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Newstips Electronic Editorial Bulletin Issue # 2007-07b
News before St. Swithin's Day
IPHONE ACCUWEATHER BOTH ON IPHONE & ONLINE (MAC ONLY)
AccuWeather.com already has a pair of iPhone offerings: one runs
on an iPhone & the other is a lookalike gadget (for Mac only, at
least for now). See them there or jingle Justin. On a separate
subject, there may also be a last-minute online offering for St.
Swithin's Day; lore says that rain or no rain on that day (July
15 this year) foretells 40 days of the same. Contact: Justin
Roberti, ACCUWEATHER, INC. (State College, PA) 814-235-8756
mailto:roberti@accuweather.com Http://AccuWeather.com
EVEN BETTER JVC LCD SETS ON DECK FOR THIS MONTH
In our issue before last, we told you about the new 688-series
37" & 42" LCD 1080p HDTV sets from JVC; later this month, they're
adding 42" & 47" models in an even higher-performance 788 series.
The performance improvements include a higher contrast ratio,
faster screen response time & a wider viewing angle; cosmetic
improvements include a thin-bezel black case with silver trim.
The price premium isn't huge; a 42" 788 model is only about $100
more than a 42" 688 model (street around $2100 versus $2000).
Reviewables should be available by the end of the month. Ask
Chelsea. Contact: Chelsea Vander Groef, JVC COMPANY OF AMERICA
(Wayne, NJ) 973-317-5000x5312 mailto:cvandergroef@jvc.com
http://jvc.com
THIS MONTH, ORIGINAL MOGO GETS A NEW ADAPTER
The original PCMCIA-slot MoGo Mouse BT will soon go where it's
never gone before, thanks to an external USB charging cradle that
means you can now use it on a notebook or desktop that lacks a PC
slot. That's cool for many users; think how convenient that makes
it for reviewers. The only missing link to reviewing a MoGo mouse
on your desktop is that most desktops come without Bluetooth.
You're darn tootin' that Newton has a fix for that, too: ask Jack
for one of the new USB BT dongles (the one they're bundling with
the new X54 MoGo Mouse) & for the PC slot cradle if you're ready
to review a MoGo Mouse BT (the MoGo Mouse, too, if you don't
already have one); there's already an X54 charging cradle, so if
you'd also like to review the new X54 MoGo Mouse from the comfort
of your desktop, just jingle Jack. Contact: Jack Corrao, NEWTON
PERIPHERALS (West Newton, MA) 858-792-0944
mailto:jack.corrao@newtonperipherals.com
http://NewtonPeripherals.com
IN JANUARY, NEW HYDRABRUSH GETS TIGHTER
Coming in January, the next-generation HydraBrush will make some
things the same (same brush heads, same brushing speeds & same
price) but it will be easy to see that many things will be
different. It will be smaller, lighter, more powerful &
completely waterproof. In order to make it waterproof, it will
replace its rotary switch with rubbery pushbuttons & replace its
DC recharging socket with a no-contact inductive charging system.
Bill's not willing to tell much more yet, but he'll soften as the
introduction gets closer. Contact: Bill Dendiu, ORALBIOTIC
RESEARCH INC. (Escondido, CA) 702-736-6536
mailto:bdendiu54@cs.com http://HydraBrush.com
DOUBLE IMAGE TRICK CAN SPEED MANY BACKUP SESSIONS
Bryant has passed along a trick that's very nifty indeed for
speeding up backup sessions for more than just Double Image-O.
Create a unique directory name off the root, place the backup
software's entire collection of configuration, cache & log files
there then configure your antivirus software to ignore that
directory. Because of the huge numbers of reads & writes to these
files each session & because antivirus software would otherwise
want to monitor each one, the time savings can be enormously
significant. Contact: Bryant Kittelson, HOST INTERFACE
INTERNATIONAL INC. (Marysville, WA) 425-746-4361
mailto:b.k@hostinterface.com http://hostinterface.com
COPS MEASURE UP WHEN THEY DON'T HAVE TO
We peeked in the trunk of an accident investigator's police
cruiser & saw a vintage measuring tape on a reel. The officers
take photos of accident scenes, measure dimensions & tire marks,
make sketches & take a fair amount of time documenting
everything. If the iPhotoMeasure software target in the photo,
many more measurements become available, even long after the
fact. (We won't spill too many beans about this just yet, but a
major version release due early next year will enhance this
capability to an astonishing degree). If you'd like to base a
story on putting iPhotoMeasure software into the hands of your
local police force, just ask. Contact: Paul Minor, DIGICONTRACTOR
INC. (Tarzana, CA) 818-888-3687 mailto:paul@iphotomeasure.com
http://iPhotoMeasure.com
ASLEEP DEPRIVATION FOR LEGS
News flash: legs fall asleep, a term that applies when blood flow
is constrained or restricted. If that occasionally (or often)
happens to you while you're sitting there at the computer, doing
your work, the chances are good that your chair is to blame.
Don't move: can you feel the forward edge of the cushion pushing
up into the back of your leg, just above the knee, near where
that big blood vessel stays so visible, just under the surface of
skin? While this may seem to be one of the more minor perils of
the modern workplace, we understand that it can lead to more
serious complications with age; in any case, it's easy to
prevent. Change chairs. Consider how the gently rolled front
edges of the main series of Herman Miller chairs (like Aeron,
Mirra, Foray or Celle) support you without ever making your legs
squish against them. If you need pictures or a test-sitting to
help you cover the unnecessarily tingly reality of this office
peril & its antidote, ask Mark. Contact: Mark Schurman, HERMAN
MILLER, INC. (Zeeland, MI) 616-654-5498
mailto:mark_schurman@hermanmiller.com http://HermanMiller.com
PROMISE FOR THE PLANET: FUEL CELLS TO RECHARGE BATTERIES
This is not a product announcement; it is a capabilities
briefing. This is about total environmental impact & carbon
loading. It's easy to recognize that mining metals & chemical to
make standard batteries, transporting those, manufacturing &
transporting, then disposing of them adds up to a significant
environmental burden. It's easy to acknowledge that the use of
rechargeable batteries helps soften that blow because the direct
environmental costs get spread over something like 1000 charge
cycles; there is, of course, an environmental cost in generating
the electricity to recharge them. Fuel cells aren't ready to
replace standard batteries (or rechargeables) in their compact
form factors & it's obvious that those are the shapes & sizes
that a zillion products have been designed to hold. What is
possible is to use something like a Medis 24/7 Power Pack 1Watt
fuel cell ($20, 3Q07) to recharge those rechargeable batteries.
This reduces their load on the power grid while providing a new
level of portability for those times when you are hours to days
away from any kind of outlet. Ask Michelle. Contact: Michelle
Rush, MEDIS TECHNOLOGIES LTD. (Brentwood CA) 925-516-3837
mailto:mrush@medistechnologies.com http://MedisTechnologies.com
12.8 MEGAPIXELS, 8" DIAMETER LENS, FITS A JACKET POCKET
Doug gets a lot of questions about what a DocuPen can do that a
camera can't do, even when it comes to something as home-turf as
scanning documents. Consider an 8x10" image or an 8x10 "live"
area on an 8.5x11" document. When you scan that with an RC800
Color DocuPen at its best resolution setting, you get a 12.8
Megapixel 24-bit color image. Lighting isn't an issue because the
DocuPen is a scanner, so it generates its own color-accurate
lighting; also, as a scanner, you're dealing with the equivalent,
in camera terms, of an 8" diameter lens. Another factor: not
every camera has a good enough macro mode to get great
edge-to-edge focus on a page; a DocuPen rolls right down it. We
see DocuPen as complementing a camera, not competing with it, but
as long as there's coverage to be had, you can take either
approach; dial Doug to get the DocuPen you'll need for your
piece. Contact: Doug Verkaik, PLANON SYSTEMS SOLUTIONS, INC.
(Mississauga, ON) 905-507-3926x225 mailto:dougv@planon.com
http://www.planon.com
SHOOT YOURSELF: VISTA HELPS WITH THAT
You're traveling alone & taking along your new camcorder, but you
want to be in a lot of the footage; how exactly do you plan to
shoot yourself? The new Vista line at Tiffen has 3 great
solutions shipping now & a fourth on the way of a planned series
of 11 products. The smallest is the Traveler (under $20 in
stores); while it only extends to 53" (not bad, since shooting
from that height can help you look taller, but it does force an
up-angle perspective), it collapses to a very tight 21" length.
If you can tote something 2" longer, the Explorer (under $40) is
just 23" collapsed but extends to 60" tall. The Ranger (under
$60) packs away at 26" & extends to 66"; add another inch or two
to the center of the camcorder lens & your perspective is
eye-high to a fairly tall guy. If you need even more shooting
flexibility, the new aluminum Attaras (under $100, reviewable in
August) is a "grounder" tripod, with the ability to let a camera
squat low for some very dramatic or unusual shots; it's
lightweight (4.6 pounds including its head), extremely rugged &
collapses to 27" to fit most carry-on bags. Contact: Hilary
Araujo, TIFFEN COMPANY (Hauppauge, NY) 631-273-2500x1216
mailto:haraujo@tiffen.com http:/.tiffen.com
ASK ABOUT ILOAD SKINS
Bug Bernie to tell you all about the removable self-adhesive
sheets you print to decorate your iLoad when you buy the Skin Pak
($29.95). Each Skin Pak has 10 blank 8"x10" sheets plus software
that gives you a choice of designs. Print your choice on a color
photo printer & you can stick a new skin on your iLoad. Ask
Bernie. Contact: Bernard Kaplan, WINGSPAN (Campbell, CA)
408-626-0009x237 mailto:bkaplan@iload.com
SPECIAL REPORT: DOWNLOAD CONVERSION TO PURCHASE MYTHS
How many people do you know who got rich on shareware? Out of at
least tens of thousands of shareware vendors over the years, can
anybody name 20 who became prosperous from it? The roots of
behavioral marketing can provide several reasons the category
hasn't done better: a trial period sets the perceived value of a
product to zero; trial periods extend the rationalization phase
of purchase consideration, making self-permission less likely;
the trial period dulls the emotional triggers that initially
prompted interest in the product. We can also report that in the
past, when we convinced some software companies to convert from
trial periods to all-paid, they were initially alarmed at the
drop in downloads, but quickly delighted at the big boost in paid
purchases. All of that brings us to now & two examples that seem
to endorse trial periods for software sales, but are easy to
misinterpret. One case is Adobe; it's easy to misread their
continued offering of trial downloads as an endorsement of that
technique for conversion to purchase, but that would be a
distortion. This is a circumstance where an enormous legacy base
of users & a broad retail presence are major components of the
decision to offer trials; the goal is not so much conversion to
purchase online as it is conversion to upgrade by any mechanism.
The company's batting average at converting online downloads to
online purchases is low enough to prompt a "does-not-disclose"
response to direct questions about it. The even bigger example of
a similar context is with Microsoft, which reports more than 5
million downloads of Office 2007 products. The Microsoft "game"
has more finesse to it, since committing work to a major new
upgrade is a lot smoother in the forward direction than in
reverse. For them, it seems the sampling program is more
promotional than sales-critical; their recent earnings report
certainly manifests a success story for Office 2007. There will
always be developers with shoestring budgets & little
understanding of sales, marketing or purchaser behaviors who will
want to take advantage of the myriad download sites; 20 years
from now we doubt that you'll be able to name 20 of them who made
fortunes at it. Our own advice is to give a product enough
attention & respect to let it stand on its own legs in the "real"
marketplace; everything we know about the history of non-retail
software & everything we know about human purchasing behaviors
tells us that trial-period software is much less likely to gain
marketplace traction than software that people have to pay for in
order to use.
SPECIAL REPORT BONUS REVIEW: PHOTOSHOP CS3 EXTENDED
Those of you in radio may care less than those in TV, but those
in print will certainly care the most about being able to deal,
even in a rudimentary way, with graphics. Have you ever tried to
open an EPS (encapsulated Postscript) file in Windows? EPS is
something of a Babel-fish when it comes to moving graphics
between a PC (where most of us & most of the world work) & a Mac
(where the designers & artists congregate). You could try using
JPG (or other raster graphics) for that, but it really doesn't
scale well because it always starts with a fixed pixel count. EPS
uses vector graphics, so you can generate (or export) just about
any size raster graphic file from it without losing quality. This
Bulletin is not a print publication, so our need for graphics has
been historically limited & only recently (through Cherry Picks &
The Big Event) became telling enough that we wanted to deal with
it in-house. We had never (gasp) used Photoshop, so we thought we
could just ask for its simplest version to review. Adobe sent us
Photoshop Elements 5, which gave us a chance to finally see what
was in all those EPS files we keep on the system, but we bumped
our heads on a dividing line that we think is important to many
of you. Most standard graphics files are RGB; accurate color
printing involves color separations, which in turn involves an
alternative rendering method, CMYK. We asked Adobe to upgrade us
to the simplest product in their catalog that could handle CMYK
(because we see that as a usefulness watershed for those of you
working in print & in color) & they sent Photoshop CS3 Extended.
Even as clumsy novices, we were able to modify an existing
EPS-CMYK graphic (by adding a layer) & convert is to a
high-quality JPG; this is the kind of activity that can let you
bring a high-resolution inside print page into a Web page or even
an e-mail. We noted a lot of unexplored turf, including some
intriguing ways to add graphics & graphical treatments to SD or
HD video. We're not artistic enough (though you may be) to
retouch photos or create fancy graphics from scratch, but nobody
uses every part of every application anyway. Bottom line: we can
certainly recommend Photoshop CS3 Extended as a capable power
tool for those many graphical chores that are frustratingly
unreachable without it.
SPECIAL REPORT SECOND BONUS REVIEW: WASHABLE PERIPHERALS
How do you say no to a chance to review a washable keyboard &
mouse? These are from Unotron, but don't make room in your Maytag
just yet; these are hand-wash only items. The M10 optical mouse
uses the magic of magnets to make it simple to eject its scroll
wheel from its sealed nesting place; this is a 2-biutton mouse
with scroll wheel plus a separate button for the usual
wheel-click functions & comes with a PS2 adapter for its USB
plug. The manual suggests keeping the far ends of the cable away
from the sink when washing the mouse with an anti-bacterial
cleaning solution; given the spread of diseases by hand & the
likelihood of any airborne germs settling on desktop devices,
that's a rather good idea. The keyboard they sent is a wireless
(2.4GHz) model that takes a pair of AA cells through a clever
"porthole" seal. Each key cap is on a plunger that depresses a
rubber dome, so overall, there's no way for moisture or dust to
invade its innards. The only battery indicator only blinks when
replacement time nears; the usual telltale (idiot) lights for
caps lock, etc., are on the (also sealed & washable) receiver USB
dongle that plugs into the PC. The key action is a little firmer
than a Microsoft branded keyboard, but similar. A top row of
special function keys provide media volume & shuttle controls,
browser controls & some special-purpose launchers. We checked &
all of the wired or wireless mouse or keyboard washable Unotron
products are under $100. Bottom line: washable peripherals are an
interesting alternative & one that merits extra consideration in
any environment where health risks climb either because of the
vulnerability of an individual or because of the nature of
exposure to others in the workplace.
HOPEFULLY THE LAST SLIDE: FRIDAY OCTOBER 5 FOR THE BIG EVENT
Major space in LA is pretty well booked solid from Labor Day
through mid-December, but we think we found a perfect space
(details after the contract's signed) for The Big Event; we did
have to slide the date to Friday, October 5. Plan the full day,
if you can; we'll keep things interesting all day long & (party!)
into the night. We'd hate to tell you how many facilities we've
been trying to work with on this & how long it's taken, even with
best efforts all-around, to come to this point, but it's now full
steam ahead. You'll need to cover holiday gift drool bait anyway;
use The Big Event as a great way to get a ton of it done, all in
a day, with more time & more facilities than the East Coast
holiday events ever offered. Any questions? Anybody want pizza?
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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