Entries for December 2007

Our two boys raked in the holiday presents. One gift in particular deserves mention in a tech column: Snap Circuits. The $30 kit does a masterful job of combining an educational toy, in this case an electronics hobby kit, with the ease of a color-coded puzzle. The result is that my 6-year-old is captivated with making things that flash, fly, and buzz. So much so that he hasn't asked for video or computer time. Thanks, Auntie, for the gift to him, and us.

Snap Circuits is the modern version of the kiddie electronic labs that were around when I was young. But it doesn't have wires, intimidating circuit boards, and—shudder—soldering guns. All the components instead get encased in color-coded plastic and, yes, snap together with ease.

The kit is aimed at kids age 8 and older; I doubt my 6-year-old is absorbing many of the concepts at work in this educational toy. But he's having fun and getting a sense that even he can make something electronic.

How long it holds his attention is to be seen. But the manual includes about 100 projects the kid can assemble without much help from us. And Elenco, the company based in Wheeling, Ill., that developed Snap Circuits, sells all sorts of upgrades. These include kits for making a radio-controlled car or a musical recorder. More cost, yes, but more distraction from screen time.

Two new breakthroughs in downloading entertainment, while seemingly independent, are closely related. They both swirl around the Apple iTunes store, the early leader in selling media across the Internet, which is desperately trying to maintain its hold.

Warner Music Group caved to market demands and said it will sell protection-free music for downloading from Amazon's new MP3 store, which is fast becoming a serious competitor to Apple's iTunes. But iTunes stands to get its own victory with reports that 20th Century Fox will rent its movies through the Apple store.

No other studio has agreed to rentals at iTunes, which has struggled to build a library of flicks to buy or rent. iTunes now has only about 500 movies for sale. Consumers prefer cheaper rentals for movies, which they usually watch only once. The lack of rentals has helped slow adoption of Apple TV, which links Internet entertainment to televisions. iTunes also fears being left out of the upcoming market for downloaded movies.

Hollywood seems more resistant to making deals with Steve Jobs, who has wanted to set terms for films much as he has maintained tight controls over prices for music at iTunes. Reports suggest that Fox is winning looser terms from Apple, which may announce details of the deal at its MacWorld conference in January.

Apple also needs video because it's beginning to lose its grip over music. The company's tight controls over music pricing have record labels looking for other outlets. But to join Amazon's fast-growing store, Warner had to agree to sell music without copy protection. Amazon already sells more than 2 million songs from other labels without the restrictions. As late as February, Warner execs had said they would maintain copy protections on downloadable music. But a continued slide in music sales has the industry willing to try new things, especially if they're outside iTunes.

Getting a little space from the PC is a good goal. The $100 Q-Bean-U from LTB provides it, with a wireless audio receiver and a microphone that hangs around your neck. It also delivers some disappointments.

I've not seen anything else with the Q-Bean's aspirations. It allows you to roam a good 30 feet from the PC, all the time getting good-quality sound pumped to the included ear buds. The Q-Bean's buttons also pause, resume play, and skip forward or backward in a playlist—all of which works pretty well.

But the Q-Bean gets more ambitious with its microphone. With a little added futzing on the set-up, you can pause the music and answer a Skype phone call as you roam. That's nifty, full of promise, and maybe justifies the $100 price tag. But the Skype feature didn't always work, sending me running to the PC to catch some calls that I could hear ringing away. And while I could usually hang up a call wirelessly, there was no way to restart the music without returning to the PC.

The Q-Bean itself is about the size and shape of a small chicken egg and hangs off the ear buds. The included buds work well, though they come with a cord so short that the Q-Bean awkwardly dangles at chest level. A standard jack will accept other buds or headphones.

The Q-Bean connects wirelessly to a transmitter that plugs into the computer. Basic set-up was easy on Windows XP, though I couldn't get it to work on a PC running Vista, which the device is supposed to support (as well as Macs). And don't look to the manual or the product's site for much help—documentation and support are minimal.

Overall, the Q-Bean seems overpriced for a wireless pair of ear buds with a few music controls, or it's a more ambitious two-way communicator with too many rough edges.

Here's a lesser-known advantage that LCD televisions have over plasma: It's usually easier to hook an LCD TV to a computer. While LCDs have a long history as monitors for laptops and desktops, plasmas weren't designed to work with PCs and can be a hassle to set up.

So far, it has not been a big issue because only a small percentage of homes has tried to connect a TV to a computer, which hobbyists call an HTPC, for Home Theater PC. It will get more important as Hollywood productions increasingly move to the Web.

All kinds of devices have tried to bridge the gap between PCs in the den and the HDTV in the living room. All have shortcomings. I thought it might be better to hook an inexpensive PC directly to the HDTV. I'd get a roll-my-own TiVo for recording television programs and be able to download all sorts of entertainment from the Web.

Months later, I'm still fiddling with the setup. The first hassle was getting the PC to even work with our 42-inch plasma. It required a new video card that could output a high-definition signal. Even then, I had to download a geeky, $30 piece of software called PowerStrip to tweak the output to look best on the plasma.

I haven't tested one, but LCD televisions are said to work nicely with PCs. That's one more small advantage in the flat-panel fight, and one that could prove more important over time.

It turns out that not all television stations are switching to digital in early 2009. And it will be tricky for consumers to still see the signals of thousands of specialty stations that aren't ready for the switch.

Nearly 3,000 stations operate under different rules than the 1,700 full-power stations that provide the most-popular broadcasts. The low-power broadcasters typically aim their programming at religious and minority groups. A few also host shopping or civic channels.

More analysts agree that the steep discounting in DRAM prices is just about over. And at least some think the coming jump in prices could be steep. That reinforces the notion that now's the time to fill a PC with RAM, which can make a huge difference in running Windows Vista and Macintosh Leopard.

The volatile chip market saw prices quickly jump after previous price collapses, say market trackers at Dramexchange. Prices for DRAM—for dynamic random access memory—plummeted in the year after the Internet bubble burst and the 2001 terrorist attacks. But once they hit bottom, they tripled in a matter of months. Prices also crumbled in 1998 because of overproduction. But after hitting bottom, prices doubled in less than three months.

DRAM prices seem to be stabilizing, Dramexchange analysts say. Demand appears to be picking up in western countries, including those in North America, and chipmakers have cut production. They can't make money at today's prices, which don't even cover the carrying costs of the factories themselves.

Still, nobody expects prices to rebound to last year's levels. Near the end of 2006, a 1-gigabyte stick of DRAM sold for more than $100. Even if today's price of $25 triples, it'll be lower than a year ago. It just won't be as cheap as today.

I'm a fan of backing up files to the Internet using services like those offered by MediaMax or Fabrik. Those are general services designed to protect songs and pictures that you choose.

A different, intriguing approach is a program that backs itself up online. Intuit, for one, offers a service that preserves your Quicken financial data on professionally managed servers. It's cheap—only $10 a year—and will even back up data from another Intuit program, Home Inventory Manager, which catalogs home possessions.

Broader systems like MediaMax are great. But they take planning, forethought, and some discipline. The Quicken system is more foolproof, asking to copy its files each time the program shuts down. I've seen some hiccups; Quicken sometimes can't connect to the backup service. But it's targeted and provides its own discipline.

Maybe a similar Apple service could back up the music I've stored in iTunes. But it would probably be costly, judging from a service that Adobe offers for photos, which would cost me hundreds of dollars a year.

And it would be confusing with a collection of backup accounts to sift through after disaster. But until Microsoft makes Windows smart enough to automatically find and back up all my crucial data, more programs should offer to protect themselves.

More cellphones can now lead us precisely to our destination, thanks to cheap chips that talk to navigation satellites. So will we dump all the navigation gear that is a hot-selling item this holiday season? Not soon, analysts agree.

There's no beating the bigger screens on stand-alone GPS, says Caroline Chow, a market analyst at Canalys. The bigger screens on what the industry calls "personal navigation devices" make directions easier to follow and easier to access than on a cell's small display. And navigation is simpler on PNDs because that's their primary purpose. The benefits outweigh the costs, especially with today's prices crashing below $100 for starter PND models. "I'm amazed at how low they're selling these things," she says.

Device makers like Garmin, TomTom, and Mio have done a great job at making a complicated function—navigation—simple to use, says Richard Robinson, a market analyst at iSuppli. "PNDs currently enjoy very high user-satisfaction ratings," he wrote in a recent report. The device makers need to guard that advantage over cellphones and not add too many extra functions, such as viewing digital pics and videos.

Cell companies also collect a monthly fee for navigation and sometimes charge for airtime, Robinson wrote. Those fees confuse and discourage consumers, who like the simplicity of the one-time charge for a dedicated navigation device. In short, while GPS-enabled phones pose a threat, all signs point to a growing market for PNDs.

Microsoft has decided the lowly keyboard can have glam. The company best known for software also produces gadgets, most notably mice and keyboards. The latest Microsoft keyboard is sleek, silver, and it sparkles. It's all dolled up to slip out of the den and into your living room.

But most important, the Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 ($300) just works. Out of the box. No futzing or fiddling. That's different from my other experiences with Bluetooth wireless gear from Microsoft, which seemed iffy even after twiddling. The 8000 model comes with a dedicated Bluetooth transmitter that's part of a recharging station and automatically connects to the keyboard and accompanying mouse. Microsoft thinks enough of the ability to give it a name: "First Connect Technology."

Then comes the fun. As the lights go down for the home theater, small lights come up behind the keys. It's a nice innovation, if aimed at a small market. The keyboard is part of Microsoft's efforts to sell "Media Center PCs" as the hub of home entertainment, which only a small slice of American homes have tried.

A special key calls up the Media Center, and others control playback, recording, and pause. The keyboard includes a pad that acts as a mouse, as most couches don't have a flat surface for mousing. The keyboard and mouse run off batteries that recharge on the docking station, which also adds USB ports for other devices.

It adds up to a useful and attractive package, if an overly expensive one. But at least this date isn't too chic to also work.

The little black box next to my TV dispensed more of its magic this weekend. Vudu delivered a high-definition movie over the Internet, instantly and without stammering. It's an impressive feat for the online service. Delivering HD over the Internet is difficult and costly.

So far, Vudu is offering only three high-def movies—the Bourne trilogy—out of its 5,000 titles. But this makes the service all the more beguiling. Vudu already did the best job yet of simply and consistently delivering DVD-quality commercial video over the Internet. I've had the luxury of testing the Vudu service for about a month now, and I'm charmed.

Still, I'm not sure I'm ready to pay the $400 for the box. It holds the movies hostage on the one box: I can watch the flick elsewhere only if I detach Vudu and take it with me. That seems particularly limiting when "buying" a movie for $20, or $25 for the latest Bourne feature. Buying a DVD can be cheaper and a lot more flexible. Also, too many of the offerings are independent or even foreign flicks that I'd not heard of.

That said, I've not had trouble finding something to watch. And now I can, at least occasionally, even watch in glorious HD.

I feel wistful that CompUSA is going out of business. The shutdown doesn't directly affect me. The company had already closed its stores near us, as it struggled to regain footing in the tough market for retail electronics. And it's easy to see that a shop focused on PCs and PC parts would face fierce competition from all the other retailers now in the market, including office, discount, and electronics big boxes.

But what seems to have killed CompUSA was the Internet. I now do almost all my shopping for PCs and PC parts on the Web. The selection is vast and the prices low. Still, and in a touch of irony that comes too late for CompUSA, online superstar Dell is now moving to retail stores to sell its computers.

CompUSA was still SoftWarehouse, a single store in the Dallas suburbs, when I found it in the mid-1980s. A local PC columnist had written that it was the one store that allowed shoppers to read the manuals for software before buying. The company would open one box of software for perusal. And all the employees must have spent downtime reading the manuals. Their advice helped get me started with PCs. They knew their stuff.

That had changed long before CompUSA's final demise. Clerks there didn't know much more than those at Circuit City or Best Buy do. Now we just hope for a bit of last-minute comparison pricing at the store. We do our research online, which has its advantages. But gabbing at SoftWarehouse was fun.

Scarcity also means opportunity. Sites that are helping consumers track the elusive Wii game console are taking different tacks to making money, and some, if not all, are in it for the long haul. For example, iTrackr.com plans a major upgrade to its site after the holiday season, says founder John Rizzo.

Rizzo hopes to make iTrackr that missing online link between consumers and brick-and-mortar stores. The site's nine employees have built software "spiders" that crawl the sites of retailers, such as Target and Gamespot, checking inventory for Wiis and other products. "We're basically a search engine," he says.

Once through the busy holiday season, the site will add tools to enable consumers to set up their own groups for sharing info—and to do it all from mobile phones as well. Like so many others, the site hopes to build traffic to eventually make money from advertising. Rizzo figures it can be lucrative, as ads can target consumers who've already said what they're shopping for. Advertisers have lost interest in shotgun advertising, he says: "We offer the sniper approach."

So far, Rizzo has funded the site from family and friends, but he hopes to raise his first venture capital next year. And while Wiis have attracted hordes of traffic, the site already covers iPhones, PlayStations, and other coveted goods that often sell out at stores—and it will add others when opportunities arise. Scarcity, it seems, never goes away. As Beanie Babies and Tamagotchi pets can tell you, it just moves to other products.

While iTunes and its sales model still dominate digital music, the record labels appear to be serious about moving to subscription services. Nokia this week announced that some of its phones will access a new subscription service that will be free for a year and that consumers can download all the music they want. And it appears to be the first example of a new business model pushed by execs at Universal Music, a leading record label.

The music industry hopes subscriptions will prove more profitable than downloads as it adjusts to a digital world. Subscriptions remain just a slice of the money spent on digital music—maybe a fifth of the $1 billion being spent this year getting tunes over the Internet. Most of the subscription share has come from monthly fees paid by consumers to services like Rhapsody.

In the deal with Nokia, Universal Music is apparently getting a hefty fee upfront, which presumably will be reflected in the cost of the phones. Consumers in turn get all-you-can-eat music. That's the approach advocated by Universal execs in talks with other record labels. And from comments coming from other music studios, you can expect some of them to sign on with Nokia.

Users can even keep the music they've downloaded on their Nokia phones or PCs. But it can't be loaded onto other music players, at least not yet. Under Universal's plan, the makers of those music players would first need to pay a fee to the labels.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has so far resisted the music industry's pressure to start a subscriptionlike service for iTunes, preferring to allow consumers to pick and choose which songs they want to buy. But Universal's pitch may catch on with other music players trying to find a new way to compete with iPods. If it does, it'll be interesting to see if Apple eventually dances to the labels' new tune.

Apple TV isn't alone in struggling to find a market. The computerlike box is designed to link the living room TV to PCs and even the Internet. It's a field where many have gone and many have failed. A big part of the problem is home networking, particularly wireless. It's too hard to get machines talking together.

But just as difficult is the message. Consumers don't understand what these boxes do. For that matter, there are many kinds with different functions. Some, for example, like the Apple TV, have hard drives that hold entertainment locally. Others operate without a hard drive, streaming songs and videos from a PC.

And nobody can even agree on what to call them. A popular choice is "digital media adapter," says Joyce Putscher, an analyst who tracks home networking for In-Stat. "Digital media" refers to the files, and "adapter" suggests the translation between the digital world of PCs and the analog world of a TV's pictures and sound.

Maybe. Still seems too techie a term for me. But perhaps it isn't as bad as calling a consumer product a "home server."