Now there’s an answer: The Viewing Distance Calculator takes in your viewing distance, screen shape and TV diagonal size/width and spits out a whole bunch of useful numbers.
This, of course, disregards two established rules of thumb:
So, taking into account my apartment’s layout, we’re talking 148.8 inches from the sofa to the TV stand, or 12.4 feet. Plugging in those numbers with a prospective 42″ widescreen TV nets me a maximum recommended viewing distance of 15.8 feet. I am, however, outside the maximum viewing distance for an immersive THX experience (6.6 feet). A 46″ TV might do the trick…
For better or for worse, I tend buck the trends when it comes to consumer gadgets to try and be a little different from the rest of the crowd. When everybody was going with the Apple iPod, or Dell DJ or Creative Zens, I went with industry pioneer Rio and bought a Rio Carbon 5GB in Pearl. Since I try not to base my buying decisions solely on being different, I did come to love the enormous battery life (20 hours), driverless USB operation and tiny size.
That spate of happiness lasted until a four foot fall broke the jog dial on the side that controls volume. And then Rio’s owners decided to close down shop. Though after some careful surgery my Carbon remained functional, I was back in the market for an MP3 player.
So now I find myself a happy Apple iPod Nano owner. Can’t complain about the player – sound quality is terrific and the battery will last me long enough for my purposes. But what to do about that easily scratchable surface? My answer, after careful research at the iLounge Forums (previously known as the iPodLounge Forums) came in the form of the CoreCases Black Nano Case: “The ultimate screen protector for your iPod Nano. Two piece anodized aluminum case with built-in clear screen protector.” User reviews for the case are all around positive, and at $19.95 USD (+ $10 USD shipping to Canada via USPS) the price isn’t that bad either.
So if you’re looking for an iPod Nano case, give CoreCases products a glance. In fact, check out my own media folder Miscellaneous for proper pictures – the one the official site provides isn’t enough to base a decision upon.
TORONTO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Dec. 7, 2005–mail2web.com, a world-wide application provider for consumers and businesses and a brand of Softcom Technology Consulting Inc., announced today the official launch of its own MediaBlog service. This free service goes beyond traditional web logs or blogs by providing support for any file type a member may want to upload and share through a personal, customizable space on the mediablog portal (http://mediablog.mail2web.com/).
In addition, the mail2web.com MediaBlog supports making blog posts directly from popular mobile phone applications such as Nokia’s Lifeblog, included on most of Nokia’s latest handsets as well as support for Apple® iTunes Podcasting.
“We wanted to build upon the success of our email retrieval application and provide our loyal customers something they have been asking for,” said Tony Yustein, CEO of SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc. “While there are a lot of free blog services in the market, in my opinion most have deficiencies. In developing our own product we took the opportunity to address those shortcomings.”
One of the main shortcomings mail2web.com identified were file restrictions. While traditional blogs only support images, mail2web.com’s MediaBlog product allows members to upload any file type, from a Powerpoint® Presentation to a MPEG4 video file. There are no identified restrictions on file size or file type.