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Newstips Electronic Editorial Bulletin Issue # 2009-02b
News to fall in love with
WildCharge in the wild saves plugs, power, jacking around
WildCharge is that pad with metallic stripes that lets you charge
handheld gear just by putting it onto the pad; okay, we
exaggerated, it takes a teensy bit more than that. The underlying
cool tech involves a special connector geometry, which you can
get either through a special skin (they cover the BlackBerry
Pearl & Curve already, with more coming) or a small adapter
(those so far are specialized, but a generic USB-A female will
soon let just about anything plug in). While the "how" of the
tech is cool, the "why bother" is even cooler: one pad can fully
support the charging needs of 5-6 devices without hogging 5-6
outlets with wall warts. On the other hand, it does make some
charges disappear because unlike most charging gear, when it
isn't charging anything, it isn't spinning your electric meter.
One more curiosity: while you'll see this tech on more & more
shelves, it will always be under somebody else's brand name. Ask
George. Contact: George Holmes, WildCharge, Inc. (Boulder, CO)
208-720-2707 gbholmes@wildcharge.com http://wildcharge.com
Add pushcasts to a BlackBerry with Chalk
We're a little late getting around to Chalk Media (just acquired
by RIM) but what they do is no less significant for our
tardiness. They're all about pushcasts, mostly for training,
using a dedicated handset inbox to receive multimedia-rich
content & tracking personal progress in reviewing it. These are
easy to author, even with things like PowerPoint (thanks to a
provided plug-in); they also provide survey & quiz wizards.
Mobile Chalkboard (reviewers: Brooke Van Hatten
bvanhatten@chalk.com 604-453-8650) is made for enterprise users,
but they can set you up for a demo; if that means you'll need a
BlackBerry handset, Ms. Berry is very happy to see if she can
help you. Contact: Victoria Berry, Research in Motion (Waterloo,
ON) 519-888-7465x73663 vberry@rim.com http://rim.com
Unify4Life springing PS3 dongle
Your BlackBerry can substitute for the Sony keypad & remote
control a PS3 with the new Unify4Life Game Shadow dongle &
software (April $40) coming out this spring. If you're already
using the AV Shadow ($99) to remote control your AV gear, this
adds a PS3 main menu item to the menu on the BlackBerry, giving
you easy access to a broad slate of PS3 functionality. Ask Chris.
Contact: Chris Kreuch, Unify4Life Corporation (Markham, ON)
905-940-1117x311 ckreuch@unify4life.com http://Unify4Life.com
FlyCast a dark cloud over satellites
While the atmospheric metaphor may be altitude-twisted, FlyCast
is starting to add materially to the pressures on subscription
satellite radio operations. In this economy, one of the biggest
factors is cost; satellite comes with a monthly fee while FlyCast
is free & FlyCast runs on gear (often more than one piece of
gear) most people already own. FlyCast gets reception wherever
you can connect to the cloud, even places where you've never
heard the orbital birds. FlyCast is expanding its channel count
while satellites are not. Satellites do have an advantage on
those big-dollar star-power channels & many fans of those shows
may well keep their subscriptions going just for those, but even
for them, FlyCast gives those fans more to listen to the rest of
the day without having to pay. Ask Roy. Contact: Roy Smith,
FlyCast (Lancaster, PA) 717-846-0499 roys@flycast.fm
http://FlyCast.fm
Nobex turns Outlook e-mail signatures into contacts
Nobex Contacts (http://nobexcontacts.com free trial; $34) is a
Microsoft Outlook plug-in that recognizes a sender's signature
block within an incoming message & with a click, transports that
info to a new Outlook Contacts record. Yep, it's from the same
company that puts Nobex Radio Companion on the BlackBerry. Both
are irresistible, so why are you being so aloof? Contact: Gadi
Mazor, Nobex Incorporated (Santa Cruz, CA) 831-621-1823
gadi@nobexinc.com http://NobexRC.com
Special Report: Tapping cheapskates
Home & hardware stores know that when new home construction goes
down, home improvement projects generally step up; is the same
true for the tech categories? Looking at the personal side of the
computer industry, it's hard to say, because the spending slumps
of the past have all been minor, in part because they all
happened before market saturation played a factor. That isn't
true today, as sales of new computers remain down after several
months of slide. If the "Home Depot" factor plays in the PC
segment, we'll soon see some pick-up in retail sales of hard
drives & perhaps memory. (For a segment of the user population,
that may also extend to retrofitting new CPUs, motherboards, slot
cards or power supplies). We're already seeing a lot of traction
for free applications on smart handsets; surprisingly, few
developers have any clue as to when or whether they'll be able to
migrate into a more manifest revenue stream. The point & shoot
camera brands have very little backstop in add-on or accessory
products, so they're compelled to fight the battle at the retail
front; as we saw over Christmas, the only theory that seemed to
work placed an emphasis on their lowest price points. Most of the
products you (or we) cover suffer in this economy, so it's
important to remember that the marketplace isn't about the
products but about the people who might consider buying them. As
bad as the economic news legitimately is & appears, a lot of the
slowdown in purchasing is more a result of hunker-in-the-bunker
FUD factors than of money not being available at all. People are
spending cautiously; they're not afraid (in fact, they may be a
little prod) of being considered cheapskates. That's
vulnerability from one perspective, opportunity from another. If
the drive with all the tunes you bough crashes, how much money
are you out? A self-avowed cheapskate may be proud of spending a
hundred bucks on a backup drive as cheaper than the potential
loss. Should you spend $1500 to replace a notebook PC when you
can get almost the same functionality from a new smart handset
for a lot less? Cheapskates spent a lot of money on hybrid cars
to save how little per month at the pump? We tend to think of
cheapskates as being one-dimensional, but the reality is that
they're an often dormant part of each of us. True, some clever
marketers will find ways to take unfair advantage of that; but
it's also true that a few good examples & clever advice in our
mutual coverage areas may actually produce some good both for &
as a result of this often-demeaned category.
I7 project: Beefy & less beefy
The I7 is something like cramming 4 Maseratis under the hood of a
VW Beetle. Its ability to run 8 threads across 4 cores while
directly addressing triplets of DDR3 memory & bringing other
previously external functionality on-chip while managing power
on 16 fronts is both amazing & welcome. Intel sent us two I7
processors for this project: one the 920 (2.66GHz), the other the
965 Extreme (3.2GHz). Either CPU will lend itself quite readily
to overclocking, but we won't be doing that. Like other recent
Intel processors, the I7 will slow down its clock rate to avoid
severe damage should overheating occur; the thermal design power
of the I7 is 130W. Since we've had some bad experiences with
overheating earlier when an active cooling solution failed, we
wanted to make sure we could identify several alternatives; we
have & will be reviewing them separately. We recognize that
throwing these numbers at you is something like trying to
describe the ride of a Rolls Royce by telling you about its
pistons; the only point we really want to make is that of the two
systems we're building, one starts out being about 20% faster
than the other. Will this make any real-world difference when we
fire up the simple combination of using Office applications while
doing HD video editing? That's what this entire multi-part series
is designed to report.
Special Report Bonus Review: Fellowes Body Glove for Bold
We think of Fellowes as a brand for office products, especially
desk accessories, but their new Body Glove line is more about
accessories for the gear you use when you leave your desk behind.
They sent us their new Body Glove Fitted Phone Case for the
BlackBerry 9000 Bold, specifically the snap-on hard case version
with a textured glove material outer lining & a felt-like inside
back panel. A clever arrangement fills an oval back cut-out with
either a flush plug or a knob; the knob slides onto a crafty
dual-purpose gizmo that can either be a rotating belt clip or
(when you flip open its kickstand) an easel-like angled mount
click-stops to keep the handset visible over a variety of slants.
As a protective solution, this is interesting & flexible, though
it makes the handset about 75% thicker, which tips the scale
against long-term comfortable use. Bottom line: the Fellowes Body
Glove Fitted Phone Case for the BlackBerry 9000 Bold is a
solid-feeling, nicely appointed protective case that offers more
than the usual variety of options for toting or resting the
phone; it's a classy way to stop bumps & bruises from making the
handset déclassé.
Special Report Bonus Review: 2 Anycom Bluetooth gizmos
When we asked Anycom for their car kits to review, a couple of
other Bluetooth gizmos slipped into the package. One is their
PM-400 Bluetooth Printer Adapter, which offers a choice of LPT or
USB connectors to attach a printer up to 30 feet away from the
Bluetooth-enabled desktop or notebook (SPP & HCRP profiles
supported) doing the printing & lets that happen without running
a cable between them. On the less geeky side of life, FIPO plugs
into any of the zillion pieces of audio gear designed to dock an
iPod to stream Bluetooth-connected audio & respond to shuttle
controls (A2DP & AVRCP profiles). Now you don't need an iPod to
take advantage of all those special added iPod support features
as long as you have a desktop, notebook, handheld or other piece
of Bluetooth gear ready to play your tunes. Bottom line: We like
the Bluetooth cleverness that Anycom displays in offering the
FIPO & the PM-400 Bluetooth Printer Adapter.
Special Report Bonus Review 3: T.R.U.E. cooler
One of the I7 (socket 1366) CPU cooler solutions we got in is
commonly called "T.R.U.E." because of its full name: Thermalright
Ultra-120 eXtreme. 6 heat pipes route through each side of the
thermal exchange block atop the CPU, then through a 4.25" stack
of 52 roughly (they're not rectangular) 2"x5" cooling fins,
spaced 2mm apart. Opposite corners of each fin are bent slightly
upward or downward, which helps promote a small amount of
third-dimension air flow. The bottom fin is 1.75" from the top of
the CPU, which helps clear whatever's underneath on the mother
board. There are both underside & top-side bracket elements to
help distribute the load of the 28.5-ounce fin array plus the
8.25-ounce companion 120mm fan (which comes with a clawed bracket
to attach to clamp onto the fin stack). When properly mounted,
the top of the fan bracket is at or just below the level of the
heat pipe terminations at the top of the fin array (any higher
could make closing the case a challenge). If you're old enough,
you may find this big stack of fins & fan reminiscent of coolers
coming through the hood in the old hot rod era. You don't have to
have had a lot of physics to recognize the solid thermodynamic
approach of this design & tests we've seen of previous
(pre-socket-1366) models always rank it in one or another of the
top 3 spots in cooling efficiency. Bottom line: We're impressed
with the design, construction & performance of the socket 1366
Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme (T.R.U.E.) cooling solution.
Special Report Bonus Review 4: Antec 1000W TruePower Quattro
Have you added anything to your PC since you bought it? Did you
upgrade the drives or the graphics card, populate one of the card
slots, add or upgrade an optical drive or the memory or plug
anything into an initially unpopulated USB port? Any one of these
little changes results in a change in loading on the system power
supply & swapping a power supply can become a fairly major
operation. Each of our I7 project systems uses an Antec 1000Watt
TruePower Quattro power supply. Out here in the maple sugar hills
east of Cleveland, the power lines don't always deliver at spec;
anything between 100-240VAC keeps these boys happy, but they
don't waste the juice, maintaining at least 80% energy efficiency
at 20-100% of load. The cables are sleeved (to help improve air
flow) & there are plenty of them: 9 for 4-pin hard drives or
other internal peripherals, 8 for SATA drives, 2 for floppy
drives, 1 ATX-12V, 2 PCIe-6+2, 2 PCIe, 1 EPS12V & a 20+4
motherboard connector. The PCIe & SATA power cables plug into
sockets on the power supply, so you don't have to populate cables
you're not using & you have the flexibility to change that later.
The Quattro in the product name comes, we assume, from the 4
separate 12VDC output rails; this arrangement keeps high
temporary loads (like when drive motors kick in) from having a
negative impact across an entire system. It's hard to imagine a
system - even with a quad-core CPU, multiple graphics cards & a
stack of drives - that this power supply can't take in stride. On
the other hand, when operations aren't demanding all that juice
all at once, we think it's nice that they made its fan speed
thermally aware, so it quiets down when there's less to huff &
puff about. Bottom line: the Antec 1000Watt TruePower Quattro
power supply cures all the frustrations we've ever had with
lesser supplies & adds clever, welcome touches of its own to both
its control over power & its cabled delivery of it.
Special Report Bonus Review 5: X-Pad Slim
If you were a kid in the Howdy Doody generation (if not, ask your
folks), one popular doodad of that era was the folding-leg metal
tray that let us slurp our soup in bed when we were sick, or
munch our Frosted Flakes in front of the cartoons on TV on a
Saturday morning. These days, the only thing likely to be on our
lap that isn't a kiddy or a kitty is a notebook PC with its own,
higher levels of body heat. A while back we looked at the Edova
Innovations X-Pad, a flat surface with raised corners that put
some air flow between the laptop & the lap. Now, it looks like
they sent that model to school to learn thermodynamics. The new
X-Pad Slim looks to be about 40% less thick (it's now just 0.5"
tall) & the corner risers now have both top & side venting for
even better airflow. It's also a little wider at 10.5"x14.5" so
typical 17" laptops fit just fine. The bottom has changed from a
felt-feel surface to a rubber-feel surface that's probably a bit
less likely to let something slip, though that's more likely to
happen because of whatever clothing covers your lap than because
of this tray. Bottom line: the new X-Pad Slim has enough
significant little improvements to warrant a look for folks who
don't like when their thighs start to cook.
When GoDaddy became No-Go, Daddy-o
The mystery arrives as we sent out last week's issue & got 17
bounce messages telling us that we were sending either viruses or
spamming; to confound the investigation, no 2 domains were the
same. All 17, it turns out, were GoDaddy domains. Their Director
of Abuse, Ben Butler, looked into it & reports that one of the
URLs we listed was linked to an IP showing up on the Spamhaus
black list (but removed from Spamhaus shortly after). We still
believe their action was unnecessarily intrusive into righteous &
legitimate communications & was escalated into a bad act when
they failed to include any identification of the GoDaddy role in
blocking it or any avenue of recourse in the bounce message their
system returns. We even suggested alternatives, like delaying
instead of blocking transmission so temporary Spamhaus listings
would be less intrusive, or breaking trigger URLs with a string
that says the URL is currently on a Spamhaus black list. So bad
marks to GoDaddy for their handling of our (your) e-mail & for
not identifying themselves or providing recourse in the bounce
messages, but good marks for being timely & candid in identifying
what happened & sharing it with us. We asked to be placed on a
permanent white list; we'll see if they comply. 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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