My Diva Lounge

For those of you who have seen the Blackberry smartphone craze and wondered if you should join in, September just may be your month! Blackberry is releasing it’s newest phone, the Blackberry Bold and it’s sure to sweep the market! Bold combines a stylish and elegant design with all of the features and functions we’ve all been waiting for in a smartphone. iPhone, you just may have met your match! Bold offers full PDA functionality (calendar, tasks, memos, contacts, etc.), but adds powerful email, faster web browsing, instant messaging, camera, built-in GPS, voice recording, and more! What’s the difference between this and the Blackberry Curve? Enhanced web experience (including wifi access), faster performance with the Bold’s 624-MHz processor, powerful document editing software (for MS Word and PowerPoint), and built-in Mobile Streaming (the ability to view online videos and listen to streaming music) all make this the power phone to get this year! Don’t be left in the dust - get organized in STYLE and GO BOLD.

Here’s a cool gadget I picked up last month and it is a lifesaver when taking notes in meetings, on the go, and away from the computer. It’s the Acecad DigiMemo Digital Notepad. Reviews on it are mixed, but for my needs, it’s an excellent Diva companion tool! It’s a digital notepad with a special pen which uses regular (refillable) paper pads for note taking. The cool thing is, it digitally records the notes you are taking so you can upload them, store them, and view them later on your computer! It even has handwriting recognition software, so you can convert your notes into a MS Word file, a .pdf file, and more! I must admit, I was a little freaked out when I first got it - wondering if I was going to ever learn to use it properly. But this Diva managed to go through the user guide (which was fairly painless as far as manuals are concerned), set up the software, go through the handwriting recognition exercises, and successfully created my own pages the first day! It can digitally manage several pages, and lets you add to older pages as long as they are still in memory. I picked up a 2GB memory card to add to the package, so my little tablet can manage oodles of pages of Diva thoughts. It will even read drawings you create, although I do not recommend using this tablet strictly as an artist’s companion. Highly recommended for the Diva on the go, however, and you should be able to pick one up for $150 to $170 from Wal-Mart, Shop.com, or from Amazon.com online. Where was this when I was in school?!