RUNBO
A company called Runbo has introduced a pair of ugly but rugged Android smartphones that also double as walkie-talkie radios. Check out the demo at Engadget.
TING
MVNO wireless provider Ting (they use Sprint's network) is offering to reimburse new customers the cost of early termination fees when they switch from their old provider. Just make sure their coverage area fits your needs. One of the things I keep hearing about MVNOs who lease another carrier's network is that while you'll have access to the bigger carrier's own towers (in this case, Sprint's), you may or may not be able to access towers that the bigger carrier uses via roaming agreements with other companies. So again, make sure you're in the MVNO's coverage map before you switch.
GOOGLE READER
If you have a Google account and routinely visit news websites for updated content, there's an easier way than sifting through each website's home page for new articles. Set up a Google Reader account, then enter the URLs of the news websites you visit via the Add Subscription button. Reader will automatically search your list of websites for new content, where you can read all of the articles from one central location. It's also compatible with some great 3rd party smartphone apps.
CNET SCANDAL
Cnet reporter Greg Sandoval resigned recently due to a controversy involving parent company CBS. Following the recent 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Cnet staffers voted to give Dish Network's Hopper the 'Best Of Show' award. Apparently, CBS didn't like the idea of the award going to a company with which they're involved in a legal battle but forgot to mention this to Cnet management until after the awards had already been decided.
I have in the past relied on Cnet's reviews when shopping for tech gear. I suppose now I'll have to do some additional homework to determine whether Cnet editors' product ratings have been affected by litigation between the manufacturer and CBS.
2013/01/10
iMD, Mpowerd, Private WiFi, AutoRip...
iMD has a feature-rich, high-tech filing cabinet which among other things, uses LEDs in lieu of labels to identify folders. Apparently the cabinet is controlled by a smartphone app. Many cool features if you don't mind paying $2,000 for a filing cabinet!
A company called Mpowerd is selling a $16 collapsible, solar lantern that charges in six hours and outputs up to 12 hours of light depending on the chosen brightness setting.
An app called Private WiFi is now available for smartphones and PCs that allows you to tunnel through their VPN service when using public Wi-Fi. Rates for the iOS app appear to be $1.99 for 1 GB and $7.99 for 10 GB. I can't speak to the quality of the service but be careful what you do over open Wi-Fi networks.
If you bought a CD from Amazon in the last 12 years, you may be entitled to a free copy of the album in MP3 format. Not sure that the AutoRip service applies to every CD ever sold by Amazon but apparently the selection is quite large. I guess there's demand for a service like this but what I'd really like to see is a way to trade in cassettes and LPs for the same album in MP3 or FLAC format. Maybe $1-$2 per album? Not holding my breath for that one.
Black and Decker has brought cordless screwdrivers into the 21st century with a model called Gyro. The more you twist the drill, the faster the bit turns. Just check it out.
Celluon has a gadget called the Magic Cube that somehow uses "friggin laser beams" to project a virtual keyboard and trackpad onto nearly any flat surface. The rechargeable battery is rated just shy of three hours and connects via USB or Bluetooth. I'm almost willing to pay the $150 asking price for the WOW factor alone, but if this thing could give you a mouse pointer on an iOS device, I'd order one in a heartbeat!
A company called Mpowerd is selling a $16 collapsible, solar lantern that charges in six hours and outputs up to 12 hours of light depending on the chosen brightness setting.
An app called Private WiFi is now available for smartphones and PCs that allows you to tunnel through their VPN service when using public Wi-Fi. Rates for the iOS app appear to be $1.99 for 1 GB and $7.99 for 10 GB. I can't speak to the quality of the service but be careful what you do over open Wi-Fi networks.
If you bought a CD from Amazon in the last 12 years, you may be entitled to a free copy of the album in MP3 format. Not sure that the AutoRip service applies to every CD ever sold by Amazon but apparently the selection is quite large. I guess there's demand for a service like this but what I'd really like to see is a way to trade in cassettes and LPs for the same album in MP3 or FLAC format. Maybe $1-$2 per album? Not holding my breath for that one.
Black and Decker has brought cordless screwdrivers into the 21st century with a model called Gyro. The more you twist the drill, the faster the bit turns. Just check it out.
Celluon has a gadget called the Magic Cube that somehow uses "friggin laser beams" to project a virtual keyboard and trackpad onto nearly any flat surface. The rechargeable battery is rated just shy of three hours and connects via USB or Bluetooth. I'm almost willing to pay the $150 asking price for the WOW factor alone, but if this thing could give you a mouse pointer on an iOS device, I'd order one in a heartbeat!
2013/01/09
Tethercell and iUSBport
One interesting prototype from CES'13 is something called the Tethercell. Basically, it's a piece of plastic shaped like a AA battery that contains both a Bluetooth control chip and a place to insert a AAA battery. The idea is that after inserting a smaller AAA into into its belly, the Tethercell gets inserted into any gadget that accepts AAs, allowing you to use your smartphone to remotely supply or kill power to said gadget. The obvious concern here is the slightly lower battery life of substituting a AAA for a AA battery. Also, what percentage of the AAA's power gets used up by the embedded Bluetooth circuitry itself? The original report suggests it be used to remotely shut off an annoying toy such as a Furby but the possibilities are endless. Fortunately, it sounds like the Tethercell has a pretty good chance of hitting production lines, with price estimates of $10-$20 being thrown around.
A company called Hyper is updating its wireless storage accessory with additional options and name changes. Renamed iUSBport, you'll now be able to choose from three different models, depending on your needs. Think of it as a battery powered Wi-Fi router that allows you to connect to your external hard drive and stream the drive's contents to your smartphone, tablet or computer. It's essentially a Seagate Goflex Satellite but with more options and features.
A company called Hyper is updating its wireless storage accessory with additional options and name changes. Renamed iUSBport, you'll now be able to choose from three different models, depending on your needs. Think of it as a battery powered Wi-Fi router that allows you to connect to your external hard drive and stream the drive's contents to your smartphone, tablet or computer. It's essentially a Seagate Goflex Satellite but with more options and features.
2013/01/08
Improving Display Quality
That last post regarding the Lenovo IdeaPad got me thinking about something that has been a burr under my saddle for close to a year now: PC/tablet display technology.
The problem I have is that both Apple and Microsoft have taken operating systems that were clearly designed to look best on 15"+ displays and shoe-horned them onto small laptops to the point that you're forced to strain your eyes to even see what you're doing. Sure, you can lower the screen resolution but that just makes everything blurry. You can also (in some cases) increase the DPI scale but then you run into issues with third party app compatibility.
I haven't had a chance to demo Windows RT or 8 so maybe this is a problem Microsoft has attempted to address, but I can honestly say that it's still a problem with Apple's hardware.
For example, if you measure the screen width and height of both the iPad and the 11" MacBook Air, the numbers are very close. For some reason though (most likely related to the touch-interface), Apple has decided that the Mac OS is not suited for use on a tablet. I would argue there's an even better reason why a tablet would need its own OS.
Case in point: I don't normally hold a laptop screen as close to my face as I would a tablet and I'm guessing most other people don't either. And while the iPad is designed to be held closer to your face, its OS consists of big buttons and fairly large text. The 11" Air on the other hand, runs exactly the same OS found on the 27" iMac. Beginning to see the problem?
As an experiment I cut cardboard templates to match roughly the height and width measurements of both the 11" Air and the 27" iMac.
I measured the distance that a laptop's screen would normally sit from my face - about 22".
I then jammed a yardstick through the Air's template, slid the template in to the 22" mark on the stick, then held the zero end of the yardstick up to my face.
While holding the contraption in this position, I began walking toward the iMac's template which was taped to the wall. As soon as the Air's template barely covered the iMac's from view, I stopped and guesstimated the distance between the iMac template and my face. The distance was at least 10" beyond the 36" yardstick!
So to my eyes, the MacBook Air's 11" screen (while sitting in my lap or on my desk) looks roughly the same size as a 27" iMac at 45-50" away!
But here's my point: aside from maybe watching a movie, who the heck sits 45-50" away from their monitor - even when it's a big 27-incher? So why do we tolerate small-screen laptops running desktop OSes, that provide the equivalent experience of trying to work on a desktop PC from four feet away?
Apple has proven with iOS that they are capable of building a very usable OS that works well on devices with small displays. The question is, why haven't they incorporated a more powerful version of iOS into their sub-15" MacBooks? It's clear that Apple, Microsoft and Google all feel that a desktop OS has no place on tablets and smartphones. I would simply add that for comfort and eye health, it has no place on a sub-15" laptop either.
Of course much of this is subjective but the fact that these guys are giving separate operating systems to tablets that have screens nearly identical in size to their smallest laptops opens the door for criticism in my opinion. And the march toward high pixel density displays seems in some ways like trying to slap a band-aid over a bullet wound. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that pricey, battery-draining high density displays like Apple's Retina technology might not be so essential if the design of the OS interface didn't require us to squint, strain and get so close to the monitor that individual pixels stuck out like sore thumbs.
The problem I have is that both Apple and Microsoft have taken operating systems that were clearly designed to look best on 15"+ displays and shoe-horned them onto small laptops to the point that you're forced to strain your eyes to even see what you're doing. Sure, you can lower the screen resolution but that just makes everything blurry. You can also (in some cases) increase the DPI scale but then you run into issues with third party app compatibility.
I haven't had a chance to demo Windows RT or 8 so maybe this is a problem Microsoft has attempted to address, but I can honestly say that it's still a problem with Apple's hardware.
For example, if you measure the screen width and height of both the iPad and the 11" MacBook Air, the numbers are very close. For some reason though (most likely related to the touch-interface), Apple has decided that the Mac OS is not suited for use on a tablet. I would argue there's an even better reason why a tablet would need its own OS.
Case in point: I don't normally hold a laptop screen as close to my face as I would a tablet and I'm guessing most other people don't either. And while the iPad is designed to be held closer to your face, its OS consists of big buttons and fairly large text. The 11" Air on the other hand, runs exactly the same OS found on the 27" iMac. Beginning to see the problem?
As an experiment I cut cardboard templates to match roughly the height and width measurements of both the 11" Air and the 27" iMac.
I measured the distance that a laptop's screen would normally sit from my face - about 22".
I then jammed a yardstick through the Air's template, slid the template in to the 22" mark on the stick, then held the zero end of the yardstick up to my face.
While holding the contraption in this position, I began walking toward the iMac's template which was taped to the wall. As soon as the Air's template barely covered the iMac's from view, I stopped and guesstimated the distance between the iMac template and my face. The distance was at least 10" beyond the 36" yardstick!
So to my eyes, the MacBook Air's 11" screen (while sitting in my lap or on my desk) looks roughly the same size as a 27" iMac at 45-50" away!
But here's my point: aside from maybe watching a movie, who the heck sits 45-50" away from their monitor - even when it's a big 27-incher? So why do we tolerate small-screen laptops running desktop OSes, that provide the equivalent experience of trying to work on a desktop PC from four feet away?
Apple has proven with iOS that they are capable of building a very usable OS that works well on devices with small displays. The question is, why haven't they incorporated a more powerful version of iOS into their sub-15" MacBooks? It's clear that Apple, Microsoft and Google all feel that a desktop OS has no place on tablets and smartphones. I would simply add that for comfort and eye health, it has no place on a sub-15" laptop either.
Of course much of this is subjective but the fact that these guys are giving separate operating systems to tablets that have screens nearly identical in size to their smallest laptops opens the door for criticism in my opinion. And the march toward high pixel density displays seems in some ways like trying to slap a band-aid over a bullet wound. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that pricey, battery-draining high density displays like Apple's Retina technology might not be so essential if the design of the OS interface didn't require us to squint, strain and get so close to the monitor that individual pixels stuck out like sore thumbs.
Ion, Lenovo, Trackdot, HP
Ion now has a portable document scanner capable of saving scans to iOS and Android. They had me at 'portable scanner' but lost me at '$180'.
A company called GlobaTrac is showing off a device called Trakdot that you stick in your luggage to locate your bags. It uses cellular triangulation instead of GPS and is estimated to last two weeks on two AAs. The device itself will cost $50 + $9 activation fee and run $13/year for service. The devil's in the details but methinks this thing combined with a soldering iron, velcro and universal charger from Radio Shack might just make a decent poor man's LoJack.
The details on the HP Pocket Playlist are still fuzzy but it sounds as if when combined with PC software and a subscription to a service called PlayLater, it allows you to download Netflix and Hulu videos to this gadget and stream them to Wi-Fi capable devices for later viewing. It's a great idea in theory but you gotta wonder, if Netflix and Hulu didn't mind us downloading copies of their content for offline viewing, why wouldn't they just build the option into their own apps like Rhapsody does with its music service? $129 for a gadget and $5/month is a lot of money to invest in something that may or may not have the blessing of Netflix or Hulu, let alone the studios that own the content itself. Early adopters beware!
Lenovo is pulling out all the stops this CES. The IdeaPad Yoga 11S convertible touchscreen laptop will be available in June, starting at $799. It'll have a full blown laptop processor running Windows 8. 1600x900 screen resolution, 0.68" thick, 8 GB RAM, and 128 GB SSD.
A company called GlobaTrac is showing off a device called Trakdot that you stick in your luggage to locate your bags. It uses cellular triangulation instead of GPS and is estimated to last two weeks on two AAs. The device itself will cost $50 + $9 activation fee and run $13/year for service. The devil's in the details but methinks this thing combined with a soldering iron, velcro and universal charger from Radio Shack might just make a decent poor man's LoJack.
The details on the HP Pocket Playlist are still fuzzy but it sounds as if when combined with PC software and a subscription to a service called PlayLater, it allows you to download Netflix and Hulu videos to this gadget and stream them to Wi-Fi capable devices for later viewing. It's a great idea in theory but you gotta wonder, if Netflix and Hulu didn't mind us downloading copies of their content for offline viewing, why wouldn't they just build the option into their own apps like Rhapsody does with its music service? $129 for a gadget and $5/month is a lot of money to invest in something that may or may not have the blessing of Netflix or Hulu, let alone the studios that own the content itself. Early adopters beware!
Lenovo is pulling out all the stops this CES. The IdeaPad Yoga 11S convertible touchscreen laptop will be available in June, starting at $799. It'll have a full blown laptop processor running Windows 8. 1600x900 screen resolution, 0.68" thick, 8 GB RAM, and 128 GB SSD.
2013/01/04
Tips For Using A Windows Keyboard With A Mac
If you use a Windows-based USB keyboard with a Mac, here's some good tips for reassigning certain keys.
Cnet: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57561916-263/how-to-customize-modifier-keys-in-os-x/
Cnet: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57561916-263/how-to-customize-modifier-keys-in-os-x/
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