outdoor

I'm a city boy, so I don't relate to the "outdoor" speaker category all that well, but I certainly acknowledge the need for such things. For me outdoor audio is limited to my iPod and whatever headphones I'm reviewing. Geoffrey Morrison over at Home Entertainment magazine sees the bigger picture so he reviewed the Polk Audio Atrium Sat30 satellite ($150 each) and Atrium Sub10 subwoofer ($300), and came away pretty impressed by what he heard.

It's a plus that Polk managed to avoid the usual styling gimmicks that most outdoor sound systems rely on, … Read more

If you can imagine "wearing" a bicycle on your feet, it might look something like Chariot Skates, the name of a novel form of roller skate that lets you go off-road and downhill with greater ease than inline skates.

Australian Michael Jenkins created his Wheelskates to bring skiing and cycling together in one product. The user's feet are suspended below the axles of knee-high wheels in hinged leg and foot support struts; smaller rear wheels add stability. The mechanism helps create the impression of skiing and skating when moving forward.

Jenkins says the low center of gravity … Read more

Bears have some awfully funny inclinations. Back in 2004 there were all those wackynews stories about the bear who'd downed three dozen cans of beer at a campground and proceeded to pass out.

But this one takes the cake: this summer, when Vermont hiker Kris Rowley was approached by a bear and it kept following her, it proved more interested in chowing down on her iPhone.

Rowley, who serves as Vermont's chief information security officer, tells CIO.com: "In a semi-panic, I threw the phone at the bear."

The bear proceeded to ignore Rowley and started … Read more

Cooking and eating outside is always a lot of fun and offers a flavor that just can't be beat. Sometimes, however, it's just not practical. Whether it's raining or you just can't get away, opportunities exist to at least capture the flavor of the great outdoors and bring it inside. While the big sky, green grass, and rolling hills won't be making an appearance inside your kitchen (thankfully), the essence of the outdoors can be captured with smoke.

The Nordic Ware Stovetop Kettle Smoker infuses great smoke flavor into meats, fish and vegetables all from … Read more

Wireless-N has gone outdoor for a while now with Meraki and Tropos having taken turns to release their their products.

However, Ruckus Wireless on Monday announced new outdoor wireless products it claims to be "world's first and only outdoor dual-band 802.11n with dynamic beam forming." The new product, the ZoneFlex 7762 access point, is supposedly designed to solve problems that have hindered outdoor Wi-Fi deployments, including interference, physical obstructions, as well as network management complexity and cost.

The ZoneFlex 7762 is the company's first centrally managed, concurrent dual-band 802.11n (2.4Ghz and 5Ghz) outdoor … Read more

If you haven't heard of North American Eagle, it's a program to break the existing land-based speed record of 763 miles per hour by reaching 800 mph, which is slightly faster than Mach 1 (768 mph).

There are a range of technologies incorporated into the NAE vehicle to make this crazy land speed possible, including those that provide communication between car and control center. This is where Tropos Networks comes into play.

The company announced Tuesday that its routers are being used in the latest NAE trial runs in the desert at Black Rock, Nevada, this week, where vehicle speeds exceed 500 miles per hour. Onboard the NAE vehicle during its high-speed test runs is a Tropos 4210 mobile mesh router that provides real-time communication and data monitoring.

While network connection at high speeds is not new, as Internet access on airplanes has been available for some time now, the main issue here is latency. The NAE vehicle is a very-fast-moving land-based testing object, and it's necessary that it has the capacity for true real-time communication.

To resolve this, Tropos system uses direct Wi-Fi links between the vehicle and ground stations to provide access to vehicle data with a delay of only one to three milliseconds.… Read more

Ah, summer. Long, hot days on the beach or by the pool spent with family and friends. Or perhaps a quality afternoon in the park sounds more appealing. Imagine it: the grill going, the kids playing, a cool breeze blowing. No matter if you imagine the beach, the pool, or the park, it's a great scene that just doesn't get any better... unless, of course you had a margarita in hand. While beer and soda pop may travel extremely well in the cooler, margaritas aren't necessarily very portable. Until now.

The Margaritaville Battery-Powered Portable Frozen Concoction Maker … Read more

Outdoor kitchens are more advanced than ever, allowing us to cook more complicated dishes than the standard burgers and brats. But few outdoor appliances pack the same punch in the variety department as this multiple-use cooker by Alfresco.

The VersaPower Multi-Use Cooker lives up to its namesake by combining with a family of accessories that allow you to cook a huge variety of meals. You can add a deep fryer/pasta cooker to cook french fries or boil noodles, or add on a steel pot filler to fill tall stock pots. You can also remove the center trivet and a … Read more

Pizza is an amazingly complex thing for a food item so seemingly simple. Bread, cheese, sauce, that's it. That's enough to get you going. Oh sure, you can drown your pizza in a sea of toppings, but the essential structure starts from basic everyday ingredients. The deceptively complex nature of pizza is both a good thing and a bad thing. Endless varieties abound, and there are certainly great pizzas to be found, but it is all too easy to order up a lousy pizza. Good thing you can bake your own.

But don't pick up that pizza … Read more