technotes

A PR person at Verizon contacted me last week via email. She said she’s been reading my technotes blog and wondered if I’d be interested in reviewing their products and posting those reviews on my blog. It sounds like an interesting gig so I said ‘sure…why not?’

They’ll be sending me a new phone every so often to use for free for a few weeks (phone and data), putting it through its paces, finding out what’s intuitive and works well, and well…what doesn’t. Once I’m done, I’ll just send it back - on their dime, of course.

They don’t even seem to mind at all that I’m an iPhone user and not even a Verizon customer. We have Verizon phone service in my area but I use Vonage for my home phone and Time Warner Cable for my cable and Internet so I haven’t been a Verizon customer for the past 3-4 years.

Verizon sent me a Droid X within the past few days so that will be my first review. Look for it soon!

I heard a great tip for saving a soaked cell phone - or any other unfortunate electronic device, for that matter. I've had a few friends who have had the misfortune of dropping their cell phone in a puddle or a glass of water (hey, that friend was heavily medicated) or - GASP - through an entire washing machine cycle.

But fear not... If you ever find yourself with a wet device, don't cry - that will just create more moisture! Trust me...we can get through this.

Try these steps instead.

1. Get your vacuum cleaner out and use an appropriate attachment to suck out as much water as possible. Look for the largest input area on your device and start there.

2. Always try #1 first to get as much water as you can out of the device quickly.

3. Next, grab some uncooked rice - or, pick up a bag of Fresh Scent cat litter. If you use cat litter, you must use the one with the blue/green crystals. Any small bag will do.

4. Grab a small container that can be sealed tightly - such as Tupperware.

5. Pour some of the cat litter (or rice) in the container and place your device on top.

6. Close the container and leave it alone for a day or so. The cat litter (or rice) will suck up the moisture from the device!

If neither of these methods work, you might be out of luck but at least you'll have tried a couple of quick and easy fixes before throwing in the towel.

Thanks to the guys on the MacBreak Weekly podcast for these suggestions. Good luck!