Lifestyle Products to enjoy while you figure out how to re-wire your house, connect your Tablet and adjust your Smart TV featuring some unusual yet useful food, drink, and personal appliances for any time gift giving.

By Richard Sherwin, Christine Eads, Richard Macias, Amy Eller and Bob Plunkett.

Edited by Susan Davis

 While DFA has touted some nice home and bath appliances from Braun, Philips and GE, we recently tried an electric shaver, hair clipper and hot/cold massager from the  Wahl Clipper Corporation, a family owned company that has been around for nearly 100 years. In addition to at-home men’s grooming tools, the personal care industry leader produces an animal grooming line and personal massager line.

Custom Shaver – This shaver’s three setting  shaving system boasts different heads for close, sensitive and ultra clean shaving. It also features a pop-up trimmer, an ergonomic shape, soft touch grips and cord/cordless operation – all with 60 minutes of run-time. Priced about half of the “brand name” shavers like Panasonic and Philips, this shaver was more powerful, even more adjustable with replaceable heads and charged faster than the famous brands. MSRP $69.99

Lighted Lithium Detailer – This tool uses a finely-ground, hygienic detailed blade to give you a close shave without pulling or snagging. The lighted head eliminates shadows to provide better visibility while trimming. Our staff, both men and women, found this particularly effective in sensitive areas like under chin beard, ears and other spots. MSRP $18.99

Hot-Cold Massager – Wahl’s new temperature therapy massager provides relief by combining soothing massage with hot-cold therapy to help relieve muscle tension and soreness. It can help maintain a regular workout routine and enhances any warm-up or cool-down. We had the older version which some thought too powerful but this version has more adjustable settings.  MSRP $34.99

Stainless Steel Li + – Wrapped in sleek armor of stainless steel, this trimmer offers impressive features including innovative green smart-charge technology, which shuts the unit off after its fully charged. It also hosts a series of interchangeable heads for detailing, shaving and haircutting. Long lasting battery (four hours of run time) and a handy carrying case make grooming on the go uncomplicated. Our guys staff members called this the best nose, ears mustache trimmer ever. MSRP $69.99

BLACK+DECKER showcased their latest and greatest ‘giftable’ products in NYC a few weeks ago. Their Stick Vacuums’ stole the show and the famous tool company even launched a Blue Tooth Speaker

Special features of the Vacuums include:

• Cordless convenience with long-lasting, fade-free lithium battery
• 3 cyclonic stages deliver strong suction
• 2-n-1 features allows stick vacs to also be used as hand vacs

Special features of the Speaker include:

• Connectivity via any Bluetooth enabled device or aux port
• Battery compatible with BLACK+DECKER 20V Power Tools & Outdoor Products
• Lightweight and durable with loud clear sound

Home Made Brewery for Craft Beer, Root Beer and more

Mr. Beer ® by Coopers, an Australian Beer company, delighted the DFA team with several make your own beverages (Root Beer, Craft Beers and Ciders) that you can brew at home. Over the past 20+ years, Mr. Beer has introduced millions of people to this great hobby.  Whether you do if for the hobby or economics, you’ll get a great beer or root beer at low cost. Directions are not very good. But you can muddle through with some common sense.

Mr. Beer is easy and fun for the entire family.  In fact, you can also take this hobby to the next level.  Many of Mr. Beer’s brewers now run breweries of their own.  The beers come in several varieties and do take several weeks to ferment, while the Root Beer can be ready in a day.  The kits are reasonably priced, and come with all the ingredients you need for a professional brewery and recipes to customize your brew.

Our own brewing results with Mr. Beer should be ready by the next radio show or column. So stay tuned.

https://www.youtube.com/user/MrBeer

Back to the Roots (of food)

With the recent expansion of Back to the Roots food nationwide throughout Target, Whole Foods, Home Depot, and Nordstrom, the fledgling health conscious company is selling a number of ready to grow foods.

• Garden-in-a-Can Gift Set: Each can makes it easy to grow different organic herbs right on your windowsill (varieties: basil, cilantro, sage, and mint). MSRP: $23.99 for 4-pack or  $5.99 each as fun stocking stuffers.
• Organic Mushroom Farm:Grow delicious, organic oyster mushrooms right out of the box in just 10 days! These gourmet mushrooms go great in pastas, pizzas, salads, or gravy! MSRP: $12.99/mini, $19.99/large
• Water Garden:Self-cleaning fish tank that grows food. In this closed-loop ecosystem the fish waste naturally fertilizes the plants on top and, in turn, the plants clean the water for the fish. Includes everything you need to get started. MSRP: $59.99

Honey for your Honey

Nature Nate’s honey is as nature intended, and very different from grocery store honey. Pasteurized honey is what’s inside most bottles of honey you find in the grocery store. It has been cooked to over 180 degrees, and has been filtered under high pressure and combined with diatomaceous earth (crushed stone fossils often used for filtering) to remove pollen debris. While it may look nice on the shelves, the pasteurization process actually destroys much of the quality and flavor found naturally in honey.

Nature Nate’s honey goes through a much different process. It’s treated with very low heat, keeping all important enzymes intact. It’s also unfiltered, which means it still contains pollen and retains the best flavor, aroma and nutrition naturally. Lastly, Nature Nate’s is made from 100% American non factory grown bees, helping to eliminate pesticides, and ensuring the highest quality product. www.honeymakesitbetter.com/

Mocktails Taste like the real thing

There are a few of our colleagues at DFA that like cocktails the old fashioned way. Maybe a Cosmo, Margarita, Sangria, Whisky Sour (the older colleagues) , Scottish Lemonade.

We tried the Mocktails that were one of the most popular stops at a recent trade show, The idea was simple: Delicious party drinks made easy anytime.

Add alcohol or not without sacrificing taste, style, or the experience of a having wonderful drink in your hand. Because they are ready to serve straight from a unique shaker bottle, personally customize each one by the glass.

That’s not all, Mocktails Brand is made with the health-conscious consumer in mind so you can be proud to serve them to anyone anytime. Fairly low in calories and the taste was natural.

Pair them with your favorite food and savor every sip. Upscale any occasion, no matter how big or small. www.mocktails.com

 Does iCoffee Beat Keurig?

Another one of the longest lines at a booth of appreciative journalists at the recent Gift Guide Show was for ICoffee, a new competitor to Keurig. ICoffee uses SpinBrew Technology to spin, steam and stir coffee grounds inside a single serve pod, releasing maximum flavor and minimizing acidic or bitter aftertaste. It Brews your favorite coffee in less than a minute and works with all varieties of k-type cups and comes with a complimentary iCup Reusable for eco-friendly brewing with any freshly-ground coffee. iCoffee is one of the few single serve brewing systems on the market that is compatible with any potable water source, including soft and well water. It features Dial-a-Brew technology, allowing you to brew any size cup between 4 and 12 ounces in 0.5-ounce increments. https://icoffee.com/coffee-science-breakthrough/

Bytes and Pieces and some advice for the Fall in Tech:

Using Chrome Browser for Personal Finance Work? Stop now!

Our team recently had some issue with both the industry leading Fidelity Investments web site and American Express and Visa and MasterCard. In each case, we didn’t find either a financial report, money market account, bill paying feature and in each case when calling the financial institution’s online services group, we realized that Google’s Chrome was the culprit. Chrome’s new built in security was thwarting what used to be an easy look at our financial records. It was stopping the “legal” pop up display of our check book, or not letting us access the PDF of our investments. “Even though Internet Explorer and Mozilla are not quite as sophisticated as the new Google Chrome browser, we are finding that customers, are having to go backwards in time and using other browsers, like IE 9 or basic Opera browsers.”

TiVo’s upside and downside

TiVo’s relatively new Tablet and mobile App can stream any and all of your TiVo’s home content to any device using the App. But, unlike Slingbox, it can’t go directly to a Roku, or any set top Internet TV box because there are no TiVo applications for those boxes. The tiny TiVo mini box only works with a TV that has coaxial cable and Wi-Fi and or Moca , but will NOT work with Wi-Fi or Moca alone…You can, however, stream from your tablet to any monitor or TV with a micro USB to HDMI cable.  These cables are available for as little as $5 on Amazon and eBay.

A Growing Threat

According to numerous anti-spam experts nearly 50% of the must update messages you get on your PC or Mac are nefarious and, while they look like Adobe or Google or ITunes, or commonly used applications, they are third party companies trying to get into your PC. So triple check that update site and when in doubt don’t update…

Microsoft Office, especially the Word segment of that suite, is going up in price again just when you thought you coud save money because Office 10 is free. We recently used Mozilla’s open source version of Office (free) and it does just about everything Microsoft Word does. Just be careful when you save a file. Make sure you are saving it in a Word 2007 format. This format is easily read by many word processing software suites.

Of course if you are totally migrating away from Microsoft, the default format that Mozilla uses is fine too. Other Office clones receiving good marks are: Apache Office, Libre Office and Open Office, all derivatives from an application developed by thousands of programmers who wanted an application to be free to consumers but upgradeable for experts, too. Google Docs, another very popular Office Suite alternative, probably the easiest to write a document or spreadsheet from, is nevertheless the hardest to save, send and share with other users.

Roku’s Minor Flaw

With the increasing popularity of full feature film downloading and playback as opposed to renting DVDs, DFA found that most TVs (less than three years old), Blue Ray Players, set top box Internet steamers like Net Gear, Western Digital, and even some generic no names popping up from Asia, all play most formats that downloading sites offer. Some sites even offer the ability to download formats that support 4K, the latest and greatest video format with four times the pixel quality of HDTV.

Most of these formats including ( 3gp, aac, ac3, avi, flac, mp2, mp3, mp4, mpg, mkv, mov, ogg, wav, wma) are not always available on legitimate consumer purchase or rental movie sites, but many down converter software programs convert these in the most popular and most used formats: MP4, AVI, MKV and WMA. Our Sony Play Station (older and newer model) and TVs like Samsung, Vizio, and Sony will play a legal downloaded movie feature right through their built in USB port.

But Roku’s spokesmen says that their set top box (by far the most popular streaming player on the market), only supports MP4 and MKV.

Roku’s Major Search Advantage

Recently Roku added the ability to search with voice recognition within the Roku Channel Store by streaming channel name, making it fast and easy to find favorites like CBS News, HBO GO and Sling TV – to name a few of the more than 2,000 streaming channels available today. Roku is known for having a comprehensive and unbiased search – find what you want to watch and decide how to watch it. Search for movies, TV shows, actors and directors and receive all available results listed by price from top streaming channels, up to 17 today. TiVo scans a little faster but you have to use a remote and key in the data.

With 250,000 movies and TV episodes available for streaming, Roku Search is a convenient way for consumers to view filmographies and discover availability and pricing options they otherwise wouldn’t have known about.

Can you say wine in your purse?…Vivajennz Does

No need for bottle openers or glass that can break… Just put in your beverage bladder into these funky purses, handbags and even messenger type bags for men too. Add a couple of cooler packs and you are ready to go! Each bag comes with its own 3 liter bladder. You fill through the opening, attach the spigot and put it in the purse. Locked and loaded…Ready for the fun…while DFA didn’t love some of the designs, Vivajennz purses will be great for picnics, pools, beaches, girls night out…boys night out? https://vivajennz.com/

Stay Cool With a Corkcicle

Ditch the cooler. Keep the cool. Enjoy your favorite cold or hot beverage anytime, anywhere. Triple-insulted stainless steel Canteen has  Easy-grip flat sides. No-slip bottom. Drinks stay cold for 25+ hours and hot for 12 without freezing or sweating. Available in 9, 16 & 25 oz. sizes.

Retail: $19.95, $27.95 and $32.95 . Our staff tried each model and they worked great. Other models like the Tumbler keeps drinks cold for 9+ hours or hot for 3 without freezing or sweating. With its easy-grip sides and no-slip bottom, Tumbler truly is worth holding and beholding. Available in 16 & 24 oz. sizes.

Retail:  $24.950$29.95

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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl52rPwGKGN_SZrDJHBXPLw