Enter SurfShelf! You can attach the SurfShelf.com to your treadmill, stationary bike or elliptical trainer and watch videos, catch up on your RSS feeds, read your email, and more.

Now, I don’t think you can pound out an in-depth blog post or design a website while jogging on your treadmill, but you certainly could combine some of your more basic tasks with some exercise and take care of two tasks at once. Your heart, waistline, and inbox would thank you.

SurfShelf laptop holder – the Perfect Gift for Working Moms! Only only $39.95

I think it is a pretty cool gadget actually! What do you think? Would you use it?

The ad shares an amazing cross section of data in a very easy to digest format – its visual, relevant and its presenting numbers about what people are using their Sprint cell phones for NOW. Like:

• The number of cell phone users – then how many just hung up
• The number of incoming emails – and the power of spam filters
• What people are searching for
• How video is being used on their phones
• The popularity of texting – even in business meetings
• People using their phones for Twitter – and the fact that 26% of the population has no idea what Twitter is
• That people are using their phones to research destinations (such as restaurants) and oh, by the way, we even lose those phones
• And the fact that now, the first thing people do when a flight lands is turn on that cell phone!

That is a TON of information – relevant information with a little humor built in – that is conveyed in less than 60 seconds! And as someone who uses my cell phone for just about every one of those purposes, I got a really good sense that if I ever needed to change providers, that Sprint would have everything that I need. Luckily Verizon has done a great job of offering the services I need at a price I am satisfied with, but if I ever considered changing, the first network I would think of would be Sprint.

What other ads/commercials have you seen that are so effective, especially in today’s highly fragmented ad market?

I have been looking at the Bamboo Fun (Medium) Black Tablet with Pen, Mouse & Graphics Software because it seems to be the middle of the road version – plenty of features but not the huge price tag.

Anyhow, I would love to know if any of you already have one and what you think of it. Do you use it a lot? Is it easy to use? Would you recommend it?

You can actually take a look at my home office in a post I did on my other site a while back – but I am just going to deal with the hardware specs for this post.

Computers:

My main system is a Dell Dimension Pentium 4 with a 3GHz processor, 3GB of RAM and a 21″ monitor. The system is about 3 years old and it is starting to show its age. Something tells me I will be replacing it within the next year. I run Windows XP on my Dell. Some of the software I use daily includes, Microsoft Office, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and iTunes.

My secondary system is a Apple iMac G5 Desktop 20″  (2.0 GHz PowerPC G5, 1.5GB RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive, SuperDrive). These are really cool machines!! I use my Mac for a lot of my graphics work. It has the complete Adobe Creative Suite 2 (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop) on it plus Office for Mac and it is my preferred machine for Skyping thanks to the built in microphone and webcam.

My mobile office includes a Sony VAIO laptop that has the same software on it as my Dell does. I take my laptop everywhere – from the living room to work while the family watches TV to the hockey rink to get some extra work done while waiting for my son to finish ice hockey practice. I can also check email and surf the web on my Treo phone as needed.

Printers:

While I don’t do a ton of print work anymore, I still have 3 printers in my office at this moment. I have a Lexmark 2430 magicolor color laser printer, an old HP Laserjet black and white laser, and an HP 2510 Photosmart all in one printer, fax, scanner and copier. Believe it or not, they all get used and all have their own specific jobs. The all in one is networked so the iMac can print to it as well.

Network:

In addition to my office we have computers in the playroom for the kids and one in my husband’s office (yes, we are a family of geeks) so they have to be networked. We swear by our Linksys Wireless G Cable Gateway to get our high speed cable to any computer in the house.

Other stuff:

For backups I rely on my SmartDisk 160GB FireLite drive. It has more storage space than the Dell and it is small enough to fit in the palm of my hand.

I also have a Nikon Cool Pix 7600 that I use for digital photography. Its small, takes good quality pictures and can even take video if I need it.

My set up is obviously more than the average person needs to be successful online, however, I am lucky that I am married to Mr. Gadget who loves technology and buying the latest toys. Plus, doing work on the web and in print requires more than just the average blogger might need.

So, what is your setup? Leave me a comment here, or better yet – go over to David’s site to get in on the action and you may even win a prize.

After experiencing one too many blue screens of death in the early days of our home offices, Mr. T. has become enamored with external data storage. From a bottomless supply of floppy disks back in the 90′s to stacks of writable CDs, Zip drives, flash drives, and external hard drives, we have tried them all. I’m not kidding.

Anyhow, Mr. T. was at his favorite haunt the other day and decided that my life could be made easier with a new technology tool or two. He picked up a SmartDisk USB FireLite drive for me. Why? Because. Because the FireLite drive is so cool. It can hold 160GB of data – which is more than the hard drive in my 3 year old Dell desktop PC. And get this! The entire unit is slightly larger than a deck of cards, which means it will fit in my laptop bag or even in my purse if I need it to.

It is also plug and play! It requires no additional power source (but can handle an AC power supply if needed) and even though it came with software, I haven’t had to install it.

No more excuses when it comes to backing up your data. It just doesn’t get any easier than this!

Every Monday night for the rest of the summer my son and some of his friends are taking a class on building robots with Legos. How cool is that? They are doing it through a company called Davinci’s Kids. He took the first course last fall and really had a great time with it.

Basically each week they are presented with a challenge. They build a working Lego robot using the LEGO Mindstorms NXT robotics kit and then program the robot to perform certain tasks.

Last night was week #2 of the course and their mission as part of Alien Encounter was to design a plow for their robot that would push the most rocks across the finish line. Here is a video of my son’s last robot performing the task. One of the wheels got stuck and it ended up making the plow turn.

About 12 years ago I taught the Lego Robotics program to kids in a private school setting. The curriculum is extremely sound and a great way for kids to begin learning the basics of programming in general.

So, Friday the 13th was my lucky day, because my well-trained kids had been passing on the message for months to my husband and they all got me a hot pink iPod nano for my birthday.

After dinner I immediately headed to the CD cabinet and grabbed some of my favorite oldies (Alphaville, Depeche Mode, Elvis Presley, The Replacements) and began ripping them onto my iPod. Once I made it through the stack I headed over to iTunes to grab some new tunes from The Kaiser Chiefs, Mika, Robbie Williams and Fatboy Slim to round out my very eclectic collection.

Now it’s your turn. What are the best sites for staying up to date on the best tips and such for iPods?