Entries for July 2008

LG today offered details of its plans to stream Netflix videos to TVs through a new box—and announced that the box will include a Blu-ray disk player.

That's encouraging for the nascent business of streaming Web video to living rooms, which are already crowded with too many set-top devices. The Web's best shot at couch potatoes will be through devices they've already embraced, such as DVD players. Or ideally, the connection will go directly to the TV itself, such as those that Hewlett-Packard and other manufacturers have developed.

Netflix streams will also appear this fall on Microsoft's Xbox 360 consoles. And Netflix has said it is working with other device makers to include its service, which offers more than 12,000 titles.

A stand-alone Netflix player from Roku has been more popular than I would have expected. The small company quickly sold out its initial stock of the $100 devices, though the shortages now appear over.

The Netflix service will get its biggest boost from partnerships with LG, Microsoft, and other big companies that already sell millions of consumer devices.

Now, Blu-ray players aren't cheap. LG is only saying the BD300 will sell for less than $500. So that player alone won't take the Netflix service into the mass market.

But it's a step toward it.

Nasty, end-of-month surprises may ease for parents with kids on a T-Mobile family plan. The wireless carrier is launching a new service that will let the account holder set limits on yakking, texting, and downloading teens and 'tweens.

The service can limit airtime, messages, and online purchases—no more unauthorized Guitar Hero III. Parents get notified when a limit is hit on a phone, which loses access to that capability. The service enables account holders to designate "always allowed" numbers that can continue to connect so they can still check on their young Jacks and Jills.

T-Mobile says it will charge an "introductory" rate of $2 for the service's launch in August.

Sometimes, it's the little things that please customers. Such as the little flashlight that the folks at Clarity added to their upcoming cellphone, one of the new handsets aimed at the elderly.

The idea came from watching how the elderly use their phones, says Clarity President Carsten Trads. A cellphone's glowing screen sometimes became a makeshift flashlight when, say, one was fumbling for dropped keys at the front door.

Clarity added the LED flashlight and ran the phone through focus groups. Guess what came back the second favorite feature among seniors? "Our engineers didn't like that it was the simple flashlight that was so popular," Trads says. "They'd put a lot of effort into some of the other features."

The favorite feature among testers, by the way, is the phone's amplified sound. The engineers can take pride in that one.

Dell touts its small Hybrid desktops as also being "green" PCs. But we like the other colors, too.

The big computer maker launched the line of stylish desktops with dorm desks clearly in mind. The company notes in promotional materials that the Hybrids are about the "size of a collegiate dictionary."

But are they attractive enough in their 95 percent recyclable cases that come in six colors to sit on a shelf beneath the home TV? They aren't meant as gaming machines but pack plenty of power to play DVDs or Web video.

Oh yeah, bamboo is another case option, much like the Fabrik drive that has its own green credentials. Dell says the new PCs consume about 70 percent less power than a typical desktop does.

They start at $500.

Corrected on 7/31/08: An earlier version of this blog incorrectly reported the capacity of the drive. It is 500 gigabytes.

Going green can also make for a better looking gadget, judging from a new external drive from Fabrik. The drive maker has added bamboo to the case for the "SimpleTech [re]drive," which the company also claims can cut energy usage by 90 percent over some competitors.

Bamboo is a favorite among some environmentalists, who say it makes for more sustainable wood because of how fast it grows. It also makes for a rather fetching drive, judging from the photos that Fabrik distributed.

The rest of the case is made of recyclable aluminum. The energy savings mostly come from an efficient power supply and fanless cooling.

All that, and Fabrik claims the drive even operates more quickly through a "Turbo USB" connection. The 500-gigabyte drive carries a suggested price of $160.

Call this Green Tuesday. There is also appealing simplicity in the energy-saving approach of D-Link with a new line of networking routers: They can power themselves down when not needed.

Among other energy-saving features, the router can shut off the wireless when it isn't needed. The feature is found in software in the "D-Link Xtreme N Gigabit Routers" (whew...no savings in that name).

It's a bit more effort and unlikely to save much money. But why not?

Satellite Radio fans will get a lot more choice out of the merged XM and Sirius. Maybe too much, at least initially. The combined companies will be getting creative, partly out of pressure from regulators and partly in trying to broaden their appeal.

Consumers will get to assemble packages of channels for different prices as the companies pledged to offer "a la carte" choices. At the same time, the companies will be combining their offerings, apparently in phases. And all of this will require new hardware, also apparently coming in phases.

Satellite radio offers appealing content, and the changes could attract new subscribers. But it's clear there will be confusion and pain in the transition. All this while there is fast-growing competition for the dashboards where XM and Sirius do most of their business.

Another "water-powered" device has hit the market. The latest version from an outfit called Bedol What's Next is attractive and maybe worth the $16 as a conversation piece.

But like other clocks and calculators that came before, it's hardly a breakthrough in new "green" power. As is explained on a site where physicists gather, the power comes from slowly dissolving metal that's immersed in the water—not from the water itself. Not much different from the potato batteries that kids play with.

I want to keep this as simple as the product: Backblaze is the easiest way yet to protect precious digital files. It's nearly effortless backup, and it's reasonably priced if you can adjust to paying a never-ending fee.

But $5 a month is cheap insurance for home PCs that hold irreplaceable memories. Years of digital photos, documents, and music can disappear with a crashed, stolen, or fire-damaged hard drive. And few people are regularly backing them up.

Two elements make Backblaze stand out. First, it's brain-dead easy. The software automatically finds everything that needs to be backed up. Second, it saves the files across the Web. You don't have to plug in an external drive, or worry that it will get stolen along with your PC.

Backblaze didn't start out so simple. The service originally tested a version that asked which files a user wanted backed up, says CEO Gleb Budman. Then it tried a version that asked which kinds of files users wanted to back up. "Users still had this constant panic that something's going to be missed," he says.

So Backblaze takes the responsibility itself. It immediately scans the PC for photos, music, videos, spreadsheets, and other file types we'd want saved. You can call up the list of what it has found and make adjustments, but I didn't see any that were necessary.

Backblaze does its thing in the background, particularly when the PC isn't being used. I've not noticed it slowing my other work.

The service has faults. For starters, even with the required broadband connection, it can take many weeks to upload a bulging hard drive. It only works with Windows XP or Vista, though it promises Mac support soon.

When restoring files, Backblaze limits each download to 1 gigabyte at a time. Or the company says it will overnight a DVD with 4 gigabytes for $100, or a USB hard drive with all the files for about twice that.

Finally, there is the question of corporate reliability. The failure of the Linkup made clear the risk of online backup—that the provider might lose files or simply go out of business. Budman says Backblaze's future looks bright; the monthly fee more than covers the cost of each added user. "We're not offering free storage and hoping to one day make it up in ad revenue," he says.

Still, I'd suggest also backing up to another destination, perhaps an external drive plugged into the PC.

No single backup destination is perfect. But for a perfectly simple way to add peace of mind, there's no beating Backblaze.

The service remains in beta testing but is accepting new paid and 15-day-trial accounts. Or for a limited time, going to backblaze.com/usnews might speed the process.

Wireless tech is easier for bad guys to crack, and Bluetooth is no exception. The rising popularity of Bluetooth connections between phones and headsets, and between laptops and other devices, prompted the federal government to issue a new warning about the risks.

Users should turn the devices off when they're not in use, set them up for "hidden" mode if available, and choose tougher passwords where possible, among other steps, says the U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team, part of the Department of Homeland Security.

The Internet "cloud" offers a great option for storing digital stuff. We can reach our files from anywhere, and usually reliably. But it's good to remember that the cloud can be wispy and fleeting.

The failure of a popular online storage site is giving the idea of storing data on the Web a black eye. Untold numbers of files have been lost, presumably forever, amid the collapse earlier this month of the Linkup.

Not enough seniors are getting cellphones, despite the "security blanket effect" they offer for health emergencies, the Senior Coalition told reporters today. The group says phones are no longer a luxury item: Seniors can keep costs under control with inexpensive prepaid phones.

Once they have a phone, seniors should "wear it" all day and have it pre-programmed with emergency numbers for one-touch dialing, said coalition spokeswoman "Grandma" Flora Green.

A nifty little idea turns flashing LEDs into a pseudo TV. Running off a timer, FakeTV's lights flit in patterns that reflect different types of shows—less motion for a news program, more for a drama. Even the colors change to reflect what might be on the screen, with a blue glow for water scenes to a reddish cast for game shows.

The device saves money from just running today's power-hungry TVs. Granted, it can take many months to recoup the $40 price tag. But don't forget the wear and tear saved on your $2,000 plasma.

Microsoft appears ready to launch an ad campaign to buff the reputation of Vista, the latest and beleaguered version of its Windows operating system. When it recently stopped selling Windows XP, the company at least acknowledged the slings and arrows and suggested that some Vista complaints were valid. But all is better now, and Vista's bad reputation should go the way of the flat-Earth theory, according to a Microsoft teaser that Ed Bott describes at his "Microsoft Report" blog.

We've all wanted to dodge the chit-chat. We just want to leave a voicemail without risking an actual conversation. On the sly. Now we have slydial.

The new, free service links to the voicemail systems of wireless carriers, allowing you to slip a voice message into someone's mailbox without ringing their phone. Many carriers will let you send a voicemail back to someone who has left you one, but slydial is the first service I've seen for unilaterally dropping in a voice message.

Slydial is fast, easy, and claims to work with all major U.S. carriers. I was able to leave messages on Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T phones.

Slydial plans to pay its way through short ads at the start of the call. The ads I heard today were just a few seconds long. But they were only plugging other services from the service's parent, MobileSphere. We'll have to wait to see if paid ads run longer.

A free MYslydial account lets you set up contacts with four-number PINs that enable faster dialing. Or, click an icon next to their name on the MYslydial site for even faster calls. A premium version cuts out the ads.

The biggest downside is that the service doesn't work with landline voicemail. You need to know the recipient's mobile number, and slydial can't leave messages on prepaid cell phones.

Try it yourself by dialing 1-267-slydial (1-267-759-3425).