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Newstips Electronic Editorial Bulletin Issue # 2008-05b
You can smell the Brickyard from here & other news
Video or still, it's time for your thrill
Here's an open call to review the Litepanels Micro ($300) as a
better choice for your video or still camera than anything you
use in their hot shoes now. For camcorders, you get more light
that lasts longer on fewer batteries; that's certainly true in
regard to any built-in camera lights, either completely or mostly
true (because there are some very bright alternatives that cost
more or don't run so long on a set of batteries) for add-on
lights. For a digital SLR, you get a light you can both model
with & (given the high effective ISO speed of today's gear) shoot
with. Is that an exaggeration? Only one way to tell: contact Ken
for one to review. Contact: Ken Fisher, LITEPANELS, INC. (North
Hollywood CA) 818-332-3070 mailto:ken@litepanels.com
http://LitePanels.com
Zoom fan demand creates aftermarket
The Zoom H2 handheld recorder ($199) - really more of a complete
handheld surround recording studio - has been a hit with audio,
radio, even film & TV people since it launched, but fame is not
without a price. The price in this case is the challenge to come
up with cases & other aftermarket products to help make the H2
even more productive. There's a new silicone jacket protective
cover ($15) that slips on like a second skin to fend off the
bumps & bruises of working where the sounds are sourced. New Zoom
skins ($7) add some custom color touches to help personalize your
H2. A mike-clip adapter ($10) screws into the tripod screw mount
on the bottom of the H2; it looks like a tapered cylindrical
handle, but look again & you'll see it's the shape of the shank
of a handheld mike, which lets audio pros mount an H2 almost
anywhere a mike might go. If you're not one of the H2 user crew,
you know what to do: ask Mark. Contact: Mark Wilder, SAMSON
TECHNOLOGIES (Hauppauge, NY) 631-784-2200x142
mailto:mwilder@samsontech.com http://SamsonTech.com
How Tekkeon gear helps make green gear greener
Environmentally friendly power sources (wind, tide, solar, etc.)
may be good for the planet, but they're not consistent, at least
not on their own. Now we're learning that some clever Tekkeon
customers are using Tekkeon packaged power products as a
buffering power bank to add consistency to the mix. The first
application used the output of a solar array as a charging source
for the Tekkeon product, which in turn provided consistent output
power even when little things like clouds or the shadow of the
planet (night time) got in the way. Ask René. Contact: René
Williams, TEKKEON, INC. (Tustin, CA) 949-360-7770
mailto:rene@tekkeon.com http://Tekkeon.com
Wi-Ex for cops who aren't behind bars
Marty's home township just built a new police station & his pal
the Chief became very interested in several Wi-Ex products. He
immediately used a signal strength meter to map out the CEL & PCS
band presence (mostly non-presence) around the station. They're
looking at zBoost to bring more bars inside. plus car units for
their cruisers & zPersonal for special circumstances that may
compel them to spend extra time off-site. While most official
communications are via police radio, there's a mix of official &
personal cell phones among the officers; there's nothing mixed
about the message that they want & need better coverage. If you
want to see how much difference a zBoost, zPersonal or car unit
can do for you & your readers, ask the ladies to issue you one.
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
Droplet Web site invites video conference demo
While the main claim to fame for the technology from Droplet
Technology is about delivering video at broadcast-righteous frame
rates from a cell phone with a still camera & a data plan, an
earlier version of the technology is already in use at
http://Peerme.com. Now the Droplet Web site invites visitors to
go to Peerme to see what that videoconferencing is like.
Normally, Peerme offers a 2-party account for free & a 4-party
account at a fee, but for press people, Marty can get you around
that & John can get you a round-up of where they stand on the
cell phone front. 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: A pan in the flash
People who are pocketbook-serious about photography are the
people who buy digital SLR cameras & it's hard to find a digital
SLR without a built-in flash, but if you're assuming these people
like those flashes, here's a news flash: they hate them. Among
the biggest complaints: the flash coverage never quite matches
the photo frame; flash intensity tends to have hot spots within
the frame; flash illumination tends to create unanticipated
reflections & shadows; and, of course, there's red-eye. Built-in
flashes have a fixed coverage pattern that doesn't adjust to the
angle of view of the lens (some expensive external units have
that ability) & doesn't adapt as a zoom lens changes its
magnification. Another challenge with flash is that it happens in
a flash, so quickly that the eye can never be sure of what the
camera just saw; studio pros with expensive gear choose flash
fixtures that incorporate modeling lights, continuous lights
designed to accurately predict (at a lower intensity) the
illumination that the flash will be throwing on its subject. So
why not just use continuous lights & make them a little brighter?
To some extent, that's happening & we think that practice will be
advancing with technology. We don't need to take you all the way
back to the era of flash powder in a hod, but it is significant
to consider that until a dozen years ago, the only reasonable
lights for photo studio use were incandescent (or their halogen
cycle cousins); these are power-hungry, burn hot & are absolutely
not portable. During the 1990s, fluorescent arrays with improved
control over color temperature significantly reduced the power
requirement & the heat generation, but these are just as
resistant to portability. The new LED arrays we're seeing for
video cameras aren't just for video, as it turns out; many
innovative still photographers are fitting them to the hot shoe
mounts on their digital SLRs with what can only be described as
glee. They're getting coverage as useful as a built-in flash but
without the unpredictability, hot spots, nasty surprises or red
eye without any sacrifice in portability. As LED light output &
power efficiencies both continue to improve, it seems obvious
that future still camera lights will offer both a
medium-intensity modeling mode & a shorter-duration
high-intensity burst mode, so even a flash that isn't a flash may
still flash.
Special Report Bonus Review: AT&T Navigator
It doesn't take long to figure out that the software AT&T sells
as AT&T Navigator is authored by TeleNav; while AT&T still sells
TeleNav 5.1 for the BlackBerry, AT&T Navigator is "unofficially"
TeleNav 5.5. There are some impressive improvements, like a new
option to let you speak the name of a place you want to look up,
a way to do your lookups on a Web site & sync them to the phone,
a way to share locations with others & "push" commute alerts to
notify you of quirks along your stored daily commute corridor.
There are some curious shortcomings, too; for example, it only
allows multi-tap input instead of taking advantage of the smarter
& slicker SureType option embedded in the BlackBerry. It doesn't
allow saving a found entity to the BlackBerry Address Book. It
lost the cool TeleNav "Compass" feature. It keeps the "Record
Location" feature that's nifty for remembering where (outdoors)
you parked the car. It claims to use AT&T's YellowPages.Com for
its searches, but the interface is way different; to its credit,
there's a collapsing-outline menu of categories so that, for
example, when you search for gas by price you can also search by
grade; or you can search for restaurants by the type of menu.
(It's useful enough, but it doesn't compel us to delete the
separate YP Mobile application). So the feature set is at least
semi-cool, but how is it as a navigator? It's adequate. The
navigation experience is not materially different from the
TeleNav-branded alternative with its sparse maps. Bottom line:
AT&T Navigator is a competent BlackBerry GPS navigation solution
with some unique features like daily commute nuisance alerts &
support for spoken location searches plus enough tie-ins to point
of interest, traffic & weather information to be really useful.
Special Report Bonus Review 2: Freedom Keychain GPS 2000
It seems that every time we get a new Bluetooth GPS receiver,
it's smaller than the last one we got. The last one we got was
the size of a slender lighter, the G-sat BT368i, measuring about
2.7"x1.5"x0.4"; then came the Freedom Keychain GPS 2000, about
the size of the electronic fob on your car keys at about
1.8"x1.3"x0.6". This is a class II Bluetooth 2 SPP (serial port
profile) device with a 30' range. The most fundamental thing to
tell you is that it works. It has a slide switch to control power
& LED telltales to let you know when it's still hunting
satellites, what its Bluetooth is up to & how the battery's
doing. After dealing with so many of these little Bluetooth GPS
receivers over the past few months, we have some overall
observations that are relevant here. First, they all use teensy
chips & all seem to use ceramic patch antennas. The biggest
difference in their range of small sizes seems to be the size &
capacity of the built-in rechargeable battery; the bigger units
offer a few more hours of run-time between charges, but even the
smallest seems to be good for 10 hours, enough for a typical
day's GPS activities. The larger units seem to be (this is
subjective, not tested) a little bit quicker at picking up
satellites. For the Keychain GPS 2000, we're usually able to get
signals indoors when we're not too far from windows, but not
always; of course, that's not normally a circumstance where you
need to know your GPS coordinates. The Keychain GPS 2000 comes
with a short attached chain with a clasp hook you can clip to a
key ring or into a purse, sack or briefcase & it works just fine
when it's in your pocket. Bottom line: The Keychain GPS 2000 is
small enough to always have along with you so even if your need
for GPS is unexpected, you're ready & it's able.
Special Report Bonus Review 3: LA Fresh Tech Pack
The $5 LA Fresh Tech Pack is a kit of 3 kinds of wipes in those
small foil envelopes, all in a zip-sealed plastic carry pouch
("airport security friendly" per the splash on the outer
cardboard sleeve). The pack includes 3 lens cleaning wipes
(unremarkably isopropyl alcohol), 3 anti-bacterial "travel wipes"
(mostly water & ethyl alcohol) & 4 wet/dry pairs of screen
cleaning wipes. There's no new tech here. There's easily as much
packaging as product. And while none of the three is
extraordinarily effective, each is adequately effective. Bottom
line: the LA Fresh Tech Pack is a convenient alternative to
gathering these several kinds of cleaners from separate sources &
a handy way to tote them for travel.
Special Report Bonus Review 4: Tellme
You know the circumstance: you're driving, can't pull over, can't
take your eyes off the road, absolutely need to find & call a
location & there's nobody in the car to help. With Tellme on a
BlackBerry, you might just survive all that. A click opens the
application then you hold down the green call button & speak the
ZIP code or the city & state for your search. A large &
distinctive animated graphic comes on the screen while its search
is in progress. It can find businesses, let you click to call,
show you directions to get there, map it & show you the traffic
you'll encounter or the weather. We tried speaking in the name of
a local coffee-shop chain, "Arabica"; its name is pronounced
a-ra-BEE-ka, but we also tried uh-RABB-ikka & a few other
alternatives, even spelled it letter by letter, but it took
typing it in for the search to come up with any valid results.
(we did find it by saying "coffee shop" but going that route
seems like cheating). There's supposed to be (per the online
description) an ability to isolate a search by using your current
location through GPS on a BlackBerry, but that functionality
(indeed, that option) isn't anywhere to be found. We're supposed
to be able to say "Weather" to get an instant local forecast on
screen; when we say it before specifying our location, we get a
list of cities with partially homonymic names; when we say it
after specifying a location we get a list of businesses with
"weather" in their names. Once you spec a location, "movies"
brings up a Fandango-sourced list of local theaters & features &
show times. When Tellme does find a location, you get several
options: You can click to call (with movies, you can click to
call for tickets), click for directions (it asks for your
starting point), click for a map or click to send the location to
a friend. Bottom line: the current version seems a bit iffy, but
we like the concept & hope an update will help it come more
completely true.
Special Report Bonus Review 5: Update - Live Search v.2
We reported on Live Search just a few weeks ago, then at version
1.5; we went to double check it recently & found an update to
version 2 with significantly more satisfactory results. It's now
fully GPS-conversant, to the point where its "Weather" menu item
takes you immediately to the weather at your location. There's a
new Web search feature. Most significantly, there's a new option
to speak in your query; it responds with a short list of what it
thinks you said, letting you scroll & click to get right to it.
Like Tellme (from a different Microsoft group), it has trouble
with "Arabica" but none at all finding "coffee shop". Bottom
line: this improved, updated version of Live Search is now one of
the most useful search utilities you can put on a BlackBerry
desktop.
Associating press
As the newspaper publishing economy continues to squeeze the size
of each editorial well, we're noting more major market daily
papers returning to an early root practice: running any number of
relevant items of interest from reporters at other newspapers. In
the early heydays of newspapers, that practice got more organized
& became the genesis of the Associated Press & United Press
International (et al). If the old practice is returning, we have
to imagine that its purpose, at least in part, is to send UPI &
AP a message; we can only guess that it's about pricing &
policies. Candidly, we like the idea of a reporter's good work
escaping the boundaries of his paper's native circulation. To
repeat a longstanding belief here: there is a valid, important
reason for the separate existence of newspapers, regardless the
impact of the Web, but if they're going to survive, it has to be
on the basis of their unique strengths, not by pretending to be
just like the enemy. 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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