An air quality scanner for your home

ENVIRONMENT
Many of my fellow Miltonians have been coughing and wheezing their way through Little League games at Shields Park lately.

But the air we breathe at home can be even more irritating, some medical folks say.

You can check your water and Chinese-made toys for lead, your bathrooms for mold, and your basement for asbestos with home test kits and the help of local labs. I do it all.

But until recently, checking your home's air quality has not been practical.

Last week I was checking the air around my home, and at my Emmanuel College office, with the Dylos DC1100 laser particle detector (dylosproducts.com). It is among the first made specifically for consumers. And it costs just $200.

The DC1100, which is about the size of a paperback book, measures the amount of large and small particles in the air your living area.

The DC1100 comes with a tiny manual that tells you nothing about interpreting its numbers, unfortunately. The Dylos website is also useless on this score.

A sticker on the back of the unit does tell you whether your small particle count (from tobacco or wood burning, for example) is anything to worry about.

I was relieved to discover my home has small particle counts that Dylos rates as "very good" to "excellent." My Emmanuel College office, despite all of the construction in the area, had only a fraction of the small and large particles I had at home.

If you are wondering how the DC1100 can be as good as a device that costs thousands of dollars more, the answer is simple: It probably isn't. It is made of cheaper materials than other counters and is less sensitive.

But if you want to know whether that air purifier of yours is actually working, the DC1100 might be enough to make crude comparisons.

You could also give your air purifier's filter a visual inspection once in a while, to see what you are catching.

Video games

A mean pinball game for the Wii

Growing up in the 1970s and '80s, I stuffed thousands of quarters into the best machines from Manhattan to Manhasset. But SouthPeak's Dream Pinball for the Wii (dream-pinball.com) offers better (and more forgiving, depending on your skill level) play than anything I ever found at the arcade.

Dream Pinball is a masterpiece of design and sound and vibration.

Playing this game (which is closer to a super-realistic sim, really), it is as if I am leaning over a real machine, thanks to the game's sensitive flipper controls and force feedback via the Wiimote.

Dream Pinball features great visual effects: It gives you six unique tables to choose from and has balls made of steel, marble, ivory, gold, and wood, like those the pre-cogs turn out in "Minority Report."

HOME ENTERTAINMENT

Netflix box brings videos straight to tube

One of the pleasures of working from home (and I suppose a guilty one, were I capable of human emotions), is being able to snap on the tube anytime I feel like it.

But now, with Roku's Wi-Fi box for existing Netflix subscribers, I am at risk of becoming a daytime movie junkie.

The $99 Netflix Player box downloads and streams films and TV shows directly to your set, bypassing your PC.

You organize the "instant" flicks just as you queue up the DVDs you want to receive in the mail. You pay once for the box, and you keep it. The vids you watch via the box are free.

You will need to have the fastest high-speed Internet connection you can afford, and wireless Ethernet in your home.

There are several problems with the player that are keeping my streaming video addiction under control, however.

Netflix's instant library is small - 10,000 titles might sound like a lot, but it isn't. Most of the featured instant vids, save a few episodes of "Dexter" or "Weeds," aren't at all appealing: old "Dragnet" shows and new zombie films from the C-movie list.

Even good movies can look a bit rough streamed through the Netflix Player.

Roku also makes slickly designed Internet Wi-Fi radios, which you can check out at Roku.com.

Innovative last week

Samsung's OLED laptop prototype

In case you were wondering whether OLEDs were ever going to get bigger than a cellphone display, Samsung has news for you. The company recently disclosed that it has developed a thin laptop with a 12-inch OLED display and touch keypad, which looks like bridge control panels on Jean-Luc Picard's Enterprise. OLED (organic light emitting diode) displays, we are told, will be brighter, faster, cheaper, more flexible, and thinner than today's technologies. At the moment, they meet few of these criteria.