Hasta La Gadget!

Winegard might sound as though they are a company that is involved in wine insurance or some sort of the equivalent, but they are really a leader when it comes to antenna design, development and manufacturing. In fact, Winegard is currently showcasing its first-of-a-kind Rayzar Automatic, which is a fully automatic HD TV antenna that has the ability to quickly scan for all available local broadcast channels. This is an extremely easy-to-use antenna, making it a must-have item where RV enthusiasts are concerned as it will enable the to enjoy top-rated programming in addition to local news as well as weather, regardless of the time and the place.

Winegard‘s Rayzar Automatic happens to be a dual band antenna that boasts of state-of-the-art technology, as it guarantees effortless usability as well as an optimal viewing experience all the time. The Rayzar Automatic’s external hardware will go to work as it searches for live, local signals, and there is also an LED wall plate within the RV which will illuminate all locations whenever there are TV signals available. The antenna will position itself automatically so that it can ensure maximum channel availability. Not only that, the presence of a manual override option would enable the user to hunt down a specific broadcast channel.

There will also be Winegard’s state-of-the-art Surface Mount Technology making an appearance with the Rayzar Automatic, being an ultra-low noise amplifier that delivers unmatched signal strength for superior picture quality with little-to-no pixilation or picture loss. The Rayzar Automatic has the ability to pull in both VHF and UHF channels. It measures a mere 15.5” in diameter and is 7” high, tipping the scales at 4.5 pounds, making it a snap to install thanks to a simple coax hook-up – which means there is no need for you to drill a hole in the roof for a crank handle. This is more or less like an outdoor version of the indoor antenna, isn’t it?

Press Release
[ Winegard reveals the Rayzar Automatic fully automatic Over-The-Air HD TV Antenna copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

While Chromebooks might be seen as really lightweight versions of laptops in the sense that they can’t really run heavy duty software, things have definitely changed over the years, especially with Google and Adobe announcing back in September that Photoshop would be making its way onto Chrome OS.

Well the good news is that after laboring at it for the past 2 years, it looks like Photoshop has finally made its way onto Chrome, but unfortunately if you’re looking to get your hands on it, you can’t, at least not yet. Photoshop is available for download via the Chrome Web Store but it seems that it is only limited to educational institutions for now and for the next 6 months.

Dubbed Photoshop Streaming, this is basically where users get to stream the software which is being hosted on another server that has Photoshop CC 2014. The UI from the desktop is captured and relayed to your browser where Javascript is then used to relay your actions back to the server, thus ultimately allowing anyone to use Photoshop on whatever machine they want, regardless of hardware.

According to Adobe’s director of engineering Kirk Gould, it seems that the company is 90% there to letting users stream a pound-for-pound copy of Photoshop. As it stands, the app will only work with files hosted on Google Drive, but Adobe hopes that eventually they will be able to support other cloud storage services. As for the public getting their hands on it, Adobe plans to do that once they become more comfortable with the experience, which hopefully won’t be too far off into the future.

Photoshop Streaming Makes Its Way Onto Chrome , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

As you might have heard, Android 5.0 will see encryption enabled by default on Android phones. Prior to this, Google made encryption an option on Android devices, but with the recent Snowden reports and government surveillance, Google decided that the best way to go about it was to enable the feature by default.

Safe to say this did not make law enforcement officials happy and it seems that it could potentially hamper the performance of Google’s devices as well. While our own review of the Nexus 6 found that it performed incredibly well, the folks at AnandTech tell a different story. The benchmark they ran was meant to test storage read/write speed.

According to their findings, it seems that the Nexus 6 with the encryption on performed much slower compared to the Nexus 6 with its encryption off. In fact the Nexus 5 with KitKat and Lollipop both outperformed the Nexus 6 with encryption enabled, as you can see in the benchmark results above.

Now how does this affect you? Well unless you work with a lot of data, chances are you might not notice any differences in performance. However if you’re the type that loves min/maxing then you can always disable encryption where the instructions on how to do that can be found on the XDA forums. Will this be an issue that Google will address? Well it’s hard to say, but hopefully with this information made public, Google will find a way to optimize performance while maintaining encryption at the same time.

Nexus 6′s Encryption Found To Hamper Performance , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

If you need a laptop just to send emails, chat, surf the web, type up some documents, you don’t have to spend thousands on an Ultrabook or a super heavy duty laptop. Instead you could always turn to Chromebooks which offers those functions. In fact come 2015, users could very well start to stream Photoshop onto their Chromebooks, so that’s worth taking into consideration!

That being said, if you don’t mind picking up a Chromebook for yourself, you might be pleased to learn that Google has unveiled a Chromebook offer in which they will be offering users 1TB of free Google Drive storage for the next two years. This will apply to any Chromebook purchase in-store, online, or through Google Play itself.

For those who store a lot of photos and other forms of media in the cloud, the 1TB storage will definitely come in handy. Given that 1TB will cost users $10 a month which adds up to $240 over 2 years, you could potentially save yourself a couple of hundred in the process. Of course after 2 years you’re expected to keep paying to maintain that 1TB, but by then you would have saved yourself some money already.

This offer will end on the 1st of January 2015, so you’ve got a little over a month to decide. To see the various Chromebooks that Google has to offer, just head on over to its website for the details. So, will you be picking up a Chromebook this holiday season?

Google Giving Away 1TB Drive Storage With Chromebook Purchases , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

In my recent memoir on becoming a wife and mother in a high caste family in Nepal, I also share stories of my work with women activists there. More than negative reviews, I dread some praise, especially characterizations of my book as “giving voice to the voiceless.” It’s true that because of local and global inequalities most women I lived among in our village in Nepal didn’t have the means to broadcast their voices far. But they still had voices — many voices: loud, kind, gruff, joyful, argumentative, funny, critical, quiet, curious, smart, compassionate, teasing. I just had to learn some lessons on how to tune in better.

1. Begin with some humility

A Euro-American, I followed love to Nepal and began living with in-laws there in 1987 when I was four months pregnant. I was studying to be a cultural anthropologist but had prepared for dissertation research elsewhere: East Africa, then India. In Nepal, I had to start from a humbling position of near-ignorance. If I could have a do-over, I’d study the language before I arrived and read more books on culture, religion and history. But in retrospect, that beginner’s mind I gained from altered plans forced me to discover aspects of Nepal and myself I might not otherwise have noticed.

2. Move beyond first impressions

At first, I observed what strikes many foreigners in Nepal: friendliness and hospitality from all castes, ethnic groups and classes. Yet the longer I lived in our village (and especially after I gave birth), the more women shared with me some of the pain behind their smiles: arguments with an in-law or husband, the boredom of daily farm and household work, undiagnosed health concerns, worries about whether grain stores would feed their families until the next harvest. Some talked of violence too: postpartum women denied food and medical treatment after giving birth to girls, beatings, rapes, suicides.

3. Hear the echoes from back home

I cringe to think what a foreigner would make of my homeland — the Pacific Northwest — if she only noticed and wrote about meth production and domestic violence in economically depressed counties, lethal shootings in schools and shopping centers, and rampant sex trafficking along Interstate 5. How easy it is to exoticize and sensationalize horrors elsewhere while overlooking those nearby.

4. Listen for joy and pride

Even as Nepali women told me tales of hardship, they urged me to taste their spicy chutneys and home-brewed whiskey, understand how much they loved children and cared for elders, admire tidy flower and vegetable gardens and well-swept courtyards, laugh at silly puns, enjoy clever song rhymes and graceful dance moves, know their devotion to Krishna or Buddha and listen to their plans to for their daughters’ education. They wanted to be seen and heard for all they were, many told me, not just as poor, oppressed and “underdeveloped.”

5. Trust a local process of change

At his mother’s prompting, my husband began literacy classes for women in 1987. Emboldened, students and other women in the village organized to demand that local officials give them a plot of land so they could establish a women’s meeting and training center. Women also talked about other problems for women: harassment in public places, domestic violence, inequality in inheritance rights, lack of earning opportunities, religious views on women’s inferiority.

6. Respect local leadership

Although they welcomed thoughtful support, women did not need any outsider to initiate change. Activists in Nepal — both men and women — had been fighting for democracy since before I was born. Some gave their lives for it. Some spent months or years in jail. My mother-in-law could barely read and write, but she had walked from village to village in 1980 — several years before I showed up — to urge people to vote yes on a referendum for democracy. And even before then she had called women in the village together to perform sit-ins to protest husbands beating their wives.

7. Honor local resourcefulness

Women in our village began organizing in 1988 when Nepal was still under the authoritarian Panchayat system. Free speech and free assembly were banned then. We lived in a district where supporters of opposition political parties may have outnumbered Panchayat followers. Government officials avoided large-scale rebellion by overlooking some local transgressions. Women took advantage of that relative openness but also understood the limits and worked creatively within them. They met in religiously protected spaces, expressed themselves in song, organized around approved activities like “development” and put forth seemingly modest demands: a place to plant trees and hold meetings and classes.

8. Understand local culture

Being an agnostic suspicious of patriarchal threads in all religions, I initially wanted to attribute every sexist statement and action in our village in Nepal to Hinduism. And I found some sympathy for that position among local atheists and agnostics, including a few of my in-laws. But again and again, women activists inspired me to think more deeply. For example, some high caste Hindu women said they wanted to learn literacy so they could interpret religious texts for themselves. They drew on Hindu stories and imagery to argue for greater equality and respect. And they took pride in their temple and demanded more representation on the committee that made decisions for it.

9. Listen for silences

The idea of speaking for “the voiceless” is not unique to those wandering foreign lands. Some class and caste elites in our village also claimed to speak for the oppressed. I learned to listen and watch for subtle practices of caste and class discrimination and to ask questions of those being ignored or silenced in public gatherings.

10. Honor diverse approaches to speaking and storytelling

Women did not always tell their stories or express their opinions in linear ways. For example, my mother-in-law often launched into a story about a past event as she remembered a song she had composed. Then, she might list distant relatives involved and cry for a moment over the hardships that resulted. The more I attended to her roundabout way of telling stories, the better I appreciated all that she was trying to convey.

Lessons on listening and observing in Nepal continue to inform how I write, read the news, travel, work in multicultural groups and make decisions about engaging in causes. Rather than assuming a role of “giving voice to the voiceless,” I hope more will take up the cause of improving listening and broadening reception for the world’s many voices.