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The Magic Charger is a new wireless charger for the Mac’s Magic Mouse from Mobee Technology.  It sets up very quickly and works really well.

You put the special batteries (included) into the mouse and from then on, recharging only requires that you put the mouse on the charger (just set it there, anywhere on it) and it charges.  The batteries hold charge for about six days of normal use, but you can charge them as much as you’d like.

The design looks good with your Mac devices as well, matching the sleek and slim looks Apple is famous for.  It’s also very portable if you’re a mobile user.

It allows you to recharge your mouse without changing batteries or even opening the mouse, which means you’re less likely to break or lose something important.  It is powered from USB so you can plug it into your system or the wall (includes a converter).  It’s made up of recyclable materials as well.

Installation is quick: remove the old batteries and replace with the included Magic Charger batteries.  That’s it.  Very quick and cool.  Here’s video:

Disclosure Notice: I received free product in order to conduct this review. No other compensation was given.

Social media news has focused largely on the launch of Google+ in recent days.  But some developments garnered more news than others, as people started to find their way around the new service.

One of the highlights – or lowlights for the person concerned – was that William Shatner, former star of Star Trek, had his own Google+ account suspended only a short time after he opened it and started using it.  William seemed rather laid back and puzzled by the event.  He stated on Twitter that “my Google+ account was flagged for violating standards.”  The only question was what the nature of the violation was, since he had only said hello on the service up to this point.

It has been speculated that someone at Google suspected the account may not be genuine.  There have been instances in the past of people signing up to social media sites under the guise of someone famous.  This is why Twitter has started using verified accounts so you know who the true famous people are.  Was this the reason why William Shatner could not use his Google+ account for a while?

Whatever the reason might be, things have now been restored to normal.  It would appear from various news reports that several other high flying and well regarded people also vanished from the new social media site for a while.  They too were reinstated after a short period of time.  Whatever was going on, we can hope it has now passed.

A recent survey conducted by OnePoll makes interesting reading when it comes to how parents use social media sites.  According to the results over half of all the parents surveyed said they use Facebook and other similar sites to see what their children get up to.  They do this without telling their children – and apparently the figure would be higher but for the number of parents who do not know how the social media sites work.

The age limit for youngsters using Facebook is 13, but some are using it at a younger age.  It would seem that parents are going onto such sites to keep tabs on their children.  They do so to ensure they are not getting into trouble or doing things they would disapprove of.  While the survey results may seem shocking, perhaps it is the fact that fewer parents feel able to talk face to face with their children that is most shocking.

According to other reports many teenagers feel offended that their parents are thinking of joining the site.  They enjoy having a space where they can communicate with friends and not feel as if their parents are watching them.  In a sense it feels no different from how most of us remember our own teenage years.  These are the years when parents and teenagers are least able to talk to each other.  But nowadays the parents use Facebook to keep tabs on them rather than any other method.

The Hit List is a life management system from The Potion Factory.  It’s not just a to-do list manager or an alarm clock.  It’s a lot of things and all of them are extremely useful for those who live in a very busy world.

You can create lists of items to do, of course, but you can also organize them by work, family, importance, and more.  You can measure progress as you work on tasks, record the time spent on them, take notes as you organize, set up repeating tasks, synch with other apps and devices to keep your tasks together, and more.

For example, I set up a workday with my appointment schedule for the day, including addresses and contacts, and did this from my computer.  I synched that with my iPhone.  I made my first appointment and then, upon leaving, took some quick notes about it so I could put together some things discussed later.  I went to another appointment and this being a client meeting, I “clocked in” using the Timer feature.  After it was over, I “clocked out” and had the time stored for later reference for billing.

I had a voicemail, so I picked that up and it was a friend wanting to know if I had lunch plans.  I checked and I didn’t, so I sent him a text and said to pick a spot and let me know.  I added this as a Quick Entry when he replied, so now I had a 12:30 lunch appointment set and could forget about it since I was due at the soccer field for my son’s practice.

Through the day this continued. When I was in the office and at home, the phone synched so that my Hit List was updated on all my computers.  I organized the day’s notes and information and made task lists for the next day so I could get some emails and other things off to finish out the day.

It’s a great app, very very flexible and extremely useful.

As anyone who uses Twitter will know, keeping up with the different people you follow gets harder the more people you are in contact with.  However there is now a new tool you can use that makes it even easier to keep up with the best of your Twitter stream.

TweetPort enables you to get the highlights from your Twitter stream sent directly to your chosen email account.  This can be done every day, every week or every month, depending on your requirements.  This means that instead of being overwhelmed by messages from all your Twitter followers every time you log in, you get a regular email report instead.  This gives you an easy to read summary of what has been going on, and you can choose to access your Twitter account from the email if you wish.

TweetPort is currently offering a free thirty day trial of the service to all followers.  If you choose to continue with it after that time it costs $3 per month.  The system works by using an algorithm that provides the highlights of all the tweets that appear in your Twitter stream.

The crucial part of this new application is whether or not people will be prepared to pay for the service.  The cost has clearly been kept low and three dollars a month is not expensive at all.  But since there are so many free applications already available, it will be interesting to see whether TweetPort really catches on.

There was a time when it would have been hard to imagine any piece of equipment that could outdo the personal computer.  Laptops and desktop computers have become a major part of many peoples’ lives.

But now it seems the tide may be turning – that is, if the latest blog posts and news articles are true.  Apparently the sales of tablets are getting better and better, putting a dent in the growth of the PC market.  Computer sales in the United States were forecast to grow by approximately 6.7% in the last three month sales period.  In reality the growth was just 2.3%.  Some of this slow movement will undoubtedly be due to the economic situation, but this appears to be only half the story.

The most eye catching and headline making tablet of all is of course the iPad.  Certainly, Apple’s sales of their much trumpeted gadget have done exceptionally well in its first year.  When you consider its success amidst a challenging economic market, you can see that perhaps it is having a marked effect on the sale of PCs.

Only time will tell whether this trend will continue.  One would suspect it will end somewhere, since a tablet cannot do everything that a personal computer can.  But similarly a tablet has advantages that even a laptop does not, never mind a desktop.  So it can be expected that tablets will continue to garner good sales in the months to come.