fretlight FG-431 Vintage Electric guitar. The FG-431, which you can connect via USB to your Mac, has a brand differentiator that’s as amusing as it is inviting: The fretboard lights up where your fingers are supposed to go. Kind of like painting by numbers (or the Guitar Hero videogame), the Fretlight, with a GarageBand plug-in, lets you learn how to play guitar easily. Something that we weren’t totally sure could be done - but we were game to try.

At first blush, the FG-431 seems a little heavier than a normal guitar, possibly because of the onboard electronics. But connecting to a PowerBook G4 was no problem - and that’s when the fun began. The fretboard (the portion of the guitar beneath the strings) lit up, as promised. Songs and exercises for learning how to play those songs appear on your Mac’s screen, allowing you to follow along in two places. The software walks you through tunes, bar chords, and the rudiments of making music (rather than noise).

Now, we don’t know much about teaching people how to play musical instruments, or if this is even the right way to do it, but it can’t get much easier than putting your fingers where the lights are. After an hour, we unplugged the guitar from the laptop and plugged into an amp, to see if the lessons stuck. Seemingly, yes. And outside of some occasional buzzy-ness from the frets, which could easily have been operator error (or reversed polarity), we highly enjoyed sliding around the living room in our underwear mangling the first few lines of “Smoke on the Water.” We probably didn’t look as cool as if we’d been rocking a Stratocaster, but unless the neighbors peeping in your open windows are pro guitarists, no one will know the difference. You learn on this one, and then move on. Your secret’s safe with us.

The bottom line. You can get plenty of other guitars for a lot cheaper than the Fretlight FG-431. But if you’re short on time and long on cash, it’s the perfect guitar for you.

COMPANY: Optek Music Systems

CONTACT: www.fretlight.com

PRICE: $549.95

REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS X

Great guitar for beginners.

The lights, the lights…for a seasoned hand, were a tad distracting. And the price kind of hurt, too.

Griffin Technology iMic

Roman Loyola — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 12:31:24 -0500

The iMic can help you digitize your crates of vinyl records.

What’s your excuse for not digitizing your vinyl copy of Dark Side of the Moon? Wait, let us guess - you haven’t figured out how to connect your turntable to your Mac, huh? The red and white jacks from the turntable don’t match any ports on your Mac. What you need is an iMic. The iMic is handy for connecting a turntable, tape player, or any other audio device to your computer.

The iMic is about the size of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, and it attaches with an 18-inch USB cable. It has a pair of 1/8-inch jacks for audio-in and -out, and it also comes with an adapter for RCA (the red and white connectors that extend from your device). It’s easy to connect an old-school device like a turntable. Plug the iMic into a USB port, plug the adapter into the iMic’s In port, select Line on the iMic, and then connect the turntable. You’ll need to select the iMic in your System Preferences, under Sound. That’s it. We only wish the iMic’s USB cable was a touch longer, since our Mac is stashed under a desk.

You can use GarageBand to record audio, or you can use the bundled Final Vinyl software, which features basic tools for editing sound files. It lacks trimming tools, but the workaround is to select the audio you want in the file, and then select Save Audio Region.

The bottom line. The iMic helps you digitize vinyl records and mix tapes so you can finally stash those items in storage.

COMPANY: Griffin Technology

CONTACT: www.griffintechnology.com

PRICE: $39.99

REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS X (Final Vinyl requires Mac OS 10.3.9 or later), USB

Provides a way to connect record players or other audio devices for converting audio to digital format.

Short USB cable. Final Vinyl software has limited features.

Goldtouch Adjustable Keyboard

Stuart Gripman — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 15:07:36 -0600

The ball joint between the two halves allows for precise adjustment, and the metal bar provides stability.

Your time with your Mac should be pleasant, not interrupted by aching wrists from using a keyboard that forces you to twist and contort your hands in unnatural ways. The Goldtouch is a compact keyboard that splits up to 30 degrees in the horizontal and vertical planes to alleviate ulnar deviation and pronation. That is, you can adjust the Goldtouch so that your hands are in a natural and much more comfortable position when typing on the split sides of the keyboard.

The adjustment mechanism is a proprietary locking ball joint. We found it to be flexible, though a bit touchy - and tricky to fine-tune. And we found the cheap, noisy keys on the numeric keypad puzzling, since the main keyboard was much quieter and more comfortable to type on.

Layout trade-offs are inevitable when making a keyboard that splays in two axes. The Goldtouch sports the Command, Option, and Control keys we know and love, but Key Ovation made some frustrating choices when it came to key placement. The Help key sits between Control and Option - huh? Even worse, the Home key is adjacent to the Delete key. We found ourselves at the start of many lines when trying to delete.

The bottom line. The Goldtouch has quirks, but it's Mac friendly and much cheaper than physical therapy.

COMPANY: Key Ovation
CONTACT: www.keyovation.com
PRICE: $179.95
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.4 or later, USB
Good documentation. Mac-specific keys.
Cheap switches on the numeric keypad. Tricky to adjust.

Intuos3 4x6

Roman Loyola — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 21:18:10 -0600

A better fit for small-sized widescreen displays.

The only difference between the Intuos3 4x6 and the Intuos3 6x11 is their sizes - the Intuos3 4x6 is smaller (duh). It feels just as comfortable and accurate as the bigger tablet. So why take up precious magazine space for this product? Read on - but if all you need to know is whether the Intuos3 4x6 is a great tablet, the answer is yes, so skip ahead to the next review.

If you're using a MacBook or a 15-inch MacBook Pro, the larger Intuos3 6x11 may be too big. Sound trivial? Not if you're a graphic designer who demands precision. Controlling access to a smaller screen is easier with a smaller tablet.

The bottom line. This is one great tablet for Mac addicts - and Mac designers - who own either a MacBook or a 15-inch MacBook Pro.

COMPANY: Wacom
CONTACT: 800-922-9348, www.wacom.com
PRICE: $229.95
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.2.8 or later, USB
The right size for smaller widescreen displays, such as those on laptops.
Expensive.