NiniaPimp Magazine

American Secrets For Sale

Space scientist Stewart David Nozette pleaded guilty to a charge of attempting to sell classified information to an FBI agent posing as an Israeli spy. Here are some other secrets people are trying to sell to foreign intelligence agencies:

• What “USA” really stands for
• Comprehensive list of the easiest gals in mid-Atlantic region
• Hoover Dam is constructed entirely of inflatable materials and is vulnerable to anyone with a pointy object
• Most all surfing is done by these three brothers
• Ingredients in a perfect Tom Collins
• A considerable number of Americans are actually introverted and/or understand irony
• Bunch of worthless shit they can already find on WikiLeaks for free
• Lyrics to Toby Keith’s latest anthem, which give clues as to whose ass America’s boot will be put in next
• We’re actually a pretty nice group of people

Having been a Garmin owner for about 5 years I had no doubt what brand I was going to buy, my old Garmin served me well but it was time for a new one and the wide screen was a key feature I wanted in my new one.

The screen is impressive, while going from 4.3″ to 5″ does not sound like much it is really amazing how much more map and information that fits well on the screen. The screen itself is anti-glare that works, and very bright if you want it, I have the brightness at 60% and that is fine even in bright sunlight. The images are very crisp and clear, street names and such are auto-sized to not obstruct the map but big enough to read easily. The volume when it is reading out direction is also outstanding, so loud I have it also on 60%. So a solid 5 Stars on the screen and voice volume, as well as the pronunciation of the street names!

Quirk: When I first got it I was in my office and opened it, plugged it in to just power and fired it up, it kept asking for me to agree to the license terms and no matter how I answered it rebooted itself, did this like 4 times and then was ok. This would happen each time I turned it on. Not a big issue really, as soon as it “sees” the sats it stops doing it and is fine. Little off for the scare factor, it has never done it again.

The update process is very easy but long, likely very long on a slower PC and/or slow internet connection, the map data is huge. That said it is the nature of the beast and Garmin makes it as painless as possible, the registration and update process was very slick.

Once all updated and ready to go it is time to go through the options, you don’t have to, out of the box it picks everything, but I think most will find it worth it, there are a lot of options on how you want it to find routes, deal with traffic (comes with lifetime traffic info), how you want the maps to look in many aspects, 2D, 3D, Track top to your direction or top to always north, and all kinds of additional information that can optionally be on the map screen. Out of the box Garmin has every bell and whistle turned on which I guess I understand but this is why I say it is worth getting it where you like. From the factory you will only see 4.3″ of map on route as it has 4 tabs of optional information along the right side. I wanted 5″ of map so I disabled the side tabs in settings, very nice option, you can also pick what tab is showing what information from a good selection of options.

Quirk: If you are using the traffic information and have the traffic avoidance enabled you can get some really odd routes, since I was just trying mine out around town and to work and back I knew it was telling me wrong turns, a little time in the manual and I found out why, it was automatically altering the route around traffic alerts, while this may sound like a good thing and would be if it told you it was doing that, in my case it was not, no other route is going to help and I did not know what in the heck it was doing :) I found you can have the best of both worlds, keep trafic information turned on but disable traffic in the avoidances setting tab. Then it warns you of traffic on your route, lets you see where, and gives you a detour option at that point you can take or ignore. It would be better during the route calc process if it said it had added detours, and when it does it on the fly it should also, minor quirk once you know. This is a 3 star feature in the auto mode. 5 star would be to tell you and offer y/n detour options for each point.

Junction View to me was one of the most impressive features, I go through one very complex set of interchanges for 3 freeways with express lanes to bybass interchanges and local lane to pick up any direction to or from any free way, many a folks have left on the wrong path… When I was aproaching it the garmin flipped to junction view and wow, it had a clearly marked path through the maze, and nailed every lane on the money, and the optimum lane for the follwing turn if there was more than one lane leading into it. Very nice! Another 5 star feature, this would have made my first time through that a lost safer than the old garmin with just a yellow line through it.

The routes it comes up with are 4.5 star, it hits most very very well but will toss a few more odd ones out than my old Garmin did, they all do some, I think this could do better, the good news is these are not horrible routes, just not the better or best always.

The next 4 star item is the power cord/FM Traffic radio, it is like having jumper cables going up your dash, why it is not in the unit is beyond me, I am stumped so far as to how to route the cables a lot more cleaner than this and have traffic info.

Another option is to skip the traffic radio and run on battery, with the right settings you can get 3 hours, but with my settings I can get just over 2 hours on battery before the warning. The final power option is just power, that is an optional cord you have to buy that is a lot less bulky than the powered traffic cord. So battery life and traffic radio/power cord is 3 star.

Bluetooth phone paring was very easy and works great, the noise cancelling is pretty good also on its mic, so your caller can hear you and not road noise. 5 Star

Another nice feature is the speed limit that shows up in a little speed limit sign icon by your actual speed, if you are going over the limit for the road, the actual speed turns red in the display. (I will not say how I know but it is a relaible source!) 5 Star, speed limit signs on a lot of our local town roads is a problem.

I was also impressed that I could pick maximum map detail and it keeps up even in the city, during fast turns in very high street density it will occaisionally repaint the screen instead of smooth scrolling with your motion but it does it so fast, unlike my prior Garmin, they it is not distracting or leave you hanging with a partial map. This is 5 star all the way.

Overall I have to say I am very happy with the Garmin 1490LMT, I could not give it a full 5 for the things it fell just a little short on to me, but if I was to make the decision on a model again with what I know, I would buy it again, I think it would be hard to beat.Garmin nüvi 1490LMT 5-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator with Lifetime Map Updates and Traffic

The fact that this book, which was originally published in the 1960s, is still ranked so high in the bestseller lists says something about its historical value in the gambling world.

This book is the bible of card counting.  It is by far the most educational blackjack book of all time.  If you’ve ever had any interest in card counting, this book is definitely worth picking up — especially at its small price.

Some of the information is outdated, but to actually relive the earliest stages of basic strategy and card counting is pretty freakin’ cool. For the blackjack enthusiast, this book won’t disappoint.  Buy it now and beat the dealer!

The Rosenblum Twins, Stasea and Sheri

Hello ladies. Can you take a minute and introduce yourselves to the fans? Please tell us a little about yourselves and what you do for a living.
Hi there…we would like to introduce ourselves I’m Sheri and I’m Stasea and we are…everyman’s fantasy! (and some women)
We are a comedy duo!

I just visited your website and watched your video. Can you tell us about some of the stars that you have met?
Yes, Cher, Ray Romano Drew Carey…but our favorite, Sean Connery, a very private meeting in the Bahamas…all we have to say is Pussy…Pussy Galore!

I saw the two of you with Larry King. In fact, I saw you both kissing him. Are we going to start hearing tabloid reports that Larry King has a pair of girlfriends?
Well, we do like older men, but I think Larry King gets up too early for us, he’s at Nate & Al’s about the time we go to sleep!

Can you tell us a little it about your trip to Nellis Air Force Base?
Not really, it’s top secret. All I can say is that the mayor Oscar
Goodman, an old acquaintance, was performing beer bongs…We are sure that was suppose to be top secret.

What do you consider your greatest performance? Was it acting as the Double Down Twins?
Well, if you sneezed you missed us, if you went to the ladies room you for sure missed us…No I just don’t think we have had our greatest performance yet.  More to come.

Is there any exclusive information that you can tell the NinjaPimp fans?
We will be launching our new radio show The Sheri & Stasea Show, No it’s the Stasea & Sheri Show on National Lampoon Radio in January on XM Satelite, TBA. We have other projects in development that we cannot talk about…hopefully soon! Oh, we will be on Sprint cell phones with “The Coors Light Twins” in early November, look for that orgy!

We here at NinjaPimp have interviewed a bunch of twins. This includes the Taylor Twins, Cali Marie and Cherish, The Potter Twins, and even the Hull Twins. What makes you unique?
Nothing really. We are just a science experiment…gone bad!

Where do you see yourself in five years? I know you have already been very successful in business.
Thank you for the acknowledgement. We will be having our own sitcom and it will not be called, TWINS!

Can you tell us about “Funny Girl?”  Weren’t you supposed to be in that movie?
When we were little we were suppose to be the babies in “Funny Girl” with Barbra Streisand, but we were beat out by blondes.  Much like our whole career.

Your page says that you worked with Playboy. What have you done with them?
Yes, we did a video a called “Twins & Sisters” we also performed a live show for a lingerie company on roller skates in gold lame! It was a little tough rolling through the grotto! Look for us in the magazine next year!

Do you have anything for sale, or anything that you want to tell your fans about?
We will, but it for sure won’t be a calendar!

Well, is there anything else you would like to talk about… maybe a questions for us?
Can you tell us your fascination with twins?

Ahhh, twins.  We spoke with Missy and Mandy Taylor in Issue Three.  All of a sudden our hits went through the roof.  Then when we talked with Vanessa Helman in issue 13.   The fans loved it.  So we decided to interview all the hot twins on the Internet!  You were the obvious choice to be next.  Thanks for the question.
No, thank you! We are honored to be asked and a part of your art!
For More Visit:  http://seeingdouble.com/

Alright, first off welcome to AfroSquad and NinjaPimp Online. How are you doing today?  Can you tell us about yourselves? Hi there! Ok here’s the answers to your questions.  Our names are Daisy and Hollie Mildenhall, and we are identical twins aged 22 from Wiltshire.  We now live in Cornwall, where Hollie works for the NHS as a finance assistant and Daisy works for a Media company as an Advertising consultant.  Although we have good careers are main job is our singing it has always been our passion and our sole drive in life. We began singing at the age of 8 where we sang at weddings, festivals, parties etc. as time went on we got more and more into singing and when we entered a competition here in Cornwall and won, it was only then when we got to record in a studio we realized this is what we want to do!

We were able to link up our Exchange, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube accounts with no problem, as WebOS pulled in all the information from these accounts to the Pre 2. We also created new appointments both on a PC and on the phone, and the events synced on both sides.

Meanwhile, Exhibition is something that will come in handy for those with a Touchstone Charging Dock, as it will allow you to continue using apps or access information when the smartphone is placed in the dock. Unfortunately, we didn’t receive a Touchstone dock with our review unit to test out Exhibition with, but a couple of examples provided by Hewlett-Packard and Palm were viewing a slideshow of your Facebook photos, stock, news, and sports tickers, and interacting with a virtual pet.

Features
As a phone, the Palm Pre 2 offers a speakerphone, speed dial, conference calling, airplane mode, and text and multimedia messaging. Voice dialing still eludes WebOS, though. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS are all onboard, and the smartphone can be used as a mobile hot spot for up to five devices.

The hot-spot function will require Verizon’s Mobile Broadband plan, which costs $20 per month and has a 2GB data cap (Verizon charges 5 cents per megabyte for overage fees). We connected the Pre 2 with our MacBook Pro and averaged download speeds of 1.06Mbps and upload speeds of 0.57Mbps, which was speedy enough to allow us to comfortably surf the Web.

The Pre 2 also ships with a number of personal information management and productivity apps, including Quickoffice for viewing Microsoft Office files, a PDF reader, a memo pad, a task list, an alarm clock, and a calculator, as well as Verizon’s VZ Navigator GPS app. Of course, additional apps are available from the Palm App Catalog.

As for multimedia, the built-in media player supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, EAAC+, AMR, QCELP, and WAV music files and MPEG-4, H263, and H264 video formats. You can transfer music and video to your Pre 2 via USB cable and dragging and dropping your files onto the phone. In addition, you can download new music from your phone using the Amazon MP3 Store or check out YouTube videos with the dedicated app. The Pre 2 offers about 15GB of user-available storage, but be aware that there’s no expansion slot.

Last but not least, there is the Pre 2′s 5-megapixel camera. It offers an LED flash, video recording capabilities, and geotagging, but you can forget about any editing options. Fortunately, picture quality was pretty good. Photos came out sharp, and colors were mostly bright and rich, even when taken in low-light environments.

Performance
We tested the dual-band (CDMA 800/1900; EV-DO Rev. A) Palm Pre 2 in New York using Verizon Wireless service, and call quality was OK. Overall, we thought the sound was clear, but we could hear some slight static during lulls in the conversation and voices could sound a bit muffled at times. On the other side, friends had mostly good things to say about the audio quality. There were a couple of mentions of some static, but they appeared to be isolated incidents and not enough cause to end a call.

Palm Pre 2 call quality sample
Listen now:

Speakerphone quality was rather hollow, and there wasn’t enough volume to hear callers in a louder environment. We had no problems pairing the smartphone with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset and the Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones and were able to make calls and listen to music with them.

We didn’t experience any dropped calls during our review period, and we logged some good data speeds using Verizon’s 3G EV-DO Rev. A network. CNET’s full site loaded in 30 seconds, while the mobile sites for CNN and ESPN both loaded in 4 seconds. The Pre 2′s Web browser now supports Flash Player 10.1 out the box. It took a few seconds to load, but the smartphone was able to play video correctly and without interruption.

The Pre 2 is powered by a 1GHz TI OMAP processor with 512MB RAM. General performance is certainly improved over previous versions of the Pre, as apps and menus launched slightly more quickly. Streaming media and game play was also smooth, and we didn’t experience any crashes during our review period. However, there were still moments of sluggishness, with one instance where the delay was long enough to make us think the phone was frozen. Though the Pre 2 wasn’t designed to compete with some of the higher-end smartphones, it does certainly make us wonder how much better the performance will be on the Pre 3, which will have a 1.4GHz Qualcomm processor.

The Palm Pre 2 ships with a 1,150mAh lithium ion battery and has a rated talk time of 5.5 hours and up to 14 days of standby time. We are still conducting our battery drain tests but will update this section as soon as we have final results. In general, we were able to get a full day’s use out of the battery before needing to recharge. According to FCC radiation tests, the Pre 2 has a digital SAR rating of 0.962W/kg and a Hearing Aid Compatibility rating of M4.

Conclusion
First off, it’s been a while since we’ve had a WebOS device in for review, so it was really great to have one back in our hands. It reminded us how much we love the mobile operating system for its multitasking abilities, data management, and search functionality, and the new enhancements only make it better. That said, it’s really a shame it took so long for the Palm Pre 2 to land with a U.S. carrier given that the HP Pre 3 is just a few months away.

Due out this summer, the Pre 3 brings a faster processor, a larger touch screen and keyboard, world roaming capabilities, and a front-facing camera, among other things. It’s not just about specs, either; we were genuinely impressed by the Pre 3 when we got some hands-on time with it at the launch event and at Mobile World Congress. Sure, there’s still uncertainty about carrier support, ship date, and pricing, but if you can afford to, we think it’s worth waiting to see how the Pre 3 plays out. At the very least, the price of the Palm Pre 2 might drop by the time its successor comes to market.

Previous page

Photo gallery:
2011 Toyota Highlander Limited

Like a reliable friend, the 2011 Toyota Highlander goes where you want to go, joining in without complaint or hassle. Its tech may not be cutting-edge, but its many useful features come in handy when exploring new ground or grinding out long road-trip miles.

Toyota made a few changes for 2011, updating the styling and adding the option of a 2.7-liter four-cylinder engine. The new Highlander has a wide, beefy grille and prominent wheel arches. The headlights get squashed by a higher bumper molding. This styling might presage a new Toyota design language, but probably not–Toyota’s cars, SUVs, and trucks don’t share a common look.

In top Limited trim, the options for the Highlander are few. This trim sticks with the 3.5-liter V-6, not lowering itself to the new four-cylinder. Four-wheel drive comes standard, and while Toyota lists a navigation system or navigation with rear-seat entertainment as options, you have to choose one or the other. The Limited-trim Highlander cannot be chosen without navigation, according to the Toyota Web site.

That top trim also means leather seats and faux wood trim in the cabin. All trims of the Highlander get a small LCD at the top of the console, which shows trip and temperature information. The navigation system option adds a touch screen below that, with Toyota’s familiar cabin tech interface.

Audio screens
In some ways, the navigation system feel shoehorned into the Highlander, and not well integrated with the other controls. For example, it can be a little baffling trying to view audio information on the main LCD. Push one of the audio mode buttons on the center stack, for radio, disc, or iPod, and a thin ribbon of audio information appears at the top of the screen over the map.

You have to push in the tuning knob, to the right of the screen, to switch the entire view to audio selection. Likewise, when route guidance is issuing vocal prompts for upcoming turns, the system mutes the music from one speaker by the driver, which is inadequate when the volume is up.

The navigation system itself is DVD-based, older technology that Toyota has been using for years. Maps are strictly 2D, but the response time for the system is good. It can take a little time to make corrections when the Highlander gets off route. Highlights of this system are traffic data with dynamic routing, and text-to-speech, which lets it read out the names of streets.

The map DVD is in a slot behind the screen, which motors open to also reveal the slot for the four-CD changer. Motorized screens are not particularly convenient for loading CDs, and the changer takes a long time to cycle through discs. But there’s no need to rely on it, as the Highlander comes with a number of other audio sources, including iPod integration and Bluetooth audio streaming.

In other Toyota and Lexus vehicles, browsing an iPod library through the car’s LCD has been distractingly slow, but Toyota seems to have worked on this problem in the new Highlander. This model smoothly scrolled through lists of artists, albums, and tracks. The only time it slowed was when we hit the Songs tab on the iPod screen, and it had to list every song in the library.

Next page