The Low-Tech Times

As the world’s leading search engine, Google.com, uses powerful computer hardware and software to rank web sites and deliver relevant results based on the search terms entered by users. For the most part, the system works great. Sometimes, however, it can take a little time to find exactly what you’re looking for.

Jason Calacanis, an internet entrepreneur, started Mahalo.com to provide spam-free, relevant links pertaining to the most popular search terms. Instead of using complex algorithms, he has a paid staff to hand-pick and organize the best links for each subject.

Mahalo is still in a beta version and there are a lot of things not covered. In fact, it seems impossible that Mahalo will ever have hand-built results for everything someone will want to search for. However, after experimenting with the site, it does look promising, particularly for when querying for vacation travel destinations or how-to articles.

It will be interesting to watch Mahalo.com over the coming months. Does human-powered search have a future? What do you think?

In this age of computers, video games, and too much television, it’s nice to spend an evening enjoying a classic board game. Last weekend, my wife and I had a good time playing Scrabble. She won.

The Low-Tech Times highly recommends Scrabble.  In addition to a new, rotating Deluxe Turntable Scrabble game, Amazon.com offers Classic Scrabble and the Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary. The dictionary can be very helpful for resolving “is that a word?” issues.

Compact Discs have some real advantages over vinyl records; the most important advantage is that they are practical to play in car stereo systems.

However, in this blog post, PhileySmiley explains that vinyl records deliver better sound than CDs. His argument is that records capture entire sound waves, as opposed to CDs which approximate sound waves by sampling. Additionally, he claims LPs sound warmer.

If you are old enough to have a record collection, or you have access to your parents’ record collection, having a record player is a great idea. There is still a lot of good music on records that has never been re-released on CD.

Just last week, a friend called to let me know how excited he was about his recent record player purchase. When my wife and I visited, we enjoyed listening to an old Bob Dylan record he got from his father-in-law.

Here are three top record players available today from Amazon.com. The first is a traditional record player that plugs into your stereo tuner. The second is a portable record player with a built-in speaker. The third one is a USB player allowing you convert vinyl records into mp3s.