February 2004 Archives

May all your gadgets be Leap Year compliant.

Yesterday afternoon, I visited my local T-Mobile store with a long list of things I wanted to do. Despite my first in-store experience with T-Mobile being really good (almost 2 years ago), given the complexity of the things I needed done, I didn't have much hope at having a good customer service experience. Boy, was I wrong.

I walked into the store wanting the following things taken care of:
• Convert my wife's existing T-Mobile Basic account into a 2-line Family plan
• Activate my new Treo 600 as the 2nd line on the Family plan
• Port my existing Verizon Wireless number (on my Kyocera 7135) to the Treo 600
• Add T-Mobile's $19.99 all-you-can-eat GPRS plan to the Treo 600

The manager of the store asked if he could help. I told him the above list and he got started. 15 minutes later, everything was taken care of plus I walked out with a new 900/1900 freebie phone. There was no hassle and he was incredibly fascile with the processes required to do each of the tasks.

Moreover, I liked how T-Mobile underpromises and overdelivers. They told me that my number could take up to 72 hours to get ported and that service to the Treo 600 might not be active until Monday. Well, by 11 pm last night, my Treo 600 was logged into the network and receiving calls made to my old Verizon number. Man, that's just phenomenal, especially given all the crap that some other carriers' customers are going through when porting their numbers.

OK, enough already. Nobody wants yet another flash memory module, no matter how small. Jeez...just work on getting the prices down, and the volumes up, on the existing formats, OK?!

Well, if the pundits are right (which they're often not, which is I guess what separates them from prophets), Bluetooth is officially dead for desktops and other non-portable devices. The slayer is Ultra-Wide-Band (UWB), which will supposedly be equivalent to wireless high-speed USB 2.0.

Pocket PC Thoughts has an interesting discussion going on about this story. Some are skeptical, some are optimistic, but there seems to be a lot of sincere interest in getting that rat's nest of cables out from behind the desk.

I hope this comes true, if not for the convenience, then simply for the fact that my 2004 new year's prediction that Bluetooth would once again die this year would at least partially come true.

Well I guess it had to happen. You can now have a cool terabyte of data in a single disk. The $1199 LaCie Bigger Disk is an unassuming beige box packing one TRILLION bytes of data accessible via USB 2.0, Firewire 400 or Firewire 800. Must...have...this...now!!!!!!!!

We have a junky PC hooked up to our stereo and TV at home so we can access our MP3 collection. Well, it's badly in need of replacing, so I started looking at my options.

One compelling idea is to scrap the whole PC, move the hard drive with all the MP3 content on it to our main PC upstairs, and go with a wireless media hub like the Netgear MP101 (shown). The MP101's job is to stream audio content from your networked PCs to your home stereo.

One main thing differentiates the MP101 from many of the new media hubs coming out: it doesn't do video. No photo showing or video playing. It doesn't require, or even allow, a connection to your TV -- it is audio only. To counter this limitation, the MP101 actually has its own 4-line LCD. This makes it convenient since you needn't turn on your TV just to listen to music. That's a big plus if your TV has a long warm-up period like ours does.

The MP101 isn't available yet, but I'm thinking this might be a good, inexpensive (<$150) replacement for the dying PC that is our media hub right now. Of course, we lose the ability to do PC stuff on our TV, but frankly, we haven't done that as often as I expected us to. Oh, well...I'm sure that will change eventually.

Man, this is messed up. According to the UK's Guardian Observer, the US Pentagon has released a report suggesting that "Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters."

That's two puny decades, folks -- most likely within your lifetime. Maybe it's time that our government actually admit that global warming is happening and do something about it. And lest pointless debate erupt, I'm posting this here as a note of interest regarding Earth science rather than as a political statement.

TiVo is doing a research survey about a proposed "TiVoToGo" idea. Fill out the survey and let them know what you think about their idea.

One idea: Consider suggesting that they let you convert your TiVo content into portable formats (e.g. MPEG-4) so you can take it with you on your handheld device.

All those (ahem) "happy" users of the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000, which has been heavily criticized by many users here at GearBits, have been left temporarily (we assume) stranded due to a Leap Year problem with the unit's software.

Time Warner Cable customers who use the Scientific Atlanta dual-tuner digital video recorder (DVR) have been unable to record any programming since yesterday. Reports that either a software update or a problem with programming coming with the February 29 date (or a combination thereof) have locked up the units with no user fix yet available. So, all these users are stuck waiting for Scientific Atlanta and TWC to roll out a correction.

I have to wonder if it really is just a software issue or if TWC is going to have to visit each house and/or require each owner to bring in his/her unit to a service center. If so, my guess would be that the folks at TiVo will be getting a lot of calls from TWC customers if not TWC itself looking for a new DVR supplier.

Being a rabid DIY person, I always jump at the chance to try building or fixing things myself. Many times I spend more in tools and time than I would have by calling in a pro, but I always learn something and I've never regretted a tool purchase. My personal motto is: "There's only two ways to do things - right or over." This time I decided to tackle the projector screen in my new home theater and I am most pleased with the results. I wrote up a little how-to and posted it over at the AVS Forums.

If you read my entry yesterday, you know I have been house hunting. During our search for the "perfect" house, I came to rely more and more on several Internet real estate websites, and I wonder what would have been like to shop for a house when these tools were not available.

First, I've been using our local MLS (multiple listing service) website here at Cincinnati to do our initial search. We can do a search on multiple neighborhoods, price range, and other requirements. You can even do a search on upcoming open houses and new listings as well. The listing also contains several outdoor and indoor pictures, and although they are not perfect, they help us to select or eliminate certain houses from our list of potentials. Some houses even boast virtual tours of the house (where we can scan the 360-degree views of rooms).

We've also discoverd that most county auditors have their own websites that list all the properities in the county. We've been able to look up previous sales data, lot size, improvements, and especially in one county, we can even look at the aerial photo of the house. We wanted to have a wooded backyard view, and the aerial photo helped us elimianate a number of houses that we thought we liked from the MLS list.

Overall, these tools have helped us save tons of time in our search, and who'd ever thought even a couple of years ago, this would have been possible. I wonder whether in not so distant future, we would all be doing virutal house hunting where we don't even have to be at the house physically to find the "perfect" house.

I just received notice today that my pre-ordered Treo 600 for T-Mobile has shipped. I pre-ordered it back on February 10th (the first day pre-orders were being taken). The promised delivery date had been "sometime in March," so I'm glad to hear that it's on its way earlier than expected.

More when it arrives later this week...

My wife is leaving on a 12-day international work trip in 3 weeks and she wanted a convenient way to take her music with her. In the past, she relied on an MP3-capable CD player, burning 30-40 albums on 3-4 CD-Rs -- a cheap and fairly convenient option.

Well, since her CD-MP3 player was stolen during our trip to Hawaii last October, she needs a new solution. I asked her what functionality she'd like and how small it should be. She replied that she wanted it to hold around 30 albums (at least), be small enough to easily jog with, and it didn't need an FM tuner. Doing the math, I figured that one of the new MP3 players with a small 1.5-4 GB hard drive would be perfect.

I investigated the options and came up with three reasonable alternatives: the Rio Nitrus (1.5GB), the Creative Nomad MUVO2 (4GB), and the Apple iPod Mini (4GB). The Nitrus and the MUVO2 are shown above on the left and right respectively.

Reviews generally favored the interface on the iPod Mini, and I figured my wife would prefer the simplest UI. So, off to the Apple store we went, and we came home with a silver iPod Mini for her (shown below to the right compared to my 256MB flash-based MPIO FL100 player on the left).

She followed the setup and installation instructions, which went mostly smoothly. Within about 20 minutes after the initial charge was completed, she was installing songs onto her iPod. iTunes seemed to do the trick, although the interface wasn't nearly as intuitive as I had expected. This was our first Apple product since my beloved IIe back in High School, so I haven't kept up on the state of the Macintosh. I guess I had figured that Apple's software would be as driven by UI and industrial design as their hardware is, but apparently I was expecting too much. iTunes is no better laid out and no more intuitive than Real One or most of the mainstream Windows-based music apps. But, it worked, and she's happy with it, and the interface on the actualy iPod itself is quite excellent.

This morning, my relationship with iTunes took a turn for the worse. I tried to sync my Palm OS device and it hung when it got to WeSync, an app we use to synchronize our calendars and contact data between our handhelds. I eventually tracked it down to a conflict with ituneshelper.exe, a TSR that iTunes loads and which serves no obvious purpose. Removing ituneshelper.exe from memory re-enabled WeSync. Unfortunately, there's no setting in iTunes to tell it NOT to run ituneshelper (even though iTunes seems to run fine without it).

Searching the web has revealed that ituneshelper has caused a fair bit of grief. Not only is there no authorized way to disable it (other than to uninstall iTunes), it causes conflicts with a variety of programs on both Windows and Mac systems. To compound my frustration, Apple's tech support knowledge-base turns up zero hits when searching for "ituneshelper" -- go figure.

So, at the moment, I'm a bit uneasy. I haven't any idea whether iTunes will continue to operate OK without ituneshelper.exe in memory and I hate the idea of having to manually shut that process down each time I reboot. I wish someone at Apple would let us know what the deal is and release a correction for it.

Well, I'm back. It's been so hectic last few weeks that my submission to this site has almost been nonexistent. Anyway, during the last few weeks, I have been been house hunting here at Cincinnati and been to Las Vegas and Grand Canyon for about a week . Well, we finally came back from LV, and the seller accepted our offer while we were on our trip. So, things have been settling here somewhat.

Anyway, I want to report on my experience using the above combination in my latest trip. The hotel we were staying didn't have the broadband connection, and I was using my Tungsten T3 and SE T610. Then it dawned on me that my latest Thinkpad also has the Bluetooth connection. So, I should be able to connect to the T-mobile's GPRS network using my Thinkpad. To my surprise, the setup was a breeze (just turn on your Bluetooth and create a dial-up networking connection using the T610), and I was able to get 115.2kbps connection speed--it wasn't broadband fast, but still acceptable for browsing most websites and downloading my e-mails. I got connection almost every time I tried during my trip. The unlimited GPRS plan I have really got a workout this past week (sometimes I would be on for several hours straight without any interruption), and I'm so glad that I have that service.

So, if you are traveling, check out this combo for your wireless solution.

CNET usually offers a mixed bag of content -- while they have some good reporting on tech issues, most of their features have pretty limited worth, at least to the hard-core geek. The latter is true of their current feature, the PDA Prizefight.

This feature supposedly compares the two dominant handheld operating systems, Palm OS 5.2 and Windows Mobile 2003, in eight categories. They go on to propose Palm OS as the winner, besting WM03 in four (of the eight) categories and tying it in two categories.

The article is pretty much worthless, IMNSHO. It's loaded with inconsistencies (e.g. it says that its goal is to consider only the operating system and not the hardware, but then uses many examples that relate only to certain OEMs' actual devices and/or third-party add-on applications). The article also assumes that the same qualities are equally important to users of both operating systems, which I'll be the first to admit that they aren't. Despite CNET's determination that Palm OS was the better handheld OS (it's the one I personally prefer), I still think this article only vaguely resembles "journalism" (sorry, Rick...I call 'em as I see 'em).

I wandered down to the vending area at work on Friday and I found a dollar bill sitting on top of one of the snack machines. Stamped on it was "wheresgeorge.com" -- so I had to find out what this was.

Well, it turns out that the Where's George? site bills itself (pun intended) as "The Great American Dollar Bill Finder."

The idea is that you can enter the serial code and unique ID info from the dollar bill into the database and see where it's been tracked. The tracking isn't anything scientific or government-sponsored, it's just folks like you and me putting the data into the website. But, it's amusing when you see one.

It's ironic to think that there are lots of folks freaked out about the (false) idea of the government tracking those $20 bills in your pocket using the little plastic strip in them, but other folks are more than happy to input the location of their cash into a publicly accessible website.

My pal Bob got a new DVD+TiVo unit and I asked him what he thought about it. He managed to craft up a nice post for GearBits, so here it is:

After listening to Craig's TiVo enthusiasm for weeks now, I decided to finally take the plunge and to treat myself to TiVo.

Not being an audio or videophile, I'll admit it did take some personal effort to cave in. I've had roommate who bought speakers and components at $5K a piece. While it's great stuff, that's just not me. Still, I still like sitting down in front of the tube to watch some dumb analog (I refuse to pay Comcast's ridiculous fees for digital box rental) cable TV. After listening to Craig, I feel I have a inalienable right to watch something good WHEN I want to watch it. Add a Wiggles-happy toddler to the mix and I have a compelling case.

My TV cabinet didn't have much room for extra components, so a new TiVo unit was going to be a tight squeeze. That's where the Toshiba SD-H400 DVD/TiVo (shown) combination unit (or, as Craig coined, 'DVDiVo') comes in. The DVDiVo solves this problem by being rather small and by replacing my existing DVD player.

Not counting the mandatory rewiring of the video and audio cables, the install was mostly a piece of cake. You first setup and configure the box with the phone line (a handy 25' phone cable is included!) That took about 30 minutes. After that, the Tivo was supposed to recognize my Linksys network adapter. It didn't. I had to reconnect with the phone line and spend another 90 minutes downloading (are we there yet?) the 5.1b TiVo software update. (Thanks to the Wireless Weblog for the tip.) After that, the wireless worked A-OK.

Remember, it's not fun unless you've had at least one technical snag to challenge your skills.

I've only had TiVo working for a day. I'm only using the TiVo basic service. But this TiVo noob loves his TiVo.

TiVo Basic, you say? TiVo Basic requires no monthly fee and comes with the Toshiba. You get three days of TV Guide information, but none of the fancy search or Season Pass features. Coming from analog cable, TiVo Basic gives me the feel that I've got some fancy digital cable or satellite service. I've used the TV Guide GUI to manually locate and program the TiVo to record several hours of shows (kiddie shows and my spouse's HGTV favorites) for the next few days. Not being someone who follows any particular show (yet?), TiVo Basic might suffice. I look forward to testing my will by signing up for the TiVo Plus service trial.

The DVD player seems to work really well. The GUI is certainly much better than my year-old Pioneer DVD player.

On the downside, I'll admit that the unit is a little noisy. If I'm cruising the TiVo menus without the TV audio on, I do notice the sound of the hard drive actuators softly clicking away. I'm not sure if that noise is specific to the Toshiba design. (Craig?) If so, then I figure it's just a trade-off for having such a small footprint. It's not a major problem for me. Besides any audiophile will already have this issue "covered" with glass component doors.

The other item to consider is the remote. TiVo spent a long time pruning down the buttons to make a good remote. Toshiba, on the other hand, had to stack extra buttons on their remote to support the DVD player. The remote works well, except for when you want to use the number buttons the change channels. The thoughtless placement of these teeny-tiny number buttons (0-9 + Enter) at the bottom of the remote makes me occasionally use two hands to change channels. (Hello, Toshiba? Does a majority of the population of the planet have double-jointed thumbs?) My thumb may get used to it. Better yet, I hope that TiVo is so good that I'll never have to manually enter channel numbers again.

Despite those two items, I'm very pleased with my DVDiVo purchase.

So, I'm planning on switching my cellular service from Verizon to T-Mobile. My Verizon contract expires on Monday, and my Treo 600 should be getting here in early March.

I've already confirmed with T-Mobile that I can port my Verizon number over, so that's fine.

Anybody have any reactions or recommendations regarding this switch? Good packages at T-Mobile? Interesting wireless data options I should consider?

I spent last evening at Bogarts, Cincinnati's famed venue for live performance variety. On the card was "Henry Rollins: The Spoken Word Tour". And that is all. Because, you see, nothing else could fit.

If you are familiar with Henry in this setting, you know what I saw and heard: an interesting, shocking, thought provoking, profane, intelligent, funny, opinionated, cynical, informative, take on things current by one of the hardest rockers who has ever rocked coming at you in one long, unbroken stream of thought. And it was good.

Aside from that, I was truly amazed by something. Slightly after 8pm, Henry walked onto stage dressed in green chinos and an olive drab t-shirt. The only clue that he was the rocker that he is were the bulging biceps and the mosaic of tattoos on this arms. He wrapped the mic cord around his left hand, put his left foot in front of his right in a sporting stance and began to speak at his machine gun clip. And there he remained for 2 hours and 45 minutes never taking a breath or a sip of water and only moving to illustrate some point he was making. Sadly I had to leave at that point to rescue our baby sitter and for all I know Henry may still be on stage. For this I apologize Henry (if you are reading this) because you put on a heck of show and deserved the standing O that was surely coming or will be coming.

In my previous post I waxed philosophic on the grand plans I had for my new house. Two and a half months later, the rubber has met the road...to a point.

Being a true masochist, I decided to bite off a huge chunk by building a home theater and adopting HDTV at the same time. I did a lot of reading on the AVS Forums and on Projector Central and decided on a Sanyo PLV-Z2 for my projecting duties. This is an LCD-based 16:9 model with 1280x720 native resolution that has a militant following and is on Projector Central's list of highly recommended projectors. I had originally targeted a 61" Sammy DLP, but the cost difference was just too great (and my wife and I are susceptible to DLP rainbows). With my homemade 98" screen, I get 2.5 times more screen area and the projector cost 2.5 times less than the Sammy. There's also nothing on the floor for my little one to crash into.

For video input, I will be using a home theater PC. I built my last PC with this goal in mind and by switching cases to a Kanam HT-200 it even looks like a real HTPC. I have also added a MYHD MDP-120 HDTV PCI Tuner for over-the-air HD reception, HD recording and upconverting the DVD output from my ATI Radeon to 1080i. All the digital audio will be passed through on an S/PDIF link to my existing mishmash of Sony amps and Definitive Technology speakers.

The room itself was nicely sized for THX-recommended viewing angles. I have the seating position right at a 36 degree horizontal and a maximum of 15 degree vertical. Though it cannot be totally blacked out, I have enough light control to really make things look great.

The theater is not quite finished. I have a component rack to build, speaker wire to run, AC power outlets to install and still need to get my TV antenna mounted and aimed in the attic. Another week and I should be ready to pop the corn.

US mobile telephone operator Cingular has announced that it will acquire rival AT&T Wireless for $41B. The deal creates the largest US wireless provider, with 46 million customers and sales of over $32B.

Cingular is a joint venture between BellSouth and SBC Communications, with over 24 million customers. AT&T Wireless is the second-largest US wireless carrier, with over 22 million subscribers.

British mobile phone company Vodafone was the other participant in a bidding war for AT&T Wireless, which was up for sale with a deadline of Feb 13, extended to Feb 15.

The acquisition is still subject to shareholder and regulatory approval, but is expected to close by late 2004.

Like raccoons who enjoy your garbage, the miniature PCs keep coming back to annoy and tantalize. The latest with news is the FlipStart from Vulcan (pictured).

The FlipStart, formerly called the MiniPC, runs Windows XP and has hardware specs similar to many full-sized laptops (such as 1024x600 display, 30 GB HDD, and 802.11g wireless). However, it's only 6" x 4" x 1" thick and weighs just 1 pound.

While the Flipstart isn't currently available, the website suggests that pricing and availability details will be offered later this year. Haven't we heard that before?

If you're a fan of role-playing games and you have a Palm OS or Pocket PC handheld, you need to check out Legacy by Redshift.

It's pretty standard RPG turn-based fare, but the execution is excellent. Tons of characters, monsters, spells, objectives, environments, etc. and it's all done in really eye-popping graphics. On my Zodiac, this game just sings.

A review of Legacy can be found at PDArcade and another one here. Also, at under $20, this game is a deal.

I've been intrigued by the notion of a camcorder that bypasses tape and records in MPEG format direct to a flash memory medium like Secure Digital cards. After doing a bit of research, I'm skeptical they are ready for prime time.

Panasonic and Sanyo/Fisher currently offer tapeless camcorders. The Panasonic D-Snap line offers both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 recording. The Panasonic SV-AV100 is the only one that offers TV-quality (640x480 or better) quality recording, as the others max out at a meager 320x240. The SV-AV100 captures really nice looking 704x480 MPEG-2 direct onto an SD card.

The Sanyo Xacti C1 (shown above), which will also be sold by Fisher, foregoes MPEG-2 and relies exclusively on MPEG-4. It offers full 30fps VGA resolution (640x480) recording in two different quality settings as well as some lower resolution video capture modes.

Both units are impressively small and packed with features. For example, both the Panasonic and the Sanyo weigh less than 6 oz. and feature optical zooms. The Panasonic has a large 2.5" LCD viewer while the Sanyo even sports a flash/fill light.

However, one needn't look very hard to figure out that there is currently a major flaw with both these units (and all similar devices): cost-effective removable storage capacity needed is simply not available at this point in time.

In its best resolution (704x480) recording in MPEG-2, the Panasonic SV-AV100 can record only 10 minutes of video on a 512 MB SD card. If you drop down to 480x352, you get double that, but you're now below what most would consider a reasonable resolution for TV-quality video. The largest SD cards available today are 1 GB at a cost of over $350. So, to have a capacity of just one hour of TV-quality video on the Panasonic SV-AV100, you'll have to shell out around $700 for the camera plus an additional $2,100 just for memory cards.

A similar situation exists for the Sanyo device. At its best quality VGA 30fps recording mode, the unit chews through 3mpbs. Using this video setting, you can fit 40 minutes on a 1 GB card. So, a 1 GB card and a 512 MB card would get you an hour of recording time. Total cost for this setup would be roughly $750 for the recorder (estimated as US pricing hasn't been announced yet) plus $500 for memory cards.

Either way, this is an awfully expensive way to capture video, not to mention the hassle of potentially having to swap out media every 10-20 minutes. If you want to record to MPEG-2 (the best quality option), we'll essentially have to wait until 4 GB SD cards are available to make it a reasonable endeavor. That's not going to happen for a couple of years at least (unless someone comes out with a unit that uses CompactFlash). 1 GB SD cards provide adequate capacity for 30fps VGA MPEG-4 video recording, but the high cost and slight quality hit make this a questionable compromise.

While recording straight to MPEG is something I look forward to doing in the future, I don't see it being a viable option for any large number of users for at least another year or so. In the meantime, a decent mini-DV camcorder can be yours for around $400. Not ideal, but if you gotta have a camcorder soon, don't wait around on direct-to-MPEG.

While we're far from conclusively identifying what the secret compound is at the tip of Cupid's arrow, scientists are making fascinating discoveries in the understanding of the chemistry of love.

The tale begins with prairie voles, who are monogamous, and montane voles, who only partake in one-night-stands. Yet the two species are more than 99% alike, genetically.

Two hormones - oxytocin and vasopressin - are released during prairie vole sex. If blocked, prairie vole sex does not lead to lifelong relationships. More amazingly, if prairie voles are injected with the hormones, but prevented from having sex, they still form a preference for the one partner.

In other words, researchers - with an injection - have been able to induce the response of falling in love.

And there's more...

If you're still stumped for Valentine's gifts for the geek in your life, or you are a geek looking for something for your significant other, ThinkGeek has something for you!

Nineteen select items are offered by the trendy gearhead store. Consider a bracelet made of cat5 twisted-pair networking cable, packaged in a petri dish, the ultimate fashion accessory for the tech-savvy!

Or consider a red cotton tank top with GEEK LVR emblazoned in a candy heart design. The design is also available in boxer shorts. Tres chic!

The store also offers cufflinks made out of circuitboards, wallets made out of duct tape, clocks based on binary, T-shirts proclaiming "I Love My Geek" and "GEEKISSEXY", and panties embroidered with the HTTP status codes "200 OK" and "403 Forbidden".

Everything you need to make this day special for your favorite geek.

I recently mentioned that Verizon was increasing its regulatory charges fee from a nickel to $0.45 per month. Now, I've just been informed with my latest bill that T-Mobile is adding a whopping $0.86 per month as a new "Regulatory Programs Fee":

A new monthly Regulatory Programs Fee ("Fee") of $0.86 per line of service will be added to your monthly T-Mobile bill, beginning as early as your March 2004 invoice. The fee will help us recover the costs associated with complying with government mandates and programs, such as:

• Enhanced 911 which helps emergency agencies determine your approximate location and call-back number when you dial 911.

• Number pooling which helps reduce the need to create new area codes.

• Number portability which enables wireless customers to bring their current numbers with them.

We hope these improved wireless services allow you to Get More.

Get More...ticked off? Get More...irritated? Wow...mission accomplished.

Well, I'm back from the PalmSource Developer Conference in San Jose and, well, I'm bushed (the SJC-ORD-CVG red-eye sequence sucks). Nevertheless, here are some noteworthy comments that you may not find on other sites.

First, the big news is that Palm OS 6.x will be called Palm OS Cobalt and Palm OS 5.4 (and beyond) will be called Palm OS Garnet. When I first heard the latter, I thought they said "darn it" and was really confused. Follow that link for more info about the new Palm OS -- while there aren't any Cobalt devices announced yet, the breadboard demos were stunning. I cannot wait to see what the device makers come up with powered by Cobalt -- should be sweet.

Ironies of ironies -- the conference venue, the San Jose Fairmont, had free Wi-Fi Internet throughout the common areas of the hotel. However, to sign on to the service, you had to use an Internet Explorer-compliant web browser -- Mozilla didn't work and neither did any of the Palm OS web browsers. So, all those Tungsten C owners were walking around with slight scowls on their faces.

I got to fondle the most teeny smartphone, the GSPDA Xplore G18 (shown to the right). This GSM/GPRS (class 10) phone is about 2/3 the size of the already small Treo 600 and includes a camera. It has no keypad (on-screen buttons), but at 3.7 oz, I can't see where you'd put them. While there's no SD or other expansion slot on the camera itself, there's a slick little SD/MMC card reader adapter that plugs into the USB port on the bottom of the phone. For those wanting their Palm OS apps in the smallest possible PDA-phone combination (possibly even the smallest Palm OS device overall), this is it.

One thing I noticed while "people-watching" was that there were a LOT of Treo 600s being used by the other 1,100 or so attendees -- my hunch is about 20% of everyone there had one of these. The recent announcement that palmOne is taking pre-orders for T-Mobile-friendly Treo 600s just put me over the edge -- I pre-ordered one yesterday for $399. Now all I need to do is wait till early March when they will supposedly be shipping. For the record, I firmly believe that the rumored Treo 610 is complete hogwash. The current device is obviously so compelling to so many that palmOne is most likely to just keep making more and more of them, thereby bringing costs down so as to improve its profits.

During the multi-PUG (Palm Users Group) meeting Tuesday night, an engineer with Tapwave demonstrated Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 on the Zodiac. I believe this is the first public demo of the game, which has been "coming soon" for a few months now. It's good to see some of the promised game titles finally coming out for the Zodiac (which rocks, BTW).

Nintendo has announced that it is developing the next-generation GameCube console.

"Our machine will be ready at the same time as the other new consoles," said Nintendo spokesman Yasuhiro Minagawa.

But, he added "We're not sold on developing powerful microprocessors to create graphics that cannot even be viewed on existing televisions."

Minagawa's comments allude to the fact that Sony is developing a superprocessor, codenamed Cell, to power the successor to the latest PlayStation, while Microsoft plans to use three 64-bit IBM microprocessors for the next version of Xbox.

Foveon and Polaroid today announced a new digital camera integrating the 4.5 megapixel Foveon X3 sensor. The Polaroid x530 is the world’s first X3 point-and-shoot digital camera.

Foveon X3 image sensors capture color in three semiconductor layers, similar to color film. The result of this pixel multiplexing is richer colors, warmer tones, and sharper images compared to traditional digital image sensors.

Other cameras incorporating X3 technology are the Sigma SD-9 and SD-10 professional-class digital cameras.

The introduction of the Polaroid x530 brings this capability to mainstream consumers in an affordable point-and-shoot digicam.

Polaroid expects shipping in June 2004, at a suggested retail price of $399.

The Universal Transportable Memory Association (UTMA) has introduced a flash memory card standard requiring no adapters, cables or card readers, called a Flash Internal Semiconductor Harddrive, or FISH. Cards based on the standard plug into any USB port, allowing transfer of information between PCs, PDAs, cameras or other devices.

FISH Memory cards are smaller than SD cards and have transfer rates of 10 Mbps. FISH cards are fast enough to capture streaming video from DVRs and videocams. Standard FISH cards are 1.3" long with width and thickness the size of a USB port. Miniature versions exist, 25% smaller. Current FISH technology allows for 2-GB, with 16-GB expected in 2005.

47 independent industry experts were involved in the development of the UTMA standard. Inputs to the standard came from 34 different companies. This industry consensus is expected to lead to a broad range of devices.

Motorola has just announced the V80 cellphone, which sports a unique rotating cover design.

Closed, the V80 shows off an colour display for playing games and photo caller ID alerts. Push a button, and the cover swings open to unveil a full-sized mobile phone.

Rotate the cover to a 90-degree angle, and the phone turns into a 640x480 VGA camera, with auto-landscape mode, photo messaging and integrated Bluetooth for photo-sharing.

The V80 also makes creative use of MP3 ringtones and lighting. Users can attach favourite songs or light patterns to friends' numbers to identify incoming calls, or can play JAVA games with flashing lights, arcade-style.

Want a girlfriend? Hate the hassle? Check out eBay.

A few enterprising individuals are offering "imaginary girlfriend" services to bidders.

Listings are similar: "Sexy college student seeking money for books will, for one month, write you frequent e-mails and send pictures and perfumed letters you can show to family, friends and ex-girlfriends."

However, in most cases personal contact is strictly prohibited. One listing points out: "This in NO WAY makes me your real girlfriend."

Hundreds of listings were previously available. Unfortunately for lonely geeks all over the world, some listings began to cross the line into more overtly sexual. eBay now deems all such auctions as inappropriate, and has started closing them down, so you have to act fast to get the girl of your dreams.

This evening I was loading up some things from my storage unit and noticed my 120-tape cassette organizer over in the corner. Years ago before CDs, I spent lots of hard earned gas station wages on 8-tracks and cassette tapes. I didn't own a good turntable until much later so never really got into albums. Twenty-five years later, a lot of my cassettes are junk having lost the battle against time. My first CD (Talk Talk - It's My Life) sounds as good now as the day I bought it. Here's where the RIAA comes in...

I know that the majority of the money I paid for those cassettes and 8-tracks didn't go into media costs. I paid for the licensing of the music recorded on the media, the record company's profits, the distributor's profits and the music store's profits. So how do I recoup my licensing fees on these hundreds of junk cassettes? I think I should be able to trade them in for CDs of the same title for a nominal media fee; a buck a disc ought to do it.

How about it RIAA? Take a break from grousing about lost profits and give something back to the consumers who have fueled your Learjets for all these years. We pay good money to license your music. Put some permanence into the licenses and support media mobility for anything we buy legitimately. I'll be holding my breath.

You can now resume your regularly scheduled grousing.

Tomorrow, I head out to the PalmSource 2004 Developer Conference in San Jose. While there, I hope to see many exciting things, including the official public launch of Palm OS6, the renaming of OS5 and OS6, and perhaps even some prototypes of devices based on OS6...who knows.

While my blogging will be somewhat curtailed while travelling, I'll try to post the most juicy bits as I can.

Sony is bringing out three new Clie handhelds to add to its line-up. The Clie TH55 (shown) will sport Sony's first slate-style device with 480x320 resolution. It will feature both Wi-Fi (802.11b) and an integrated VGA (640x480) camera. It will come with 32 MB of RAM and a variable-speed ARM processor running Palm OS 5.2.

New for the TH-series is Sony's enhanced PIM app, Clie Organizer, which has been met with some mixed reviews by those seeing screenshots. It will be interesting to see if the new app still maintains the ease-of-use that has been the hallmark of standard Palm OS applications to date.

The other two new Clie handhelds are the TJ37 and its lesser sibling, the TJ27. Like the TH55, the TJ37 sports Wi-Fi and an on-board VGA camera, has 32 MB of RAM, and runs on Palm OS 5.2. However, it's display resolution is 320x320 (plus a dedicated Graffiti2 area). The TJ27 will not have on-board Wi-Fi and won't have as extensive a set of multimedia functions as the TJ37. Unlike the TH55, neither TJ unit will come with Clie Organizer. Previews of these devices can be found at Palm Infocenter, BargainPDA, and Brighthand.

I'd be more excited about these units if they didn't rely on Sony's semi-proprietary Memory Stick expansion card format. I think it's obnoxious for Sony to shove an unneeded flash memory format down our throats when that format offers no real technical advantages over existing alternatives (e.g., Secure Digital) while being bigger and more expensive. Of course, Sony's bad reputation regarding their poor customer service is another reason to reconsider making one of these new Clies your next device. Kind of like that hot girl in college...they're pretty, but they come with baggage.

A researcher at the University of British Columbia in Canada has reported a new mode of unconscious visual perception, which enables, for example, awareness of a change in the visual environment even without being able to identify what that change is.

Ronald Rensink showed 40 people a series of alternating images on a computer screen, each for a fraction of a second, followed by a blank screen. Sometimes the same image would remain throughout the trial; in others, the first image would alternate with a subtly different image.

Around a third of those tested reported feeling the image had changed before they could identify the change. That indicated that our visual system has the capacity to produce a strong gut feeling about a change in the environment - what might be termed a sixth sense, a belief in perceiving something when the perception has not actually occurred yet.

What the researchers are now calling mindsight may also behind that feeling of going into a room and sensing something is different but not being able to put your finger on it. "It could well be an alerting system," says Rensick. Sensing someone is following you may be the auditory equivalent of mindsight.

"I think this effect explains a lot of the belief in a sixth sense," says Rensink. Researchers still have no idea what physical processes are behind this phenomenon.

Microsoft is reportedly circulating the specs for the Xbox Next, the follow-up to its Xbox video console.

Microsoft's strategy appears to be controlling the cost of its consoles, and launching before Sony's own PlayStation 3 launch in 2006. Currently, PlayStation outsells the Xbox by a 5 to 1 ratio.

The Xbox Next will launch in fall 2005, and will feature

• Three IBM 64-bit microprocessors, providing Xbox Next with more computing power than most PCs.

• An ATI graphics chip with speeds faster than the upcoming R400 chip for PCs, enabling high-definition TV resolution.

• Since the original Xbox makes use of Intel and Nvidia chips, backward compatibility isn't guaranteed. While this keeps costs down, Sony has always maintained compatibility with older consoles.

• Flash memory to store saved games, unlike the current Xbox which relies on an 8-GB hard drive.

• 256-MB of DRAM, upgradeable to 512-MB depending on PlayStation's specs, compared to 64-MB in the current Xbox.

• Either DVD or Blu-Ray capability will be included. Blu-Ray will hold more data, but may not be ready in time for the launch.

By releasing specs, Microsoft is helping developers begin work on software for the launch, as well as to solicit feedback.

Laks, an innovative Austrian watchmaker, is launching a wrist watch with digital audio player functionality.

The Laks Memory Music comes in models that sport from 32-MB to 256-MB in memory. Music formats supported include MP3, WMA and ADPCM, uploaded though a USB 1.1 interface. Playing time is about 4-5 hours. A built-in microphone also allows voice-recording.

Equalizer settings are indicated via miniature LEDs in the watch face, and other music controls are integrated into the watch mechanism very unobstrusively.

Cost of the Laks Memory Music Watch depends on memory, and ranges from 89 to 279 Euro ($110-350)

Laks' offering is the latest in a line of digital music watches, including the Casio WMP-1V and the V@mp MP3 Player watch. Despite the functionality, none of these multifunction watches has gone mainstream... so far.

...just by looking at them?

Take the test and find out.

I got 6 out 20. Let us know how you scored.

According to BushGreenWatch.org, the Bush administration has granted approval for an extensive natural gas drilling campaign in a national park that is the nesting grounds of the Kemp's ridley sea turtle, one of the world's most endangered species.

The National Park Service under President Bush has given the green light to "an aggressive drilling campaign" that could involve drilling 20 or more natural gas wells on Padre Island National Seashore in Texas. And it did so without formally consulting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as required by the Endangered Species Act. [1]

"It's a case of -- perhaps literally -- running over a critically endangered species on the way to pocketing profits on public lands," George Frampton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and assistant secretary of the interior for fish, wildlife and parks under President Clinton, told BushGreenwatch.

"It is disturbing that the Interior Department would fail to get a formal opinion from their own biologists before allowing the drilling."

There are reportedly less than 5,000 of these turtles remaining in the world, and Padre Island is the only US location where these and other sea turtles come to nest in the Gulf of Mexico.

If you have been reading my columns in photography, you know that I'm a Nikon owner. It's not that I have anything against Canon since my first SLR camera was the Canon A1 more than 25 years ago. However, I have grown accustomed to the Nikon "feel," and I can't seem to go back to Canon.

Anyway, when Canon broke the $1000 barrier with the introduction of its 300D (Digital Rebel), I was curious to see what Nikon's repsonse will be. Now we know. It's the Nikon D70. Unlike the Canon 300D, which is really a diluted or cheaper version of the Canon 10D. The Nikon 70D is not really a cheaper version of the 100D since it add several new features that the D100 lacks.

For instance, the shutter speed now maxes out at 1/8000 sec instead of 1/4000, the LCD panel has been upgraded (higher resolution), and the flash sync speed is now up to 1/500 second instead of 1/180 for the D100. You can also take pictures in compressed JPEG + NEF combination (not available in the D100) and it can shoot 12 images continuously in the high JPEG quality mode (compared to 6 images in the D100). The D70 also comes with USB 2.0 rather than USB 1.1 for the D100.

So, as you can see, the D70 can stand on its own. Of course, it's not the D100 in a sense that there are a number of features that are not available in the D70 (such as metal body).

The price for the D70 is $999 (body only), which is $100 more expensive than the Canon 300D, but with all the upgrades, it's definitely worth it. All in all, it's going to be a great entry-level digital SLR. Check it out at Nikon.

Verizon Wireless let its cellular customers know recently that it would be increasing the fees it charges because of the recently passed Wireless Telephone Number Portability Act of 2003.

"INCREASE IN REGULATORY CHARGE. Beginning March 1, 2004, our Regulatory Charge, which helps defray Verizon Wireless' ongoing costs of complying with various regulatory mandates, will increase from $0.05 to $0.45 per month to help defray the costs of complying with the FCC's local number portability requirements. ..."

An 800% increase? Wow. I'm looking forward to my contract being up in late February so I can switch over to T-Mobile. I'd like to make use of all those monthly nickels I've been paying Verizon!

If you use your Palm religiously as I have done for the past 8 years, you start to understand that there are a number of programs that become so indispensable. For the past few months, and especially last week or so, Tealscript emerged as one of those programs in my T3. Ever since Palm abandoned the original Graffiti writing recognition system (G1) for the new Graffiti 2 (G2) system, I had not particularly enjoyed using G2. I have always found the letters i and t were cumbersome and inefficient in G2. I installed G1 over G2 in my Tungsten C and Tungsten T3 for a while, but number of conflicts got in the way (including restoring the handheld from hard reset--if you installed G1 over G2, then you cannot restore the device after hard reset w/o getting rid of G1 from the backup directory to prevent fatal exception loop).

Disclaimer: I am a Survivor nut. I have seen every episode, attended weekly Survivor gatherings, dressed as Rudy Boesch at a Survivor 1 finale party and I think Big Tom should be president.

My question after last night is: Should men wear kilts? The king, Richard Hatch, was nattily attired in a Utilkilt when he wasn't naked. The garment appeared well-made, very utilitarian, and looked good even on Richard's big ass. And we all remember Rupert quickly made himself a skirt on Survivor: Pearl Islands when his Levis started chaffing.

Is is possible for a normal, heterosexual, red-blooded, non-Scottish male to wear a kilt and be taken seriously? For some reason, I think the answer is no and that's a shame. We men just don't have any variety when it comes to clothing choices. For formals we wear tuxedos. To dress up we wear suits. Business casual puts us in button downs and khakis. Casual finds us in jeans. Slumming has us in t-shirts, shorts and trainers. Where does the kilt fit in? That's what I want to know!!!!

Who'd have guessed we'd get free pr0n during the game yesterday? Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" (Justin Timberlake's words, not mine) definitely gets nods for the most TiVo-worthy moment of Super Bowl XXXVIII. Makes me yearn for a HD DVR just that much more.

Thanks to LostRemote for the link.

Olympus has announced its entry into the market of mobile phone camera modules.

The new camera module, pictured here with a Japanese 100-yen coin for a size comparison, realizes its thin size by employing free-shaped prisms for aligning light rays.

The free-shaped prism technology was previously employed by Olympus in a head-mount display, called Eye-Trek. The experience carried over in the design of the miniature camera module.

Compared to conventional camera modules for mobile phones that require several lenses vertically stacked on one another, the resin free-prism model is much thinner, at 8.5-mm. Olympus' camera module has an F value of 2.8, is designed for a 1/4-in optical instrument, and supports a 1.3-million-pixel image sensor.

Olympus is expecting to ship camera modules by spring of 2004, and mass-production in fall 2004, with an estimated production run of 500,000 units per month.

Canon has announced the EOS-1D Mark II, an amazing addition to the EOS series. The camera features an 8.2 megapixel CMOS sensor, and has the ability to capture over eight frames per second.

The EOS 1D Mark II uses a new generation DIGIC II processor for the processing power needed to maintain the resolution and speed, and boasts a 40 frame JPEG image buffer (20 frames in RAW mode). The combination of CMOS sensor, DIGIC II processor and new buffer system allows the EOS 1D Mark II to shoot and process over 69 megapixels of data per second (or 100 MB/sec).

The EOS-1D Mark II is the successor to the Canon EOS-1D which was introduced at the end of 2001. The new model offers double the resolution of its predecessor, double the size of the continuous shooting buffer and increases continuous shooting speed slightly.

Other modifications to the $4500 model include a new USB port, and a new SD expansion slot in addition to the existing CF slot.

A new 3G broadband wireless antenna technology will be tried during the 2004 Olympic Games inside Athens International Airport in Greece this summer.

The new antennas, called phased arrays, can electronically and automatically change their coverage patterns from circles to ellipses in order to dynamically cover dead spots where callers would otherwise get no signal. Current systems change only their power output depending on demand. The new antennas would change both their power and the shape of their signals to match call demand at any given time.

The system will rely on autonomous agents, semi-intelligent software entities that can locate and negotiate for resources on behalf of their owners. The benefits of the new system potentially include better reception for users and potentially lower mobile bills, since the system would rely on a reduced number of antenna masts, saving money up-front as well as later due to reduced maintenance.

"The airport network will be a hybrid "2.5G" system encompassing some aspects of both conventional GSM and 3G. Called the Airport Decision and Management Network (Adamant), it is part of a European Union-funded project designed to reduce flight delays caused when airlines cannot contact passengers who are late boarding a plane."

The full story can be found at NewScientist.com.

Over three years, 14-year-old Annie Leith downloaded nearly 1000 songs via Kazaa. The downloading, illegal in the U.S., got Leith into legal trouble with the Recording Industry Association of America in September 2003. Ultimately, the lawsuit was settled for $3,000.

Now, that experience has landed Leith in an ad for Pepsi and Apple Computer, to be shown on Super Bowl Sunday. The ad introduces a promotion in which 100 million bottle caps on Pepsi soft drinks include a code for free downloads on Apple's iTunes Music Store.

The partnership deal is one the most visible of recent digital music partnerships. Coca-Cola has partnered with Musicmatch to promote its Sprite soft drinks, and Heineken has partnered with RealNetworks in a giveaway of beer 12-packs.

In the Pepsi-Apple Super Bowl ad, which features Leith, her sister, and 14 other music downloading outlaws, Leith acknowledges she was among hundreds sued for downloading songs, then vows to continue doing so... on iTunes.