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Newstips Electronic Editorial Bulletin Issue # 2008-04d
News you can peruse when you're back from your walk
7-HOUR NOTEBOOK BATTERY DEATH DELAY WITH TEKKEON
Welcome Tekkeon with some of the neatest runtime extender
products we've seen; how much would you love, for example, to add
3.5-7 hours of runtime to your notebook? The Tekkeon MP3450
myPowerALL Plus (online $130) universal notebook & accessory
runtime extender weighs just 12 ounces yet delivers 50 Watt-hours
of power per charge, enough to keep most notebooks running an
extra 3.5 hours. If you need more, add a companion MP3450-10
piggyback battery pack ($100) with mounting clip to hit that
7-hour runtime extension. You can set it for Voltages from 3-19
Volts; combo that with its kit of adapter tips & you cover just
about every notebook out there. For notebooks in the 16-19V
range, it powers them; for those up to 16V it both powers &
recharges them. There's also a USB A connector delivering the
requisite 5VDS at up to 160% of standard current output to let
you simultaneously run & charge any of your gear that uses USB
charging. The power versus weight magic comes from the Lithium
Polymer battery technology. Info & high-res photos are ready now,
as are (stand by for excitement) review units. Ring René.
Contact: René Williams, TEKKEON, INC. (Tustin, CA) 949-360-7770
mailto:rene@tekkeon.com http://Tekkeon.com
NEW JVC SETS HIT STORES IN MAY
By the end of May, stores should be showcasing two new JVC 1080P
LCD HDTV set lines. The X579 series (42", 47" & 52", which may
come after May) boasts bottom-firing speakers & a thin, glossy
bezel, plenty of inputs & a ton of onboard image processing. The
new P789 series (32" at 768P & 42", 47" or 52" at 1080P) features
an integrated iPod dock plus an added up-scaling mode that helps
iPod video look fantastic on the bigger screen; the TV's remote
can control a docked iPod through an on-screen menu. Chelsea can
get you pix & info now & line you up for a review unit when those
become available. Contact: Chelsea Vander Groef, JVC COMPANY OF
AMERICA (Wayne, NJ) 973-317-5000x5312 mailto:cvandergroef@jvc.com
http://jvc.com
LIVE VIDEO VIA CELL: TRADE-OFFS
Since CTIA & NAB, we've seen video over cell in several current &
future products & discussed the technology limitations with the
people who design various codecs & it all comes down to this: you
can't suck an elephant through a soda straw. The Droplet approach
is unique in its use of a handset's existing still camera & its
output at a broadcast-qualified 29.96 frames per second, but even
Droplet faces trade-offs between bandwidth & the resolution it
can carry. Its current release (a full release, not a beta,
though still a stepping-stone) can carry VGA video resolution
(640x480) in real time, plus audio paths in both directions. The
next step up will carry full SD video when bandwidth permits, but
fall back to VGA when it doesn't. Droplet technology is advancing
faster than available cellular data path bandwidth is advancing,
but it will take the latter before the former can ever hope to
send a full HD signal in real time. Jingle John for a chance to
see what this tech can do now. 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
BACTRACK ON TRACK FOR ACCURACY
While there are some inexpensive breathalyzers whose readings you
might not want to trust, the accuracy of the BACtrack ($80) blood
alcohol content measurements are remarkably accurate, due in part
to the sensor technology & in part on its use of deep-lung air
samples. The detection range is 0.00-0.40% (BAC); a 0.02% reading
may be off by a digit, but it means the actual BAC is assuredly
in the 0.01-0.03% range. Call Keith if you'd like to check it out
for yourself. Contact: Keith Nothacker, KHN SOLUTIONS (San
Francisco CA) 415-693-9756x113
mailto:keith.nothacker@khnsolutions.com http://bactrack.com
SAMSON CL2 CAN SOLVE TV NEWS MONO TRAP
For almost every TV newscast in the country, the theme music may
be stereo or surround sound but everything else is in monaural;
we know the reason & the answer. The reason is that when the
engineers tried miking for stereo, they did it by putting a
stereo mike in front of each person on-camera; a small movement
of the mouth to either side made it sound at home like the voice
was bouncing around the walls. The approach they haven't tried is
to keep mono mikes on the talent but cross-aim a matched stereo
mike pair from high mounts in the far corners, because that adds
the extra audio information that uniquely places each speaker in
the studio space. The Samson CL2 matched stereo pair of
directional pencil condenser mikes (online $299) fits both the
need & the budget. They're also great for recording musical
performances, outdoor events or almost anything involving more
than one person. Ask Mark. Contact: Mark Wilder, SAMSON
TECHNOLOGIES (Hauppauge, NY) 631-784-2200x142
mailto:mwilder@samsontech.com http://SamsonTech.com
LP MICRO CHEAP COLOR TEMPERATURE TRICK
If you've ever seen a snapshot turn green because you shot it
using available fluorescent lights, welcome to the world of color
temperatures. The white LEDs in Litepanels products each have
their own color temperature; one plus of the brand is that they
maintain tight color temperature consistency within the LED
arrays in their products. The bigger products come in both
daylight 5600K & tungsten 3200K flavors. The "little brother"
Litepanels Micro ($300) comes only in 5600K, but includes some
welcome cheap trickery. A flip-down frame holds any of several
square filters that come with the product, including one to
adjust to 4400K for fluorescents, one for 3200K for tungsten & a
diffuser you can add to soften the light at any color
temperature. With 7 hours of run time on a set of 4 E2 Lithium AA
cells, it's a video shooter's dream. Ask Ken. Contact: Ken
Fisher, LITEPANELS, INC. (North Hollywood CA) 818-332-3070
mailto:ken@litepanels.com http://LitePanels.com
YAGI IS NOT YOGIC; THE CELL TELESCOPE
A Yagi has nothing to do with exercise or spiritualism; it's a
directional antenna design named for its Japanese electrical
engineer inventor, Hidetsugu Yagi. As you go up in frequency in
the radio spectrum, the length of the antenna rods in an
effective Yagi design gets shorter; at cellular PCS & CEL band
frequencies, a Yagi is smaller than a pizza box. Wi-Ex offers
Yagi antennas (primarily for installers) because they work
something like a telescope, providing gain (like magnification)
in one specific direction (along the beam of its center post) by
narrowing the antenna's field of view. Installers can team a Yagi
with the Wi-Ex cellular signal strength meter to determine the
best place to snag a signal & if the installation requires a
Yagi, which way to point it. A Yagi adds a boost to any cell bar
signal helper, too, but there's yet another reason it may
interest you. With a Yagi, people outside a tower's normal
coverage footprint may still be able to get coverage, which can
be important to first responders & exurban professionals. Ask the
ladies. 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
INDUSTRIAL-SIDE EUBIQ POWER TRACKS EXTEND END TO END
In addition to its fixed-length power tracks, Eubiq also offers
short, modular tracks that can extend end-to-end. In a cramped
space, their twist-to-place-anywhere sockets placed along a short
track can still offer more flexibility & future-proofing than
most designs. If later on that proves to be not quite enough
track, another one or more in-line plug-in add-on tracks lets the
electrical opportunities grow to meet current (pun not intended)
needs. Think about data cabinets that have needed to accommodate
increasing numbers of pieces of gear, each with its own need for
a socket & you'll quickly appreciate why this is a significant
offering. Check the Web site or message Kee. Contact: NG Kee
Haur, EUBIQ PTE LTD (Singapore) +65-6372-9393x380
mailto:keeng@eubiq.com http://eubiq.com
SPECIAL REPORT: TIME IS PLACE
It's intriguing that when modern technology needs to locate
something, it uses time to determine place. The GPS system, for
example, uses satellites that really are little more than
orbiting atomic clocks; when you get signals from enough of them,
the time reading from each will be affected by its distance from
you, so when you know their orbits, chip-level math can translate
that into latitude, longitude & altitude. Fold in time once more
to use changes in position over time to measure speed & direction
(not quite instantaneous enough for your old physics teacher, but
you can still think of the combination as a vector value for
velocity) You may not be aware of the boxes in cell towers that
also have a pretty good idea of the location of each handset
within the tower's footprint. This, too, uses time; in this case,
it's the teensy bit of signal delay between the handset & the
tower (officially U-TDOA for Uplink Time Difference of Arrival).
A cell tower has multiple antennas, which aids measurement
accuracy & adds other cues, like the angle of arrival of the
signal. When the phone does have Assisted GPS, it's almost like
cheating, though that may be less than useful inside buildings,
for example. A third kind of measurement takes you back to before
high school when the emphasis was on Rate times Time equals
Distance. We've seen tiny inertial systems (using chip-size
gyroscopes) in concert with tilt & magnetic sensor arrays in dead
reckoning systems that are impressively accurate in determining
exactly where you are relative to a known starting point. Less
sophisticated versions of such things have been in use for
decades in the guidance systems of missiles & bombs. If you think
back to all those old war movies you used to watch, you may even
remember that for both the navigator & bombardier, the basic
tools involved a compass, an altimeter, a ruler, a map & a
stopwatch. In the second half of the past century, relative
timing also played a part in a radio-based navigation system
called LORAN. If you want to go really far back, to the sextant &
the astrolabe, it was the predictability of celestial motion that
allowed them any accuracy at all in determining where on this
globe the measurement was being taken. We think of spatial
placement as being 3-dimensional, but our technology for
identifying our 3-dimensional position on Earth has always been
based on the fourth dimension, time. And the more we advance our
technology, the more its calculations demonstrate how time is
place.
SPECIAL REPORT BONUS REVIEW: TELENAV 5.1
Blackberry handsets bundle TeleNav maps, with a menu item that
invites upgrading to (really adding) TeleNav Navigator 5.1; other
than that little sales pitch, there really is no integration
between these two offerings. While TeleNav 5.1 has a lot in
common with the other navigator products we've tested (Blackberry
address book integration, point of interest lookup, spoken turn
by turn, traffic updates, gas prices, etc.) it has the sparsest
map display of the group. Sparse can be good but this sparse
loses something, like the names of streets before & after your
next turn (to be sure you haven't picked the wrong corner),
direction or even time of day. One nice feature when you're not
navigating a map is its compass, in case your car doesn't have
one or you're walking (pedestrian is one of several routing
options). Its "Spot Marker" can, for example, help you get back
to where you parked the car. Rerouting is inconsistent; when we
deliberately strayed from its path, it tried correcting the first
time, tried giving us a wacky route about 15 miles out of our way
the second time & then gave up & we had to redo our entries (not
recommended while driving). When it detects traffic-related
slow-downs ahead, it gives you the option of staying on course or
going a different way & displays an ETA (which it doesn't show
most of the time except on the Turn Icons display, an alternate
to the moving-maps displays). One nice feature: you can look up
map points (including businesses, etc.) on the TeleNav Web site &
sync them to your phone; there's also a phone service that lets
you call in to get destinations sent to your phone (so your phone
can send you to those destinations). Another nice feature is a
distinct POI category for WiFi hot spots. We hope you don't need
tech support; the 3 times we tried calling we were put on hold
for major fractions of an hour with no answer ever & a call to
the company's main number, operator option, simply disconnected
us. We were calling because the Web site claims this has the
ability to insert a waypoint en route & we haven't so far been
able to find that in either the product or its documentation. So
to recap, we don't love the map display & wish it had more info;
the ability to sync from the Web site is way cool but we wish the
Web site part were as good as competing online map services; the
rerouting feature generally works but we saw it stumble; the
waypoint feature it claims is either very tough to find or
missing; but when it comes to getting you from point to point
with spoken turn-by-turn directions & an awareness of current
traffic, it does the job. Bottom line: TeleNav 5.1 is a credible
competitor for navigating with a Blackberry with some currently
unique & interesting features.
SPECIAL REPORT BONUS REVIEW 2: LEXMARK X6575
We had been using a Lexmark all-in-one since our XP era, but the
transition to Vista was one it didn't handle well; when we
recently upgraded to Vista Ultimate, it became dysfunctional
(killing the spooler process for everybody) in a way that could
only be addressed by amputation. We checked out the current AIO
offerings across the brands & came back to Lexmark to get their
X6575 in for review, one of our happier decisions. We're using
its USB connection, though it comes equipped for WiFi & easily
supports MAC-based filtering at a router. As a fax, it restores
our ability to let applications print directly to remote fax
machines without creating paper here first & adding printing &
scanning steps in the middle. As a scanner, it performs both
sheet-fed & flatbed scans (Windows applications that can use
scanners see it as both TWAIN & WIA); its bundled software also
supports scanning to a PDF file or doing OCR-driven scan & edit
work. It has front slots for camera memory cards & a PictBridge
USB connection for printing photos or copying among these. As a
printer of photos, it's as good as you let it be; photo prints on
plain paper look better when you choose a photo printing mode,
but aren't as good as prints made on glossy photo paper & look
even better when you use their specialized photo print cartridge.
Lexmark builds the nozzles into their cartridges so swapping
between normal & photo cartridges doesn't involve lengthy
rituals; even the alignment is a one-step process that only takes
one button push from a user. The X6575 feature we most regard as
an upgrade is its ability to duplex print (both sides of the
paper, automatically); we used to manually jigger up two-sided
prints when making copies of our trade show schedules just to
reduce the weight on our shoulders & now this makes it all happen
even when fatigue challenges our neurons to remember how the heck
we did it last time. Bottom line: the Lexmark X6575 adds enough
intelligent features to the basics of printing, scanning & faxing
to take it beyond the realm of peripheral & into the realm of
sidekick.
SPECIAL REPORT BONUS REVIEW 3: NUANCE VOICE CONTROL
When we put Nuance Voice Control on our BlackBerry Pearl, our
expectations borne of their Web site description were only
slightly marred by the user comments we saw on some of the
download sites. We quickly shared their disappointment, but to be
fair, the current version of the product will soon be replaced by
a new version that allegedly dodges several of the shortcomings
we're about to cite. The basic premise of the product is that you
can speak a command to call a name or a number, fetch a Web site,
look up a business, check the weather, get a stock quote, play a
song stored in the handset, find a business, get driving
directions, dictate an outgoing message, etc. The idea is
attractive & compelling but the experience is flawed (in the
current version). We surmise from watching that rather than
performing speech analysis within the handset, it works like
this: When you install it, it uploads data on your handset's
catalog of e-mail or SMS messages, appointments, media files,
etc. to its server. When you push the button to launch it & speak
your command, it captures that command as an audio stream,
uploads it to the server, performs its analysis there & returns
commands via downlink to the application running on the handset
to get them to execute. Our first disappointment is with the
amount of time this takes (in some cases, multiple minutes with
no response at all). Our second disappointment is with the
analysis; when we told it, "Find Mac's Tobacco Pouch near Chagrin
Falls, Ohio" it came back with a search engine page for "Max
Tobacco Couch"; in three trials, not one of the pages it returned
had the right listing. It also flubbed responding to simple
yes/no answers in its multiple choice near-miss calling
interpretations; it's not fun waiting that long for wrong. The
Voice Dialer that comes with the BlackBerry (from embedded speech
technology vendor Voice Signal, which Nuance owns) is much faster
& more accurate, needs no data connection, uses no data service &
is $6/month less (free). Bottom line: Nuance Voice Control
represents an aggressive & welcome approach to hands-free,
eyes-free interaction with a cell phone; we hope its near-future
next version does a better job of delivering on that promise.
SPECIAL REPORT BONUS REVIEW 4: TV GUIDE MOBILE
TV Guide Mobile (for BlackBerry or Windows Mobile) is free, so if
we grouse a bit, don't let that reduce your sense of its value.
Once you localize it, you can see your channel line-up & listings
as soon as your data connection lets them load. The most
wonderful thing about it is its exemplary search facility that
can go by name, by channel & (we love this) by time & date &
channel. We like that because when you get to a desired show, it
can not only give you a blurb about what's happening that week,
it also lets you tag it (one episode or all episodes or all new
episodes) for a "watched" list with SMS message reminders. It
also offers news, features & a hot list. Our grouses: we'd rather
do our searching & typing on the Web at our desks & have it synch
to the phone & we'd really love to see it figure out its location
rather than making users set or change them (it stores both a
home setting & 1 away setting; on the Las Vegas Strip, it had
specific listings for the LV Hilton but not for The Venetian).
We'll let you decide your own reasons for knowing when new
episodes of your favorite shows are coming up. Bottom line: this
gives more TV program info more conveniently than we ever thought
anybody would be able to cram into a BlackBerry.
NOTE FROM JUDIE
Mrs. Winston would like you to help start a rumor that the jump
in gas and food prices is part of a huge conspiracy to help
Americans lose weight & get fit.
MAYBE IT'S TIME FOR A DICTATOR
As we've been thinking a lot about ratcheting up tech to improve
a journalist's workflow, we've also been thinking about
text-to-speech applications. We know what we like about them: the
promise. We know what we don't like about them: the broken
promises. We're going to try out a few alternatives (suggestions
welcome) & let you know what we find. Here are some of the
attributes we hope to find: We want them to save us more time by
getting more right than they cost us in having to format them or
correct them when they get things wrong. We want interoperability
so we can store speech in any of several devices for desktop
software to deal with later, as a file, in the background as we
do other work; it would be very cool if it could act
automatically on audio files we e-mail to ourselves (with some
secure handshake so it doesn't do that to audio files from
elsewhere). If we find something fuss-free, nimble, accurate &
truly useful, we'll let you know; if you already have, please let
us know. 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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