Category: review

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Vuka: social media success

Some of you may remember back a few days when I said some negative things about Vuka, a natural energy drink.

I take back what I said! I still sort of stand by what I said about aluminum thickness – but their incredible attention to customers’ needs is enough to easily win over this hard heart.

They read my review and left a thoughtful comment. Then they contacted me and sent a package over… via courier… with t-shirts, stickers, and several samples of the drink. So I have tried it – and it tastes great. It’s a great concept – the first healthy energy drink that I’ve heard of. (I have only tried one Monster drink – and it was close to drinking cough syrup. The chemicals contained in Monster are not necessarily things I like flowing through my bloodstream… not that I’m Mr. Healthy.)

So check out Vuka. Especially if you’re into energy drinks.

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Cool but wasteful

Vuka. It’s a new-to-me “Intelligent Energy Drink”. My 14-year old son bought it because he thought the bottle was cool. And it is.

However, his comment on what was inside: “pretty disgusting”. He also described it as a “fake energy drink”.

My take: the container is hugely wasteful. The bottle is heavy-gauge aluminum and must have accounted for half of the cost of the product. If the lid were up to the same standard of permanence, it would be a nice thing to hang onto. But it will probably last for about two refills and then strip out. Sad.

Update: See some interesting comments and a rebuttal in the comments.

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No Ping

Ping is a music-matching thing that Apple bought up and added to version 10 of iTunes.

I don’t like it. Problems?

1. All the bands I like are too obscure to even be on Ping’s list.

2. My kids’ buy music through my iTunes account. (Don’t worry – it’s with their money!) I’ll simply say that their tastes in music are different than mine.

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Bad buying decision

My artistic daughter (also my only daughter, as it turns out) wanted a camera – so she could capture images through her eyes.

Since I love taking photos of weird things, and since she thinks a lot like me in those ways, I was quite happy to get a camera for her birthday. Knowing she is not a discriminating consumer, I bought the inexpensive HP you see here from buy.com. It never worked right. You can see the little battery leak at the lower left corner. Somehow it drained the batteries so fast that she could only take about three photos before the batteries died. And by the time I figured it out, the warranty had expired. (And sadly, I could not even sell it with a clean conscience for a giveaway price on craigslist.)

Moral of the story? Sometimes it’s worth it to spend more to get a better whatever. The initial cost may be more, but it will cost you less in the long run.

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Pete vs Frank

I love hot sauce. I normally have at least three different kinds of Tabasco waiting to use when needed. But I like variety.

A recent Sunday newspaper provided me with a 50c coupon for use on a bottle of Frank’s. So when I was out grabbing something else at our nearby supermarket, I thought I’d pick up a bottle. Alas, Frank’s bottle was priced roughly double what Texas Pete’s was – even after the coupon. So Pete won out.

And I had to point out to you that Texas Pete is not from Texas. He’s brewed in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Flavor? Pete’s is milder than Tabasco. I like it enough to recommend that you add it to your hot sauce arsenal. (Apologies that I haven’t yet tried Frank’s.)

This post is inspired by my blogging friend James Taylor. He said, “I literally put Tabasco sauce on everything…”

Finally, apologies to my overseas readers – I’m guessing Texas Pete has not taken his sauce outside these borders.

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Avoid Best Buy

…Just for this one thing, anyhow.

If you are about to buy a High Definition TV, don’t get the HDMI cable from Best Buy. A quick search on Yahoo Shopping yielded the same thing for $7.99 from Sears.

(By the way, we don’t have an HD TV. Low-definition is good enough for us. And most low-def players come with all the cables you’ll need.)

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Toy Story 3 Review

The punchline: It was great. Go see it.

It was amazing how the movie’s creators were able to appeal to all ages. One illustration of this was the toys. Kids under 11 were not alive when the previous episode was released, so they might be used to playing with any of the toys represented that are “timeless”. My oldest (now almost 17) was only two when the first episode came out. He played with Buzz Lightyear and Woody, so he has fond memories of those characters. My wife played with the telephone-on-wheels when she was a kid.

The story was wonderful – no glitches or places where I went, “Why did they do that?!” Again, there were enough entertaining aspects to the entire experience that we all enjoyed it from start to finish.

A+. The film of the summer. Donald Miller agrees with me, in his own special way.

Image courtesy of Awards Daily. I’m sure Buzz himself was happy to lend his photo to them. And they didn’t object to my using it for your pleasure.

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I lied

ipad-emailWell, not really.

But I was not able to stay away from the iPad. No, I didn’t buy one. But I did visit the Apple Store last night (separate from the opening day, when I did not go in the store, as previously reported). My sons and I tried out the iPad. We all liked it a lot!

A few observations:

– It would not rotate from landscape to portrait in some apps. (The rotation lock switch could have been turned on and I didn’t know it. I discovered its existence after leaving the store.)

– The interface was not intuitive on Pages (the Word equivalent). I couldn’t find tools in the page view.

– The keyboard takes some getting used to. If I bought one, I’d grab a bluetooth keyboard right away.

– I guess I’m used to the traditional Mac interface – not having access to the Finder would take some getting used to. (I do a lot with files.)

Advantages of Amazon’s Kindle? You can read it in direct sunlight. It has longer battery life. More titles are available. Everything else? iPad.

I had fun making my site the home page for Safari on some of the demo units. (My website hits will go up artificially till the store personnel fix that.) Also, one of my sons made the screen background on some of the demo units look like a page filled with app icons – stealth little trick! Alas, though – the Apple Store resets them every morning, so our little tricks lasted just a few hours.

Verdict? It looks like a great new toy (and useful work device, for many). If I could afford one, I’d add it to my toy chest. Alas, not for a while! And finally, David Pogue has a great FAQ page on the iPad here. And don’t forget to check out the great explanatory videos on the Apple site.

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Daily extravagance

neem-soap$5 for a bar of soap?

Well, you see, it started with a free sample. The CEO of Organix-South sent me a sample of their lovely Neem toothpaste for an International Toothpaste Museum review. Besides the toothpaste, she sent me several hotel-bar-sized samples of their soap. I got hooked.

When the samples finally got spent, I was desperate for some more. So when a few extra dollars were given to yours truly for Christmas, what did I go out and spend the money on? A bar of soap!

How could I justify spending so much for a bar of soap?

1) The smell is amazing. My shower each morning is now something I look forward to – just because of that smell! (I must disclose that Heather doesn’t like the smell. But it doesn’t wear off on the user – so she is still happy to hang around me!) I have a very weak sense of smell, and this soap has the ability to awaken my nasal powers unlike anything else – if only for a brief second.

2) I have really dry skin. During winter in dry Colorado, some days find me wanting to soak in a bathtub full of lotion. (Never done it – but I’ve thought about trying!) This soap seems to make a huge difference for me.

I’m not advocating your buying this soap. But I thought you’d like to know why I bought that bar over Christmas break.

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