#FollowFriday - @Wendell_Howe: Temporal Anthropologist, Time Traveller, Historian.

This week's Follow Friday is looking at  @Wendell_Howe, a Temporal Anthropologist from the year 2657. Dr. Wendell Howe is a doctor of History and Anthropology who works for the University of Cambridge in the twenty-seventh century. His work involves traveling back in time to observe historic events and interview notable persons. His actions in the past are closely monitored by the members of the Institute of Time Travel's Enforcement Agency, or simply The Enforcers, in order to ensure that his fact finding missions do not change the past and alter the future. This scrutiny bothers him somewhat. You can find some of Dr. Howe's reports from his travels at his blog: http://wendellhowe.blogspot.com/.

Dr. Howe is also a writing experiment by writer Jeanette Bennett (@Scablander). For her this is an attempt to write a story one tweet at a time. Dr. Howe's story is also an extension of her unpublished work, Walking a Fine Timeline, involving Serendipity Brown, the inventor of time travel, Sherman Conrad, a teen working in a McDonald's who really hates his life in 1985, and Dr. Howe.

In the good doctor's Twitter stream, he gives short reports of the events and persons he encounters in the past and in 2657. The combination is both entertaining, and informative. Dr. Howe's tweets contain a lot of information and links to historical sites, and imparts a look at Victorian history that is both personal and easily accessible. Even the tweets from the 27th century demonstrate how the past influences the way that society progresses. If you have even a mild interest in history or Victoriana, you should follow Dr. Howe.

While you're here, go ahead and cast your vote in the July poll in the sidebar. It will be ending soon, so don't delay! Then come back on Monday, when I'll be posting a new review. And of course, be back next Friday for another Follow Friday post. See you next week!

June Poll Wrapup

Back in June, we had two polls running. This was mostly because I failed to expect the vast numbers of consumers who were going to rush out and preorder a new iPhone 4. Since the iPhone 4 seemed to have stuck a chord for a lot of people, I started a second poll asking what feature most influenced your decision to buy a new iPhone 4. The responses really weren't what I was expecting.

Eleven people took the time to answer the poll. Of that number, over half had NOT bought an iPhone 4. One person declared that they would not buy an iPhone 4 under any circumstances, three more were not going to touch one unless they could get it without having to use AT&T, and another three were undecided about making a purchase. It is pretty clear that a lot of people have strong feelings against AT&T. And these responses pretty much mirrored the way I was thinking at the beginning of June: Even if you can deal with AT&T as a carrier, the iPhone 4 doesn't have a lot of compelling features, just minor upgrades to what was there already.

Of the four persons who said that they were purchasing a new iPhone 4, two of them were replacing an older iPhone, one was getting one for the fast A4 processor, and the last was just getting one because it had an Apple logo on it. Despite criticism, complaints, and allegations of improper business practices, Apple does manage to retain a lot of customer loyalty. While some people would label these loyal customers "fanboys" and dismiss them, there has to be some reason why Apple products gain such a following and an inordinate amount of attention from the press. It seems to be easy to love or hate Apple and their products, and very hard to ignore them.

I hope everyone has enjoyed June's polls, and that you'll all take a moment to vote on July's poll while you can. After all, this one is about You! I'l be back soon. See you then!

#FollowFriday - @jeanettemarsh: The neighbor from New Zealand, cat lover, gardener, friend.

In previous Follow Friday posts, I've introduced you to a number of very talented people, and useful services. All of those people, while useful or entertaining to follow on Twitter, also had an online presence apart from Twitter that showcased their special skills. This week, I'd like to introduce you to someone whom I only know from Twitter, @jeanettemarsh. What she does outside of Twitter, I really don't know. But if I'm online late at night, or early in the morning, she is usually connected from Auckland, New Zealand and cheerfully chatting away.

 According to her Twitter bio, @jeanettemarsh "Likes Spec Fic podcasts, gardening, cats & yoga." While she spends a good bit of her time on Twitter talking and ReTweeting about what other people are up to, she also shares events out of her own day, like spending the afternoon flinging geese back over the neighbor's fence, or the tales of the harrowing adventures her cats go out on, or her latest gardening project. It is honest, and wholesome and refreshing. And perhaps best of all, in these times when so many people are trying to find new ways of making money off of Twitter and using it to promote their own projects, once you befriend Jeanette, get to know her a little, she is truly interested in other people's projects. The biggest agenda of her own that I've seen her promote was a wish for her lost cat to return home. She did. Jeanette, thank you for just being yourself!

And yes, I'm experimenting with a new way of heading up these Follow Friday posts. Instead of the Twitter logo, I've substituted the Twitter icon of the article's honoree, with a link to their Twitter page. If I like it, I'll go back and retrofit it to the previous Follow Friday posts.

This weekend I'd best write up the results of the second of the June polls. Things have been pretty busy here, and I've got a lot to catch up on. And hopefully I will carve out time to get back to those of you who have volunteered to write reviews. I haven't forgotten you! I just have no time! Next week is my birthday, and fortunately I don't have a review due. Unfortunately that is when I'll need to write up the review for August 2nd! And of course, there will always be Follow Friday. Be sure to vote in July's poll, time is running out! Until next time, folks!

AirPort Extreme

As mobile devices become more popular, the need for wireless networks increases in order to provide the most demanding apps with the bandwidth they require. And eventually, one begins to look at setting up your own home network. These days, many internet providers are filling this demand by providing uplink devices with built in wireless modems. For some it is an option, for others it is a premium service with an accompanying monthly fee. For some people, letting Comcast or Verizon or whomever set up their wireless network is good enough. But others want more control over the network, and who is allowed on it. In this review, I'd like to show this last group of people one of the easiest, fastest, and most robust ways to set up your own wireless network: The AirPort Extreme.

The AirPort Extreme is Apple's latest solution for wireless networking. It provides the speed of 802.11n (Draft) wireless networking and is still backwards compatible with 802.11g, b, and a devices. Even better, the latest incarnation of the AirPort Extreme has dual-band support. This means that instead of one antenna for the wireless network, the base station has two antennas, so it can use one antenna for the speedy 802.11n devices and a second antenna for the slower 802.11g, b, or a devices. Most other wireless networks will slow down when a g or b device connects to the network. And there is actually a third antenna, so you can set up a Guest Network and allow visitors to use your connection to the internet without letting them see your computers on your local network. With the AirPort Extreme you can connect up to 50 devices on the network and all share the same internet connection. And they don't all have to be Apple devices. 802.11 is an industry standard and should communicate well with any device that follows the standard, be they Mac, PC, Linux, or something else. In this review, I'll be going over the set up of a new AirPort Extreme, to show how easy it is to get going right out of the box. I'll highlight a few of the other features as well, but if you really want to dig into everything the AirPort Extreme can do, go look at http://www.apple.com/airportextreme/ and take a look. Apple sells the AirPort Extreme for $179 in their US stores, but we were able to find it online for $164.39 at B&H. Prices will vary with time and from country to country. Right now we're just looking at the standard base station, not the $99 AirPort Express portable base station, or the Time Capsule, which provides a base station and 1 or 2 TB of network attached storage for $299 or $499, respectively. All of these are Apple AirPort devices and should give about the same feel when setting up and using your network, but may have slightly different features.

A few more features of the AirPort Extreme I'd like to mention before diving into setting up a new network. The AirPort Extreme has a USB port on the back, which you can use to connect a USB hard drive or a USB printer, or both if you also add in a USB hub. Why would you plug your hard drive or printer into the Extreme? Because the AE will share these devices on your network, allowing all connected devices to share the printer and hard drive. Naturally, you can put additional security on your drives to limit access. And unfortunately every computer will need their own drivers in order to print to the printer, but other than that little wrinkle, it is an easy way to share these resources with multiple users.

The AE supports the latest security protocols, so instead of leaving your network wide open (a bad thing to do), you can secure it with a password using WPA, WPA2, or WEP encryptions. Wait, what is all this alphabet soup? These are different standards for wireless encryption. Depending on how old your other devices are, your security needs, and if you're using some features with limited compatibility, you'll probably want to use one of these standards to protect your wireless network. The oldest of these is WEP, which stands for Wired Equivalent Privacy. Unfortunately, there were some flaws in WEP that allowed unauthorized persons to determine the password and decrypt the network traffic. WPA stands for Wi-Fi Protected Access. WPA was developed to eliminate the problems found in WEP, but was introduced quickly and was discovered to still contain some flawed code. WPA2 patched the remaining holes and is the current accepted security standard for networks. I recommend using WPA2 with a strong password: a password that contains letters, numbers, and special characters and does not appear to be a word or a simple pattern drawn on a standard keyboard. However, if you've got some older devices in your network, you may not be able to use WPA2 or WPA. Do the best you can, or try to set up your older devices to be connected to the network with Ethernet cables.

In addition to turning on encryption and setting up a strong password, you can also limit access to the base station to specific MAC addresses. No, that's not a Macintosh address, it stands for Media Access Control address. The MAC address is a unique identifier that each device has when using a particular network protocol. It uniquely identifies that specific device. When looking up a MAC address for your device, make sure you have the wi-fi address. Some devices also have different MAC addresses for using Ethernet or Bluetooth. And lastly, you can set up a Closed network. That means that instead of the base station shouting out "I have a network, and this is its name! Wanna join?", the base station will simply listen for devices that already know the network's name and access password to request a connection. These different security measures are all industry standards, so your devices should be able to work with them, but some devices may have issues when using more than one of these methods. I recommend using WPA2 encryption, and limiting to MAC addresses. Those two methods usually work well together. Your mileage may vary. If you're concerned about the security of your network from intruders on the internet side of things, the AirPort Extreme has a built-in Firewall to keep intruders out of your network.

Now, if at least one of the computers on your network is a Mac or a Windows box, you should have a very easy time with the AirPort Extreme. Apple provides AirPort Utility with the AE and usually installs it with Mac OS X. AirPort Utility provides powerful, easy to use tools to set up and manage your AirPort network.

After taking your AirPort Extreme out of the box, you'll plug in the power supply, and connect that cord to the back of the unit. And you'll need an Ethernet cable to connect to your internet access point. For most people this is a cable or DSL modem. This Ethernet cable plugs into the WAN (Wide Area Network) port. This is on the back of the AirPort Extreme. There are four Ethernet ports back there, the one you want is next to the USB port, on the side where the power supply plugs in. Once you've plugged up the hardware, and installed AirPort Utility on your computer, we're ready to get started.

When you first bring up AirPort Utility, it should scan for Airport base stations that need to be configured. The default name for the base station should be something like "Base Station abcd3f". The last six characters are the end characters from the MAC address for the primary antenna of the base station. This is the one used for the fast 802.11n speeds. It should look something like this.

And we're already into the setup wizard. To begin setting up your base station, click the Continue button. The next screen asks you to name the base station, and to pick a password for it. The name here is just the name of the base station. You don't have to change it unless you have more than one base station. It just helps you figure out which base station you're working with when you're in Airport Utility.

This isn't your network password, but a password that will allow you to change settings in the future. You'll want to pick a password that is memorable and strong. Some people create strong passwords by taking the first letter from each word of a short phrase. By including punctuation and inserting a few numbers, you can usually get a pretty strong password, and it is easier to remember the phrase. If you click on the key icon, a Password Assistant window will open. It will suggest a good password, and will tell you how strong your password is. It can suggest several different types of passwords. So enter your password and click Continue.

This screen asks how you want to set up your network. You can create a new network, replace an existing base station in a wireless network, or add a new base station on to extend an existing network. We're creating a new network, so we'll just click Continue.

Now we're on the screen where we are naming the actual network. You might also want to change from the default name for your network as Apple's default tells everyone whose network it is. This may help hackers find information about you to break your password. Don't make it easy on them.

The password on this screen is the one that your devices will use when joining the network. Again, you want a good strong password that you can remember. Don't rely on Keychain and other things to remember your password for you. They may help with day to day computing, but some day you'll want to add a new device to your network and unless you remember that password, you'll have to reset passwords on the entire network. Make it memorable, and at least 8 characters long. Of course, if you have a huge plot of land and no neighbors, or if you are a strong believer in free Wi-Fi, you can click the No Security radio button and create a totally open network. If you're like most folks, you'll want to enter a new name, and a good password, and click Continue.

This next screen lets you set up a guest network if you like. You can set a password for the guest network, or leave it open with no password at all under the security popup. Or you can uncheck the box and leave a guest network for later. We'll do that and click continue.

This screen talks about how you connect with the internet. Most people will be using DHCP, getting a IP address assigned automatically from your ISP and changing on some set period of inactivity that your ISP controls. If you have a domain associated with your network, or your ISP requires a DHCP client ID, you can enter them here. But for most people, it is just time to click Continue.

And at last we have a Summary screen. This is your last chance to check your settings before updating the base station. Now we click update, and then Continue, and wait for the base station to restart. It should take about 30 seconds.

And that is it! Your network is up and you're connected. Your network is protected by your password. If you want to enable other security measures, share drives or printers, just choose Manual Setup from the Base Station menu. This opens up this screen, giving you access to all the available capabilities of your Base Station.

If you want your network to be a little more secure you can go into Access Control, choose Timed Access from the pop up menu.

From here you can enter a MAC address for a particular device, and set up rules for when that device can access your network. The first entry there is the default, it is the access that machines that aren't on the list get to your network. Be default they can access it all day every day. If you're going to limit MAC addresses, you'll probably want to change that to no access.

If you forget a password, or manage to block MAC addresses without giving access to your own MAC address, you can connect to your base station with an Ethernet cable and fix it.

One of the nice things about the design of AirPort Utility is that most of these screens are pretty self-explanatory. You don't really need someone like me to tell you how to use each one. The hardest part is really the initial setup, and you're past that now. Once you've connected your devices successfully, they should connect right to your network whenever you're in range. The actual range depends on what kind of device you're using. 802.11n signals are pretty robust and have a good range. 802.11g signals are unfortunately prone to interference from cordless phones and other devices. And of course your environment will have an effect on how far and how cleanly the signal carries. In most cases you should have usable signal within 150 feet of the base station.

We have to give Apple credit for building a product based around ease of use. It may not be the right answer for everyone, but for people who just want to set up their network and move on with using it, it really does the job.

#FollowFriday - @Mainframe: Original Southern Gentleman Geek.

This week I'd like to introduce you to @Mainframe, also known as Richard Green. Richard is a mainframe programmer, comic book and podcast fan, a writer, a blogger, and a podcaster. And a Southern Gentleman Geek. If you've any questions as to what that is, you've only to listen to his podcast, Geek Out! with Mainframe. Richard combines southern charm and politeness with a geek's thirst for knowledge and attention to detail. For his writing, you can read the companion blog to his podcast, or listen to the story he submitted to the Every Photo Tells... Podcast. Or, you could just follow him on Twitter.

In the Twitterverse, @Mainframe is a big conversationalist. For the most part, he doesn't tweet to the general public very much, but responds and converses with the other people in his network. But if you're following other folks in his network, you'll note that he tweets with good humor and retweets to support projects that are cool to his geeky senses. If you're not following other folks in his network, ask him who to follow! Engage him on a variety of topics. Mainframe computing, podcasts, and comic books to name a few. I think you'll find him knowledgable and happy to share his viewpoints.

Monday I will be back with a new review. This time I'll be looking at my favorite wireless networking solution. I'm sure that some of you can already guess what it will be, but I hope you'll enjoy the writeup anyway. In the meantime, there is a new poll up for the month of July, so be sure to vote while you can. Have a good weekend, and I'll see you soon!

July's Poll: How tech savvy are you?

The first of the June polls is over, although there are a few more days for the second one.  I'm glad to see that more people are participating, although it is still a really small sample. But the results are kind of interesting.  I asked what missing feature would inspire you to buy a new iPhone 4, and a full half of the responders said that there was no feature missing. For half of them that was because they would never buy an iPhone of any kind.  For the other half the iPhone 4 already has all the features they're interested in. The half of all responders who wanted a new feature to entice them to get an iPhone 4 all wanted a choice of carrier other than AT&T. One wanted Verizon, one was happy with anyone BUT AT&T, and the remainder wanted their new iPhones to be completely unlocked so they could go to any carrier they wanted.

When the other poll ends, I'll post again to talk about why people went ahead and ordered their new iPhone 4s.

For July, I'd like to hear how tech savvy you consider yourself. I try to make this blog approachable to everyone, from the tech expert who already knows these products and is looking for a new way to apply them (or to explain how cool they are to his friends), to someone who just got their first computer and is trying to make sense of it and make it work for them instead of against them. So I'd like to hear from you, my readers, about where you fit in the spectrum.

This poll ends with July, so be sure to get your vote in. As always, feel free to comment about new polls you'd like to see, things you'd like to see reviewed, and what you'd like to see here in the blog. Or just give me a call on Google Voice and let me know what you're thinking about.

#FollowFriday - @Cynical_Woman: Cartoonist, writer, blogger, podcaster, mother, and devilish cutting wit.

Sometimes, life just gets in the way. You think you've got everything in hand, and then something happens and boom! You're scrambling to keep up. Sometimes this is a disaster. Sometimes it is great fun. Usually, it's a little of both and it throws a monkey wrench (with monkey still attached) into the way that your life works. That's what happened to me this week, and why this Follow Friday post is a tad late.

Helen E. H. Madden, aka @Cynical_Woman, knows from whence I speak. Helen is a writer, blogger, erotica podcaster, cartoonist, and mother of two. If all of the former weren't enough to put her schedules into chaos, the last one can do it by itself. Helen has published three volumes of erotica, Demon by Day, Future Perfect, and Welcome to Mundania. Unfortunately, I can't post links to these works right now because the connection I'm using is heavily monitored and the sites I need to post links to are blocked because they contain erotica. Go figure. But if you really want to find them, you can search the titles. And you can probably find links to them at http://www.helenehmadden.com/. I can't tell because... it's blocked! Someone must have fun surfing erotica so that they can put it on the block list. Helen also publishes the Heat Flash Erotica Podcast, which I also can't link to. *sigh*

What I can link to is Helen's two webcomics. You can find them at http://www.cynicalwoman.com/. The two comics are Rats!, a re-publishing of a webcomic she did for the Virginia Tech Collegiate Times from 1989-1993, and The Adventures of Cynical Woman, which she is currently drawing and posting. Both are semi-autobiographical, the first chronicling her time at Virginia Tech, and the second following her daily life, with appropriate embellishment. The comics are published as part of a blog, which makes reading the entire archive a little slow going as the comic has to be opened in a fresh window or tab to read it properly, but the blog gives insight into the events that inspired the comic. Also in the blog are updates on Helen's various projects and other life experiences.

But we're here to talk Twitter. And on Twitter, you can find @Cynical_Woman's cynical wit and biting repartee disguised as slice-of-life conversation. Helen crafts her tweets with the same kind of sardonic humor that goes into her comic, making even every day occurrences into a commentary on the ironies and emergencies of life. OK, maybe every tweet isn't a 140 character tome of social review, but they are well worth the read for someone who appreciates wit. I find her comments to be delightfully evocative.

And that is it for this week. Well, sort of. I do need to wrap up the first of June's polls and post the poll for July, but that may end up happening over the weekend. Next week is catch-up time for me, but there will be another Follow Friday next week, and then a review on the following Monday. There are still a few more days to vote in the "Why are you getting an iPhone 4?" poll, so make sure you cast your vote. Be sure to come back for July's new poll, because I want to find out a little about you. So, have a good weekend, and I'll see you next week!

ThermaPAK HeatShift Laptop Cooler

Today's review isn't software. In fact, it doesn't even use electricity, but there is a lot of technical research behind it, and it is designed to prolong the life of your legs, and your laptop. I'm talking about the ThermaPAK HeatShift Laptop Cooler, a laptop pad that cools your laptop through thermal conductivity instead of using USB power driven fans that will eventually clog with hair and dust and create a horrendous noise.

The HeatShift Laptop Cooler is made by ThermaPAK Technologies and is available for 13 inch, 15 inch, and 17 inch laptops. The cooling pads come in black or pink, and are sized for the typical footprint of a PC laptop. This means that the 15 inch pad is 13.5 inches by 11.5 inches and about a half an inch thick. But it is a bit hefty, with the 15 inch model weighing in at 23 ounces. There is also a white version that is sized to fit under 13, 15, and 17 inch Mac laptops. So that 15 inch model weighs just as much, but is 14.5 inches by 10.5 inches. If you buy from the ThermaPAK online store, the 15 inch pads run $29.99 regardless of color, with the 13 inch models two dollars cheaper, and the 17 inch versions five dollars more. ThermaPAK does have a number of resellers listed on their site and you may even be able to find them in a computer store near you. We did a quick look at the online resellers and were surprised at an odd three way tie for lowest price. Coming in as the most consistent was Buy.com, where a 15-inch ThermaPAK was priced at $22.99, regardless of color. If you want a black one, you may want to consider shopping at PC Connection, where a Black 15 inch pad was priced at a low $20.05, while the White and Pink versions in the same size were seven to eight dollars more. If you favor one of the other colors, look at Provantage.com, where the White and Pink 15 inch pads are $20.76, but the Black is oddly $29.53. Of course, these prices are just a snapshot, and they may change by the time you are reading this article.

ThermaPAK also has a Competitive Upgrade Program, where they will sell you a pad at a reduced price if you send them your existing cooling pad from another vendor. But you're better off looking at that on their site if you're interested. And they also make 15 inch and 17 inch basic Laptop Bags out of the same materiel as their cooling pads. But for now, we're just looking at the pads.

The ThermaPAK pad uses HeatShift technology (ThermaPAK's trademarked term) to provide cooling for your laptop.  What this means is that the cooling pad that you put under your laptop is made of a thermally conductive fabric, and filled with specially conductive crystals developed by ThermaPAK. At room temperature, these crystals form small hard grains that will move around each other, allowing the pad to be flexed and folded, and even rolled up for storage. When exposed to the heat of your laptop, these crystals melt, absorbing the heat and spreading it out to the surrounding area. As the heat is spread out, it dissipates, allowing the crystals to reform. So in use, the pad is filled with crystals going in and out of liquid state as the heat from your laptop is being spread out and dispersed.

So how do I demonstrate to you that this really works? After considering a number of methods, I decided to use SCIENCE!

The Problem: to demonstrate if the ThermaPAK really does help disperse heat from a laptop.

The Approach: Record the temperature profile of a laptop (in this case a MacBook Pro) on a hard, flat surface (a wooden table) from cold startup for a period of 2 hours. At the two hour point, insert the cool (room temperature) ThermaPAK pad between the laptop and surface. Record the temperature profile for an additional 2 hours.

The Data: I conducted this experiment at home, in a room kept at 72 degrees Fahrenheit. I recorded the following temperature data on my computer using Temperature Monitor. You will probably want to open this image up in a separate window.

I know that there is a lot on this graph, but I think it shows some interesting information. The line that most people will be interested in is the red line on the bottom. This represents the temperature of the bottom of the laptop enclosure. This would be the temperature of the laptop against your leg if you set it on your lap. It took me a couple minutes to boot up the laptop and activate all the sensors in Temperature Monitor so I could graph the data. In that small amount of time, the bottom of the laptop went from the ambient 72 degrees, up to the minimum recorded temperature of 82.4 degrees. As I used the laptop for the next two hours, the laptop's temperature rose steadily until it topped out near 95 degrees about an hour and a half into the experiment. It hovered at that point until I put the ThermaPAK under it at the 2 hour mark, indicated by the dotted cross hairs on the graph.

Notice that after the ThermaPAK was in place, almost all of the sensors experienced a pronounced dip. Even the widely varying CPU sensors display a general decline over most of the next hours, despite the fact that I continued to use the computer. Only the hard drive sensor failed to report any changes due to the introduction of the ThermaPAK. The laptop enclosure experienced about a 10 degree drop in temperature, and then started to heat back up again, although at a much slower rate. It wasn't until the end of the experement, 2 hours after the introduction of the ThermaPAK that the enclosure resumed its former temperature.

The Conclusions: It appears that the ThermaPAK is effective at conducting heat away from your laptop and into the environment, but that capability is limited and only buys you about two hours of cool down time. At the end of that time, the laptop will be back up to the temperature it started at. If your intent is to keep your laptop cool, this may not work for you.

But our primary purpose in looking at the ThermaPAK was to keep the laptop from burning your lap. That, it does admirably by more evenly distributing the heat across the surface of the pad. Although a tad heavy, the ThermaPAK does form a formidable barrier to heat. My wife has been using the ThermaPAK for several months now (she has more of a lap than I do, and is more willing to put her laptop upon it), and she just loves it. It keeps her legs from being burned and is comfortable and easy to pack into a suitcase, briefcase, or laptop bag. This may not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you're fond of the odd bit of computing in bed, the ThermaPAK is a great way to keep your laptop from getting overheated as it sits on your bedspread. And on top of that, it doesn't drain your battery life.

#FollowFriday - @Cirque: Gateway to wonder, behind the scenes at Cirque du Soleil.

This week for Follow Friday We're looking at @Cirque, the official Twitter feed for Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas. My wife and I have long been fans of Cirque du Soleil and the fantastic artists they attract.  We never pass up an opportunity to go to a show when one of the touring shows comes near. But for several years we've wanted to make a trip (or several) out to Las Vegas and see some of the shows that are resident there and don't tour. If you've had similar ideas, you'll definately want to check out @Cirque.

On Twitter, @Cirque tweets the latest information about the Las Vegas shows, from schedule changes, to special events, ticket sales and other items of interest. On top of that valuable information, @Cirque posts behind the scenes pictures from the various Cirque shows. be it a shot of the stage before a performance, or of a group of performers in full costume at an event, or just relaxing between shows.  This is content that you literally cannot find anywhere else. And to top it all off, @Cirque helps people, giving advice and assistance in planning their next Cirque du Soleil experience. All told, a valuable asset for any Cirque fan.

This weekend is the annual celebration of the founding of the United States of America. The 4th of July will be rife with patriotic celebrations. And some will spill over to the 5th, which isn't a work day for most of us. I will be out of town and celebrating in my own way, but you need not worry. When you come back here on Monday, a new review will be waiting for you. And this time it isn't even electronic! So come back next week to find out what this mystery product is! Also, time is running out, so be sure to vote in the two polls going for the month of June. And check back to see what the poll is for July! Until then, have a good weekend, everyone!