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Newstips Electronic Editorial Bulletin Issue # 2008-03b
News too late for National Procrastination Week
MEETING PLANNER CELL KNELL SCANNER
Professional meeting planners fall into two different camps when
it comes to cell coverage: some prefer no-signal "cell dell"
areas to thwart interruptions; others want to make sure guests
can use their cell phones if they need to. Now planners in either
camp can arm themselves with the YX699 signal meter ($199) for a
digital readout of cell strength in both of the 2 major (CEL &
PCS) bands. Care to try it? Contact: Sharon Cuppett, WI-EX INC.
(Norcross, GA) 770-239-5475x6380 mailto:scuppett@wi-ex.com
http://wi-ex.com AGENCY CONTACT: Deanna Anderson 404-759-1890
mailto:danderson705@comcast.net
JVC & THE SWEETNESS OF LIGHT
If you've seen the tiny GZ-HD6 high-def Everio model that came
out last year, you already know how much camcorder JVC can pack
into a butter box size package; there's even more in the new
Everio GZ-HD6 high def camcorder, which is even smaller in every
physical dimension. The HD6 builds in a 120GB hard drive good for
10 hours of best-quality 1920x1080 HD video. The lens door is now
automatic, opening when you go to record mode & automatically
shutting to protect the lens whenever you're not. Its macro
abilities are spectacular; we've been able to bring the lens hood
into direct contact with our LCD monitor screen & every pixel &
every pixel gap displayed in crisp focus & full detail. The new
configuration of connector placement is very intelligent, too;
most are on the back of the camera, covered by small attached
caps, with one above the battery offering DC (charger), plug-in
power mike & headphone connections (a surprising number of
consumer camcorders offer no headphone connection at all); to the
right of the battery, a second group offers A/V, component video,
HDMI & USB connections; the Firewire connection is next to the
lens up front & the Micro SD slot is behind a door underneath.
There's a very effective new optical stabilizer behind its 10X
Fujinon zoom lens. The balance of the camera is also excellent;
even with the biggest available battery on the back, four fingers
through the side strap & the thumb underneath the battery give
you a platform that's as stable to point & shoot as an opera
glass. The review request backlog is already pretty big, so tell
Chelsea what you have in mind & she'll see what she can do;
there's no delay at all, of course, getting info or photos to
you. Contact: Chelsea Vander Groef, JVC COMPANY OF AMERICA
(Wayne, NJ) 973-317-5000x5312 mailto:cvandergroef@jvc.com
http://jvc.com
SIZE OR SPEED SANS FRITTERS WITH APRICORN
When it's time to upgrade a notebook drive, worrying about size
versus speed can fritter the nerves faster than a head seek. Not
even Apricorn can offer both the fastest drives & the highest
capacities in a single drive (nobody can, it's just the nature of
drives), but they can ease the choices. Their fastest Xtreme
Upgrade 7200RPM choices go up to 120GB, so if that's enough
capacity, it's about as close to getting both size & speed as you
can be. If you're still a fretter, Apricorn has it all together
with a notebook hard drive selector on the Web site; tell it your
make & model & it will tell you what capacity options are
available at 4200, 5400 or 7200RPM speeds. Ask Michelle. Contact:
Michelle Fischer, APRICORN INC. (Poway, CA) 858-513-4480
mailto:mfischer@apricorn.com http://apricorn.com AGENCY CONTACT:
Jennifer Olson 415-402-0230 mailto:jennifer@atomicpr.com
THINKING AHEAD TO EUBIQ REVIEWS
When UL approval comes & we can start getting some of those
innovative Eubiq power strips into the hands of reviewers, you
may want to be already prepared with your wish list of twist-in
sockets (etc.) you want to try. In addition to AC Power outlets,
there are coiled power cords ready to plug into the back of a
computer or peripheral (see the Web site for their geometries), a
convenience light & some other goodies. Put together your wish
list on their Web site & send it to Kee. Contact: NG Kee Haur,
EUBIQ PTE LTD (Singapore) +65-6372-9393x380
mailto:keeng@eubiq.com http://eubiq.com
SAMSON UHF WIRELESS INTERVIEW MIKE
Last time we told you about the tiny Samson AirLine UHF
wireless-mike AL1 transmitter & companion AM1 receiver, which is
a great set-up for speaking solo into a camcorder. There's
another product in that line that lends itself to interviews: the
AX1 wireless transmitter (online $270 including AM1 receiver)
that plugs directly into the XLR connector on any dynamic mike
(no phantom power needed) & runs 5-7 hours on an alkaline AAA
cell. The mike we like with this is the Samson Q7 dynamic
handheld mike (online $60) which was built for vocals so it's
cruising when dealing with spoken voice interviews. It's a
supercardioid so it rejects noise from the sides & it copes well
with high sound pressure levels in loud environments. Its
response is flat & linear with a wonderfully low noise floor &
there's an internal shock mounting to help keep handling noise
from reaching the mike element. Just point the camera at your
group, point the mike at the person talking & record it all with
no strings attached. Contact: Mark Wilder, SAMSON TECHNOLOGIES
(Hauppauge, NY) 631-784-2200x142 mailto:mwilder@samsontech.com
http://SamsonTech.com
SOON GETTING MOLDY WILL BREAK WITH OLDY FOR PETS
Even before they knew about the electronics to heat & cool pets
to keep them comfortable, a lot of the people who have seen a
Komfort Pets carrier asked about owning one just for their looks.
That may come true as early as summer with some small changes in
tooling that will allow each size to be available either with or
without the electronics. If you never hit the Web site to see
what these beauties look like, please do. We can get your hands
on the original small carrier (with electronics) now, the medium
(also with) in May or high-res images any time. Drop a line to
Robert. Contact: Bob Inello, KOMFORT PETS (Revere, MA)
781-485-0077 mailto:rinello@komfortpets.com
http://KomfortPets.com
LITEPANELS WARNS: DON'T BE LED ASTRAY
Litepanels is not a consumer brand; they sell mostly to pro
cinematographers & video studios. They're all about LED
technology, but don't be LED astray; there's a lot to pay
attention to in these applications that doesn't automatically
happen just because a product can boast the lower power
consumption of using light emitting diodes. The most telling
concern is color temperature that stays consistent not only
during dimming but also after aging. There's more, too, like
dimming without creating electrical noise that can leech onto a
sound track, array housings that aid diffusion so they don't
project grids of circles onto people or objects, heat channeling
to help maintain color temperature consistency & lamp life,
compatibility with the gear already in place & enough savings in
power consumption & lamp replacement costs to quickly amortize
their slight purchase price premium. Ask Ken. Contact: Ken
Fisher, LITEPANELS, INC. (North Hollywood CA) 818-332-3070
mailto:ken@litepanels.com http://LitePanels.com
MOUSE VERSUS PAD: BOTH FLAT, ONE FRIENDLY
Notebooks tend to offer only 2 built-in options for moving the
cursor, either a tiny pointing stick thing or a small flat
touch-pad area; many notebook users disfavor both to the point of
grumbling. That drives some users to pack along small versions of
desktop mice, their wired tails a slight nuisance. The
alternative (that people like you understand but that the people
you write for may not until you tell them) is the fold-flat MoGo
Mouse that stows & charges in the notebook's accessory (PC or
X54, depending on model) slot, then works wirelessly over
Bluetooth for no-fuss ease. A "kickstand" brings the flat mouse
into a wedge shape that's comfortable & lither; its width helps
keep hands from cramping & its downward forward slant lets your
wrist rest on the table. If you find these benefits worth telling
& want a mouse for your show & tell coverage, just tell Jack.
Contact: Jack Corrao, NEWTON PERIPHERALS (Natick, MA)
858-792-0944 mailto:jack.corrao@newtonperipherals.com
http://NewtonPeripherals.com
SPECIAL REPORT: PRO RADIO FIELD NEWS TECH
Recent years have seen a continuation of the decades-long trend
away from all-news formats in local radio, as well as a dwindling
in news/talk formats. Field news reporting has, at least for a
time, all but disappeared from their air, minds & budgets, but
that may soon be seeing a small upswing. The agent of change in
this case is HD Radio with the broader content landscape afforded
to it by multicasting. We note that news/talk formats continue on
satellite radio & that a variety of network operations offer news
segments. In an earlier era, field news reporters would capture
audio interviews & reports using shoulder-strap-carried audio
recorders & handheld microphones; more recently, that
transitioned to very small (often, modified lavaliere) mikes
plugged into portable disc recorders; recently, pro mikes plugged
into portable mixers with USB digitizers or complete USB mikes
have turned notebook PCs into audio recorders; today, complete
pro-grade field recorders (like those from Edirol & Zoom) that
are about the size of a pack of cigarettes have a lot of the
momentum. These handheld recorders are digital, battery-powered &
use SD cards as their recording medium; even within that broad
description, there's a wealth of choices. The end point is the
audio file & the editing software on the market right now; while
most bigger-market stations buy & install a chosen package, we
see a lot of field guys editing on their own notebooks & using
their own software, then simply copying the finished audio file
into the station's audio file server. Before that can happen,
something has to get the original unedited audio out of the
recorder & into the PC, meaning trade-offs between copying files
over USB cables, swapping SD cards, etc. At any given compression
rate or with uncompressed WAV files, of course, a higher-capacity
SD card can hold more minutes (often hours) of audio, so there's
also a cost-convenience trade-off between owning a smaller number
of huge-capacity card or a somewhat larger number of mid-size
cards. Capacity issues also emerge with battery choices; these
handhelds use standard (AA) cells & can get good recording time
with rechargeable NiMH cells but not as good as with alkaline,
which are not as good as Lithium; any choice means carrying
spares. While these handheld recorders have good built-in mikes,
they also have external mike jacks (only unbalanced jacks with
plug-in power, except one model that also has XLR connectors)
that allow reporters the option of using better mikes or of
recording from line-level pool feeds. There are two age-old
challenges for any kind of hand-held rigs with microphones:
mechanically transmitted handling noise & wind noise. One answer
to both is the fitted foam wind sock; it not only baffles direct
wind noise, its bottom edge gives the reporter a place to grasp
the recorder that's nearly immune to handling noise. Some of
these devices also offer accessories so users can attach separate
hand grips or mike mount adapters, for example. Pros also know
that with any audio recording technology, you're shooting blind
if you can't hear what the recorder is hearing; over-the-ear
headphones do a better job than earbuds when it comes to these
monitoring tasks & some of the better models with bands that go
behind the neck are less obtrusive in most radio field news
applications. The one element of traditional radio field news
reporting that's more difficult to duplicate with these small
recorders (not to mention, one reason some reporters still plug
handheld mikes into them) is the mike flag, that little sign
board on the mike that carries the station or network logo. If
the recording gear keeps shrinking, radio news reporters may have
to start wearing logo hats.
SPECIAL REPORT BONUS REVIEW: LENMAR CHARGER
How many devices travel with you that need chargers for removable
or exchangeable (spare) batteries? Lenmar wants to address this
with their Solo XP line with a single AC charge base (like those
fold-away plug prongs) & a line of slide-on plates to accommodate
various batteries. One of their plates fits the batteries for our
JVC camcorder; the JVC charger measures 4"x2.3"x1.2" while the
Lenmar plate measures 3.6"x2.2"x.8" (not that much smaller), or
when mounted on the charger base, 4"x2.5"x1.8" (a bit larger).
One difference is that the JVC unit has a cord, which may be an
advantage or disadvantage, depending on the outlet stinginess of
the hotel. Another difference is that we can slide off the JVC
plate & slide on a plate to recharge the Canon Elph battery. The
base also has a USB "A" connector, so it can also recharge one
piece at a time of our handheld gear. It's a clever system, but
not necessarily an advantageous one for people who already own
chargers for their battery spares (assuming those chargers aren't
big & clunky). We also noted that the charge-status indicator
light (red or green) sometimes changed when the charger base or
tray was nudged, which makes us wonder about the integrity &
longevity of the connections between them. Bottom line: it's
interesting & may be a great choice for many users, but it's
probably not something destined for our travel kit.
SPECIAL REPORT BONUS REVIEW 2: BLACKBERRY MAPS
We knew about Blackberry Maps but thought (because the Web site
warned it was not available on AT&T) that we couldn't use the
application; with our new interest in GPS for journalists we
decided to try anyway & it works, perhaps because of our
Bluetooth GPS hardware. The maps are clear & because they're
vector-drawn (many of the others are downloaded JPG images), they
draw & redraw quite snappily (especially when zooming). The drawn
map is the only display; there is no satellite image option. Its
integration with Blackberry contacts is very strong; you can pick
any name & see a map of any address in the record for that name.
Its local search feature goes to Google to find the surrounding
geography's contingent of coffee shops or pizza shops or shoe
stores or whatever you asked it to find; the list that comes back
also lets you click to call. You can send your location to others
in any of 4 modes, which can be useful both for reporting
progress & for specifying where colleagues (or other responders)
should come to join you. As a mapping utility that can find you a
route, display maps & find points of interest, its useful, though
we don't see it performing well as a real-time navigator. Like
Google Mobile Maps (reviewed 2 issues back), it's free, but it's
Blackberry-only. Bottom line: it's useful, fun & a cool bridge
between your location & your contacts or between you & their
locations.
SPECIAL REPORT BONUS REVIEW 3: MAPQUEST NAVIGATOR
Of all the mobile GPS software we're evaluating, MapQuest
Navigator is the first we've seen (out of 4 so far) that we can
recommend for getting something like a Blackberry (it's available
for other phones, too) to work a lot like an advanced on-dash GPS
navigation product. It's not free, but at $50/year is not
prohibitive & its lengthy list of features is impressive. Its
graphics are useful for quickly showing you where you are & which
way to go. It talks, with spoken turn-by-turn instructions &
status messages. The moving maps & dashboard info (street names,
next turn direction & distance, your current direction, etc.) are
the best we've seen so far for actual real-time moving-map
navigation on a phone; you can add the spoken instructions to
that parlay. You can optimize for shortest route length or
shortest route time & it can adjust your route for traffic. It
fetches real-time traffic info (updated every 10 minutes) & if
there's trouble ahead, beeps & shows an icon to tell you about it
& offer you the option of recalculating your route to avoid it.
It can adapt to whether you're walking or driving to issue the
directions appropriate to either mode of travel. You can tell it
to choose routes to avoid ferries or toll ways or highways. It
can switch to a dark-background display mode to reduce backlight
glare at night. If you stray from its planned path, it will alert
you & recalculate a new route to make sure you can still get
where you're going sans panic. Unlike the Verizon VZW Navigator
we tested earlier, it isn't using a full-time data connection (it
gets most of what it needs when you first give it your starting &
ending points or when you stray out of that corridor of travel),
so it eats fewer minutes & your phone can still take or make
calls as you go. You can save locations for later & send location
info to contacts; there's no way yet to prep for your trip at
your desk by saving locations you find with MapQuest on the Web
then syncing those into your phone's saved-location folder
(coming soon, we're told; until then, we recommend some alone
time with the handset when planning trips). Access to points of
interest is enormous (16+ million) & includes AOL City's Best
listings; for most, you can click to call & click to see a map of
it. Our advice: don't try to do that when driving (pull over);
there is no waypoint routing (not yet, anyway) so you can select
an intermediate stop, set your current location as your starting
point & it as your end point to get navigation guidance there,
then when you leave, set your original destination (or some next
waypoint) as your new end-point. One of its most promising
features locates local gas station pricing (you can specify
economy, mid-grade or premium or biodiesel, CNG or E85; you can
also search by distance, by price or by brand) that's updated 7
times per day; it's a nice premise but in our area, it had info
on only 3 brands & left out a lot of stations, including all
those we know to have lower pricing. It can map locations for
your contacts & the feature works smoothly though, as you might
expect, the integration is not as thorough as we saw with
Blackberry Maps. Also, there is no aerial (photographic) view
(not yet, anyway), which we find useful for previewing building,
access drive & parking locations; you can always also have Google
Mobile Maps on your phone for that, especially since it's free.
Also, the splash screen & the online info identify this as
Navigator 5 though it's really version 4.03 (in help-about & the
Blackberry applications listing); we checked & this is the
version being marketed as Navigator 5. So what do we think of
MapQuest Navigator for journalists? Most of you don't need this
or any other GPS anything just to get to work every day, but when
you have to hit the road to do an interview or take a plant tour
or, more significantly, work a trade show in some less familiar
geography, it's a very useful asset. While it's less expensive to
subscribe for a year, you have the option of subscribing a month
at a time, which may make sense if you just want to use it for
trade show travel & want work to pay for it. For people (like
network TV field news producers) who are constantly traveling to
strange turf, need to get somewhere quickly & find special assets
(like a WiFi hot spot) nearby, it's a wonderful way to get
exactly what you need without needing to pack any additional
gear. Bottom line: MapQuest Navigator is a truly useful real-time
navigation product that lets our phone guide us to where we want
to be without compromising its ability to be a phone; we
recommend it & consider it a keeper.
WEATHER FOR TRAVELING REPORTERS
As we look into GPS products for reporters (with our Blackberry
as test platform), we're a little surprised when vendors don't
get as close to exactly what we would find useful as they should.
(You know Marty; he's nagging them to build these enhancements
into future versions). The disconnection is considerably worse
for weather products. Many products can give us weather through a
Web browser or the equivalent in a connecting applet, but nothing
makes it quite easy enough. We saw with Google Mobile Maps that
it's easy enough to get a rough idea of your current location
just by identifying the cell tower you're connecting through;
that's a level of precision that ought to make it very easy
indeed to tell you the weather where you are right now, but all
the software we've seen requires that you enter something like a
Zip code. Most of the time, the weather conditions & forecast are
more a curiosity than a necessity, but when it becomes a
necessity, these products are especially lame. If you ever listen
to NOAA weather radio, you can pick up on a lot of factors that
can shape expectations. There are different kinds of alerts at
different levels of severity; we should be able to tailor how our
handhelds respond, from nothing to a blinking light to a warning
tone to a spoken alert (which, after all, NOAA generates as a
synthesized voice for its radio transmissions). New alerts are
treated differently than continuing alerts. Also, of course, when
you travel you could be leaving the area an alert covers; a
stored spoken message could notify you of cleared alerts because
of your location, the time or changing weather conditions.
Speaking of travel, while it's cool to know where you are & the
conditions there, it would also be nice to be able to go online
somewhere as you prepare your travels & list the dates & times &
places you travel to or through; when there's an advance warning
for a place you're soon going to be, wouldn't you like to have
that pushed to your phone? You may also want to note a special
status for times when you're going to be indoors & out of view of
windows (the LVCC comes to mind) so you can be alerted to milder
condition changes, like when it's raining outside & when the rain
is or will be ending. The core data for all this is out there &
available. It's of value on its own, not only to traveling
reporters but to everybody at one time or another. Dare we also
mention: this is data that should get not just to our cell phones
but also to our dashboards, either through navigation devices or
through some separate facility. We're sharing this with people in
the weather business & hope you'll find it a cause for coverage,
too. Contact: Martin Winston, NEWSTIPS (Novelty, OH)
440-338-8400; mailto:marty@newstips.com http://Newstips.com
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Newstips Bulletin [Novelty, OH] +1.440.338.8400 http://Newstips.com
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