SPECIALS | 11/14/08 – 11/21/2008

At Small Dog Electronics, it’s obvious we love animals. So when we discovered that there was a little girl who was committed to feeding hungry dogs and cats, we thought we could provide some support!

Mimi Ausland, a 12 year old girl from Bend, Oregon, was inspired by the website “freerice.com”:http://www.freekibble.com, which uses word games to help feed those in need. She figured the same could apply to animals, so she came up with an easy (and fun) way to provide food through playing trivia games on the website.

“Check it out!”:http://www.freekibble.com

I’m going to see the new James Bond movie “Quantum of Solace” this weekend, which is the sequel to “Casino Royale.” Did anyone notice that whenever James Bond used a computer in “Casino Royale” he looked utterly perplexed? I’ve always thought that the iPhone/iPod touch is a perfect James Bond-ish gadget. I want M to add sonar, a laser, and a miniature buzz saw to my iPod touch. Oh yeah, and cut and paste (if Apple can’t do it, certainly M can).

I hope all of you have a great week, and thanks for reading yet another edition of Kibbles & Bytes!

Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,
_Ed and Kali (and Rebecca)_

Several people wrote in with questions about the EyeTV Hybrid review I wrote last week. Most people wanted to know about the difference between the EyeTV Hybrid (which costs $135) and the EyeTV 250 (which costs $185).

El Gato has a comparison page between the two devices:
http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/products/compare.en.html

And even better, you can see an article detailing the comparisons here:
http://support.elgato.com/index.php?languageid=1&group=englishdefault&_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&parentcategoryid=1&kbarticleid=1193

The main difference is that the EyeTV 250 Plus is a hardware encoder, so it does not use your Mac’s processor to encode analog video. This is mainly an issue for older Macs – newer Intel Macs should be able to easily handle decoding analog signals. El Gato says “EyeTV 250 Plus contains hardware encoders that offer excellent performance and recording quality. Because the processor intensive MPEG encoding is done in the hardware, you can use an older Macintosh to record high quality programming.” And later “Dual G5 and Intel Macs can handle the demand on the processor quite effortlessly, so an EyeTV Hybrid is a very suitable and inexpensive alternative for newer Macs.”

Note that both devices will allow you to import VHS tapes and convert them to digital – the guide is not clear about this. The EyeTV 250 comes with a specialized program for this, while the EyeTV hybrid requires you use the same software to record a VHS tape as you’d use to record a TV show. In my opinion, this is not a major distinction.

The EyeTV 250 comes with Toast 8 Basic, while the EyeTV Hybrid does not. EyeTV 250 needs to be plugged into the wall, while EyeTV Hybrid is bus-powered.

I’m a fan of the Post-It note, so I love the fact that it comes on my Mac (plus, it’s better for the environment that way). I’m __not__ a fan, however, of the clutter that occurs when I have several windows open.

I thought I’d explore some preferences to see if I could make the application work better for me, and I found an option I now use all the time: making the note translucent, with the keyboard shortcut of Command-Option-T. So now when I have several notes open, I can still see the other items I’m working on underneath.

There are many more tips to make Stickies a much better app, and “Macostips.co.uk”:http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/ has outlined a top 10 which is worth a read (they like the translucency, too!). “Check it out!”:http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/10-tips-for-stickies.html

_Hi Everyone,_

It’s Edward Shepard writing for Don this week. Sadly, he was abducted by little grey aliens on Wednesday. He won’t be back until they get tired of hearing about how superior the National League supposedly is to the American League.

We began adding holiday flair to “Smalldog.com”:http://www.smalldog.com this week. I have to admit, it seems early for this. I’d prefer to wait until after Thanksgiving (at least). We all know that retailers are pushing the Christmas season earlier and earlier. A little holiday magic is lost when “Silver Bells” is playing while you’re shopping for Halloween candy. I even read that some Cracker Barrel restaurants already had complete Christmas displays set up at the end of August. That’s absurd! You can still swim in Lake Champlain in August!

While we don’t relish being part of the holiday magic-diluting trend, and we’ve resisted it in the past, this year we recognized that most other businesses in our industry had posted their holiday sales message by 10/31. That’s partly because people really are already looking for holiday and pre-holiday special offers. In this shaky economy, people are planning ahead for their big (and small) purchases. We’re hearing about this on a daily basis.

We’ve posted our “Pre-Holiday Sales Event page here.”:http://www.smalldog.com/holiday After the 24th, that page will become our main holiday sales page. We’ll keep it updated with the most popular items for sale on Smalldog.com, new special offers, and gift suggestions. Even better, we’re going to make sure our holiday offers are competitively priced, easy to purchase, and easy to understand. Finally, our customers will get more than just a holiday purchase from Small Dog; they’ll get an entire team of people dedicated to ensuring that they’re happy with their purchase, and that the purchase was an excellent all-around value.

Now for a final confession: I really do love Christmas and the holiday season in general. It’s fun to decorate our website, even if it seems a little early. Some of my friends are getting tired of hearing me say this, but I already want to get a Christmas tree. I’m getting one the weekend after Thanksgiving. I’m going to make the most of the season, bad economy or not. So Merry–I mean, Happy–I mean, Seasons–eh, still too early for that. How about this: Have a nice weekend!

Ed@Smalldog.com

As part of the pre-holiday promotion, we’re offering a free Isis sleeve with the purchase of any MacBook or MacBook Pro with AppleCare….