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Late last month while at the Avenues I spotted the Vuzix Wrap at Xcite and since I’ve always wanted to try one of these before I contacted them so I could get one to review. The Vuzix Wrap is a video eyewear which basically means you watch video through tinny screens that are fitted inside the glasses. According to the package, watching videos using the Vuzix Wrap will feel like watching a 67″ screen siting 3 meters aways. After playing around with it for a week I have my personal opinion on video eyewear’s in general as well as this specific model.

The Wrap works with regular AA batteries which means you can use them wherever you are. The batteries are fitted into a small external compartment which you could keep in your pockets and the Wrap is connected to the batteries using a wire. The Wrap comes with earphones as well which you need to plug in separately into each side of the eyewear. Inside the box Vuzix also includes an adapter to connect the glasses to Apple devices like the iPhone as well as RCA cables so you could connect it to a videogame console or your TV receiver.

I downloaded Truth in 24 II from the Apple Store (which is the sequel to an incredible documentary btw) and watched it on the Vuzix. At first I was expecting it to feel weird and uncomfortable like trying to watch a 3D movie with 3D glasses but the experience was actually pleasant. I’m not sure if it felt like watching a 67″ screen from 10 feet away, but the screen definitely didn’t feel like it was 2cm’s away which is what I was expecting. These kind of glasses could be pretty useful when traveling on a plane since you can watch whatever you want in complete privacy and also zone out from your surroundings since once you have the glasses on you’re pretty much watching TV in your own little room.

But there are a whole bunch of things I didn’t like in the Vuzix Wrap. The video quality left a lot to be desired, other than the fact the screen resolution is low, I felt the contrast lacked with the blacks looking more like grays. I tried to adjust the settings as much as I could but I wasn’t able to improve on it that much. Another issue I had was with the earphones. First you can’t connect your own earphones which is a let down and second I found the included earphone wires to be too distracting. Each earphone plugs into a socket thats located in the front of the glasses so the wires were touching my eyebrow and face while on their way back to my ears. The eyewear along with the various attachments also felt very plasticky and cheap but the biggest issue I had with the Wraps were how stupid I looked wearing them. If you sit on a plane and put these on people are either going to think you’re Ray Charles or some douche with horrible taste who thinks its cool to wear sunglasses inside a plane. This is why although they would be practical to use while traveling, they might be better off being used in the privacy of your home where you can play Xbox on these glasses without having to hog the living room’s TV.

I’m pretty glad I finally got to try video glasses on and I kinda understand how Google’s Project Glass is going to end up working. Price wise Xcite currently have a special offer on these glasses until the end of the month and they’re selling them for KD89.900. If you want to check them out they have them on display at the Avenues branch OR even better you could try to win a pair. All you need to do is just leave a comment below and tonight I’ll choose a winner using Random.org. Good luck!

Rules: Only one entry per person and please make sure you use a working email since the winner will be contacted by email. If winner doesn’t respond within 24 hours another winner will be randomly chosen.

Update: Comments are closed and I had Random.org choose two numbers, a winner and a backup winner in case the winner doesn’t respond.

Winner is #94: Abdullah
Backup is #20: Ahmed

Lulu are opening a new location in Dajeej Farwaniya right next to Sears. From the outside the location looks pretty huge although I’m not sure if it’s going to end up being their largest branch in Kuwait. What I like about the location though is that it’s closer to Salmiya than their Al Qurain branch which is currently my favorite. This would be their fourth location in Kuwait and according to a worker I spotted on site they should be opening right after Ramadan.

The other day I found out that Kuwait is going to have its first female Olympian swimmer and it got me thinking… who else is on Team Kuwait? Who are the other athletes that are going to be participating next month in the summer Olympics? Does anyone know?

Team USA have an amazing website listing all the sports they’ll be participating in as well as who will be representing them. We don’t have to have anything fancy like that, just a simple list would be enough since right now we don’t even have that. I just got the domain teamkuwait.com and as soon as I have a good amount of names I’m going to start uploading them there but I need your help.

If you have any idea who is going to be participating at the Olympics next month please email me or leave a comment below.

So far this is the list:
Swimming: Faye Sultan
Shooting: Mariam Erzouqi

Update: Thanks to Buz Fairy, this is the full list of Kuwaiti athletes participating in the Olympics next month:

Shooting:
– Fuhaid Al-Daihani in Double Trap (men)
– Abdulla Al-Rashidi in Skeet (men)
– Talal Al-Rashidi in Trap (men)
– Maryam Erzouqi in 10 meter Air Rifle (women)

Track and Field:
– Ali Al-Zankawi in Hammer Throw (men)
– Mohammad Al-Azmi in 800 Meters (men)
– AbdulAziz Al-Mandeel in 110 Meter Hurdles (men)
– Salsabeel Al-Sayyar in 100 meters (women)

Table Tennis:
– Ibrahim Al-Hassan (men)

Swimming:
– Yousef Al-Askari 100 meter freestyle/backstroke (men)
– Fay Al-Hussain in 100 meter freestyle (women)

Final tally is 11 Kuwaiti athletes, 8 men and 3 women.

Update2: Here is an article about Yousef (pictured below) who is currently a high school student in Florida. [Link]

After posting about On Cost the other day I decided to pass by and check it out myself. From the pictures (and logo) it looked like Kuwait’s version of Costco and on some level it is but mostly it isn’t. The place turned out to be a lot smaller than I was expecting it to be. There also isn’t an electronics section, a clothing section or a hardware or home-ware section. The way everything is displayed thought make it looks like a Costco but it’s more of a supermarket then a full fledged all in one retailer. I picked up a label maker from their small office supply section. I got it for around KD3 less than I had seen it somewhere else.

Finding the place was easy. Just take the 6th Ring Road and if 360 Mall is on your right keep heading straight past the Jaber Al-Ahmad International Stadium. Keep driving until you pass the new Kuwait University campus on your left (currently just hills and hills of sand) and then after that in a bit you’ll see a sign for the 604 exit. Once you take the exit stop at the traffic light and then take a left and pass under the bridge. Then keep driving straight until you get to a roundabout, you should spot what looks like a huge ass mall in the middle of the desert on your right, that’s the vegetable market and On Cost is located there.

Update: Here is a link to the location on [Google Maps]

Short but interesting report. [YouTube]

Originally I was planning to write a small post on my experience with the Synology backup drive and maybe compare it to my Drobo but in all honesty, the thing turned out to be a lot more than just a simple backup drive and so the tiny post has turned into a much bigger one.

Synology DS1511+ Web Interface

Firstly a quick brief about what the Synology DS1511+ is. In it’s most simplest form it’s an external backup hard drive that can take up to five 3TB hard drives and has data protection which means if one of the five hard drives fail my data is still protected. But the DS1511+ (from here on I’ll just call it the Synology) is also a mini server and so doesn’t require to be connected to a computer.

Xbench disk test

Performance wise the Synology turned out to be a lot faster than my Drobo. How fast? Copying a 2.48GB file from my computer over FireWire 800 to the Drobo took 4 minutes and 30 seconds. Copying the exact same file over gigabit ethernet to the Synology took just 42 seconds. That’s over 10 6 times as fast!

So yeah if you’re looking for a backup drive to put all your important files onto it and still have your data protected in case the drive fails, the Synology is great. But, the Synology is also more complicated to setup than the Drobo. Cost wise they’re selling the Synology drives in Kuwait for cheaper than Amazon and you can find them at either Blink (where I got mine from) or Cameo. Cameo also has the newer but slightly more expensive DS1512+.

Now that I got all that out of the way this second part is what REALLY makes the Synology cool. Continue below for the second part of this review.

The AlJazi Villas are the villas located right in front of The Village in Abulhasaniya. I always thought they looked interesting from the outside but was curious to know how the inside looked like as well. Conveniently, I just noticed ArchofKuwait have pictures of the interior as well as some information on how the project originated. They’re pretty cool villas and you can check out the photos [Here]

Ama Traveller just posted pictures and information on a new place that opened up in Kuwait called “On Cost”. Judging by the pictures and her comments it looks very similar in style to the very popular large US retailer, Costco. Need to pass by and check it out myself but you can check out her post and pictures [Here]

Omarker posted a video on his blog that was taken a few days ago onboard a Kuwait Airways flight to Jeddah. The video isn’t so great but you can see that the oxygen masks were released and you could also hear some strange engine sounds. [YouTube]

According to The Buz Fairy, Al-Qabas reported that the minister of transport asked Kuwait Airways to ground three of its ailing Airbus planes due to multiple and repeat maintenance and operational issues.

It’s times like this I wish Wataniya Airways was still around.

iBadala is a local phone directory app on the iPhone and one that I use frequently. I’ve posted about them before [Here] and my biggest complaint back then was regarding the app’s design which looked prehistoric.

Turns out they read my post since I got an email from iBadala yesterday telling me that based on my feedback they’ve released a new revamped app with a completely new look. I downloaded the app awhile ago and the app does look better but more importantly the ease of use and speed is still there so they haven’t broken anything. In fact, they’ve made two minor changes to speed things up even more:

Search as you type
According to iBadala this feature was supposed to be in the original release but it never worked properly. What this feature does is it starts searching for results as you type so if you’re searching for “Open Flame Kitchen” by the time you’ve typed “Open” you already have two results displayed with the second one being Open Flame Kitchen.

Search results ranking
Another new feature to speed things up is how the results order changes the more people use the app. For example as I mentioned above a search for “open” will result in two results with Open Flame Kitchen being the second. If a lot of people are searching for open and then clicking on Open Flame Kitchen more than the first result which is Arab Open University, then the app will start displaying Open Flame Kitchen as the first result instead.

I was also told they’re releasing an Android version of the app in the next few days so that should please some people as well. If you want to download the iPhone version it’s available right now in the [App Store]

Big D’s on a roll, this is his second video this week but this one’s produced by our friend TJCfilms. Here’s the YouTube description:

Big D is on a mission to open the minds of people all over the world and educate them in regards to the citizens, places, religion and culture of Kuwait and the Middle East. With Relevant Existence he is shining a light on what the people of Kuwait suffered through in the Iraqi invasion.

[YouTube]

This logo is currently circulating around in Nottingham because of the news that Kuwait’s Al-Hasawi Family are buying the club. Reminds me of the new Aston Martin logo.

Thanks John

I had two packages arrive with Aramex today and as expected their new pricing system was applied.

The first package included air filters and the value was $86. I paid KD2.550 for customs and KD2 as a clearance fee. The second package included sandals with a value of $500. I paid KD8 for customs and KD2 as a clearance fee.

I haven’t received a package from Borderlinx yet so not sure if they’ve started applying these fee’s as well. But, according to a DHL customer service agent there is a new 5% customs fee on ALL shipments. So it’s not just Aramex.

I was picking up some food for my dog from Pet Zone and got a packet of this new brand of treats they started getting (Zuke’s). They come in various flavors but I picked up the Peanut Butter Formula. My dog really loves it. Like crazy eyes if you don’t give me another treat right now I’m going to rip the bag out of your hand along with your whole arm kind of loves it. They also have kitty versions.

Over the weekend I picked up three different speaker docks from the Digits Apple Store to review. Even though all three do the same thing they’re not really direct competitors, either because of the price difference or because of their abilities as you’ll see in my short reviews below.

Logitech S715i
The Logitech speaker was the smallest and most portable of the three. It’s also the only one that comes with built in rechargeable batteries which makes it really convenient to take to the beach and other places where power outlets aren’t available. The speakers are loud although the sound isn’t the greatest with pretty weak bass but that’s to be expected due to the size. One thing that really bugged me about the speaker dock is that I couldn’t connect my iPhone to it unless I removed the iPhone bumper which was annoying. Overall a fairly decent speaker that doesn’t win on style or sound but is priced competitively at KD35. Personally I’d check out the Jawbone Jambox first if I was looking for portability but that also costs twice as much.

Altec Lansing iMT800 Digital Boombox
When I first pulled out this boombox from the box I was a bit disappointed. I had just finished with the Monster Beatbox and compared to it, the Altec Lancing felt very plasticky, light and flimsy. It also didn’t sound as good nor was it as pretty. But it did have some features the Beatbox lacked and one of them is the built-in FM radio tuner. If you’re a fan of Linda on the Superstation you’re going to really want this. Another feature is the fact that it has three inputs, one iPhone/iPod dock and two auxiliary inputs so you could hook up 3 iPods if you want. Finally and more importantly is that the Altec Lansing can run on 8 large D-cell batteries which actually is a useful feature. Now because of the size of the Altec Lansing I thought it was competing with the Monster Beatbox but turns out they’re currently selling this for KD34 which suddenly makes this not so great speaker dock a really great deal. It sounds a lot better than the much smaller Logitech, it also has a small digital screen that shows you details like artist and album name as well as having the ability to run on batteries if needed. I actually emailed Digits back to confirm they hadn’t mixed up with the price. Turns out they’re having an offer on these and I’m guessing because of the newer iMT810 version.

Monster Beatbox by Dr. Dre
This by far was the best sounding speaker of the three. Even compared to my Bang & Olufsen BeoSound 8 the Monster Beatbox sounded really great with a lot more deeper bass. It was also the easiest of the three to operate and it also had the most solid build. The Beatbox is pretty simple with just an iPhone/iPod dock in one corner and a volume knob on the other. To give you an idea of how big a sound the Beatbox has, I live in a two story apartment and while I was sitting upstairs Nat was listening to music downstairs and I couldn’t tell if she was listening to music off our home theater or the Beatbox (turned out to be the Beatbox). The amount of bass it gives out for it’s size is just ridiculous, it really does shake the house. I did have one big issue with the Beatbox and that is the fact the dock can’t hold an iPad. I know you’re probably wondering who would want to use an iPad as a music dock anyway and the answer is anybody who’s tried the iPad version of Spotify. I use it with my BeoSound 8 and it’s unbelievably cool so much so that while I’m home I no longer listen to my MP3’s. The iPad Spotify app is fantastic plus I prefer to keep my phone on me and not plugged into a speaker dock. But that’s nit picking a bit which is fine since this is a review. Price-wise if you’re interested in the Beatbox, Digits are selling it for KD100 to my readers. Just tell them you saw this price on my blog and you’ll be able to get it for KD100 which is around KD20 cheaper than Amazon (not including tax and shipping).