This week, Stephen and Charlie kick off a three part arc that spans everything you need to consider when building a home theater system in your home. This week they focus on the visual aspect—displays such as projectors, LCD and plasma panels, and CRT monitors. They also discuss the Xbox 360 a week after launch, and crash, burn and pillage their way through another patented Rapid-Fire Roundup® of Cool Products.

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Articles You Need to Read
Interview: Making Small Companies Sound Big, Part 2
Innoport gives you the sound of a hosted PBX without all that hardware and expense
by Charlie White

Intellicomm offers a service called Innoport, which gives individual users and businesses the functions of automated telephone hardware such as a hosted PBX without its associated high costs. The service can make a small business seem like a major corporation by screening callers, handling fax-to-email functions and finding its users by automatically calling a list of phone numbers, all the while playing the user’s choice of music to callers while they wait. Digital Media Net’s Charlie White talked with , about the company’s services in this second part of a two-part interview.
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Plane Quiet Solitude Headphones
Top-of-the-line active noise reduction headphones are aptly named
by Charlie White

I’ve often wondered why I get so tired after a coast-to-coast flight. After just sitting there, motionless for hours, I usually feel like I’ve run a marathon. Studies have shown that a constant low-frequency noise will introduce fatigue. When I received the Solitude Headphones ($200) from a company called Plane Quiet, I hoped maybe my days of feeling worn out after sitting inside a pressurized tin can for a half a day might be over. Beyond that, I wanted to hear some tight music through a pair of good-sounding headphones. These Solitude phones did not disappoint on either count.
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Rapid-Fire Roundup® of Cool Products

Porto Skype
This 32MB USB drive from Elecom comes preloaded with the Skype software. The memory allows storage of profiles and it also keeps track of more private information such as usernames and passwords without storing them on the PC. There are two versions, one of which is more expensive and features Bluetooth capabilities.

Plantronics Bluetooth Headset
Pulsar 590A headsets include a telescoping voice tube microphone so you can listen and talk. Plug it into your iPod, PC or Bluetooth telephone and talk for 12 hours before you need to recharge the batteries. You can even seamlessly switch between phone calls and ultra high fidelity music listening. Plus, you can control your iPod or phone calls directly from the headset. Go cordless, do it with Bluetooth, $250 from Plantronics.

The iDog
Little dog, big sound. iDOG Rocks to your music! And when you plug it in, it even plays your music! With a built-in speaker, a distinct array of moods, and a personality that changes with the music you "feed" it, iDOG is a faithful music companion. Flashing LED lights change color depending on the type of music you play. Changing light patterns respond to your touch or the amount of music you "feed" iDOG to express moods ranging from loneliness to pure pup ecstasy!

Deodorizing lightbulbs
Does your house smell like the outhouse door on a tuna boat? Here's a light bulb that claims to eliminate all that stench. A two-pack of these 23-watt compact fluorescent light bulbs costs $25 including shipping, the do their magic thanks to a titanium dioxide coating which creates extremely strong oxidizers when exposed to their fluorescent light. They fit in almost any lamp, and they give you 10,000 hours of stink-free fun.

Foodsaver
After the holidays, you probably have a lot of food leftover, don’t let it take up valuable space in clumsly large bowls, throw the food in a foodsaver bag, vacuum out the air and it will last a lot longer, and take up less space. The foodsaver is a great way to marinate meats, extended the freshness of food stuffs, or to even protect collectibles.

Eudora 7
I think Eudora is the best email program in the world, and it just got a whole lot better with the newest version, Eudora 7. It has a great new feature called Ultra-fast Indexed Search, where you can blast through hundreds of thousands of emails in a couple of seconds. It really works, I've tried it myself. Unbelievable. If you're tired of all the exploits that happen with Microsoft Outlook and want to search your email in the blink of an eye, you might want to take a look at Eudora 7, you can try it for free.

Building Your Home Theater
Top 12 User Rated Flat Screen HDTVs
LCD or DLP Projection? Decisions, Decisions
Design and Build Your Own Home Theater

The girls of Vantage Point Technologies, makers of video, television, and monitor mounts.

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