Entries for January 2008

Forget the holidays. It's Sunday's Super Bowl that drives the most sales of HDTVs. The big game will have moved about 2.4 million high-definition sets into homes, according to research from an electronics trade group.

Perhaps more interesting, nearly half of viewers will use a PC or cellphone to check stats on the Internet, says the survey by the Consumer Electronics Association. That helps justify TV makers who are adding Web connections to their sets.

The problem is that TVs themselves are already too complicated. About 20 percent of people buying HDTVs don't get a high-def signal but think they do, according to another survey by Leichtman Research Group. They'll actually be watching the bowl in standard definition, which can sometimes look worse on a HDTV than it does on the old tube. That's got to lead to a lot of grumbling.

But if you think TV is already getting too complicated, just wait until the Web mucks with it.

Garmin isn't taking any chances. While some analysts argue that navigation on a cellphone won't replace dedicated GPS receivers, Garmin has decided to make its own cellphone. It's a big shift for Garmin, the biggest U.S. seller of standalone navigation devices.

The company's nüvifone is an answer to the rush to add GPS capability to cellphones. The new Garmin phone combines the navigation capability of its nuvi line of GPS receivers with a phone and Web browser. Users will navigate the device almost entirely through its 3.5-inch touch-screen, making comparisons to the iPhone inevitable.

But unlike the iPhone, which has no GPS chip, the nüvifone is first about navigation. Plug it into its dashboard holder, and the device returns to its mapping roots. The nüvifone automatically pulls up its navigation menu and turns on the speakerphone.

Garmin didn't discuss price or which carriers might offer the phone when it goes on sale sometime in the fall.

Step back and relax a bit. Using a microscope will no longer require hunchbacked peering, thanks to an LCD-equipped model due soon from Celestron. A 3.5-inch screen replaces the eyepiece, making it more comfortable to use. Plus, it's easier to share the experience with family or classmates.

It's otherwise a traditional compound microscope that uses slides to hold specimens and lenses to magnify them up to 400 times. That puts it in the range of basic lab models with power to see detail at the cellular level. It's more than enough to gross out a kid sister with germs from her spit.

The scope's $300 price tag is about twice the cost of a similar model without the LCD. But the extra money also buys a built-in, 2-megapixel digital camera and a USB cable for transferring images to a PC. Or you can just save them to a memory card.

Celestron says a 4x digital zoom can magnify images to the equivalent of 1,600 times. But I imagine a digital zoom is no more useful on a microscope than on a digital camera, where it simply enlarges a portion of the image. It doesn't add detail.

Celestron says the new microscope goes on sale sometime in late February or early March.

The most successful entertainment premiere ever wasn't a movie. No, Microsoft laid claim to that title with the much-publicized release of its latest Halo video game, which sold more than $170 million worth the day it was released in September.

But it turns out the most successful video game introduced last year was from competitor Activision. The fourth release in its Call of Duty series has sold more than 7 million copies since November. It has helped that the game can be played on more than one console, unlike Halo, which is for Microsoft's Xbox only.

But Call of Duty also won the market because, well, it was simply better than Halo and competitors, say folks who've tried these games. Halo got people excited with its multiplayer possibilities, and other games had better looks or more innovation, blogs Darren Waters at BBC: "But Call of Duty 4's commitment to excellence across almost every aspect of the game makes its success very much deserved."

Most folks seem ready to celebrate that the format war is over for the next generation of DVD players, the high-definition battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray. I'm not so sure it is, nor that it would be a good thing, at least not yet.

The competition has gotten prices down. Player prices would be much higher if Toshiba hadn't made it a price war, as well as a format war. That's Toshiba's best shot at keeping HD DVD alive. It's losing ground on content, a point soundly reinforced when Warner Bros. recently dumped HD DVD for Sony's Blu-ray format.

If Blu-ray prevails, sales volume would eventually get the price of those players out of the clouds. But I'd bet that competition works faster. I hope Toshiba sticks around for another year or so.

Maybe VIA Technologies will get some respect, now that the computing world is going green. The chipmaker has mostly been a niche player with its low-power microprocessors, which are the central brains in personal computers. Its chips don't try to compete with the bruisers from Intel and AMD.

VIA's chips instead emphasize low energy and low heat. They've been featured in tiny PCs that look like toasters and model cars—the work of hobbyists with too much time on their hands.

The company's chips turn out surprising oomph for their miserly demands. But they haven't packed enough power for most consumers, or at least for PC makers. So VIA is staking its claim on a new generation announced today that it says will outperform upcoming chips from Intel, which is targeting mobile computing.

Only time and testing will tell. But give VIA credit for understanding low power before the big boys did.

Corrected on 1/29/08: An earlier version of this blog post said making Vumber calls requires pushing 20 buttons, including a security code. When calling from certain phones, the security code is not necessarily required.

Dating these days can be a scary process, from what this married man reads. Those psycho stalker dates make the most dramatic case for throwaway phone numbers now available from a couple of services, including one that officially launched this week called Vumber.

The numbers also have strong appeal to us nondaters. They can add a layer of privacy when, for example, selling something through a classified ad.

Vumber gives you a number that will ring whatever landline or cellphone you choose. The monthly $5 charge (which will be going to $10 sometime later) includes voicemail and the ability to change numbers. The first three changes come free of charge, and later switches each cost $2.

Especially cool: You can use the same number to make calls. Recipients don't see your real number on their caller ID.

The company originally expected the numbers to be temporary. But it turns out that in beta testing, the numbers have proved sticky with users, says CEO Cliff Wener: "Unless you've got somebody stalking you, you're going to keep the number."

On the downside, making calls can mean pushing at least 20 buttons—your "vumber" and then the number you're calling, plus a security code. And there's no way to cut off just the creeps. You have to change your vumber and alert everyone you gave it to.

But Vumber works as advertised. It's easy protection for when you're selling something in an ad—especially if that something is you.

I've thought of the iPod Touch as a bigger version of its media-playing siblings. Apple, it seems, has larger plans. The Touch is more than a video and music player. It's also more than an iPhone without the phone. It's a new "platform" that will carry all kinds of programs to come, Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook said in a call with analysts yesterday about the company's earnings.

The device is also carrying a lot of Apple's hopes, apparently. Cook said the Touch should become "the very first mainstream WiFi mobile platform." So maybe the Touch is Apple's answer to the Ultra Mobile PCs that are hitting the Windows market.

Pushed by Microsoft, Intel, and Samsung, UMPCs are hand-helds that run full-blown Windows. Their portability is an obvious appeal, but they seem awkward to me. Maybe I'm intimidated at the idea of shrinking a sophisticated computer.

The Touch in many ways is the same thing—running the same operating system as its desktop Macintoshes. But Apple markets it differently. It's just expanding a simple iPod. It's turning a music player into more. Seems friendlier, and something more of us could ease into.

With laptops selling faster than desktops, it's clear that a lot of us are scrunching over keyboards on the run. The simple and inexpensive ($40) Cricket Laptop Stand could help save a few neck aches.

When the Cricket goes on sale next month, its best selling point will be its simplicity. Three bars unfold to form a tripod, with two grasping the laptop and the third boosting the PC into the air a bit. The pivot that holds the three arms together makes it easy to adjust the height, and rubberized ends make it feel secure and rugged.

Best of all, the Cricket folds into a small package that's about 8 inches long and a couple of inches wide—plenty small enough to throw into a laptop bag.

That's all good. But you'll need to add the weight of a keyboard and a mouse to plug in. The keyboard, in particular, is too awkward to use when a laptop gets propped at an upward angle. An extra keyboard and mouse add to the cost. But the Cricket is a simple and flexible laptop stand at a reasonable price, and a little pain in the pocketbook is better than one in the neck.

Seeing a robot in action can often be a little eerie at first. So that feeling shouldn't have surprised me when Gibson did a demo of its self-tuning guitar at the recent Consumer Electronics Show. After all, the company calls it a "robot guitar."

But it's weird to see those little tuners spin on their own. The new Gibson Robot went on sale last month and quickly sold out its initial run at $2,500 each. The company has obviously touched a nerve with musicians tired of tuning.

The guitar comes with seven preset tunings, although it's easy to program your own. Then, turn an added knob on the Les Paul electric guitar, and the tuners start spinning, back and forth. After a few seconds, lights flash to announce the instrument is ready to play.

Some purists have complained that it would appeal only to lazy and sloppy musicians. Gibson says the buyers are people who like to use a number of tunings for different songs, branching beyond the tried-and-true EADGBE. I'm no musician, so I'm not even sure what that means. But the Gibson Robot seems to let musicians get past the mundane and spend more time in the creative. Like any good robot.

Netflix dropped a nice little surprise in my E-mail inbox this morning: The company no longer limits the video I can stream over the Web. Thank you, Netflix, and thank you, Apple.

The move is an obvious counter by Netflix to stronger competition from Apple. At the annual Macworld conference, Apple CEO Steve Jobs today said the company would revive the moribund Apple TV with a software upgrade. Now users can stream video directly from the iTunes online store without a PC.

More important, iTunes will finally get video rentals, some in high definition. Jobs confirmed long-rumored pacts with Hollywood studios that will put 1,000 movies into iTunes that will rent for $4 each, and those available in HD will go for $5. Plus, he's dropping the price of Apple TV to $230.

Now I'm tempted to get an Apple TV. The box hadn't much interested me because iTunes offered just a couple hundred TV shows and movies, and the movies were for sale only.

But I've already got a PC hooked up to my big-screen TV. And Netflix lets me stream movies and TV free, as part of my monthly membership—now with no time limits. I suddenly sense a disorienting wealth of choices.

Green was in the air at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where just about every major manufacturer talked about the products using less energy and hazardous materials. But it was the smaller start-ups that had some of the most innovative products.

1) Vectrix electric motorcycle. The first zero-emissions bike that's ready for the highway. The sleek-looking Vectrix is available now and approved nationwide as a street bike. With a top speed of 62 miles an hour, the Vectrix can travel as far as 55 miles on a single charge. Its $11,000 price tag is high for a bike of its size, but with no gas or oil and little maintenance on the electric motor, the payback can come within a couple of years.

2) Voltaic Generator. The first backpack with enough solar oomph to power a laptop. Constructed from recycled material, of course, the solar panels come in four colors—orange, silver, green, and a more discreet charcoal. The Voltaic Generator sells for $600, although bags with panels that can charge cellphones and MP3 players start at $200.

3) eMotion solar media player. A smaller twist on solar power, this MP3 player can also charge other devices, such as mobile phones and digital cameras. The 3.5-inch screen is bright and can play videos and photos. The $170 player comes with 1 gigabyte of built-in memory and a card slot that can handle a 2GB secure digital card.

4) Medis fuel cell. The world's first portable fuel cell can provide several days of power for a cellphone or other portable device. It's a one-use device, but unused power stays available for at least three months after activating the cell. It's a concept that's been long in coming and will get even better in a year or two when Medis produces another model that can accept refueling cartridges.

5) Belkin Conserve. An eight-outlet surge protector that comes with a remote control to switch it off. That prevents your home theater or computer components from continuing to suck energy from the wall after being turned "off." The $50 power strip also provides two always-on outlets and surge protection for all eight outlets. The remote means no more crouching under the desk to save energy.

6) Energizer LED lamps. The battery company has come up with an innovative line of lamps, sconces, and under-cabinet lights that can run several days on their rechargeable batteries. That could be a lifesaver in the event of a power outage. Many of the lamps pop out of their holders to offer portable light, and some can take AAA batteries when the rechargeable runs out. Prices start at about $50.

It may be possible to photograph even a fast-moving toddler if a camera coming from Casio lives up to this week's demos at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Casio says the new $1,000 digital camera captures an impressive 60 frames a second. That's remarkably faster than the 10 frames a second that today's best models can grab, and those cost around $4,000.

Casio showed reporters how the fast frame rate means catching the moment that the ball hits Junior's bat, every time. Luck no longer is needed, says Susumu Takashima, head of Casio's digital cameras.

That's just one new feature that Casio and others hope will revive growth in the sale of digital cameras. Sales otherwise will peak this year, Takashima says. Consumers this year will buy about 100 million of the digicams, whose popularity exploded earlier this decade after large LCDs and thin bodies were introduced. But sales are slowing in Europe and North America, and expansion in other markets like China and Russia isn't enough to keep the business growing.

Another approach is automating the shutter. Some cameras already can detect smiles before snapping a photo. New Casio cameras will also wait until everyone's sitting still before snapping. It's an effort to lessen blur in photos while boosting new sales in cameras.

Sony worked hard to make the introduction of its new, breakthrough television a dramatic moment. It's hard to make an 11-inch screen seem a big deal at a Consumer Electronics Show where other companies are announcing TVs measuring bigger than 100 inches.

So, Sony Chairman Howard Stringer stepped aside during a speech Sunday, and the music thundered. Then six—count 'em—of the petite sets rose magically on podiums at the back of the stage.

Of course, small can have its benefits in electronics, and the gossamer thinness of the sets is their most exciting aspect. The sets are the first commercial TVs made from organic light-emitting diodes, or OLED. This is a technology that the industry has talked about for years but that has been slow to emerge.

Sony also showed a 27-inch prototype. The image was gorgeous, and it looked otherworldly thin. It's no thicker than three credit cards stacked together.

The company didn't even try to put a price on the larger set because in the case of this television, small and thin are hugely expensive. The 11-inch model went on sale today for $2,500.