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Newstips Electronic Editorial Bulletin Issue # 2008-04b
We interrupt your tax filings for news
SAMSON PREVIEWS SYNTH WIRELESS AT NAB
The companies that have been selling wireless mike gear to
broadcasters can't love what their customers will see at the
Samson booth at NAB. The new AirLine Synth product family will
ship later this year with smaller sizes, equal or better quality
& lower prices than those other companies can offer & with a huge
additional bonus. They're called "Synth" because the choice of
frequency channel for each mike & receiver is synthesized within
it; other gear makes you buy units in pairs on preset channels.
In the field, that means an instant ability to dodge busy
channels or adapt to a facility's channel plan. In the studio,
that means one spare can fill in anywhere. Come see it in Las
Vegas or send a message to Mark. Contact: Mark Wilder, SAMSON
TECHNOLOGIES (Hauppauge, NY) 631-784-2200x142
mailto:mwilder@samsontech.com http://SamsonTech.com
REAL TIME TV VIA CELL PHONE WASN'T BORN TO BROADCAST
Droplet didn't develop their amazing cell phone originated live
TV software with TV station or network use in mind; they see it
as a social networking tool with friends able to share their
real-time video "remote presence" with each other or with fellow
social networkers viewing from the Web. That model is still very
active, but there's even more to the story. Contact: John
Ralston, DROPLET TECHNOLOGY (Menlo Park, CA) 650-688-5762
mailto:ralston@droplet-tech.com http://droplet-tech.com Agency
contact: Evan Kennedy (Terpin) 310-821-6100x116 evan@terpin.com
LITEPANELS SCORING STRONG & HIGH
Know what the Pentagon & the Space Shuttle have in common?
They're both new customers for Litepanels all-LED
color-temperature-matched video lights. The Pentagon briefing
room puts people under enough heat from the press that they
didn't need to add even more heat from their lights & the power
savings helps them present a (not just olive) green face. Power
consumption & heat are even bigger concerns aboard the Space
Shuttle & now they can pipe down even better video without
draining their batteries or boiling their Tang. Ask Ken. Contact:
Ken Fisher, LITEPANELS, INC. (North Hollywood CA) 818-332-3070
mailto:ken@litepanels.com http://LitePanels.com
ZPERSONAL IS ZPORTABLE TOO
Have you ever been in a hotel room with even mediocre cell
coverage anywhere but the window? The little Wi-Ex zPersonal
PCS/CEL dual-band cell bar booster ($169) creates a desk-size
boosted coverage bubble by piping signal from that window (or
whatever) over to where you need it. It was built with the
intention of helping people in dorm rooms, apartments or very
small offices, but it's small enough to pack easily for travel,
so toting it on a trip is not only easy to do, it's also (hint)
easy to write about. 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
AS PRIME TIME RETURNS, SO DO JVC HDTV SALES
It may be a coincidence that this is happening as prime time
shows are returning, or maybe not; in any case, there's a renewed
forward churn in JVC LCD TV set sales which may be signs of a new
retail cycle or just of a new product cycle. While consumers seem
to prefer more basic LCD HDTV models, there's also a user base
growing for the stunning 898-series frame-doubling sets that
excruciatingly calculate in-between frames for exquisitely smooth
video that feels even closer to being there yourself. We'll tell
you more soon; meanwhile, if you need a set in hand to handle
covering all this, or even just high-res photos, the person to
see is Mrs. VG. Contact: Chelsea Vander Groef, JVC COMPANY OF
AMERICA (Wayne, NJ) 973-317-5000x5312 mailto:cvandergroef@jvc.com
http://jvc.com
TWISTS ON TWIST-ON SOCKETS ADD POWER TO TRACKS
The unique Eubiq power track system was born to be
user-configurable in ways beyond just its push & twist
place-anywhere sockets. Skip the socket for a CPU or printer with
a twist-in coiled cord that terminates in either the trapezoid
shape that plugs into a CPU power supply or the trio of cylinders
shape that many printers now use. Need a light? There's a handy
pan-hood lamp you can place anywhere along the track for desktop
or utility lighting. They're on the Web site for all to see, or
for a high-res photo, just ask Kee. Contact: NG Kee Haur, EUBIQ
PTE LTD (Singapore) +65-6372-9393x380 mailto:keeng@eubiq.com
http://eubiq.com
WITH BACTRACK, EVEN DRUNK, YOU WON'T PRESS A WRONG BUTTON
The svelte little BACtrack blood alcohol content breathalyzer
($80) has only one button, so even a sot can get it right. Push
the button, it counts down to a beep, open-mouth exhale for 5
seconds into the hole on either side (can't get that wrong,
either) & a few seconds later it gives you a digital reading of
your BAC percentage. Warmer & friendlier weather brings all those
familiar coverage themes about going outdoors, entertaining &
fun; if you can find a slot for this in that coverage, tell Keith
whether you'd rather get it in black or white. Contact: Keith
Nothacker, KHN SOLUTIONS (San Francisco CA) 415-693-9756x113
mailto:keith.nothacker@khnsolutions.com http://bactrack.com
HOW GREEN IS YOUR DOG?
How many hours a day is the dog the only family member in the
house? You know the cost & energy savings of a time-programmable
thermostat, but concerns over a dog's discomfort can make a lot
of people just leave the thermostat where it's at. Right now for
smaller dogs & soon for progressively larger breeds, a Komfort
Pets electronically heated & cooled pet carrier can create a
small, comfy respite from any discomfort the rest of the house
may present. The temperature changes are from solid state Peltier
devices, so they're very energy efficient. Ask Bob. Contact: Bob
Inello, KOMFORT PETS (Revere, MA) 781-485-0077
mailto:rinello@komfortpets.com http://KomfortPets.com
DAPTER & PENNY TWO-SHOT
Whether or not (heaven forefend not) a MoGo Mouse user is
involved, the tiny Dapter ($30) USB Bluetooth 2 adapter is about
as small a solution as you can find & now there's a photo you can
use to make that obvious. Check out the "For Reporters" page on
the Web site to download a photo of Abe Lincoln's head on a penny
looking at a nearly same-size Dapter just next to it. Jack can
get you a Dapter for your own photo shoot, or for your all-text
or all-audio coverage. Contact: Jack Corrao, NEWTON PERIPHERALS
(Natick, MA) 858-792-0944
mailto:jack.corrao@newtonperipherals.com
http://NewtonPeripherals.com
SPECIAL REPORT: WHERE ARE THE LOCATION-BASED SERVICES?
There's been more buzz about location based services than you'll
hear in a basic training barber shop, so where are they? Several
are truly deployed, like Google Mobile Maps, which doesn't need
GPS, plus all those mapping & navigation products that do. Many
of these are supplemented by local traffic & road hazard updates
& a rare few by weather conditions & most by some points of
interest catalog. Is that all there is to LBS? Let's agree to
ignore the hype around things that are about merchandising (like
cell phone coupons) or socializing (like when your pal is nearby)
& think about things that either improve productivity, save time
or reduce hassles. We've already said that we'd like for a
BlackBerry or similar cell phone to tell us (without making us
dig into it) when we're on a collision course with bad weather,
when there's a fresh local Amber Alert or when our next flight
has been cancelled or delayed. The things that might be the most
useful to know involve locality both in place & in time. Consider
all the events in your experience where you could have benefitted
by knowing a little more about what was happening nearby; aside
from traffic, weather or maybe gas price info, what would you
like to have known? If it's difficult to think of an obvious
answer for that, you've found one obvious answer to why the whole
LBS category is so slow to fulfill its self-prophecies. It's hard
to be encouraged when the best they have to offer is to give your
current location a head start when you do a search for a product,
service or business. We think there's a potential for smarter
products. Do your kids carry cell phones? Would you like their
phones to warn them if they get too close to the current home of
a registered sex offender, an adult entertainment business, a bar
or a neighborhood with recently reported loose dog attacks? We
don't see anybody offering that as a service (probably because
it's hard to monetize). If you have allergies, would you want
your phone to tell you when you're entering a particularly
bothersome zone (plus, perhaps, your quickest way out of it)?
Would you like the phone to warn you of an impending earthquake?
You may have noticed that many of the things that sound appealing
could work quite nicely as additional "live" information overlays
to existing mapping & navigation applications, the core of the
LBS category. One of the cleverest twists we've seen, a spot
saver that can bring you back to where you parked the car, for
example, lives within that description. The watershed is between
things that are useful to a user's well-being & convenience
versus things that are more about a vendor's revenues. That said,
there's still work that needs to be done to make the handset more
proactive when urgency & vicinity coincide, as well as to get the
information from where it springs to where it can be sprung & to
pay for the costs of that process.
SPECIAL REPORT BONUS REVIEW: PDF CONVERTER
Nuance PDF Converter 5 Professional is all about starting with a
PDF file & ending up with something that lets you work it, like a
Word document. It does OK but it's not perfect. We tested with
our last master Cherry Picks PDF & while most of those pages came
out OK, some of them got hashed up, so the conversion logic is
apparently not as nimble as the package's claims would have you
believe. Even more disturbing, its claimed ability to save as
Word 2007 DOCX is not always an obvious choice (it's an available
option setting in save-as but not a visible choice in "Convert
PDF"). We saw several carefully crafted headers get mangled &
some dark blue on light blue type turn to muck. Our interest in
this product is driven by the number of times each year we have
to make a minor modification here to a PDF entry for Cherry Picks
(like "oops, we got the price wrong, please change it to..."). We
have now tried 6 different pieces of software that attempt to
automate that process; this works perfectly on some pages &
consistently imperfectly on others. So the bad news & the good
news is that while it is still way short of ideal, it is to date
the best we've tried & is, overall, easier than starting from
scratch. Bottom line: for PDF in & anything else out, you'll want
this software in your tool kit; for those times it misses, you
may want a flask of whisky in there, too.
SPECIAL REPORT BONUS REVIEW 2: OMNIPAGE 16 PRO
OmniPage is a venerable & venerated OCR program, but our first
experiences with it started off badly. Something happened during
installation of both OmniPage 16 Pro & its service pack that made
Vista Business misbehave (the graphics went screwy & there was no
uninstall for OmniPage). When our initial troubleshooting tweaks
didn't work, we took a shortcut & upgraded to Vista Ultimate,
uninstalled it & reinstalled it. (Note: we also had to uninstall
& reinstall Windows OneCare, which refused to work otherwise; we
also uninstalled & replaced our Lexmark printer, which insisted
on shutting down the print spooler; more on that elsewhere). We
have only one account under Vista & it is an Administrative
account, but OmniPage insisted that we run it from the
Administrator account the first time so it could set up its
licensing; we did that several times but it kept exhibiting the
same behavior & the online support suggestions were ineffective.
We ended up going into the properties of the executable & setting
the run-as-Administrator flag. That kind of installation chaos is
inexcusable (not to mention entirely unnecessary, no matter what
the executives decided in their meeting on the measures they
wanted to take that end up serving their revenue interests more
than their customer interests; our time, after all, is not
worthless). The good news: once installed we ran several source
images through it & in every case, the OCR functionality was
faster & more accurate than anything else we've experienced to
date. In many ways, alas, it's like trying to get a teenager to a
day job; it's hard to get them up, ready & to the job site, but
once there, they work hard & fast. Thankfully, installation,
however incident-prone, only happens once & after that, this
works like a champ. So take precautions (like creating a restore
point & exporting a copy of the registry) when you get it, be
prepared for a little extra work to get it to work, but once it
does, look forward to it making you do a lot less work to capture
images of graphics & text into reusable graphics & text. Bottom
line: fats, nimble, accurate & powerful.
SPECIAL REPORT BONUS REVIEW 3: REPLIGO FOR BLACKBERRY
We are learning about several third-party alternatives for
viewing PDF pages or Office document or ZIP files on a
BlackBerry; we learned about RepliGo by accident when we
encountered its author, Cerience, at the RIM booth at CTIA.
RepliGo is a surprisingly rich & flexible resource, mostly
server-based (so don't expect much from it when you don't have a
data connection). When you get an e-mail with an attachment, the
BlackBerry menu adds an "Open with RepliGo" option that uploads
the attachment & transcodes it to a downloaded file the
BlackBerry can read & more. There's a companion Web service you
can use to upload documents for on-demand fetching, reading,
Bluetooth printing or faxing (after 20 pages/month, there's a
charge for faxing). Your BlackBerry can interact with Web links,
e-mail addresses or phone numbers within documents. There's a
small learning curve in figuring out which features happen inside
the BlackBerry e-mail reader & menu versus which happen from
inside the RepliGo application (where, among other things, you
get to send saved documents to an e-mail address, fax number of
Bluetooth printer), but it all ultimately makes sense. Bottom
line: with RepliGo, our BlackBerry Pearl suddenly became even
more like our workplace PC in a lot of useful ways; we like it.
SALUTE TO BLACKBERRY
We never thought we'd like having a Blackberry instead of a more
"normal" cell phone, but we immediately found its intelligent
ways of handling contacts, scheduling & e-mail to be enormously
helpful. That happened about the same time we learned that our
old pal Shelly Sofer was heading PR at RIM; we hadn't seen him
for a very long time until then. We since learned that RIM is one
of the most reasonable companies to work with when you need a
handset in hand for a review or other coverage. Then we learned
about how very many truly useful products from a third-party
armada are there to make the handset ever more helpful; you've
seen our continuing investigations into mapping & navigation
products, for example. Now we've been reading up on the soon-due
device software upgrades that will add some significantly good
things to our Pearl, like stereo over Bluetooth, an ability to
edit Office documents & a voice recorder mode. It's unfortunate
in this world that so few products live up to our expectations
for them that when one does, it's noteworthy, but that's what's
happening here. Just because they got it right & we appreciate
it, we're using this slot to offer our salute to Blackberry.
Hurrah! 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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