I need a new hub. I have a Gigaware four-port hub, but it just isn’t enough for my needs, I’ve decided. Plugged into my laptop currently are a printer, iPhone charger, wireless USB key for my keyboard and mouse, and external hard drive for backups. That’s not enough for a gadget guy like myself.

After some research, I’m closing in on this one — the Belkin USB 2.0 seven-port hub.  Seven hubs; now that’s more like it! It’s relatively cheap, at less than $50, but it has some strong selling points.

In addition to the ports on the side, there are two on top. That makes it easy to plug in things like thumb drives, that you use often. It also has a little clip on the side, which you can route your USB cables through — a thoughtful touch.

Another positive is that these hubs are stackable, so you can add one to another and double your USB outlets. For folks like me, who use their laptop as a desktop, the Belkin hub isn’t a sexy item, but a necessary one anyway. And Belkin is a name I trust, as I’ve used a number of its products over the years.

The Android mobile phone platform is no longer the sole province of T-Mobile. Sprint has announced its own Android smartphone, the HTC Hero. HTC is a large and growing smartphone maker, with many good offerings.

Adding the Hero to the line is a good sign for Android, Google’s open-source software for phones. Android is an iPhone-like operating system, with an online app store much like Apple’s. Since it’s open source, anyone can develop on the platform, and it doesn’t have to go through a rigorous (some say random) approval process like Apple’s (which has gotten Apple in  lot of hot water lately).

The Hero will sell for $179.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate (I hate those things), and go on sale Oct. 11. Since it will be on the Sprint network, it should have much better coverage than the spotty T-Mobile network.

If you’re thinking about getting your first smartphone, and don’t have to buy for a little while, give this one a spin; you may find you like it. It has the advantages of the Android with the coverage area of Sprint. It looks like a solid offering.

Hopefully you read my pre-review of the Garmin nuvi 255W GPS. Well, I put it through its paces on a 1,200 round-trip jaunt, and am much more familiar with it now.

In a word: I love this GPS. It got my family and I to Indiana from Maryland without a hitch. The display is very easy to read, with a big purple line showing you which direction to go in. The voice directions were top-notch, with almost all the road names pronounced correctly. It normally warns you of a road change, like a highway exit, in plenty of time (normally when you’re just less than a mile away) to prepare.

One of my favorite features is the detour function, and it worked perfectly. In Ohio, for example, we were about to take an exit ramp from one highway to another. But when we got to the ramp, we found that it was blocked because of an overturned tractor-trailer.

Uh-oh. We were in completely unfamiliar territory. What to do? Easy; just hit the “Detour” button on the Menu page. It immediately recalculated a detour route, and took us around the accident instantly, putting us back on the new highway just a few miles later than we would have been. I estimate that we lost about five minutes total. No stopping and looking at maps, no guessing and hoping we were going the right way. Folks, that’s awesome.

We also used it to find restaurants on the way. No having to wonder how long it would be until we could eat again; we knew exactly how far away they were, and which ones they were.

One final thing, that I didn’t expect: on each route, it lists the speed limit. I found that functionality to be highly accurate. There were a few times it was off, but not often. Very nice, indeed.

I have complete confidence in the Garmin after this trip. I would recommend it to anyone and everyone.

I love to ride my bicycle (LeMond Maillot Jaune, for the curious). When I was young, it was just about tooling around town. When I got older, it became my main form of fitness. When that happens — when you get beyond the “casual rider” stage of bicycling, into greater distances — it’s time for a computer.

Bike computers measure time, distance, average speed and more. Really sophisticated ones can give you all kinds of data, like cadence and trend information, but those are more for the racing crowd.  A good computer for the recreational rider would be the Sigma Sport BC 1606L.

To start with, the Sigma is wireless. That’s what I look for; wired computers require you to wrap the wire around your front fork and up to the computer. Wireless eliminates that, and looks better on your bike.

This has all the basics like total distance, time, current and average speed, etc. A couple of additional things I really like about this are the backlight, which is great for night riders, and the integrated storage chip. The chip stores settings like total distance and wheelsize (wheelsize is important — without knowing that, the computer won’t be able to measure anything correctly). So when you change the battery, it retains all that information. With my current computer, I have to reset all the data every time I change the battery, which is usually once per year.

The Sigma is also reasonably priced. So get off the Internet, and get on your bike!

So my latest gadget was delivered today, and it’s got me plenty excited. It’s a Garmin nuvi 255W GPS. As you know if you follow this blog, I’m taking my daughter to college this week, and I wanted a GPS more full-featured than the one that comes with my iPhone (that’s not a knock against the iPhone — just that the Garmin is a dedicated unit with a lot more functionality).

I got the Garmin today, and have only had a chance to play with it for a little. I’ll give a fuller review after I’ve experienced it on the 12-hour trip (each way) to Indiana. What I like so far are the big screen, intuitive navigation, easy-to-read icons and voice capability.

One little quirk is that I had to reboot the unit three times before it would acquire any satellites. The first two attempts, it did nothing but display no progress on the progress bar. Strange. But the third time was the charm, and everything seems to work properly. Can’t wait to try it out.

My daughter heads off the college in a few days. She has a nice laptop already, but it’s large; I’m thinking she needs something with enough power, that’s also really portable. And it can’t be expensive, seeing as how we just paid the tuition bill.

That, of course, led me to examine netbooks. They offer a nice compromise between functionality, size and price. My daughter isn’t much of a computer gamer, so it doesn’t have to be a fire-breather; something with which she can take notes, check e-mail and surf the Internet (only for research for classes, of course (wink, wink)), and that won’t tire her out lugging from class to class.

Here’s what I’m zeroing in on: it’s a Dell Inspiron Mini 10v Netbook.  The 10-inch screen lends itself to small weight, but is still large enough to be easily viewable. It has an Intel Atom processor and 1GB RAM, which is plenty to run Windows XP, the operating system of choice for this netbook (Windows Vista is too resource-hoggy to use with a netbook.)

Another very nice thing is the hard drive. It comes with 160 GB, a very nice size at this price point. I’ve owned many Dells in the past, and have been happy with the quality and service they offer.

In all, this is a capable computer in a form factor that works for my daughter. It even has a webcam, so she can chat with her parents at night, and see them crying that their baby is gone!

Gizmodo has an interesting article about Apple’s AppStore and how, and why, certain applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch (right) are rejected — or not.

Apple is claiming that it hasn’t actually rejected the Google Voice application. It’s still “studying” it, the company claims. Does anyone else actually believe this? There’s no reason for Apple to “study” a proposed application for months — either it meets the criteria or not. Certainly, Google Voice meets all relevant criteria. It’s obvious that Apple just doesn’t want competition for potential voice applications from partner AT&T on this.

Shame on you, Apple and AT&T. Do the right thing and approve Google Voice. Let the market determine the success or failure of an application — and make the iPhone, the greatest gadget of all time, even more useful for consumers. Stop denying your user base access to this technology. Now.

It wasn’t all that long ago that I spent $4,000 on a 43-inch plasma-screen television. It was a Panasonic with a beautiful picture. Problem is, the circuit board in it went bad after fewer than 18 months, causing a green band to stay on the screen constantly.

Needless to say, I wasn’t impressed. It was a lot of money to pay for a product that didn’t even make it two years. Nowadays, however, you can get big-screen HDTVs for a fraction of that price. Case in point: the Vizio VO320E TV, available for a little more than a tenth of that price.

It’s a little smaller screen, but the picture is better, with 720p HD resolution. This particular model is also eco-friendly, consuming less electricity than a normal HDTV, according to the company. It has all the inputs you’re likely to need, including component, composite, S-video, VGA and HDMI.

This is good news for those of you shopping for a new television; not so good news for those of us who shelled out four big ones for a plasma that kicked the bucket after less than two years.

As if the iPhone didn’t have enough problems, now there are reports that some in Europe are actually exploding. Yes, exploding.

Reuters, among other outlets, is reporting that iPhones are shattering. One story, from a website covering French news, states that a French youth heard a hissing sound from an iPhone before it exploded. The youth reportedly got a small shard of glass in his eye.

Some websites have graphic photos of iPhones with shattered faces.

Apple has stated that it’s aware of the reports and is investigating. It believes, according to various news outlets, that these are isolated incidents and not part of a widespread issue. The reports also do not show this happening to customers in the U.S. at this time.

Check back for updates to this story.

One of the very best things about the second-generation iPhone — known as the 3G — was the GPS functionality. Of course, it wasn’t as full-featured as a dedicated unit you could get from Garmin or TomTom, but it still beat the heck out of Mapquest.

Well, now the TomTom has come to the iPhone. A $99 application, it’s far from the cheapest program you can buy for your phone, but it may be one of the most useful.

The  TomTom for iPhone takes care of most of the built-in GPS’ weaknesses. The two most glaring are turn-by-turn navigation and voice directions. It also adds TomTom-only features like TomTom IQ Routes, which the company says finds the quickest, most efficient route to a destination.

Initial reviews of the app are positive for the most part. Some of the drawbacks listed by users include no spoken street names, and it lacks traffic updates. On the whole, though, most users seem quite happy with this app. Expect TomTom to update this software frequently (and for a hundred bucks, they should!), adding some of those missing features.