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Newstips Electronic Editorial Bulletin Issue # 2009-05d
Austerity is good for the figure & other news
New on BlackBerry: Gwabbit snags signatures
It's one of the newest offerings on the BlackBerry App World:
Gwabbit (Todd Miller todd@technicopia.com 831-659-2672) can pluck
contact info from the signature block on an incoming e-mail
message & use it to populate a new Contacts record. The new
Gwabbit on BlackBerry ($9.99/year) is a companion to the only
slightly less new Gwabbit for Outlook ($20). If you don't yet
have a BlackBerry to run these great App World apps, then you're
late, you're late, for a very important date with Ms. Berry.
Contact: Victoria Berry, Research in Motion (Waterloo, ON)
519-888-7465x73663 vberry@rim.com http://rim.com
Dads/grads: get what's needed, not fads
If somebody in the family is giving a grad or a Dad a new camera,
handset or computer, think how thoughtful it would be for
somebody else to give a new PNY memory card or USB drive. Even if
one of those main gifts is not for-sure happening, these are
affordable gifts that are always welcome. PNY is a brand you'll
find at most major retailers, so fif your coverage needs photos
or samples, ask Sue to help you. Contact: Susan Bartolucci, PNY
(Parsippany, NJ) 973-560-5592 sbartolucci@pny.com
http://PNY.com
Dads & grads: get a car tech makeover
You'll have to hurry to make arrangements, but it's a unique spin
on your usual dads or grads coverage: Point To Point can arrange
for one of their installers to redo a car with a factory-look
(otherwise invisible) antenna, booster, cradle & speakerphone,
complete with a tie-in to the existing car sound system.
Depending on where the dad or the grad is going to work, it may
help avoid those cell-in-hand tickets; no matter where they work,
it will improve their safety & convenience. Get it all set with
Brett. Contact: Brett Haysom, Point To Point Technology USA, Inc.
(Viola, DE) 302-284-4721 brett@ptp-usa.net
http://www.ptp-usa.net
Dads & grads: Tiffen goodies galore, even in the App Store
Lots of things with lenses, from cameras to camcorders to
iPhones, get given as gifts right about now. Tiffen has lots of
complements, from tripods to bags to lights to filters & more.
Even better, Tiffen has Cool fx & Photo fx (each $2.99 in the App
Store) to add effects or drama to pictures taken by (or stored
on) an iPhone - meaning that even if it isn't in hand for the
event, you can add it right after & still make the magic happen.
If you have an iPhone, ask Hilary to get you Cool fx & Photo fx
for review; if you don't, ask if he has a spare iPod Touch (it
runs on that, too) to loan out for that. Contact: Hilary Araujo,
Tiffen Company (Hauppauge, NY) 631-273-2500x1216
haraujo@tiffen.com http:/.tiffen.com
This bug may grow a tooth
In discussion now & possibly in release by the end of the year: a
Bluetooth version of TuneBug will work wirelessly to make any
variety of surfaces into sound boards for this clever cone-less
adaptation of NXT technology. It will also sport a mike, so
hands-free handset usage can happen without sticking something
into your ear. Will it be a battle between the buds & the bugs?
Ask Dick. Contact: Dick Brown, Silicon Valley Global (San Jose
CA) 408-497-6403 dbrown@sv-global.com http://tunebug.com
Thermaltake ups the ante on external drive cases
The new Thermaltake Max 4 external USB/eSATA 3.5" drive case
($60) combines enough cool, useful & important extra features
that alternatives will need a while in order to catch up. BYO
hard drive & it can relax in the breeze of a uniquely positioned
airflow created by a silent-running 80mm case-side intake fan
that vents out both the front & rear of the case (both featuring
a handsome black perforated metal motif); the switching power
supply is also external, keeping that source of heat outside the
case. Between the blue front pilot light & the cool blue glow
that comes from the fan, you can see at a glance that power is
present. This case is aluminum, not plastic, so it's more rugged,
more durable & better able to radiate heat. It includes an inline
power supply (not a wall wart, so it won't hog extra outlets), a
foot-stand, a USB cable, an eSATA cable & even an eSATA bracket
(with a cord to plug into a spare SATA connection, for systems
without a spare eSATA port). There are lots of reasons to review
this: as a way to ready a newer & bigger hard drive for your
system, as a place for backups, as a way to free up main drive
space by externally storing music or photos, as a way to help
Windows Easy Transfer move files & settings to a new PC, etc.
(OK, because it looks cool & you'd love to have one; we won't
argue). Ramsom can get you a Max 4; if your review also needs a
SATA hard drive for it, Marty may be able to help get you one.
Contact: Ramsom Koay, Thermaltake Technology USA (City of
Industry, CA) 626-968-9189x127 ramsom.koay@thermaltakeusa.com
http://ThermaltakeUSA.com
Special Report: CE economy past the bottom
How often in the past has the restoration of economic health in
consumer electronics segment been driven by the purchasing of TV
sets? They're doing it again, entrenching with additional sales.
Some of these are because HD sets are seeing some very low price
points (some under $200); it is an incentive, not a handicap,
that many of the least expensive ones are at smaller (ergo, more
room-friendly) screen sizes. The NTSC-ATSC transition is helping
more families think about replacing older sets, but perhaps the
lead factor in all of this is that it's happening without a lot
of hype. Word of "really good prices" seems to be spreading more
virally (with friends & families in touch with each other) than
by design. That's to be expected, since these reduced prices
don't leave much allowance for advertising. The good news is that
anything that gets customers back into these stores also results
in purchases of other products, both in those stores & from other
resources. It's not a boom yet, just a reversal of decline into a
slow rise with some hope of accelerating. We anticipate some of
that during the summer, some at back-to-school & a lot for the
holidays. Next year's CES may be worth attending again.
I7 project: Readying the transition to production
The first of our two Core-i7 systems is ready for the transition
into our daily production environment. All of our major
applications (Office, Acrobat, Photoshop SE, Vegas Pro,
NetObjects Fusion, etc.) are now installed, all our drivers up to
date. The next step is the major challenge of transitioning. We
will be using Windows Easy Transfer (comes with Vista; transfers
accounts, settings & selected directories) which also covers the
deeds that the Office Files & Settings Transfer Wizard used to
do. NetObjects Fusion involves a different process, in which we
have to export our Web sites as templates on the old PC then
import those templates on the new one. We are working through
strategies on our music & photo files because if we ever need to
reinstall Windows, the new installation tends to overwrite files
in the default "My-Whatever" locations (where we also try to
never keep our documents). Our current fingerprint scanner
login/password data isn't transferable to the new reader's
software; we've been building a spreadsheet to help get us
through that. We expect to find some gaps (especially in the move
from 32-bit to 64-bit operations) that will send us up the
download trail; we are deliberately not (for now) installing many
of the not-much-used applications or utilities. Once the software
transfers are complete, we'll need to reconfigure the graphics
(from the single build-bench monitor to the dual desktop
displays) & audio (from headphones in a jack to feeding an
external 7.1 sound system), tweak the desktop icons, rake through
the application default & option settings, confirm that all the
scanners & printers are working & make sure our digital
certificates can all be authenticated. If there are no major
glitches, with luck, we'll be able to send next week's issue from
our new platform as we work on our final reports, involving
whether or not this new system lives up to its promise of
"pants-that-fit" comfort when multitasking among several
resource-hungry applications.
Special Report Bonus Review: D-Link & 2 of the Bee Gees
While we were building all of those recent systems (two Core-i7,
two Atom), it was hard enough finding enough power outlets let
alone network connections, so we decided to cheat a little &
called on our old pal Les Goldberg (anybody else old enough to
remember the Toshibar?) for a little D-Link help. He sent a pair
of PCI-slot cards that now have a permanent home on our build
bench. The WDA-1320 Wireless G Desktop Adapter covers 802.11b/g
(the "Bee Gees" of WiFi) without any frills while the WDA-2320
Rangebooster G Desktop Adapter does the same with a little more
range (letting us also use our alternate build bench, at least
between meals there). So much of what we do depends on being able
to go online for downloads, updates, authentication or
instructions that we can't build without connections; these days,
we're building so much that we can't afford to be stringing ad
hoc cables across the floor or swapping sockets at our already
full switch & WiFi spares us that. Bottom line: The D-Link
WDA-1320 Wireless G Desktop Adapter & WDA-2320 Rangebooster G
Desktop Adapter are reliable alternatives for letting WiFi do the
work where wires can't, won't or ought not go.
Special Report Bonus Review 2: Driver Agent
A lot of you will remember the utilities from Touchstone
Software; these days, they're under the Phoenix Technologies
umbrella & are now evolved into a more scrubbed face, shiny smile
existence. Our attention accidentally landed on DriverAgent.com
(because our Gigabyte mobo support Web site included an
invitation to get a free driver scan there). We were aggressive
about getting the latest driver downloads when building our new
Core-i7 systems, so when the scan showed 6 of the drivers on the
better system (haven't checked the other yet) had aged, we
immediately went to the vendor Web sites to find something newer;
no such thing was there. So, curiosity aroused, we asked them to
let us do a review of the full product; they granted us a 3-day
free trial for the review while explaining that their very
aggressive "driver spiders" often found the newest drivers in
unexpected places before vendor Web sites offered them. In the
case of several Intel chipset drivers, for example, they located
newer & compatible drivers on the Asus (another X58 mobo brand)
site. The worst of the adventure was enduring very long download
times, not because of the download size but because their
transfer speeds tended to be under 25KB/sec. Intel drivers that
said they installed didn't (it did fetch updated drivers, but we
had to manually force a driver update from the unzipped file's
Vista folder one at a time); they tell me there's a detailed FAQ
about that, but you can't find it without searching for it (it
doesn't volunteer itself when an Intel chipset driver is on the
needs-updating list). Three attempts at fetching a Logitech
driver update failed, possibly because it was trying to update to
a version 4.60 when a more current 4.72 was available (it's what
we already had installed but they didn't yet seem to know was
available). We rate Driver Agent as a handy resource for
identifying when newer drivers may be available, as inconvenient
& sometimes misdirected for fetching them & as not necessarily
reliable for getting them installed. In balance, their $30 annual
subscription lets you run it on up to 10 PCs, so two bits a month
per PC may still warrant it a decent value. Bottom line: the
facility for scanning & identifying which drivers have updates
available (which is free) makes DriverAgent.com a good candidate
for routine upkeep practices, but the balance of its convenience
versus its inconveniences makes its ultimate worth a personal
call.
Special Report Bonus Review 3: MXL pop filter
Imagine somebody saying, here, I just spent hours spitting on
this, as did the guy before me, so now we'd like you to spend
hours with your lips just inches away from it. As unlikely as
that may sound, it happens all the time with studio microphones.
How unsanitary! The swine! The swine flu! Many pros put a little
something between their lips and the mike: a circular disc of
fabric or metal. Hygiene was never the motivation; that thing is
a pop filter, which will take us on a little tangent into
physics. Consider pronouncing the word "pea" as a model for those
sounds known as plosives; in uttering those, the mouth projects a
sudden high-pressure burst of air. A pop filter weakens that
impact just enough to keep the pop from overwhelming the mike
element while still allowing clear enunciation to pass through.
While most pop filters are fabric, those can be tough to sanitize
with wipes or sprays without missing internal surfaces. We got
our hands on an MXL-PF-002 Black Metal Pop Filter, a perforated
disc on a flexible metal arm that clamps onto whatever holds the
mike so you can position it midway between your lips & the
cartridge. Bottom line: the MXL-PF-002 Black Metal Pop Filter is
effective at calming both those persistently pesky plosives & any
fears we might have of not being able to counter any creepy
cooties that might be breeding in such intimate proximity to our
lips.
Special Report Bonus Review 4: La Cubanita
Like most of you, we have never been to Cuba & the occasional
Cuban-inspired menu offerings we encounter at various restaurants
seldom seem to be beyond a domestic approximation of some ideal
at which we can only guess. We think we've been much closer to
the source since having visited La Cubanita (on McKinney in
Dallas); it was an accidental discovery, across the street from
the car rental office we used when there for son Ian's
graduation. Our party of 6 got to sample a variety of their
offerings, including the best Cubano sandwich we've tasted to
date. Bottom line: La Cubanita is on our must-stop list for any
future forays into any of the Southern markets where this small
chain has a presence.
Special Report Bonus Review 5: Gwabbit for Outlook
The RIM item in this issue is about the new Gwabbit
signature-snagging App World offering for BlackBerry; in learning
about that, we learned that they also have Gwabbit for Outlook &
we ran that through its paces. We set up its options for minimal
dialog, so we click a toolbar button when we want it to create or
update a Contacts record from the signature block in an incoming
message. The parsing is fully automatic with overall good
results, though like most automated results, you may want to keep
the sandpaper handy. The results of its work appear as an open
Contacts record for you to save as-is or edit to taste. As a
rule, the cleaner the signature block, the better the results,
but as we all know, there's no real formatting standard for
signature blocks. A couple of items irked us (to their credit,
the company is addressing every one of these items in upcoming
releases): the button bar can't be edited & phone numbers get
inserted without +1 up front, which causes some wrinkles in
Outlook 2007 field formatting & handling. One item they're not
addressing (to be fair, they shouldn't try unless they're ready
to deal with highlighted blocks instead of the whole message) is
how to deal with multiple signature blocks within a message. On
balance, we don't want to make it seem like a flawed or "needy"
product because most of what it does most of the time is good
work & a major convenience. Bottom line: Gwabbit for Outlook is a
must-have convenience for anybody who counts on Outlook for both
e-mail messages & contacts, taking the tedium out of keeping
those records up to date based on signatures within incoming
messages.
Slow return to wealth
As we note in this week's Special Report, economically priced
HDTV sets are pulling CE sales out of their decline & taking the
segment past its bottom & slowly into recovery. These final
commentary items in each of our issues tend to be either about
you or about us; in this case, it's a bit of both. We know that
in this era, a lot of product coverage gets nixed because gear
just seems like an extravagant indulgence when only 90-some
percent of the workforce is employed. While that's inevitably the
case for a lot of items, there are other ways to think about
things that keep them relevant. (We also believe that the public
perception will see any return to covering such items as a return
to normalcy, ease some fears, reignite some spending & in so
doing, accelerate the recovery). For example, with factories
closing, many outplaced workers may be looking to tech schools as
a bridge to a new career path & you might expect related book
sales to pick up. Cell phones are now more mainstream than land
lines, but the map is filling in rapidly with places that (either
already or have proposals to) forbid in-hand use when driving; if
the incoming call relates to the welfare of a child, what's a
driver to do? We applaud conscience in the press & we hope that
extends to an appreciation of how net coverage shapes the
perceptions of the public & can be an agent of change. We'd like
to help. Let's start by brainstorming a few ideas; if that proves
fruitful, we're always eager to help major media outlets score
just about any product (by name or category) from just about any
company. Between your resources & ours, we can accomplish a more
rapid return to wealth for these industries, for your bosses &
maybe (if those companies pay any attention to who got them any
attention) for us, too. 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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