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Newstips Electronic Editorial Bulletin Issue # 2009-09c
Up & autumn with news
Want to see a 102-key BlackBerry with a really big screen?
If you reach any of the 27+ million BlackBerry users (or are
one), you're going to love Liberty ($100), a software product
with a USB hardware key that makes a BlackBerry & a PC work in
unison. Your PC screen & keyboard control the BlackBerry, which
can also connect your PC to all the same BlackBerry applications,
browser & message services. With the USB key, that works with any
PC that's available to you - desktop, notebook, borrowed,
business center, hotel room, press room or whatever - without any
compromise to your privacy or security. Mark can get you info or
get you one. Contact: Mark Andress, Bayalink Solutions Corp.
(Waterloo, ON) 416-399-4969 mark@bayalink.com
http://Bayalink.com
WET ships; headphones recommended for reviewers
WET ($50 for Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, rated M for ages 17+) has
only been out a few days but it's already resonating with a lot
of young-adult players who are learning the fantastically fluid
motions of the acrobatic, evocatively clad assassin heroine of
the story. While Tracey is happy to get you a review copy, you
may want to consider playing with headphones: the violence, drug
talk, sex talk & off-color street talk may offend those who work
near you. Contact: Tracey Thompson, Bethesda Softworks
(Rockville, MD) 301-354-4216 tthompson@bethsoft.com
http://BethSoft.com
Intel at retail - new gamer exploits
The gang of gamers is legendary for perennially hitting their
local stores with Intel inside to build their own high-horsepower
PCs; this season, Intel has two retail products that are so cool
that gamers may regard them as exploits. Some gamers (of course)
will always buy the fastest, hottest, most overclock-friendly CPU
they can get, regardless of its price tag, meaning this season
the $600-ish Intel Core-i7/870, but some will cheat just a little
to get a cool new alternative for about $400 less. The Intel
Core-i5/750 ($200-ish) is a fast & nimble CPU that won't show any
discernable difference in system response during game play
(especially given how well it communicates with current graphics
boards). Add a 34nm Intel SSD (solid state drive) for screaming
fast disk I/O & suddenly there's a new top gun in town. If you
need info or reviewables, Todd's game. Contact: Todd Garrigues,
Intel Americas Inc. (Santa Clara, CA) 301-497-8997
todd.c.garrigues@intel.com http://Intel.com
Priceless gifts at a cheeseburger price
In the upcoming holiday season, gift-giving may still be somewhat
constrained by the wait for a more complete recovery, but that
won't slow down the desire to give & get presents. Thinking
ahead, that leads us to believe that photos of memorable times
together may be a very popular choice indeed, but special times
suggest doing something special with the photo. When it comes to
doing something special with photos these days, that's both easy
& economical to accomplish from inside an iPhone or iPod Touch
with Tiffen Cool fx or Photo fx version 2, each at about the
price of a fast food sandwich. Hilary knows that if you can ever
be compelled to cover them, you have to first discover them &
what they can do, so here are some options. If you already have
an iPhone or iPod Touch, ask him for the App Store download
codes. He also has a small number of iPod Touch loaners
available. Or you can send him one or more of your own snapshots
& he can return them with some of the hundreds of effects these
little apps can deliver. You might as well do it now, before
Marty gets around to nagging you about it. Contact: Hilary
Araujo, Tiffen Company (Hauppauge, NY) 631-273-2500x1216
haraujo@tiffen.com http:/.tiffen.com
Special Report: Trick or Treat tech
Pins & razor blades in Halloween candy or fruit are not just
urban lore but a documented way in which demented people have
caused past injuries & may do so again. It does not make sense
for every neighborhood dentist to bring the X-ray gear home &
scan every Snickers bar, but there may be an economical
alternative. Some of the tool-department products that slide over
wallboards to locate studs also have extra features that can
locate metal behind the wall; sliding one of these across a candy
bar (if there's a metallic foil wrapper, remove it & replace it
with a sandwich bag or waxed paper) or piece of fruit can catch
many of these metallic foreign objects. It also helps to closely
examine wrappers or other packaging for pinholes or other signs
of intrusion; one of the frankfurter-size bright LED flashlights
provides a higher color temperature white light than usual
without the shadows that are part of ambient light & of
traditional incandescent flashlights. If you have a chance, it
can also make sense to have all the parents in a neighborhood
agree to put small name/address labels on their treats, which can
help isolate any anonymous contributions. When several kids go
out as a group, it's important that at least one of the older
kids carries a cell phone; all of the kids should carry
flashlights. An often-forgotten bit of older tech that may also
make sense: make sure at least one of the kids has a working
wristwatch & knows how to tell that it's time to head back
home.
Special Report Bonus Review: Eviant 7" TV
How many rooms in your house have an old analog TV on the counter
or dresser or tabletop that's been sitting there dark since the
digital transition made them all but useless? In the current
economic climate, there's been no urgency to that, but with the
holidays ahead, we're interested in some of the newer
alternatives for replacing those TV sets, so we asked for look
at an Eviant T7 portable color 7" TV. Portable here means more
than just totable with a LiIon battery able to run the set for
hours between charges (AC adapter/charger is included). Its ATSC
tuner can pluck broadcast signals from either the telescoping
whip antenna normally at the top of the set or the magnet-mount
antenna (also in the box) that can plug in to replace that. We
should note that in these rural maple sugar hills east of
Cleveland, the whip antenna found 9 stations while the
magnet-mount antenna found 29. There's a flip-out easel stand on
the back; it also includes a wall-mountable slide-on bracket. The
7" screen (think of a Netbook or a digital picture frame) is a
good size for desktop or bedside viewing; while the screen is
16:9 it is not HD, offering a resolution of only 480x234. We
found that setting the screen for 4:3 gave us the least
distortion while automatically filling at 16:9 when the station
was broadcasting in 16:9. (Note: most local newscasts, for
example, originate most of their content in 16:9 SD, even if the
splash says it's in HD). We also found that we had to tweak the
saturation, brightness & contrast settings to get a picture we
liked; the presets tended to make us feel like we were viewing
the screen through sunglasses. Once adjusted, it was very cool
being able to watch from wherever we wanted to be, not just where
there are cable & power connections; because of that, we may have
to consider this for our gadgeting up for winter product kit,
since it gives us a way to keep an eye on local updates in the
event a storm knocks out our power. The $170 list on this
(update: reduced now & for the Holidays to around $105-110) may
not seem like a great value in light of the true-HD 17" & 19"
sets in the same price class, but the portability & power
independence of this as well as its ability to serve well in
smaller spaces gives it a set of attributes that still add up to
a good value. Bottom line: the Eviant T7 portable color 7" TV set
offers a very satisfactory watching experience with more
flexibility than larger sets can offer & can be a lot of fun.
Special Report Bonus Review 2: Speaking Collegiate Dictionary
It's small enough to slip into a shirt pocket, about the size of
a face powder compact or a travel alarm & unlike eBooks, there's
nothing else to buy once you have it, but do you really need the
Franklin Electronics Speaking Merriam-Webster's Collegiate
Dictionary Eleventh Edition? That's the question we wanted to
answer with a hands-on review & the answer surprised us; you'd
think all of this stuff would be built into what's already on our
computers, after all. This has things our computers don't have.
Let's start with a laundry list: half a million dictionary
definitions for words it can speak aloud as the best possible
pronunciation guide, including 40,000+ usage examples; half a
million synonyms & antonyms in the Franklin Thesaurus; phonetic
spelling correction (whee!); a 5-language translator (English,
Spanish, French, German & Italian); Merriam-Webster's Concise
English Usage; Merriam-Webster's Guide to Punctuation & Style;
Merriam-Webster's Signs, Symbols & Tables; Merriam-Webster's
Dictionary of Quotations (organized by author & subject); an SAT
word list; a grammar guide; 2 Speaking Spelling Bees (personal &
SAT); 2 Flashcard drills (personal & SAT); plus 7 games (Hangman,
Anagrams, Jumble, Letris, Letter Poker, Word Blaster & Word
Builder). This isn't just for students (though given the state of
language education in our schools today, we wouldn't hesitate to
recommend getting one for your kids & making them actually use
it). Sure, it's handy for test prep or term papers, but it's also
a way to clean up a resume before it goes out & goodness knows,
we get tons of press releases every day that could have benefited
from this. We have 3 test words we use with language references;
this found plinth & palimpsest but could not find peloria
(originally a botanical term, it refers to the abnormal
occurrence of a regularity in something that is normally
irregular). If we have any complaints at all, it's that there's
no way to integrate this into our PC as a boost for the
references already there. Bottom line: the Franklin Electronics
Speaking Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary Eleventh Edition
pocket language reference is a cool language tool that can even
prove useful to a professional writer & can robustly compensate
for lesser language experience or skill for others.
Special Report Bonus Review 3: Remington Body Groomer
Swimmers shave their body hair for speed in the water & many men
choose to shave hair form various areas of their bodies as a
personal preference but it's hard to find tools precisely
designed for getting that done. So, with the holidays ahead in
mind, we asked to review the Remington BHT-600 Body & Back
Groomer. The curved, vertical body telescopes for extra reach,
which proves useful not just for backs but also for shoulders &
sides. The wet/dry cutting heads are asymmetrical but designed to
operate when pointed either fore or aft; because this combines
with the arc of the main body, it provides some added options for
readily reaching remote patches. The most-used body hair trimmer
blade is well designed & can handle most heavy duty challenges
without jamming; it also does a good job at trimming necklines
without creating major razor burns. While this is not positioned
as a general-purpose electric razor, the foil shaver attachment
gives a good facial shave, on the level of a dedicated shaver.
The only curious part of the design is that, again, they chose to
use a NiCad battery, which mandates special end-of-life handling.
From a geek's perspective, we're impressed with the telescoping
body design, the effectiveness of each of the heads in the kit &
the quality of the results. Bottom line: The Remington BHT-600
Body & Back Groomer impresses us as a great choice for daily
shaving, sideburn & neck trimming even for those guys who never
intend to trim any other body parts.
Special Report Bonus Review 4: Belkin CushDesk
Imagine that you turn a lap tray upside down & meld it with a
cushion; that's essentially what you get with a Belkin Ease
Comfort Cool CushDesk, which as more parts to its name than to
its construction. The hard-shell top has a rubber ridge to keep
your notebook from sliding into your belly. They espouse the
arrangement as a way of keeping a notebook's hot underside from
making your legs too hot, which we see as more an effect of the
separation than of any special characteristics of the hard top,
soft underside or foam in between. It has more than enough room
to hold even the largest notebooks, maybe even a pair of
side-by-side Netbooks or perhaps as many as 6 e-readers. While
we're not at all startled by the cooling performance, we do
respect the engineering that effectively distributes the weight
of a notebook across a large surface area so there's only
negligible pressure on your legs. Bottom line: if you're often
inclined to work from a bed or sofa or comfy chair & away from a
desk or tabletop, the Belkin Ease Comfort Cool CushDesk may help
that happen with fewer discomfort-based distractions.
Spam autopsy
We still find false positives in the junk mail folder, so we
continue to dredge through the daily hundreds, an exercise that
gets very tedious indeed if we let it slide a few days, so we
have a list of search terms that help us quickly delete in
chunks. Some of the most productive terms (if we list them here,
this may hit your junk folder) involve forged horological
jewelry, an antioxidant berry, the word "bank", references to an
anatomical dysfunction & synonyms for prescriptives. The
strongest categories are still the snake oil offerings, the
financial resource masquerades & the something-for-nothing
come-ons. If you'd like the coarse details, the best choice is a
phone call. Contact: Martin Winston, Newstips (Novelty, OH)
440-338-8400; 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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