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Newstips Electronic Editorial Bulletin Issue # 2008-05a
News to crack the middle of National Egg Month
Updated Samson Resolv monitors ship this month
Resolv is a classic studio monitor brand within Samson, but their
look & sound just got elegantly updated with a new cabinet design
& some sweet engineering updates. In order to qualify as
reference monitors, speakers need to exhibit extreme audio
transparency, offering full fidelity without coloration. These
new Resolv speakers combine a lot of technology to make that
happen: woven carbon fiber woofers, 1" silk-dome tweeters,
ferro-fluid cooling, a ventilated ceramic motor (speaker driver
element) structure, external heat sinks, AV shielding &
low-diffraction waveguides. These come in 3 models: A5 (5"
woofer, 50 Watts woofer power/25 watts tweeter; online
$300/pair), A6 (6.5", 75/25 Watts; online $400/pair) & A8 (8",
75/25 Watts; online $450/pair). Mark can get you a pair for
review, but be warned, they may make you forever after
dissatisfied with your PC, car or entertainment system speakers.
Contact: Mark Wilder, SAMSON TECHNOLOGIES (Hauppauge, NY)
631-784-2200x142 mailto:mwilder@samsontech.com
http://SamsonTech.com
Nimble biscuit adds runtime to gear dozens of ways
A week before Tekkeon became a client Marty was working NAB & the
Circle Bar, a combination that makes for a lot of power drain on
his BlackBerry. He had the Tekkeon product we're about to
describe in his inside jacket pocket, connected to the phone with
a small retractable cable; it even lasted through that very long
stay-up-drinking-&-gambling night before the early-AM plane took
off. It's in the same price class as the limited-duty hang-peg
phone chargers you know, but it's a lot nimbler. The MP 1550
TekCharge Mobile Power Battery Charger (online $25) uses 2 or 4
AA cells (any type: standard alkaline or E2 Lithium or NiMH
rechargeable), comes with retractable USB (A to 5) cable & a
carry pouch for its kit of 7 adapter tips (though most folks will
carry just one or two). A trio of LEDs shows you the battery
charge status. Marty uses 4 rechargeable NiMH AA cells in his.(if
he ever gets to a bedroom, it will recharge during those few
hours sleep & at the same time, charge whatever's plugged into
it). If the rechargeables get drained, he can buy 2 or 4
off-the-shelf AA cells almost anywhere & keep going. If he needs
a couple of AA cells for another device, he can pop 2 out of the
charger, leave just 2 in & still keep going. We can keep going,
but do we need to? Ring René; it's reviewable now (batteries not
included). Contact: René Williams, TEKKEON, INC. (Tustin, CA)
949-360-7770 mailto:rene@tekkeon.com http://Tekkeon.com
For this summer's vacation, bag the bars
Getting away from it all doesn't have to mean getting away from
cell phone coverage when you pack a zPersonal ($169) cell booster
in your bag. It's not much bigger than a smoke detector &
completely portable; put the suction cup antenna on a window, run
the wire to the zPersonal, plug it into the wall & for a change,
the bars hit you, all in about a minute. It's dual band (both PCS
& CEL) so it works with any carrier except Nextel. The rest of
the year, when you're not in a hotel room or at the cabin, it
solves cell dells for dorm rooms or even (depending on where you
& the tower happen to be) back bedrooms. Sharon or Deanna can get
one to you to review as soon as you say "do". 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
Why consumers need a $300 camera light
It's easy to understand why professionals or prosumers would
spend the money on a Litepanels Micro ($300) LED-array camera
light, but what can possibly make something this expensive a
consumer product? Don't most consumers shoot videos without any
lights at all? The answer to this parallels the reason that
people tend to buy new camcorders right after they see their old
home videos on their new big-screen HDTV sets: the results can be
disappointing. Blowing out the candles in the restaurant can look
spooky if the birthday kid is in the dark. The toddler heading
into the kitchen can turn green when walking into the glow of the
fluorescents there. When it's time to unwrap presents, they don't
wait for you to move the lamp. Category watchers will tell you
that consumers will not pay more than the cost of the camcorder
for any one accessory & don't like to deal with anything they
find complicated; an LP Micro clears both of these hurdles. But
Ken would rather have you convince yourself, so don't be bashful
about asking for one for review. Contact: Ken Fisher, LITEPANELS,
INC. (North Hollywood CA) 818-332-3070 mailto:ken@litepanels.com
http://LitePanels.com
What's in Droplet's buckets
With a focus on handsets (but not ignoring notebooks), Droplet
does video handling that squeezes elephants through soda straws
in terms of being able to get a lot of video quality through a
tiny amount of data bandwidth. They do a lot of work in
WindowsMobile, BREW, Linux, Symbian & Java. While capture &
playback features fall out of that, they're comparatively trivial
to the automated authoring & delivery elements, especially in
(limited) many-to-many push video applications. Social networking
may be the least productive application for all this, but its
populations (ergo potential revenues) tend to be huge, so we
won't ignore it. We're more excited about field-to-newsroom video
via cell phone, field-to-dispatch law enforcement video,
field-to-office insurance claims verification & family-wide video
calls. If you have an interest in these or any of the zillion
other potential applications for their tech, jingle John.
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
Special Report: Handset headroom
It's not uncommon for today's cellular handsets to have
processers running at over 300MHz, hundreds of Megabytes of
system memory & multiple Gigabytes of flash memory, so why aren't
they more like PCs of 15-20 years ago? In speaking with handset
application developers, it comes down to processor power &
architecture. Among the things that current-generation processors
don't do well are multitasking & multi-threading; it's easy to
understand why, when you consider other handset priorities. How
happy would you be with a handset that drains its battery in 1-2
hours? Or with one that's twice as big as what you use now in
order to have enough battery capacity to be more of a
computer-level PDA? It will take more processing power to
complete more of the voice-command/speech recognition picture. It
will take a bigger case to fit one more antenna if you want to
support multiband cellular plus Bluetooth plus WiFi plus GPS. The
more of those services you use, of course, the more quickly
you're draining that tiny battery (more quickly still if any of
those signals is less than full-strength). The relatively small
size & speed of handset displays helps keep graphics processing
from being a huge factor, but improving photo & video capture may
bump that up a bit. We note that the newer handsets afford a bit
less loudness in speakerphone modes & assume that's another
measure to moderate battery drain. So what does our ear to the
ground anticipate changing? We foresee a bump in processing power
next year, followed in 6-9 months by a bump in the capabilities
of branded application (meaning, software that comes from
companies that can afford to pay for development ahead of
revenues). We see improvements in the handset-bundled utilities
(like voice command). We see more reliance on the more expensive
advanced battery technologies. We foresee more handsets with
higher-resolution (2-5Mp) camera chips. We foresee advances in
media player functionality (especially in the user interface &
album-information functionality). We foresee a tiny boost in
handset thickness (we were intrigued to find, for example, that
the BlackBerry Pearl 8110 is a smidge thicker than the 8100 & we
know that aftermarket batteries with more capacity are a bit
thicker still, requiring adapted back plates; we think some of
this will migrate to the OEMs). Since the total cure will still
have a hard time fitting in the handset case, we also anticipate
seeing a spate of aftermarket products by 2010 that combine
features to address some of these; imagine, for example, a car
cradle that both powers the phone & embeds a Bluetooth GPS
receiver while also affording speakerphone & Bluetooth headset
support features. Today's handset is already a full-fledged
computing platform with abilities comparable to an early
Macintosh; it won't stay at that level for long.
Special Report Bonus Review: XM Radio Mobile
We've gotten around to being on the BlackBerry so much, whenever
we're not, we tend to wonder, isn't there something it can be
doing now? It's already a phone, an e-mail machine, a Web
browser, a navigator, a mapper, a thing finder, a puzzle player;
now it's also the newest way to listen to XM Radio. Because they
pioneered satellite radio, the brand is closely associated with
delivering a zillion channels to a specialized satellite receiver
(as a monthly fee), but that's not what's happening on the
BlackBerry. XM Radio Mobile on the BlackBerry is derived from its
later online (subscription) service that could stream its
channels through a browser. The BlackBerry rendition uses data
streams over the cellular network (so a data plan is required &
an unlimited data plan is recommended) to deliver a selection of
20 channels (including many of the most popular choices among
that zillion; this is ultimately a sample to lure new subscribers
into the main offering). The user interface is pretty good,
starting with a selection of 6 categories. When your selected
channel is playing, you can scroll up or down to raise or lower
the volume, or scroll left & right to browse through the other
available channels & what's currently playing on them. We tested
it in a marginal signal area; degradations in a data stream make
the music stop, but it starts up again once that's remedied. We
tried piping the audio to an external amplifier & speaker; this
is not a product for audio purists; the reproduction fidelity is
compromised, something like a highly compressed MP3 file; though
if you tend to do your listening through something as compromised
as, say, earbuds, you might never hear that it's less than
wonderful. For now, they're offering the first 24 hours free once
you download the application to a BlackBerry (it costs $8/month
to subscribe), so there's a small window of opportunity to decide
whether these 20 channels are worth it or not. We asked XM if
there's any content in these 20 channels that would contribute to
a journalist's productivity; they said sort of, but only in the
sense of entertainment or stress relief. One nice feature: you
can minimize the application so the music keeps playing while you
work with your e-mail or other handset applications. When we
checked out their 3 over-the-air offerings for the channel
selection, we found only one channel with any promise of suiting
our peculiar musical tastes (one not on the BlackBerry list, we
should add), so you may want to check that list before checking
out the service. Between the dependence on uninterrupted data
connectivity, the limited fidelity & the menu of music, this
isn't something we plan to keep around after the demo period
expires, but your priorities may be quite different. Bottom line:
If you enjoy the fidelity of a portable media player, tend to
listen to your phone over a headset & find something you like on
the menu, this could be a cool way to take the music with you
without having to haul along another piece of gear.
Special Report Bonus Review 2: Paragon Oxford vs. Dictionary
Paragon Software offers a broad catalog of reference works for
the BlackBerry as well as for other handheld devices, some of
which work from a locally stored vocabulary & some from data
fetched over the Web. We were delighted to see an Oxford
dictionary & thesaurus so we got it in for review; we were
disappointed with the result. This is one of those over-the-Web
server-based products & not especially fast. The user interface
is not exactly up to speed either, more reminiscent of a
mainframe terminal session circa 1975 than anything else. The
worst offense is that the first word we checked (peloria,
originally a botanical term, referring to the abnormal occurrence
of a regularity in something that's normally irregular) was one
it didn't know. So, just for the heck of it, we loaded a
BlackBerry browser bookmark for Dictionary.Com
(http://m.reference.com/d/), which also gives us Thesaurus.Com &
Reference.Com. It knew "peloria", was faster than the installed
Paragon application & took less memory space. The people at
Paragon tell me another incarnation may be coming that will store
the lexicon in the phone & be faster; we offered to review it
when & if that happens. The folks at Dictionary.Com weren't all
that familiar with their mobile product & were interested in our
take on it. So here are our bottom lines: The Oxford references
in a cell phone are a promise we look forward to seeing fulfilled
in an even more streamlined architecture. Mobile versions of the
Dictionary.Com, Thesaurus.Com & Reference.Com Web sites are now
enduring bookmarks in our BlackBerry's mobile browser for their
welcome simplicity & speed in getting us the look-up info we
need; we like them.
Special Report Bonus Review 3: PNY 4GB Mobile Media Kit
The PNY 4GB Cell Phone Memory 4-in-1 Mobile Media Kit (the
product names in this category always seem to be bigger than the
actual products) is a kit with a 4GB Micro SD card & 3 adapters:
one for standard SD, one for MiniSD & one for USB. It took us a
few seconds to figure out to slide the USB carrier out of its
shell, poke the MicroSD in the back & plug it into the USB port
still naked (out of its shell). We initially wanted to confirm
that this card would work reliably at high data rates with our
full-HD JVC GZ-HD6 camcorder (it does; it's Class 4 Flash,
capable of 4MB/sec), then decided to deploy it to our BlackBerry
for a couple of significant reasons. One is that its original 2GB
MicroSD card was now using over 1GB of its space & with a
newer-model Pearl en route that adds new audio & video recording
features, we needed more room; another is that Judie finally got
around to adding content to her Pearl & it had no memory card at
all. The PNY kit made it a simple task to move the old 2GB card's
contents to the new card, swap cards, clear the old one, stick it
in Judie's phone & make everybody happy. That content that was
jamming (anything over half full makes us nervous) our old card
includes 6 half-hour TV episodes, scores of songs & plenty of
pictures; it would take one heck of a long airport delay to give
us enough time to watch & listen to it all, but it isn't as if
that never happens these days. Back to PNY & our bottom line:
slick, speedy, capacious & nicely kitted - we like it.
Special Report Bonus Review 4: HollerID
HollerID (Terratial Technologies) is not so much an application
as a service. You browse to it with your BlackBerry, find a
person's first name from among 1700+ on its lists, pick from
among its male & female human & synthesized voices, choose
whether or not to include an alert tone & choose a 1, 3 or 5
second delay between alerts. It generates all that as an MP3
ringtone file you can save & associate with one or more
appropriate names in the BlackBerry address book. The good news:
you get a full year of unlimited downloads for $20; the bad news:
not one of the 15 available voices is wonderful. The tonality on
the human male voice is like a presenter hitting a bullet point
on a PowerPoint slide. The human female annoyingly mispronounces
"calling". The synthetic voices are not really optimized for
legibility when piped through the tiny audio transducer of a
BlackBerry. This is a decent idea with less than slick execution.
On the plus side, it's a more than adequate way to give each
caller an audio annunciator so that you can tell the cool calls
from the fool calls. Find a voice you can tolerate (we would
suggest the Dixie or Lucinda synthesized voices) & this is useful
enough. Undocumented trick: You can load the same Web site on
your desktop browser to listen to the voices more quickly than
you can on the BlackBerry. Bottom line: it's an easy & flexible
way to audibly tag every caller on your phone without spending a
fortune.
Special Report Bonus Review 5: DocHawk
When the copy of an e-mail you get on your BlackBerry has a PDF
or Office document attached, you don't have to wait to get back
to the office to read it. DocHawk (Terratial Technologies) adds
an "Open with DocHawk" item to the message menu that can handle
more than 50 file types. It isn't instant; in our 1-2 bar signal
area, it takes 2-3 minutes for a lengthy multipage Word document,
though the developer tells us most documents are viewable in
about 30 seconds with more nominal connections. While it's
server-based, it's not browser-based. The BlackBerry application
sends the attachment file to the DocHawk server where it's
transmogrified into a file you can view exactly as originally
formatted, zoom (25-150%) & even save on the handset. At $20 for
3 months or $60 per year, you can decide whether enough you'll
need it enough to make it a considered purchase or a no-brainer.
Bottom line: document legibility is magnificent & for people who
don't want to wait to get back to their desktop to see the
attachments they just got, DocHawk is a ticket to freedom.
Bags, events & other questions
Many apologies for the delays in getting January's bags out; we
won't bore you with the latest delays, we'll just assure you that
our ship-to list is intact, that we'd much rather have them there
than here & that we all deserve an escape from their nightmares.
We're also getting down to the numbers on The Big Event & Cherry
Picks; the first major task there, once we know where the numbers
fall, is to update the Web sites. We'll let you know that here.
Also, this is the first issue with our new mixed-case headlines;
does anybody especially love or hate them? 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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