|
Newstips Electronic Editorial Bulletin Issue # 2008-06a
News before the only Friday the thirteenth in 2008
BlackBerry ISV consumer software gems
If you're not yet a BlackBerry user, you may think of it as
primarily a business platform, but there's an army of consumer
application developers in the BlackBerry ISV program with goodies
that may surprise & delight you. For example, did you think a
BlackBerry can equal or better dashboard gear for navigation?
(Many BlackBerry models have GPS receivers built in; all can work
with Bluetooth GPS pucks). The current spate of navigation
applications includes spoken turn-by-turn directions, searches,
maps, sharing, real-time traffic, separate driving versus walking
routes & other features available only on the best & most
expensive dashboard navigators. There's a new version of Garmin
Mobile for BlackBerry ($99 for the life of a handset, not a user)
in beta (reviewers: Jessica Myers mailto:Jessica.Myers@Garmin.com
913-440-1411) that's a lot like turning the phone into a Nuvi.
MapQuest Navigator 5 ($4.17/month to $100/year) includes AOL
City's Best & 16 million MapQuest points of interest plus a way
to save favorite locations & maps (reviewers: Chris Savarese
mailto:Chris.Savarese@corp.aol.com 212-206-4589). TeleNav version
5.1 ($9.99/month) offers a very sweet menu of search, map &
sharing functions (reviewers: Noah Dye mailto:noahd@lewispr.com
408-573-3662), including a way to save your parking spot (or
other special location) so you can find your way back to it
later. That gets even better for AT&T customers who buy (also
$9.99/month) the TeleNav 5.5 release that's exclusively available
as AT&T Navigator (reviewers: see the Web site for regional PR
contact info or ask Noah to help) with improvements that include
searching by voice. Victoria runs point on ISV program PR at RIM
& can even get some of you who aren't yet using a BlackBerry to
change your ways. Contact: Victoria Berry, RESEARCH IN MOTION
(Waterloo, ON) 519-888-7465x73663 mailto:vberry@rim.com
http://rim.com
NavDock lets your TV run your iPod
When you connect your TV & drop your iPod into a Tekkeon NavDock
ND2000 ($130), the TV screen gives you a great big menu into your
iPod content & lets you control it from there (a 16-button NavDoc
remote comes with). Since it comes from Tekkeon, it charges your
iPod, too, of course. It's reviewable now. Contact: René
Williams, TEKKEON, INC. (Tustin, CA) 949-360-7770
mailto:rene@tekkeon.com http://Tekkeon.com
Wi-Ex ready for AT&T 3G upgrade
275 markets get access to full 3G bandwidth over the AT&T HSDPA
service by the end of June; nobody in any of those markets will
have to change or update a thing to make their Wi-Ex cell signal
helpers ready to rock & roll with the extra bandwidth. Of course,
getting all that bandwidth always means getting all the bars
(because bandwidth degrades & errors incur as signal strength
drops), so anybody in a marginal area hoping to test 3G on
something like a next-generation iPhone or a BlackBerry Bold
would be smart to think about reviewing a Wi-Ex unit now.
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
Samson StudioDock 4i active USB monitors do iPod, too
The hottest new Samson studio monitor-quality speakers skip past
the noise of the analog realm & dives directly into digital for
its sound source. The new StudioDock 4i ($199) plugs into USB for
full-fidelity digital computer audio & offers a top-side iPod
dock for the biggest boost in cool you'll hear from those little
charmers. (If you insist, it can still take analog audio, too;
you can even listen to it all through their headphone jack).
These are active monitors with 20 Watts of power per channel. We
can talk about the copolymer woofers, silk dome tweeter & tuned
passive crossover, but really, your ears are where it all comes
true. Ask Mark to get you a set to review. Contact: Mark Wilder,
SAMSON TECHNOLOGIES (Hauppauge, NY) 631-784-2200x142
mailto:mwilder@samsontech.com http://SamsonTech.com
Run & gun or sit & stun with Litepanels
On the consumer side of things, the Litepanels Micro ($300) LED
array makes personal videos (or SLR photos) a lot less woebegone
when circumstance hasn't handed you perfect lighting to begin
with, but it isn't always the best choice. Sometimes a better
choice is to use two for a little extra light & a little more
spread. The Litepanels Mini ($640) provides even more light but
needs external power (available on most pro cameras or through a
common video camera battery) & if circumstances insist, a camera
can carry a pair of those for spreading more lighting wider. For
doing a sit-down in otherwise unattractive lighting, clever
camera & lighting people can get a lot farther than you might
think with LP Micro or LP Mini class products. We're only
suggesting you report on the Micro, but if you're curious about
how these combo lighting setups can work, ask Ken. Contact: Ken
Fisher, LITEPANELS, INC. (North Hollywood CA) 818-332-3070
mailto:ken@litepanels.com http://LitePanels.com
Droplet development keeps adding handsets
When Droplet software gets loaded into a handset, it locks down a
broadcast-righteous 29.96 frame rate, using frames from the
handset's still camera chip & running everything through its
proprietary codec to fit the available cell bandwidth (in both
directions no less). That takes a strong set of software skills
plus a lot of work not only on each mobile operating system
(Java, Symbian, etc.) but also on a lot of specific handset
models. That's been burning the midnight oil for Droplet
development, with a lot of progress getting down the roster of
all the handsets they want to cover. Ask 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: Random tidbits
When some airlines started announcing no more free pretzels, the
fallout landed close to our home at the King Nut Company of
Solon, OH, whose name has been on those little bags since they
actually contained peanuts; so the high cost of gas now has a
logical flying leap to harder times for nut bags... In Cleveland,
at least, higher gas prices have neither increased ridership on
public transportation nor reduced (as might be observable if car
pooling was really happening) reduced revenues at parking lots;
higher air fares do not seem to be significantly increasing
intercity bus ridership or creating any groundswell of support
for bringing back old levels of passenger rail service... With
new camera chips for cell phones now reaching 8Mp, useful
resolution is no longer a dividing line to keep a phone owner
from deciding not to also own a camera, leaving primarily
lens-related features to hold the fort; for the moment, phones
would have to get bigger to house a lens & still leave room for
their collection of internal antennas... It's not just "the kids"
deciding they don't need to wear a wristwatch; adults & seniors
are having second thoughts about replacing an old watch when a
battery dies or something breaks, putting a cramp on the
category... AT&T is committed to having its network-wide faster
(800K up, 1.4Mbps down) 3G service build-out complete by the end
of June, meaning 275 of a planned 350 markets; that's driving the
release of a lot of next-generation handsets, but until those
hit, this won't matter much to users... In all the hype about
OLED devices, remember that the organic part of the technology
eventually dies (2-5 years, depending on the intensity of
heat-creating light output)
Special Report Bonus Review: Jawbone 2
We saw some forum chat about favorite Bluetooth headsets lead to
some very loud cheerleading for the new Jawbone 2 with Voice
Assassin; it led us to a Web video with an impressive demo of
talk clarity with jackhammers going, which led us to get one to
review. The first surprise we had was its comfort, somewhat
better than most earbud-style BT headsets we had tried & with a
provided collection of ear loops & bud cushions. Operation was
simple enough. The tech is credible, with dual mikes to help it
reject low-frequency wind noise & active noise cancellation to
improve voice audibility; one component of that is (at the mike
end) a small bead in contact with your skin that helps it sense
you talking. We checked but didn't have any jackhammers handy for
our tests; in any case, we know a wicked technique that most
active noise cancellation schemes fail. It starts by using an
unexpected test phrase (in this case, the opening lines of
"Jabberwocky") & by planting the offending noise source right
across the speech frequency spectrum (the car radio cranked up
really loud). The results were impressive, if less than magical.
We tested with the radio at volume settings of 10 & 20. In every
case, our speech was audible. In many cases (this is the dirty
trick part of this approach), the active noise cancellation
transformed the radio signal into a very distracting gargle of
noise that did not mask our words but did make them harder to
discern. To be fair, we don't think many people will be buying
this to make phone calls from the stage during a rock concert;
for everything else, it demonstrated an uncommon thoroughness in
getting what you have to say out above the noise. Bottom line:
this is perhaps the best of noise-rejecting earbud-style monaural
Bluetooth 2 headsets.
Special Report Bonus Review 2: Traffic Vizzion
Imagine you're a movie super-spy able to launch a drone to keep
an eye on the road ahead & send a picture of it back to a device
you can hold in your hand. Skip the drone. We loaded the new beta
of Traffic Vizzion on our BlackBerry Pearl (it's already in
release for Windows Mobile Smartphone) to get it to show us feeds
from the network of traffic cameras. You set how far ahead you
want it to look (closest, farthest & idea distances) & it uses
GPS plus some clever algorithms to keep the images coming,
letting you see whether or not the traffic is clotting. Click to
pull up Yahoo maps to explore alternatives or help you get back
if your explorations go awry. There's also an alternative to
browse to any camera in the system by browsing locations or by
clicking their location on a map. The service costs $5/month or
$25/year (after 2-week free trial), so you don't have to save
much gas to cost-justify it. Our recommendation: if you're on a
daily commute where you already know the route but may not know
what lies ahead along it, you probably don't need a navigator but
a look ahead can be extremely useful - just don't let it seduce
you into taking your eyes off the road immediately ahead. Bottom
line: Traffic Vizzion is a way cool way to know when something on
your way gets in your way.
Special Report Bonus Review 3: RobLock
We (evil sneer) absolutely love RobLock for BlackBerry ($10; also
available for Windows Mobile phones). It makes stolen phones
useless. Once you install the application, there's no getting
into it without a password. If your phone gets lost, you can send
one secret text message that can wipe the phone's memory
(including everything on the Micro SD card), or another that sets
off an unending siren tone & locks the keyboard so there's no
easy way to stop it (which you can do with a third kind of
message); you can send these messages from any phone but they
have to embed your password. If the phone gets stolen, when the
new owner sticks in a replacement SIM card, the phone secretly
sends a text message (to the cell phone you specify when you set
it up; you can also customize the text message) that includes the
new SIM card number & the phone's new location. You even have the
option of having it also send your complete contacts list along
with that. Our own advice: on a BlackBerry, use the option that
hides its icon. This may not always help you get your BlackBerry
back, but it sure as heck can make it useless to the guy who took
it. Bottom line: a must-have.
Special Report Bonus Review 4: Wilson Mobile Amp
The Wilson Wireless Mobile Cellular Signal Amplifier Kit with
Cradle (one of the longer product names) is supposed to give you
more bars in the car for PCS or CEL band carriers. A magnet-mount
external antenna feeds through the door molding strip to an
amplifier brick (powered through the lighter socket) & then out
to either a cockpit-mounted (inside) candy-bar-shape patch
antenna or a universal handset cradle with an embedded antenna.
In theory, the long (ergo gain) antenna on the roof helps snag
weaker signals for the brick to boost when receiving & lets the
phone hit the power with less of its own power (ergo less battery
drain) when transmitting. Our tests could not show clearly that
either one was happening. We got the same bar count whether the
amplifier was on or off in several weak-signal (1-2 bar)
locations where its role would have been most crucial. Bottom
line: We can't really say that it made any difference.
Special Report Bonus Review 5: Grammar Girl book
We got an advance copy of "Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips
for Better Writing" by Mignon Fogarty (Holt Paperbacks); had this
book been out 50 years ago, we probably would have crammed copies
of it down the throats of about 50,000 people. All of those
aggravating, annoying, fingernails-on-the-blackboard mistakes we
hear & read all the time get addressed here. Somehow she gets
around the usual-numbed brain response in explaining the niceties
of active versus passive voice, objective versus subjective case,
danglers, manglers, homonymic wranglers. She addresses the
special protocols of e-mail & messaging. She even gets beyond
grammar & into tips for the task of writing. Bottom line: this is
a book every pro writer will want to have on hand just to know
into which pages a bad writer's nose needs to get jammed.
Notebooks as mobile peripherals
Worlds flipping upside down are a long-term norm in tech;
inevitably cost & performance bring a "someday" wish list item
into the built-in, no-extra-charge list of features. We watched,
for example, as notebooks grew from lame shadows of desktop PCs
into nimble performers able to match all but the most souped-up
systems. We're watching now as mobile devices evolve from barely
suitable telephones into handheld connected computing platforms
that also happen to ring with incoming calls. They're not yet the
equal of notebooks, but if past is precedent, they may eventually
flip the pecking order to make the notebook or desktop PC a
peripheral for our main computing device, held in hand. How will
we get from here to there? Handset processor power & onboard RAM
will have to reach a level that allows robust multitasking. Voice
command vocabularies will have to improve. New AI-like algorithms
will have to constantly anticipate our needs so that a
size-constrained keyboard & screen can let us see & do exactly
what we need to see & do right now & next. At some point, our
otherwise idle full-size computers will doubtless assume a
support role, in concert with online servers, to help keep our
handsets atop the need to feed us exactly the things we want &
need to know. That implies a lot more push applications on all
sides. For example, your flight was just canceled & instead of
just getting today's text message about it (if that), automation
can also get you a suitable substitute reservation with proper
changes & notifications made to everything & everyone affected by
the change. To a visitor from 1960, the handheld of the 2010s may
seem to be eerily sentient. We have many of the pieces now. We
also have many companies that want to work competitively, not
cooperatively, to stake out their own pieces of that pie to the
exclusion of others. In an election year, we shouldn't have to
remind anybody that not everything you hear along this
evolutionary path will necessarily be true, accurate or even
objective. Still, if we retain possession of our souls, it should
be fun. Contact: Martin Winston, NEWSTIPS (Novelty, OH)
440-338-8400; mailto:marty@newstips.com http://Newstips.com
# # #
Newstips Bulletin [Novelty, OH] +1.440.338.8400 http://Newstips.com
|
