New this week: the first portable HD radio that can be strapped to your arm or tossed into your pocket like an iPod or mp3 player. And at about $50, the Insignia NS-HD01 is the cheapest way to get HD radio, which offers far better sound than normal FM or AM.
But will anyone care? The HD radio technology, announced amid much hype in 2004, has failed to capture a mass audience, even though about 2,000 stations nationwide -- including nearly 20 in the Los Angeles area -- are equipped to broadcast the digital format.
Maybe all that was needed to give HD a push was the introduction of a relatively inexpensive unit that can be worn to the gym or otherwise on the go. But this device from Insignia (BestBuy's house brand) is limited in that it's only a radio and can't play mp3s. Also, it's a bit bulky compared to the super-slim portable players that are available now.
But those are only first impressions. Soon to come: a full-fledged review.
T-Mobile today announced its new myTouch 3G smart phone, the next generation of its G1 handset, which was the first to deploy Google's Android operating system.
But where the homely G1 found a limited home among tech-savvy early-adopter types, T-mobile is aiming the sleeker, more colorful myTouch squarely at the mainstream -- as well as at its well-hyped new opponents, the Palm Preand iPhone 3G S.
The company is emphasizing the various ways consumers can customize or "personalize" their phones: from the menu options to the array of available Android applications, to the inclusion of a program called Sherpa that learns about users' real-world preferences as they visit various restaurants and businesses in their towns.
"Most of the other products are really built as one-size-fits-all,” said T-Mobile's chief technical officer, Cole Brodman. For the myTouch, he said, the company's focus is "going to be around individualization -- how we allow consumers to make it theirs. No two are really ever alike."
Leapfrogging the G1, the myTouch device will come with a 3.2-inch touchscreen display as well as an accelerometer and compass to boost the phone's ability to know where it is and which way it's pointing -- the better for location-based applications.
The phone, which will become available for pre-sale on July 8 and is expected to ship on July 29 will retail for $199 for new T-Mobile customers who sign up for a two-year contract. The price may be different for existing in-contract customers, depending on how much time remains on their contract. T-Mobile said the pricing ladder will not be finalized until closer to the pre-sale date.
The Sherpa application, which T-Mobile co-developed with Santa Monica-based mobile technology company Geodelic, uses a "learning engine" to determine mobile users' preferences and behavior, the better to recommend places and services in a given location. Geodelic calls Sherpa a "geobrowser" because it searches the Web to pull appropriate recommendation data from sites such as Yelp and CitySearch.
The emergence of the myTouch, coupled with the recent launch of the Pre and IPhone 3G S, clearly cements this as the summer of smart phones.
The Cool-ER electronic reader in the color "blue sky." Credit: Interead
Intrepid techies and avid readers who want to have hundreds of books with them wherever they go have had very little choice on electronic readers. It's either Amazon's Kindle ($359) or Sony's Reader ($270 to $350).
Now, there's a new kid on the block -- the Cool-ER, made by Interead.com, a British startup called that appeared just five months ago. (Right now it's available only on the company's Coolreaders website, but Chief Executive Neil Jones said he's in talks with major U.S. retailers.) At $249, it's the lowest-priced reader thus far. It has the same screen size as its rivals and uses the same E-Ink display, but is lighter and smaller.
That's because the Cool-ER doesn't have a lot of the bells and whistles the Kindle and Reader do -- no accelerometer, no wireless Internet adapter, no Bluetooth, no 3G connection and no keyboard. That's led some reviewers to give it a thumbs-down.
"The device in and of itself doesn't really break any new ground," said Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at Forrester Research. "What's interesting about them is that they went from nothing to putting out a product in less than six months. It shows that the bar for entering this market is very low, and that we can expect to see a lot more competition in this space in the coming months."
That spells good news for electronic bookworms, who can look forward to lower prices, more innovation and a wider selection of devices, said Rotman Epps, who estimated that prices could drift below $200 by the end of next year.
"From the consumer perspective, pricing is really important," she said.
So is style. With a choice of eight colors, Cool-ER is hoping to tap into a segment of consumers who consider personalization and fashion a factor in their gadget purchase.
In a reminder that spurned gadget lovers can quickly turn rabid, several thousand angry iPhone owners in the U.S. and U.K. have signed a pair of Twitterpetitions to protest pricing regimes for Apple's new iPhone 3G S. In the U.S., those currently under two-year contract by AT&T must pay $200 more than for the new phones than customers not under contract.
Screen shot of a Twitter petition.
That means $499 for the top-of-the-line 32-gigabyte iPhone 3G S and $399 for the 16-GB version, rather than $299 and $199 respectively, the prices for those with no existing contract. If you want to buy the phone with no contract at all, it's a piggy-bank-breaking $699 and $599.
(In the name of fairness, it should be noted that this movement comprises a vanishingly small fraction of iPhone 3G owners. The company has sold more than 15 million of the second-generation devices since their release last summer.)
In a typical complaint on the AT&T message boards, user apw34 seethed, "This is ridiculous and slap [sic] in the face to long time loyal iphone customers. . . . We have to mount a vigorous campaign to change this policy."
"Longtime iPhone customer" is a borderline oxymoron, however. The phone debuted only two years ago at a price point of $599 for the first 8-GB phone, or $399 for the 4-GB -- contract or no. Moreover, customers who purchased those original models in 2007 would now find themselves eligible for the discounted, new-contract pricing.
Unless Apple decides to institute a quick price reduction -- a move it made soon after the 2007 release (triggering another mini-outrage), customers who expect to be exempted from their contracts may find themselves bound by their own signatures.
"Why should the iPhone be any different than any other ATT phone?" argued user kgipp. "Your reasoning would imply that anyone that has had a Blackberry should be able to upgrade to a new Blackberry anytime they want. What would be the point of offering incentives such as discounted phone prices if they're just going to keep making exceptions?"
Indeed, discounting new handsets to new or out-of-contract customers has long been part of mobile providers' strategy to filch market share from competitors.
But before you try telling that to the owners of the now-outmoded iPhone 3G -- who woke up Monday to find themselves in possession of a 12-month-old relic that is slightly slower than the new version, not to mention lacking its compass and video camera -- make sure to strap on your helmet.
Corrected, 12:16 a.m.: An earlier version of the post used prices from Apple's iPhone "Apple Store" page, which currently states that existing AT&T customers will pay $699 for the 32GB iPhone 3G S and $599 for the 16GB. An AT&T representative, however, told the Times that the actual prices will be $200 more for customers under contract, not $400.
In our initial hands-on look at the Pre, we found the keyboard to be a very welcome addition (even if moderately crowded for an average-size woman's fingers), the interface smart and Web surfing swift. A cursory test of calling up a website found that Pre loaded the Los Angeles Times website faster than the iPhone.
The platform-agnostic messaging is quite impressive. No app switching required when a friend moves from instant messaging to texts. The conversation keeps going, uninterrupted.
Of course, Palm has a huge mountain to scale in taking on Apple Inc.'s much-adored iPhone. Even at Wednesday night's geek-meets-chic launch party for the Pre at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood, there was a preponderance of iPhones in the crowd.
On Friday morning, be sure to join us online -- on this blog and on Twitter -- as we put this device through its paces. Tell us what you're most interested in knowing as we walk through the device.
Diana Hughes, an MFA graduate of USC's aforementioned program, handed me a furry business card. A furry card! That was almost enough to blow me away, but then there's this ball of fur with eyes and a mouth sitting on a table in front of a TV screen.
"What do you do with that?"
"You pet it."
Should've known it would be that obvious, but Hughes' Pluff -- a thesis project -- was a bit more interactive than your normal stuffed animal. She'll explain the details:
And yes, you don't get a grade for your master's thesis! Lesson learned: Amid the huge displays and flashing lights and gamers hopped up on Gamer Grub and 5-Hour Energy drink samples, there are some smaller gems on the E3 floor.
We do want to see what scary things they've done with this title though!
-- Jevon Phillips
Photo: The eerie poster of a frozen little girl on a swing illustrates how haunting Konami's Silent Hill: Shattered Memories game could be. Credit: Jevon Phillips
Thanks to Amazon.com's Kindle, the e-book reader has gone from a niche curiosity to a mainstream, oft-cited technology in a little more than a year. But now buzz is snapping and crackling about a second wave of electronic readers coming down the pike to give Amazon a run for its undisclosed monies.
A post by Ars Technica pointed to the array of media interests rumored or reported to be entering the e-reader field -- from telecom heavies such as Verizon, AT&T and Sprint, to Barnes & Noble, to news companies such Rupert Murdoch'sNews Corp, Hearst, and the owners of the Detroit Free Press, the last two of which have faced crippling challenges to their print products. Upshot: More than a few big shots are betting that even if electronic readers can't print money, they can still make some.
But the possibilities really start to hit home when you watch these YouTube videos of laboratory-stage e-reader technology. Note that the following video of Plastic Logic's flexible screen is almost 3 years old.
This video of a Sony plastic color TV screen is 2 years old:
Also from 2007 is the following demo of a cellular device that contains an actual folding screen:
Put the pieces together and you have enough technology to build portable, flexible, touch-screen color reading devices -- just the sort of gadget that the publishing world needs. Both the Kindle and the iPod have suggested that it takes a new hardware platform to get people to pay for electronic content. You're not just buying the song or the book, it turns out, but the ability to consume it anywhere -- a value proposition that much bulkier computers still can't satisfy.
You've got interest from the distribution companies, and you've got a technology that's starting to become viable. A digital newspaper is now visible at the end of the tunnel. The problem is, there's also a train coming.
What if you don't want Google or Project Gutenberg to get their paws on your library, but still would like to scan your material onto hard drives so it isn't lost forever, like the books in the Royal Library of Alexandria, when fires come? Enter Atiz, a Los Angeles company that will create digital copies of your books without sharing them with anybody -- all for just $1,595 and up.
"It's an inexpensive solution that allows everyone to digitize their content and preserve it for prosperity," said Atiz President Nick Warnock, who, incidentally, was a contestant on the first season of The Apprentice.
It may make sense for some publishers to make digital copies of books without giving access to Google or Project Gutenberg. For example, Warnock said, the Conjuring Arts Research Center in New York turned down Google's request to scan its collection because its magician’s library is filled with trade secrets. If Google were to scan those books and puts them online, people anywhere could pull rabbits out of hats and turn each other into newts. That simply wouldn't do. So the research center bought a book scanner from Atiz to create its own private digital collection.
Manchester United goalkeeper Ben Foster, a 26-year-old who plays for one of England’s top soccer teams, has the sports world debating whether it's fair to use an iPod as a competitive edge during a match.
Faced with the always difficult task of defending penalty kicks when Sunday's game went to shootout, a well-prepared Foster whipped out his iPod to study the tendencies of Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Jamie O’Hara.
Foster watched video of a kick O’Hara took against Dutch powerhouse PSV Eindhoven last year that suggested O'Hara liked to strike the ball to the left of the goalkeeper. He made the same move against Foster, who dove and blocked the shot.
Manchester United goalkeeping coach Eric Steele recommended the digital assist, but it was Foster who took home player-of-the-match honors.
"They told me for Jamie O'Hara I should stand up and be strong, and he would probably go the way he did," Foster told reporters after the game. "I have done a lot of research before, but this is an innovation we have brought in at the club."
The rules of soccer, both in England and at the international level, don’t say much about the use of technology -- let alone an iPod -- by players during matches. British soccer's governing body, the Football Assn., ruled that because there was nothing inherently dangerous about Foster’s tactic, there would be no disciplinary action.
It's not hard to imagine professional and national soccer teams throughout the world now loading videos of their opponents on iPods to prep their goalkeepers.
Not long after Amazon releases the new version of its Kindle e-book reader late this month, a Canadian counterpart of Barnes & Noble is slated to launch a competing digital book platform. Called Shortcovers, it aims for a much faster-growing group of consumers than Amazon, whose $359 price tag for the Kindle is a deal-breaker for many. The Shortcovers crew is targeting people with smartphones, starting with BlackBerrys, iPhones and G1s, then Windows Mobile devices. (Insert your joke about Windows Mobile here.) Shortcovers will work on laptops and Netbooks as well.
Amazon hasn't said how many Kindles have been sold; analysts estimate a up to half a million. That number is dwarfed by the amount of iPhones, BlackBerrys and G1s in circulation. So the market opportunity for Shortcovers is huge; the question is whether the owners of those devices will be comfortable reading books, magazines, newspapers and other items sold by Shortcovers on their comparatively small screens.
Other companies recognize the potential too -- Google, for instance, just released a mobile version of Google Book Search, enabling people with iPhones and G1s to download public-domain texts from the company's online library. And Amazon hinted in its announcement today and a New York Times interview last week that its selection of e-book titles will be available on other mobile devices, although there's no indication when that might happen....
Depending on the model, your device features either a hard drive or flash drive that allows you to read and write files to it just like an external drive.
More E3 photos
RSS: Subscribe to this Blog
The call for urgent improvements in the ...
Nice image used for this article - from ...
great post, I had exactly the same quest...