TECH SPOTLIGHT

These 3 products keep summertime travelers busy - and open their beverages

— It’s time to have a little fun.

I have a few products this week that are made for summer vacation travel. One can keep the power flowing in the car, one can help the kids bide their time in the back seat and the last can help get that refreshing summer beverage open.

The first is a basic product with a couple of enhancements from people who know a lot about power. Energizer, best known for its batteries, has added car chargers to their collection of power sources. The Energizer 5W Premium USB Car Charger comes with either a cord to charge Apple products or a micro USB cord, which charges most Android-based smart phones.

There are plenty such car chargers on the market that work just as well as this one, but the Energizer charger does have a couple of standout features. The first is the “Find-Me Light,” as it’s called. Basically, a blue light inside the USB port on the charger lights up at night, so you can see to plug in the cable more easily.

The other extra feature is the big gap between the port and the part that slides into the car’s power socket. This gap, partially covered by rubber, allows you to roll the cord around the charger and store it when not in use. It’s nice, but it makes the charger really bulky.

Those long summer trips give you plenty of time to charge your phones, but what about the kids in the back? How will you keep them occupied?

Pressman offers a solution to that with its iPieces line of games and accessories. I tried out the Air Hockey set.

The set includes two little plastic pieces with felt on the bottom to be used as air hockey bumpers. The set is made strictly for the iPad. It includes a QR code to scan that takes you to the accompanying iPad game in Apple’s App Store. If you don’t have a QR Code scanner (there are several free ones in the App Store), you can just search for“iPieces” and it will pop up.

The game brings up an air hockey table that will only work with the appropriate pieces. Pressman has other free games, like Snakes and Ladders and a fishing game, but you have to have the appropriate pieces to go with those games or they won’t work.

The game works well and is fun to play. The felt on the bottom keeps the pieces from scratching the iPad and helps them glide easily across the screen. But those pieces also can be problematic. They’re really small, only about an inch tall. I’m thinking they could be very, very easy to lose, and if you do, the game is useless. Also, you have to be certain to keep these pieces away from small children, because they could be swallowed very easily. The game is rated for ages 4 and older, but I’d still keep an eye on the 5- and 6-year-old kids as well.

Finally, what do you do when you hit the beach, reach for a cold one and have a hard time getting the top off the bottle? You reach for your iPhone, of course!

Opena turns your iPhone into a bottle opener with its Opena Case. The case comes in white or black and features a bottle opener that slides out of the back.

At first glance, you’d never know you were holding a bottle opener. It just looks like a sleek case with a metal accent that frames the Apple icon on the back. The circle actually doubles as a thumb hold to let you slide the metal down its groove and out the bottom of the case. The end of the metal has a ring that can be used as a bottle opener.

The case is a fun idea, but there are a couple of issues with it. First, if the bottle you’re opening happens to spew a bit, you could be in trouble. The opener sits just below the phone’s dock connection, which is wide open and vulnerable to any flying moisture. That moisture could short out the connection and ruin the phone, so you really have to be careful. It would be nice if they would just put a small strip of rubber across the bottom to protect the port, and that you can move out of the way to charge the phone.

The other issue is the case itself. Hopefully, you really like it once it’s on, because it is a beast to get off. I actually slightly damaged my phone trying to pop it off. That did not make me happy, folks.

These products have their good points and bad points, but one thing is for sure - they’re made for summer fun.

Melissa L. Jones can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].

Where it’s @

The Energizer 5W USB Premium Charger comes with an Apple Dock cable or a micro USB cable and retails for $24.99. More information is available at www.energizer.com. The Pressman iPieces Air Hockey game requires an iPad and an Internet connection to download the free game. The product retails for $12.99. More information is available at pressmantoy.com. The Opena iPhone 4/4S Case retails for $39.95. More information is available at openacase.com.

Business, Pages 19 on 06/11/2012

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