In my article Amazon Kindle 3G-The Perfect Travel Companion, I talked about how useful I found my 3G Kindle while travelling overseas.  One of the comments left on that article pointed to a blog that said that Vietnam was one of the only places that the author couldn’t get any 3G signal.  This confused the heck out of me, as I had full coverage (and also full web access) from North to South for the 3 weeks I was over there. What was going on?

US Kindle 3 3G Coverage

I went to Amazon.com to look at the 3G coverage map. Huh? No 3G coverage in Vietnam? Had I slurped back too much Pho, or had the sun addled my brain, or was it just like an episode of Dallas and it was all a dream?

Then I remembered there’s actually two versions of the 3G Kindle , a US one that is only available in the US and uses an ATT sim card and also an International model that uses a Vodafone sim card.  Now, Australia being NOT being part of the US meant I had an international model. So I went to Amazon.co.uk and check the Vodaphone 3G coverage map there.

Intl Kindle 3 3G Coverage

So you can see while the US (ATT) Kindle 3 offers ZERO 3G coverage in Vietnam, the International version (Voda) gives almost full 3G coverage. The same applies for Cambodia.

US Kindle 3 3G Coverage

Intl Kindle 3 3G Coverage

Tasmania US v Intl 3G Coverage

For interest sake I then had a look at Australian coverage.  I live in Tasmania, that little island just underneath Victoria, but couldn’t get my screenshot to include in the map above, so I added separately. (We hate being left off the map of Australia ).  You can see  that there’s dramatically different coverage between the International and the US Kindle 3 3G . Looking at the maps above, in reality I’d be much better off with a US Kindle 3 3G than the International model. Vodafone has notoriously bad coverage in Australia, and it’s a bit ironic that a US Kindle would give me better coverage than an “International” version.  But of course if I had a US model, I’d have NO coverage while in Vietnam.

A quick comparison of the maps shows some obvious areas where coverage is different, Morocco (I), Namibia(I), Cote D’Ivoire(I), Belarus(I), Malawi(I),Ecuador(U), Tanzania(U) and Bolivia(U) amongst others, and the degree of difference in coverage varies.

I’m guessing that this “anomoly”  has to do with the partners that the respective Telcos have in the different countries. The long and short, if you’re intending to use your Kindle while travelling, it’s worth checking out if the US or International will give you the best coverage in the countries that you’re going to visit. Be aware though that it’s not possible to get a US Kindle 3G directly from Amazon internationally and conversely an International Kindle 3G in the US, but there are ways of doing it.

Happy travelling

Filed in categories: Articles, eBook Readers and Gear, Travel Gear

Tagged: 3G, Kindle, Travel gear

Amazon Kindle 3 3G International Coverage – US vs International model originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 3, 2012 at 11:00 am.

I love my Kindle, and I love the Amazon ecosystem for the purchase and reading of novels but did you know that  you can extend  the functionality of your Kindle way beyond that?

The Kindles supports more than just Amazon’s .AZW book format (basically a .MOBI with Digital Rights Management-DRM).  From the web site the Kindle supports:  Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML, DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion.

So maps, pictures, articles and other useful stuff can be loaded onto your Kindle. Amazon promotes this and gives you up to 5GB for storage of personal documents. Anything archived here can be downloaded to supported devices or applications just like your Amazon books. When I’m travelling I like to keep copies of important documents like itineraries,travel insurance documents and medical documents on my Kindle.  That way they’re always with me and won’t get crumpled, lost or wet .

This is a short article to quickly cover the most common ways of getting your own documents onto your Amazon Kindle (note: I am not going to discuss DRM)

Please click on any of the pictures to enlarge the screenshots.

Direct File System

By plugging your Kindle into your PC or Mac, you can get access to the Kindle as an additional drive. This way you can just drag and drop supported files onto your Kindle.

Documents can be placed directly into the root of the document directory or can put into subdirectories. Similarly, audio files can be manually placed into the music directory or audible books into the audible directory.  Note that putting them into sub-directories does not put them into collections.

Useful if you’ve got you Kindle handy and just want the native file put onto your Kindle or if you have multiple documents to transfer. Just as a side point in the example above you’ll see two files with the same name but a different extension.  The .AZW is the ebook itself and the .MBP is your “progress” file for that ebook.

Advantages:

• No Wifi required
• Fast transfer
• Can transfer music and audible books

Disadvantages:

• Need PC/Mac and micro-USB cable and Kindle
• No conversion available
• Not archived in your Amazon Personal Documents storage

Personal Documents  Kindle Email

Amazon supplies you with two email address that allow you to send documents to your Kindle.

@kindle.com – your personal document will be received via either wifi or 3g. Sending via 3g on the Whispernet is chargeable, so you need to be careful how you connect by default ( as I found out from borrowing a friends Kindle 2 to test to see if I liked the Kindle and managed to rack up a $60 bill )

@free.kindle.com – will only send via wifi. Even if the 3g is your default connection it’s only the next time you connect via wifi  that the document will be downloaded (for free).

Where this is additionally useful is if you have multiple users and devices on a single account. In my example above I can send a personal document to one, two or all three of the Kindles attached to my account just by adding their email address. For security you nominate what email addresses are allowed to send documents to your Kindle addresses otherwise I’m sure by now Kindle spam would be a reality

If you send a document and put “Convert” in the subject line of the email, then Amazon will attempt to convert from your format to AZW format.  By converting to .AZW, you can then manipulate like a normal book: change font size and typeface, spacing, style, etc. The accuracy of the converstion depends on format and layout of the source document. You will receive an email when your document is ready for delivery and also a notification on your Kindle when the document is available.

Advantages:

• Does not require Kindle
• Can be initiated from multiple platforms as long as you have an email client
• Can be sent to individual user for multiple user accounts
• Can do conversions to .azw
• Archived in your Amazon Personal Documents Storage
• Can retrieve over 3g

Disadvantages:

• Author becomes email address.
• Can incur Whispernet charges inadvertently
• Document must be less than 50MB
• Email must have less than 25 documents
• Email must go to less than 15 recipients

Amazon Send to Kindle application

Amazon recently released their Send to Kindle app for PC.  Once installed, you then have two ways of sending documents to your Kindle.  You can either right click on a document in Windows Explorer and choose Send to Kindle, or you can use the Print function in almost any Windows application to convert your source to a PDF. You can choose whether to send it via Wifi or Whispernet. You can select whether to archive your document or not. Again receiving a document may incur a 3g Whispernet fee.

Advantages:

• Does not require Kindle
• You can rename the title and author
• Any source can be converted to PDF via Print option
• You get the option to archive in your Amazon Documents Archive
• Can retrieve over 3g

Calibre

Calibre is more than just a means to be able to send documents to your Kindle, it’s a complete e-book manager.  I’m not going to review the full functionality of Calibre here as that’s a subject by itself.  Calibre can be used to convert from pretty much any e-book format to another.  If you click on the picture above you’ll see that I’ve got two documents in my library.  By plugging your Kindle in, you can see that the green tick next to “Locked On” means that that document is already on my Kindle.  By highlighting a document and hitting “Send to Kindle” you can transfer documents from your library to your Kindle.  If you have a lot of documents you can easily see what is and isn’t already loaded on your Kindle.

Advantages:

• Fully featured ebook/document management (and more)
• Support for Windows, OSX, Linux and a portable (thumbdrive) version
• Multiple conversion options
• You can rename/modify any information about the document

Disadvantages:

• Not archived in your Amazon personal documents
• Need PC/Mac, micro-USB cable and Kindle

So there’s multiple ways to get personal documents onto your Kindle, each with it’s own advantages and disadvantages both in terms of procedure, operation and complexity.  One of the big differentiators is if you need the document to be saved into Amazon’s Personal Document storage either for sharing, archiving or for on/off-line access. Personally I use a mixture of all the methods mentioned above depending on my circumstances of what sort of document I need to send, what source format it’s in, what destination format I want it in, where I am and what sort of  ”resources” are available to me. One other thing to keep in mind is that if you don’t have a security code on your Kindle then if you lose it or it’s stolen then anyone can access your personal documents so be careful what you do put on

Filed in categories: Articles, eBook Readers and Gear

Tagged: Kindle

How To: Getting Personal Documents on Your Kindle originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 19, 2012 at 11:00 am.

It’s the beginning of a new year, which for a lot of people, means that it is time to start a new journal or diary. I’ve been wrestling with the decision of whether to stay traditional and keep my journal in a Moleskine, Rhodia or similar notebook, or go digital and use a diary app on my iPhone / iPad. Both formats have their own set of advantages and disadvantages. Is one way to better than the other? In this two part article, I’m going to try to answer that question for myself and maybe for you too. Part one covers traditional journals.

My journaling background

I’ve been an on again off again diary keeper since I was a kid. Back in the 70′s and 80′s when I was growing up, the only way to keep a record of your thoughts, memories and events was by writing them down on paper. I had several anything books as we used to call them… blank unlined hardback books meant to hold “anything”. I also had a couple classic lock and key type diaries that offered one page for each day of the year. I was even into 3×5 inch index cards way before they were cool. I used to keep a metal index card box labeled “Julie’s Secret Files”. Yep, I was a dork even back then… Nothing has changed folks

Childhood diary entries

The sad thing is that I can currently only find one of my childhood journals. I know the others are around here somewhere (hopefully). I just don’t know where. I sat down with that one diary this past weekend and reading it from cover to cover gave me quite a few laughs. 90% of it was filled with entries talking about how big of a pain my younger sister was and all my attempts to find and read her diary. Come on, that was very important stuff to a 13yr old! But mixed in with that silly stuff were a few nuggets that triggered long lost memories. Reading it made me wish I would have continued to keep a journal all these years. I especially wish I would have kept a journal this past year to record my cancer adventure.

Sticking with it…

Why haven’t I been able to keep a journal over the years when I’ve tried countless times? Lots of lame reasons that tend to run in a continuous loop as an internal dialog in my head:

What I write is complete drivel, so why write it down?
My hand writing is messy and I make too mistakes.
I don’t have time to write today, I’ll do it tomorrow.
My doodles are crude and pointless.
I haven’t written in months, so why start again?

I now have answers and comments to those questions and statements that are helping me make journaling a habit that I will stick with.

Q: What I write is complete drivel, so why write it down?
A: Yes, it probably is, but who cares. It’s your drivel and mixed in with it, will be valuable memories that you’ll be able to enjoy later.

S: My hand writing is messy and I make too mistakes.
C: You’re not being graded on your penmanship, so who cares.

S: I don’t have time to write today, I’ll do it tomorrow.
C: That’s fine. You don’t have to write every day, or even every week or month. Write when you feel like it.

S: My doodles are crude and pointless.
C: You’re not being graded on your artistic abilities, so who cares.

Q: I haven’t written in months, so why start again?
A: Why not? Don’t feel like a failure when you don’t write for long periods. Think of it as a break so you can store up memories to write about later.

Once I flipped the switch in my brain that makes me want to write things down all the time, I encountered a new problem and the reason for this article… It’s my struggle to choose between keeping a traditional paper journal or keeping a journal on my iPad. Analog vs. digital? That’s the big question. Let’s consider the analog journal…

Going with paper and pen

Analog journals come in all manner of sizes, shapes and colors. I have to admit that I’m a sucker for Moleskine, Rhodia, and similar notebooks. There is something very romantic about writing your thoughts in a bound book. It’s as if those thoughts are more important just because they are inscribed in a physical book. As you can see from the image above, I have quite a collection of empty notebooks to choose from. The stack on the Left includes a Quo Vadis Habana journal, several blank and lined Moleskines, a San Francisco Moleskine travel journal and a Rhodia webbie. On the Right are a bunch of a Field Notes notebooks and Moleskine Cahiers and Volants. On the bottom of that stack is a Wreck This Journal book by Keri Smith. It’s a journal with all kinds of prompts that are designed to help you be more creative and not worry about screwing up your journal. I found it to be a cool concept, but it a little too juvenile for my taste.

My favorite notebook is currently the 3.5 x 5.5 inch unlined Rhodia Pocket webbie in Orange. I love the soft almost padded feel of the cover and that I can write and draw with markers without too much fear that they will bleed through the page. I do wish that the webbies had white instead of the cream color. I like Moleskine notebooks too and prefer the Sketchbook Pocket version for the thicker paper. Markers and some inks bleed through the regular Moleskine notebook paper too easily.

I am also more than a little obsessed with finding accessories for my notebooks. Notebook covers, pen holders, bookmarks, pens, pencils, you name it…

What do you write in your journal?

There are a million different types of journals. Art journals, gratitude journals, dream journals, trip journals, workout journals, food journals etc. I’m usually pretty traditional when it comes to what I write in mine. I don’t use it as an appointment or to-do book. It tends to be a dated entry with a synopsis of my day. I might include a drawing if the mood strikes and I sometimes tape or glue ticket stubs or other small paper items pertaining to the day’s events.

I recently purchased a Polaroid Pogo Mobile Printer for the sole purpose of making 2 x 3 inch prints to add to my journal entries. Although the print quality isn’t spectacular, it’s good enough for this task. The printer itself is less than $40 and doesn’t require any ink cartridges. The only consumables are the special photo paper that is required for it. They also offer photo paper with a peel and stick backing, which makes adding pictures to your journal very easy. I have some on order

The big downside for me is that this little Bluetooth printer isn’t compatible with the iPhone. Apparently you can get it to work if you’re willing to jailbreak your phone and load a special Bluetooth app. But, at the moment there isn’t a way to jailbreak an iPhone 4S. As soon as there is, I’ll be doing it just so I can use it to print pics to the Pogo. The Pogo does work just fine with my iMac and also worked great with a Samsung Galaxy Nexus Android 4.0 phone.

Finding inspiration

I love seeing pictures of other people’s journal entries and will sometimes go on Flickr and do a search on the word “journal”. It’s a cool way to find ideas for my own entries.

For example, if you want to be inspired, go check out The Hike Guy’s journals of his 1700 mile trek along the Pacific Crest Trail. They are fantastic and make me want to get a backpack and set off for an adventure in the woods right now. Or maybe when it’s warmer… and I have an RV… with a satellite link.

There are also many journal related sites that I love to visit. Here are a few:

Notebook Stories
Journaling Saves
Recording Thoughts

Privacy

Keeping a journal on paper means that someone will probably find and read it long after you are gone, if not sooner. Some people might consider this a terrifying possibility. It’s something I really don’t worry about. If someone wants to read one of my journals, it’s probably going to bore them silly very quickly.

For those of you that do worry about the uninvited sneaking a peek at your innermost thoughts, does that make digital journals more attractive since it is easier to secure / hide them?

Some advantages of keeping a paper journal:

• Electricity or a connection to the internet is not required to write an entry
• Dropping a journal on the floor will not break it or cause it to lose entries
• A Moleskine will never crash or need a firmware upgrade
• Paper journals allow much more freedom and customization than their digital equivalent
• They cost much less than a smartphone, tablet or computer

What are some other advantages that you find with paper journals vs. digital journals?

If we’re going to talk about advantages, we have to talk about the disadvantages too.

Some disadvantages of keeping an analog journal:

• It’s easier for someone to find and read your journal when it’s a physical object like a book
• There’s no spellcheck for a Moleskine
• If you write an entry with sloppy penmanship, you’ll have to live with it
• It’s difficult to find a specific entry in a journal
• You can’t easily backup an analog journal like you can a digital journal

I actually have one way to take care of the last two disadvantages on that list.

Using Evernote to back up your journal

If you haven’t heard of Evernote, it’s a free (there’s a premium version too) note taking, web clipping, archiving tool that you can use on your desktop or your iPhone, Android and Blackberry devices.

It makes a great analog journal backup tool and search tool. Just snap a picture of your journal page and upload it to your Evernote account. You can create an Evernote notebook to store all your journal images. You can then sync your Evernote notebooks between your desktop and your phone, which means you’ll have a copy of your analog journal on your digital device. Cool right? It gets even better though…

You can search for words in the images you’ve uploaded to Evernote. Just type a word in the search box and Evernote will give you a list of all the entries where that word shows up. Even your hand written words are searchable. I’m not just talking printed words – even cursive! That makes it super easy to find a specific entry. It doesn’t work 100% of the time as in it sometimes will show you words that don’t match your search criteria, but it works well enough to be a super useful tool. Evernote is also an excellent companion to one of my favorite iOS journal apps. But more about that in part 2 of this series where I’ll talk about digital journaling.

In the mean time, I’d love to hear from you about your journal preferences. What is your favorite brand of notebook? Do you include drawings? Do you add photos? Write in code so people can’t read it?

Filed in categories: Articles, Featured Items, Miscellaneous

Tagged: Gear Diary, Journal

Starting a New Journal – Which Format Do you Use, Digital or Analog? originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 7, 2012 at 5:53 pm.

Disclaimer 1: Rooting can have a difference connotation down here in Australia and I’m not sure if it means the same thing in other countries. This article has nothing to do with the Aussie colloquial term  

I literally fell into being an Android fanboi. After a raft of Sharp data organisers, Palm devices and then Windows Mobile PDA and phones, I quickly needed to get a new phone. I don’t turn my phones over quickly, I’m not a “must have the latest” kinda person as long as the device is still doing the job (can I really call myself a Gadgeteer? ). My intention was a new Winmob phone ( V6.5  at the time)  but all the Winmob phones offered by my carrier were too big  (4.3″ screen) and because of that I ended up with an Android based Froyo HTC Desire (3.7″ screen) not because of  the Android but because of the size.  Like all good Gadgeteers from there my research began as Android was new to me at the time (does this redeem me?).  Well you can’t research Android without coming across rooting your device so I thought I’d put this quick article together about what exactly is rooting and why would you do it ?

Disclaimer 2: Rooting will generally void any manufacturer warranty and can potentially brick your device. If you are not comfortable with the procedure and not willing to take the risk then please do not attempt. 

The term rooting comes from the old Unix days where the Super User account (SU) had root access to all the files, i.e. access to the files from the root directory up, so basically administrator rights in Windows terms. On a standard Android device you’ll only have access to some files, which limits your control over a number of variables and functions. The procedure for rooting an Android device can be as easy as downloading and running an app on your device or may be be a multi-stepped process.  For all those Apple folks out there this is the equivalent of Jailbreaking your Apple device (or at least as close as a comparison as you can get when you talk Apple v Android ).

This article is not intended as a how-to tutorial but as a list of some of the advantages you can get from rooting your Android device.

Remove OEM Bloatware:

Many manufacturers and carriers will have customised ROMs on their devices. These often include applications that THEY think would be useful to you or are useful to them by say pushing traffic through them.  These applications may take up valuable storage space, or stay active in memory using up valuable resources.  The apps are normally written into the protected areas and can’t be uninstalled as they are system apps.   To the left is a picture of the typical bloatware found on an Australian Telstra Android phone ( in this case they’re actually only shortcuts ). Rooting gives you the ability to remove or freeze these.

Backup and Restore your Entire System:

Backup programs for non-rooted devices only have access to user accessible areas of apps and data.   Having root access will give you access to all areas on your device and allow you to make  ”bare metal” rebuild images.  Where is this useful ?  Let’s say a manufacturer ships out an Over The Air (OTA) system update to you that makes your device unusable. If you have a “bare metal” image then you can just go back to your last working version and not apply the system update until it’s stable.

Run Custom Roms:

Since the release of the Nexus G1, the Android ROM community has grown and grown and there’s a plethora of “cooks” out there baking custom ROMs for almost all Android Devices. Alternate ROMs can be anything from hacked OEM ROMs to ROMs built from the ground up.  These ROMs will typically incorporate things that will speed up your device and add functionality not found in the OEM ROMs.  Of course the ability to backup and restore your entire system means that you can easily try different ROMs and easily go back to the one you like the best or even go back to the OEM one if that’s the one you prefer. Cyanogen is probably one of the popular alternate ROMs out there, in fact the founder of Cyanogen was employed by Samsung based on this project. The most active alternative ROM site is XDA-Developers where you can find multiple ROM options for the more commonly available devices.

More screen real estate:

With smaller-screen devices you are constrained to the standard screen estate given to you by the manufacturer.  Especially on the 7″ tablets (which kind of straddles the phone/tablet size), the icons are normally too big which leads to excessive scrolling to find that app you want. By changing the LCD density, you can get more real estate on the screen.  Conversely as you get a bit older you might want to make those icons bigger

Speed and Battery:

Many developers will tweak the kernel to dramatically improve performance .  Processors can be overclocked or underclocked and unnecessary processes can be eliminated. These changes result in better performance and better battery life.

Keep up to date with versions:

Most manufacturers are notorious for developing a product, releasing it and then dropping all support after the next model’s released.  By using customised ROMs you can update to the latest version of Android OS before they are officially released (if it ever is) . Especially useful if you have an older device that isn’t supported by the manufacturer but is by the development community.

More memory:

Root will allow you to move and manipulate the partitions where system and data resides.  Manufacturers will set the partition limits to best suit them at time of manufacture. You can push some functions and applications to the external card storage of your device.  Older phones were notorious for running out of memory after you’d installed a number of  apps. While later versions of Android did this automatically, root gives you complete control. Rooting will also allow you to freeze unnecessary processes.

Take screen shots: 

Everyone likes to show off their artistic abilities by showing off their home screens or show off their high score in Angry Birds .  While some manufacturers do give you the ability to take screen shots, most don’t.  Want to post an error on your screen or similar ?  Screen shots can be useful.

Change boot screens:  

Don’t like the boot animation that comes up when you turn your phone on (often almost an advertisement)? Root will allow you to change and personalise even down to this level.

Filed in categories: Android related, Articles

Tagged: Android, rooting

Rooting your Android device…advantages? (…it’s not a bad thing) originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 6, 2012 at 9:00 am.

In a few hours, 2011 will become a memory as we say hello to a brand new year. We posted over 400 reviews this year on topics that ranged from apps to flashlights and smartphones to wrist watches. Let’s take a look at the 25 most viewed reviews on The Gadgeteer in the past year. Will the #1 review be from this year or will it be an older product from years ago? Let’s start with review #25 and find out.

25. DAGi Stylus for iPad by Jackie Cheng (September, 2010)

The 25th most read review of 2011 is a capacitive stylus review from the previous year. This particular stylus has a unique tip that sets it apart from the many styli on the market. I’m still trying to find the perfect stylus. Have you found yours?

24. Motorola Extended Battery for Droid X by Julie Strietelmeier (February, 2011)

The Motorola Droid X is the smartphone I used for almost a year before switching back to the iPhone. This extended battery was a must have upgrade from the standard battery.

23. Sony Reader Wi-Fi (PRS-T1) eBook Reader by Janet Cloninger (October, 2011)

Janet (AKA Queen of eBook Readers) shows up in this list with 2 Sony eReader reviews. People love her reviews because she knows all their ins and outs.

22. Motorola XOOM Android Tablet by Julie Strietelmeier (February, 2011)

The Xoom was the first Honeycomb tablet that I had the chance to try. It was both impressive and disappointing all at the same time because it lacked some core features at launch (Flash support, SD card support, 4G support).

21. D-Link Boxee Box by Julie Strietelmeier (January, 2011)

I still use the Boxee Box on a regular basis to watch video on my big screen TV. I love the watch later feature that allows me to mark videos on my web browser to watch later though my Boxee Box hooked up to my 55″ TV in the living room. It would be my perfect streaming video device IF it could easily access Amazon Prime content. I keep the Roku XS around for that feature.

20. Roku XD|S Media Player by Dave Rees (February, 2011)

An earlier version of the Roku video streaming device.

19. ElementCase Vapor Pro case for iPhone 4 by Andy Simmons (March, 2011)

We reviewed several metal rail style “cases” for the iPhone 4/4S. This is the most popular one of 2011.

18. HTC ThunderBolt Android Smartphone by Julie Strietelmeier (March, 2011)

I only had a short visit with this Android phone, but really enjoyed it. It’s hard not to fall for HTC’s Sense interface.

17. Casio G-Shock GW9200-1 “Riseman” by Andy Chen (March, 2009)

This review was on last year’s list at #18, so it continues to be a popular one. We gadgeteers like our watches don’t we?

16. LED Lenser P7 LED Flashlight (8407) by Julie Strietelmeier (June, 2008)

This is one of those flashlights that feels like it would survive almost anything. I still use it occasionally.

15. Apple’s White iPhone 4 by Janet Cloninger (May, 2011)

It’s exactly like the Black iPhone 4 only it’s… White. Janet’s family drank a big pitcher of Apple koolaid and bought 3 iPhones this past Spring. I’m sure Steve Jobs is smiling down on her!

14. Aluratek Libre eBook Reader Pro by Julie Strietelmeier (February, 2010)

The Aluratek reader is not one of the upper echelon brands of eBook reading devices, but obviously still very popular among our readers.

13. netTALK DUO by Bill Kuch (September, 2010)

Devices like the netTALK were extremely popular this year with those of you that don’t feel the need to hang on to your analog phone service.

12. Sony PRS-650 Touch Edition eBook Reader by Janet Cloninger (September, 2010)

Another Sony review from Janet. I wonder when (if?) Sony will release a color device to compete with the Barnes and Noble Nook and Amazon Fire?

11. Motorola DROID Pro by Julie Strietelmeier (December, 2010)

This phone brought me back to the days of the Palm Treo. Am I the only one that misses physical buttons?

10. Citizen Eco-Drive Watch by Don Damiani (January, 1999)

I continue to be amazed at the fact that this 12yr old watch review still remains so popular. Last year it was #8, what will it be next year?

9. Apple iPad 2 by Janet Cloninger (March, 2011)

The iPad 2 is my favorite tablet of 2011. It still pulls me in better than any Android tablet I’ve tried and I keep wondering with the iPad 3 will bring us next year.

8. Logitech Revue™ With Google TV™ by Janet Cloninger (February, 2011)

Google TV didn’t take off like Google hoped it would.

7. Kill-A-Watt Electric Usage Monitor by Judie Lipsett (December, 2003)

Another review from days gone by.

6. VuPoint Magic Wand Scanner by Robin Cox (July, 2010)

I used to want one of these, but now I just take a picture of a page with my iPhone using the CamScanner+ app and it works perfectly.

5. Epad ZT-180 Android Tablet by Julie Strietelmeier (May, 2011)

I can’t understand why this review / tablet is so popular given that it has horrible battery life and a resistive display.

4. Apple iPhone 4 by Julie Strietelmeier (August, 2010)

Great phone, great camera. The only phone better is the 4S, which I’m using now.

3 . Pandigital Novel eBook Reader by Russ Coe (August, 2010)

Another inexpensive Android tablet.

2. Apple TV 2nd Gen by Janet Cloninger (July, 2011)

Apple’s $99 video streaming device that puts Netflix, Youtube and iTunes video on your HD TV. You can also use it to mirror video from your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to your TV.

1. magicJack PLUS by Bill Kuch (July, 2011)

This year’s most read review, with over 135,000 views, is for a gadget that allows you to drop your old analog phone in the trash by using your broadband connection for local and long distance calling. It doesn’t surprise me that this is a very popular review since times are tight and finding cost cutting solutions is a high priority on people’s to do lists.

I guess this was the year of “cutting the cord” for a lot of people. Whether it was cutting the cord with your cable company by using an Apple TV, Roku or Boxee Box or cutting the cord with your phone company by using the NetTALK DUO or magicJack, these products demonstrate that people are always looking for ways to save money by using gadgets.

Many thanks for all the hard work that The Gadgeteer team put in to bring you these great reviews!

What was your favorite product of 2011? Is it on this list?

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The Gadgeteer’s Top 25 Reviews of 2011 originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 31, 2011 at 4:30 pm.

A few years ago, most of the people reading this article probably carried two devices with them every day in their pocket or bag: a mobile phone and a PDA. PDAs aka Personal Digital Assistants were the norm back then, while smartphones were still just a glimmer in eye of Steve Jobs and the Google whiz kids. These days no one wants two devices when they can carry one uber-nifty mega smartphone right? Maybe not.

Once a month or so, I’ll receive an email like this one:

Hi Julie,

I was wondering if you could give me some advice on a replacement for my Palm TX?  I’ve done quite a bit of research and found that no one except HP (IPAQ) is making PDAs any longer.  (And they are expensive.)

I could go to a different platform, but it seems that there isn’t anything handheld that enables you to enter data with a stylus and that functions primarily as a business organizer (focus on calendar, contacts, notes, and enables you to sync it with the computer.)  I don’t need a phone with more functions and I don’t want to have to pay a monthly data fee to use the device. I really like the simplicity of Palm devices.  It seems I am not alone.

Some people are turning to the iPod Touch, but I really like the “always on” feature of PDAs. Plus, I understand it is primarily an entertainment device as opposed to a business organizer.

Any thoughts.  I’ll need to sync with a Windows 7 PC.

Don

I know that Don isn’t alone because I live with someone that has no desire for a smartphone. She still uses a Palm Zire 31 which was released way back in 2004, the dark ages of mobile computing.

As I see it, people that want to continue using pocket sized PDAs, have 3 choices:

1. Continue using older PDA devices for as long as you can find / replace them

Most of the people that email me asking for PDA advice, always start out by saying that their Palm device is dying and what current device can they buy to replace it. Guess what? You can still find brand new boxed Palm PDAs for less than $50 on eBay. And if you don’t mind used devices, you can easily spend less than $25. Handspring Visors and Windows Pocket PCs can be found too. This is the most inexpensive solution and most likely the best one for people who are perfectly happy kicking it old school.

In addition to the basic PIM (Personal Information Management) apps that are built-in to each device, you can still download 3rd party productivity apps from sites like Handango and Freeware Palm.

The biggest problem I can see with these older devices is the fact that there is little to no support for them other than like minded users on various online forums. There’s also the issue that as we continue to update our desktop computers to newer OS versions, the ability to sync/backup our data on these devices will probably become impossible due to software incompatibility. That said, depending on the device, you can still find syncing software for Palm and Windows CE/Pocket PC devices on http://www.hpwebos.com/ and http://hp.com respectively.

2. Consider a WiFi enabled Android device

There are two ways to get a pocket sized Android device that can serve as a PDA. One way is to buy a WiFi enabled smartphone and only use the WiFi connection instead of the cellular connection. Just like with older Palm devices, older Android smartphones can be found at bargain prices. However, if you want something shiny and new, consider one of the Samsung Galaxy Player devices. They offer 4 and 5 inch models that are priced at $230 – $270. They have all the main features of current Android smartphones like WiFi, GPS, Camera, SD card expansion and Bluetooth, but without the need to pay for a monthly data plan. I took a quick look at the Galaxy Player 5.0 at my local Best Buy and was tempted to buy one just to do a review.

One of the best reasons to go with an Android device is the fact that you completely bypass the need to sync data with a desktop PC. All data syncing is done with Google (calendar, contacts, email) via WiFi to the cloud. And for those of you that are extra paranoid, there are third party apps that will back up your data to an SD card.

3. Another option is an iPod touch

Apple’s iPod touch is almost like having a thinner iPhone without the actual phone feature. Priced at $199 – $399 depending on the capacity, the touch has WiFi, Bluetooth, and front / rear facing cameras. What it doesn’t have is a flash card slot or a real GPS… but there is a mapping feature that uses proximity to known Wi-Fi networks to figure out your location. Definitely not very accurate though.

There are a bazillion productivity apps for the touch including some of the really popular ones that used to be available for the Pocket PC and Palm OS like Pocket Informant and iambic’s Agendus.

Like Android devices, you have the option not to connect the iPod touch to a desktop computer as the data will be stored in the cloud with iCloud. iCloud will also make sure that your data is the same across all your iOS devices which is cool. I like that I can take a picture with my iPhone and it will automatically show up on my iPad and iMac. You can even sync your Google data (calendar, email, contacts) with Apple’s built in apps.

Of course if you choose option #2 or #3, you’ll have to charge your device every 2-3 days unlike 2-3 weeks or longer with an older Palm device.

If it were me, I’d probably choose the iPod touch for a few different reasons. For one thing, it has more support from Apple in the way of OS updates than the Samsung Galaxy Player and other older Android devices. Apple tends to provide major OS updates through 2 generations of devices. So if you buy the current or last gen device, you can still run the latest and greatest version of the OS. This doesn’t seem to be the case with Android devices. There is also a huge variety of 3rd party accessories for the touch that include cases, charging docks, speakers, fitness sensors and more.

So what do you think? Is there still a market for PDAs? Are there other devices not mentioned here that you think would make a great PDA for the non-smartphone crowd? Let me know your ideas.

Filed in categories: Android related, Articles, iPhone, iPad, iPod related

Tagged: PDA

Is there still a market for PDAs? originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 21, 2011 at 5:49 pm.

Dear Gadget Diary,

Gadgets have been keeping me busy the last couple of weeks with the iPhone 4S and now the Kindle Fire. I’ve only had the Fire for a few days, but my initial impressions are that it’s no iPad. But for $199, it’s a nice little tablet. I don’t want to make any snap judgements though, so I want to use it awhile longer before I post my full review. I should be receiving an HTC Rezound review sample tomorrow. I’m excited to try it as I haven’t used an Android phone since my Motorola Droid X.

Jeanne and I went back up to Indy to the GRT Glass Design Studio yesterday to pick up the glass tiles we made last weekend. For the 2 of you that are interested, here’s how the tiles turned out (see my last diary entry for more info…).

This is the first glass tile that I made back in October.

We attended a 2nd class last weekend and here’s the pattern I used. I wanted to make a sun to go along with the moon.

This is how it turned out. I like the moon better

After that, we drove back down to Greenwood to check out the Barnes & Noble bookstore. I was really amazed that the mall parking lots were so full. No one would know that the US is having economic troubles by the crowds of people we saw shopping.

After my usual perusal of the magazine section, I headed over to the notebook and journal area. I almost bought a boxed set of monthly Moleskine Daily Diary Planners. The set contains 12 individual Moleskine Volant notebooks. One for each month, in a different color. The price was $39.95, but using that handy dandy ShopSavvy app on my iPhone 4S, I found that I could buy the same thing through Amazon with a $13 savings. I did end up buying a set of Moleskine Volants and two sets of Cahiers notebooks though. I’m currently obsessed with trying to find a perfect way to keep a daily journal on my iPhone, iPad or good old paper. I think paper is going to win the battle, but I’m not sure buying a bazillion notebooks is helping. In the process, I’ve become a notebook addict…

I guess there are worse things to be addicted to right?

In other news, I found two iOS apps that are saving me time and effort. If you do any type of business where you have to sign forms and then fax them to someone, you know how inconvenient it can be to print the form, fill it out and then fax it. I don’t even have a fax machine, so I usually have to scan the document and then email it. One app is called Sign-N-Send.

It allows you to open PDFs or Word documents directly from your email and then use your finger or a stylus to sign your name or type text into fields. You can choose different colors and even highlight text. Moving text blocks around on the iPhone’s small display is challenging, but it’s definitely doable if you need to sign a form and get it back to someone quickly. FYI: the free version of the app puts a full page ad as the first page of your document.

Another app I purchased recently is called CamScanner+. With it, you can use the camera in your iPhone to take pictures of documents and turn them into PDF files. The PDF files can then be emailed, uploaded to Evernote, DropBox, Google Docs and more. This app has a lot of features that make it worth the $4.99 price. It can do multi-page documents, enhances color, auto crop images and you can even search for text inside the created PDF files.

There are many scanner apps in the app store. If anyone would like to suggest a better solution to using Send-n-Sign and CamScanner+, please do.

I wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving Day this week. We have a little ‘gift’ for you that will hopefully keep you awake after dinner Thursday. We’ll be bringing you a nice selection of holiday gift idea reviews. This year we have so many, that we’re going to spread them out over 3 days. So get ready!

And lastly… I have received several emails lately asking how I’m doing health-wise. I’m happy to report that I’ve been back to work (day job) for a month now and am almost halfway through my radiation treatments with no side effects (knock on wood) yet. So things are going great and I plan to keep it that way!

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Tagged: gadget diary

Julie’s Gadget Diary 11-20-11 originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 20, 2011 at 5:14 pm.

When I reviewed the Apple Cards app, I was disappointed to receive a card missing the letterpress design elements I had selected. Someone at Apple read the review, and they launched an investigation into why I had received the wrong design.  Someone at the printer checked my order file and determined it was okay.  Apparently, my card had just been the victim of a glitch in this new process.  They reprinted my card for free, and I wanted you to see how the card I designed with the Apple Cards iPhone/iPod App actually looks.  Click on the above image for a larger view, and click through to see more views.

You can see in the top picture that I received the border around the photo.  This border is embossed into the card.  In the above image, you can almost see the indentation of the design. (Click it for a larger view.)  The photo printing was just as sharp and clear this time as with the first card.  I can see details in Rachel’s sweater, and I can see the stitches on Teddy’s holly leaves.  The “Season’s Greetings” is just printed on, not embossed.

The interior is missing the border – which wasn’t part of the design I had selected – and has the flourish between the greeting and the signature – which was part of the design I selected.  The flourish is letterpressed, so it is embossed into the card.  None of the printing inside the card is embossed.  Again, this image can be clicked for a larger view.

I think the card is attractive and well-printed.  It’s certainly worth the $2.99 purchase price.  I still wish I had more designs from which to choose.  I’d also like an expanded color gamut so I could have some pink and yellow on baby cards and some red and green on Christmas cards.

Some people will say that having the signature printed on and having someone else mail the card is too impersonal.  Perhaps, but all my friends and family know what a geek I am, and I think they would appreciate getting these cards from me.  I’m impressed by the quality of the card, and by Apple’s attention to working the kinks out of their new system.  I’m sorry to report that I still did not receive the promised delivery notification, though.

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Update to Apple Cards iPhone / iPod App Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 26, 2011 at 2:00 pm.

Dear Gadget Diary,

My smartphone (which happens to be the iPhone 4 at the moment) was my BFF this past Saturday. The first thing I used it for was Google Maps to navigate to the GRT Glass Design Studio on the East side of Indy for an art workshop that Jeanne and I attended. Google Maps isn’t as good as a full blown GPS app since it doesn’t have spoken turn-by-turn directions. But it works just fine when you’re the navigator and not the driver. 

The workshop was called Glass Design Play Days and we were able to create a piece of art from a scrap of plate glass. The process requires you to cut a design out of special fire proof paper. I knew I wanted to make a moon shape for my design, I but wasn’t sure exactly how to draw it on the paper. I used my iPhone to surf google’s image library for ideas. One minute later, I was all set.

After I cut out all the little parts of the design and layered them for a sort of 3D effect, I placed the piece of glass over it and set it on the kiln where it will be fired this week. We go back next weekend to pick up the finished tiles. I hope mine turns out good.

After the workshop, we met my Dad for lunch at Cheesecake Factory. I used the iPhone during the drive from the glass studio to the restaurant to browse their menu. They have too many choices, so I wanted to figure out what I might want to order before I got there.

During lunch, I was able to show him pictures I’d taken at the glass studio so he knew what we’d been up to that morning.

After lunch, we went to the Barnes & Noble book store next door. I snapped pictures of books that I thought might be fun to read at a later date. At one point, another customer noticed me doing this and commented that I was just like his wife. Ha!

Jeanne found a book on jewelry making and asked me to look it up on Amazon.com via my phone to see what the price was. Instead, I pulled up ShopSaavy, scanned the barcode on the back of the book and boom, it told me that Amazon indeed did have it for a cheaper price. She was impressed.

On the drive home, I was able to catch up on some emails and Facebook. Ain’t technology great?

Filed in categories: Articles, iPhone, iPad, iPod related

Tagged: gadget diary

Julie’s Gadget Diary 10-10-11 originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 10, 2011 at 2:00 pm.

I’ve been accused of being an Apple fangirl, but you’d be surprised to know that I’m a recent convert.  There were years that I had nothing but contempt for Apple products.  I thought they were over-priced and ugly.  I thought people who said you could just open them up and get down to work were fooling themselves, to put it nicely.  I liked my old IBM clone just fine, thank you.  I liked clicking around with my noisy keyboard.  I liked DOS, and I didn’t need a mouse for “pointing and grunting”, as I described it.  I wouldn’t even walk into the Apple section at the local CompUSA store.

Then I saw an iPod, and I needed one.  I eventually got one after Apple saw the light and allowed them to work with real Windows computers.  That was just one little blip; I didn’t have a problem yet.  I began to notice how beautiful Apple computers were becoming.  I still would kill for one of those clear easel-style monitors.  I started to wonder how difficult it would be to put Windows on an Apple computer.

Then I saw my first iPhone commercial, and I told my husband I wanted one of those to use instead of my iPod (still the original one I bought).  When Apple introduced the iPod touch, I was tempted.  I was doomed when the introduction of the 2^nd generation iPod touch coincided with the opening of the Greensboro Apple store.  We bought three touches, and I was on the slippery slope to fandom.  I firmly believe the iPod touch is the gateway drug that leads to harder, unibody things.  I was truly converted when I got my first iPad thanks to Julie.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was being lured in by the evolution of Apple products as directed by Steve Jobs.  I didn’t know the man, and I don’t know much about his personal life.  None of that matters to me.  What matters is his genius and how it has impacted my life.

I think there are some true geniuses in this world, not necessarily as defined by an IQ test.  I think some people “hear the music of the spheres” and they can translate that beauty into something for the rest of us.   Frank Lloyd Wright heard it, and he made buildings so beautiful that I have literally cried as I walk into them.  Einstein heard the music, and we are still finding ways to prove his “transcription” of the physics of that music.

I think Steve Jobs also heard the music.  He translated it and harnessed it into products powerful enough to help us do our jobs, simple and intuitive enough that young children can play on them and learn, fun enough to provide us with hours of entertainment (when we aren’t using them for our jobs).  Most importantly to my family, his products have found a way to bring this to people with disabilities who can’t easily use other computers.  My story of George and Gracie shows how his simple little tablet is helping George recover his life after a devastating stroke.

Yes, I’m an Apple fangirl, and I’m damn proud to be one.  I think the world is a poorer place today.  I hope the folks at Apple will be able to continue bringing us wonderful products that still have a touch of Steve’s “music.“

Steve was a giant.  It’s his shoulders we’ll stand on as we go forward.

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Tagged: steve jobs

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 6, 2011 at 12:00 pm.

So, the Amazon “Kindle Fire” tablet is now reality and I believe it will be a big seller. At $199 it is within shouting distance of that “no brainer” gadget purchase price. Best of all, for us consumers, Amazon is forcing the rest of the tablet market to prove their value and “reason for being”.

That doesn’t mean that Motorola, Asus, Acer, Toshiba, Vizio, Samsung and whoever else is making an Android tablet this week is going to be out of business. Oh, and unless Apple hires Leo Apotheker (former CEO of Hewlett-Packard), I very much doubt the iPad is going to be killed off anytime soon.

There is an “if” though, because I’m writing about a device I’ve only seen in demo videos. Problems have been known to become apparent when a million users fire up a new device or service. But, for the sake of this article I’m going to assume that the demos are real, the people that used the demo units are being honest and that Amazon is sticking with their practice of not releasing products until they are ready. Besides, if Amazon doesn’t deliver it will make for an even better article come mid-November.

First let’s talk about the timing of Amazon’s release. It’s about as good as it could get. The product is available for presale now, on the cusp of the fourth quarter, it will be released over a month before Christmas and most importantly, may be available several months before Apple is expected to announce its new iPad model(s).

In designing the Kindle Fire Amazon looked at their target market and only included hardware necessary to support that offering. The device features:

1. 1 Ghz Dual Core Processor
2. 7″ multi-touch display with IPS (in-plane switching) technology and anti-reflective treatment, 1024 x 600 pixel resolution at 169 ppi, 16 million colors
3. Battery Life – 7.5 hours of video or 8 hours of book reading (WiFi Off)
4. Weight 14.6 ounces (413 grams)
5. Charges from wall adapter OR computer USB port
6. Free cloud storage for all Amazon content.
7. One-month Prime Subscription
8. 8GB RAM
9. Amazon Silk web browser (http://amazonsilk.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/introducing-amazon-silk/)

So, Amazon has developed a device that when coupled with their extensive online content library is clearly aimed at the consumer/home market both in price and capabilities. I doubt we’ll be reading stories about the Kindle Fire being used as a Point-of-Sale system or for navigating commercial aircraft.

However, the Kindle Fire has more than enough processing power to provide for smooth video playback, fast app launches and a responsive user interface. The display is bright, has a higher pixel density than the iPad 2, and (hallelujah!) an anti-reflective screen.

If the battery life lives up to the claims it’s more than acceptable for consumer use and being able to charge the device from either the wall or a standard USB port makes it less likely you’ll have to carry, or hunt for a high-amperage charger when needed. Basically, you’ll be able to charge it with the same charger or cable you’re using for a number of other devices in your home or car.

The Kindle Fire comes with 8GB of storage space and no slot for extra memory. I believe that is going to be sufficient when you consider Amazon is also including free storage on their cloud system. To give you an idea I looked at memory usage on my iPad where I have over 350 apps installed and they only take up about 3GB of space. For further comparison I checked my T-Mobile G2 phone and found that 150 apps there resided in less than 700MB of memory.

This should leave sufficient room for the device to hold several hours of video, books and a lot of music, and provided there’s a WiFi signal available content can be removed from the device and new downloaded from your online library. Once you have purchased content from Amazon it is always available. I suspect that Amazon will charge for non-Amazon content that is uploaded to their service much as they do with their existing MP3 library service (the first 5GB of non-Amazon content is free and 20GB of storage costs $20/year with higher limits available.).

What may also aid in the Kindle Fire being a game-changer is their new “Silk” browser. Amazon is attempting to split the workload of the browser between their “EC2” cloud service and the device. They’ll be caching pages in their cloud service as well as making intelligent guesses (based on data gathered from all of their users) at what links you’re likely to follow and pre-downloading them to the device. They’ll also be optimizing (shrinking) graphics and other content so that it is only the quality and size necessary to look good on the Kindle Fire’s display. Companies like AOL, Opera, Skyfire and a few others have tried similar, albeit less complex, schemes in the past. If Amazon can succeed in speeding up the browsing experience it would become another significant differentiator between them and the competition.

Amazon’s choices of what features they didn’t include in the Kindle Fire are almost as important as the features they did. Amazon’s new tablet reportedly does not include:

1. GPS or Accelerometer (G-Sensor)
2. Bluetooth Radio
3. 3G/4G Radio
4. No Microphone
5. No Cameras
6. No Memory Expansion Slot
7. No HDMI/mini HDMI port

All of these missing features were shaved to reduce cost, size/weight and battery usage. The only item on the list that surprises me is the Bluetooth radio as it would allow people to connect their wireless headphones and external speakers. Perhaps one can be added via the device’s mini-USB port, but that smacks of the same connectivity unfriendliness as the iPad Camera Connection kit for the iPad. Dante’ should have included “dongle usage and storage” as one of the “Circles of Hell” .

Some will complain about the lack of a 3G/4G option, but I don’t believe Amazon wanted to include a feature that would require their customers to contract with a third-party company. The cost of providing an all-inclusive 3G package like they offer on the existing 3G Kindle readers would have been too pricey. Customers don’t like metered service, contracts and, in general, mobile carriers. Even the best of the carriers is ranked pretty low on the American Consumer Satisfaction Index.

I’m sure AT&T’s backpedaling on the iPad 3G’s $30/month unlimited package (it’s now $25/month for 2GB) shortly after the iPad 3G was launched also had struck a nerve. It wouldn’t take many movie downloads to more than equal the price of the device in data charges. That may lead to unhappy customers.

On a side note, I’d suggest that anyone absolutely needing 3G/4G service for their Kindle Fire consider purchasing one of the standalone mobile hotspots. For roughly the same cost you could have 4G service (if available) and use it with a variety of devices. There are also some phones offered by the carriers that allow tethering as part of their data plan (My T-Mobile G2 phone is one of them).

The rest of the items are superfluous to the Kindle Fire’s intended use. The Amazon’s development team was not intent on replacing your computer, car navigation system, smartphone or point and shoot camera. The Kindle Fire is a relatively inexpensive device that is meant to fulfill the desire to watch TV shows, movies, play games, read books, newspapers and magazines, listen to music, browse the web and check things like email and personal calendars. My guess is that list covers about 85% of the use most tablets see today and a far higher-percentage of the use predicted for the hundreds of millions of people that haven’t yet purchased a tablet.

Certainly there are going to be people that want a device that has one or more of the features that Amazon did not include. Amazon is gambling that a lot of consumers are going to decide against paying $200 more for some of the fuller featured Android tablets or $300 – $450 extra for a WiFi iPad/3G iPad with GPS capability.

Presently, there’s only one successful tablet maker, Apple and the iPad. I’m looking forward to seeing how Apple reacts to the Kindle Fire. Their response is going to tell us a lot about Apple’s market strategy moving forward. Do they want to be a sales leader in the tablet marketplace or are they content to be the manufacturer of a highly regarded, high-margin luxury model? Steve Jobs once stated that the Macintosh’s market share was greater than that of Porsche, BMW or Mercedes and being the BMW or Mercedes of the computer market wasn’t a bad thing. We’ll soon get to see if that’s still the Apple strategy or if they’re willing to compete based on price in the tablet marketplace. With their locked-in content libraries (iTunes and the Apple App Store) proving to be a significant profit center for Apple the pressure to drop price or produce lower-end iPads might be very tempting.

While Apple is planning its next move the other Tablet makers need to decide in which segment of the market they want to compete. Google (and its licensees like Asus, Acer, Toshiba, Samsung and even Sony) trails both Amazon and Apple badly in availability of streaming video and other saleable content.

Even if Google can improve its content offerings it would be hard for their partner tablet manufacturers to reduce their margins of the units when they will be sharing their profits from the sale of content with Google or even Amazon’s own Android market offerings.

I expect we’ll see some of these guys pull the plug on their current offerings and others re-work their devices to go after the other potentially large tablet segment, productivity machines. Samsung, Asus, and Acer have always been adept at producing lower-cost versions of products. None has ever shown itself to be a market pioneer or provider of entertainment content. This may lead to some of them jumping ship from Android to Windows 8 and its desktop integration, but that’s over a year away and in a marketplace where the lifecycle of a device can be less than two months (HP TouchPad), a year is a long, long time.

Sony’s choices will also be interesting to watch. While their e-readers have been technically competent they haven’t really challenged Amazon or Barnes & Noble in that marketplace. They have two tablets and, of course, their own library of video and music content. In the past they have licensed that to vendors like Apple and Amazon. I doubt they’re going to pull that content from Apple or Amazon, two significant revenue sources; however tablets like the Kindle Fire do pose a threat to their portable gaming devices, and even to their PlayStation 3 consoles.

My guess, Sony will also focus their tablet offerings to compete in the productivity segment and perhaps work a revenue sharing deal with Amazon for content distribution through their PlayStation devices.

For those old-timers out there like me, I expect that the Kindle Fire could have the same impact on the tablet market as the Commodore 64 had on the personal computer industry back in 1982. Commodore’s CEO Jack Tramiel used to proudly claim that he made, “Computers for the masses, not the (upper) classes.

So, we may end up with the two of the highest rated companies for customer satisfaction in their respective markets going toe to toe (Apple is the highest rated Personal Computer Manufacturer and Amazon holds the top spot among online retailers according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index).

For those that enjoy watching the machinations, sparring and outright wars in the high technology industry this should be a great show.

Filed in categories: Android related, Articles, Tablet Computers and Gear

Tagged: Acer, Amazon, Apple, asus, Commodore, iPad, Jack Tramiel, Kindle, Samsung, Sony, Tablet

Kindle Fire – A Tablet for the Masses? originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 2, 2011 at 11:00 am.

Almost two months ago, a close family member suffered a devastating stroke. It was a Sunday night, and he and his wife were planning to watch The Amazing Race – or whatever reality show is on that night. (To protect their privacy, I’m going to call them George and Gracie.) George was the type of guy who was always busy, always working on something. He seemed to be in great health, other than an injured shoulder, and he hadn’t complained about not feeling well that day. Gracie had gone to take a shower before the show started. When she came out, she saw George slumped over on the bed, and it seemed he had vomited. She was worried he was sick, but she thought he was being overly dramatic about it. She quickly realized it was far more than an upset stomach and called 911. George was transported to the local hospital, then immediately transferred to the huge regional hospital with better facilities for treating stroke patients.

I don’t know nor understand all the specifics of the stroke. George wasn’t even 50 at the time of the stroke. It was determined that nothing he did caused the stroke nor could have prevented it, because he was diagnosed with a very rare condition called Moyamoya that caused his carotids to become completely blocked. George’s stroke was in his right hemisphere, and there was evidence of 4 or 5 previous strokes that no one was aware of until then. He was completely paralyzed on his left side. The left side of his throat was also paralyzed, making speech very difficult. He also couldn’t swallow, so he couldn’t eat or drink anything. It was obvious in the first few days of his recovery that his intelligence was completely intact. He could write out notes that asked intelligent questions or made snarky little jokes – just like he always did. It was obvious George was still “in there”, but he was “trapped” by his body that just couldn’t respond the way it used to.

George was at the regional hospital for about five days for medical treatment, then he was transferred to one of their intensive rehab facilities. My family and I have visited with George and Gracie at least once a week since the day after the stroke. Each time we saw him, George had made progress. He was working hard in physical, occupational, and speech therapy. Gracie, who stayed with him every day and night while he was hospitalized and in rehab, said he’d work hard for the therapist but didn’t like to do his exercises on his own. Who could blame him, because a lot of the things I saw him doing looked boring. But therapy lasted only a short while each day, and progress was going to require him working on his own.

I care about George and Gracie, and I wanted to help them in anyway I could. We live about 1.5 hours away from them, so I couldn’t just pop over and help out every day. We aren’t rich, so I couldn’t finance 24-hour in-home care for him. Then I started thinking about how the iPad has impacted the lives of disabled people and wondered if anyone had used it in stroke recovery. I found several news stories about how Florida Hospital Oceanside had been successfully using iPads with an aphasic stroke patient. Unfortunately, that application allowed the patient to touch an icon and a synthesized voice would communicate simple messages. That’s not what George needed, so I started searching the internet and the Apple App Store for more ideas.

I found another story on MSNBC about two Australian neuroscientists, Stuart Smith and Penelope McNulty of Neuroscience Research Australia, who had been using iPad, Kinect, and Wii games to make physical exercises less boring for stroke patients. Smith found that Fruit Ninja on the iPad was especially useful for improving fine motor control in patients. Searching the App Store turned up several applications that were developed for aphasic patients so they could tap an icon to have a voice speak for them. Best of all, I found an app that had videos demonstrating all the mouth and tongue exercises that would help improve George’s throat paralysis, swallowing (so he could have his beloved coffee again!), and speech.

Unfortunately, George and Gracie didn’t already own an iPad and now wasn’t a good time for them to make such an expensive purchase. Butch and I talked about it, and we decided we’d buy an iPad for them as our best way of helping them.

We got an iPad 2 at the local Apple store. I didn’t want to initialize the iPad on my iTunes account; it needed to be associated with Gracie’s existing iTunes account so they could get updates for the apps I planned to add and to add new apps later. We had the Apple associate initialize the iPad for us. I was able to set it up completely without ever connecting it to a computer – at least not until I had access to Gracie’s computer. And by the way, when I did connect it to Gracie’s computer, it connected and synced with no problems. All the apps I had purchased on the iPad 2 were transferred to the computer without a hitch.

George had made a great deal of progress, but he was still physically recovering, so I thought a sturdy case to protect the iPad from spills and drops was necessary. I searched around on Amazon and found the GumDrop Drop Tech Series Case for iPad 2. I liked this case because it completely covered the iPad 2. The buttons were encased but easily usable, and all the ports had attached covers over them. There was even a replaceable screen cover. Only the camera lens was left uncovered by this case. The case has a deep “tire tread” pattern that improves your hold, and it’s thick and padded enough that it should protect against shock and bumps. This case is heavy, but I like it a lot. I used it for a couple of days on the new iPad as I was loading it up with the apps. The case does add weight and size to the iPad, but it’s not uncomfortable to hold.

Because of his paralyzed left arm, I realized that George would need to use the iPad while it was in a stand. The GumDrop case is so thick, I didn’t have a stand that would work well with it. I remembered that I had a ThaiPad from Levenger. This padded pyramid-shaped pillow supports books, tablets, and ebook readers. I thought it would work well for George, because it would be soft enough that he could put it on his lap or even on his chest as he lay in bed. I tried it with the GumDrop-encased iPad and found it worked well.

Gracie trusted me enough to tell me her iTunes password, so I bought an iTunes card for her account and got busy loading up apps directly onto the iPad 2 from the iTunes app store. Of course, I added Fruit Ninja HD. I also added Angry Birds HD; I thought it might be a fun way to work on fine motor control and reasoning skills, too. I thought CHALK_BOARD, a simple drawing program, would be handy for George to write a note if no paper was near, and they could always play simple paper-based games like Hangman or Tic-tac-toe. I added Montessori Crosswords, a spelling game for children, because it reminded me of a letter arranging activity the therapist had George doing. Hopefully these games would prove more interesting than actually pushing letter tiles around on a tabletop, and George would be able to work on his fine motor control without being bored.

I was most excited about a series of Lingraphica apps from The Aphasia Company. The SmallTalk Aphasia – Male app has a simple vocabulary of phrases, spoken in a normal male voice – useful when George needed something but couldn’t make himself understood. (It’s also available with a female voice.) SmallTalk Letters, Numbers, Colors has a series of videos showing the mouth and tongue movements needed to say the 26 letters of the English alphabet, colors, and numbers 1-20. You are shown a tile with the letter, number, or color displayed; tap it to see a video of a woman slowly pronouncing the word. The SmallTalk Oral Motor Exercises app has 53 videos demonstrating cheek, tongue, palate, lip, and jaw exercises designed to strengthen oral musculature. All these SmallTalk apps are iPhone apps, meaning they run in the small window on the iPad. However, the videos are easy to see in the small window and remain clear enough to easily use even when screen-doubled.

We gave the iPad to George and Gracie at the end of August, about 1 month after his stroke. At that point, George had made quite a bit of progress, but he still wasn’t allowed any food or drink by mouth because of his throat paralysis. His speech was still difficult to understand, and you could see the effort he had to put into talking.

I spent some time showing George how to use his apps on the iPad, and he immediately started trying the oral exercises. Gracie was excited to see that application; she said the exercises demonstrated in the app were exactly like the ones used by the speech therapist. They had been given a printed list of these exercises, but it was hard for George to remember how to do all of them. After a while, Gracie and I started going over these and other apps, and I was giving her a general lesson on how to use and maintain the iPad 2. George, who often seemed to quickly lose interest in things when we had visited previously, actually tried to get himself out of his wheelchair and onto the bed so he could see what we were doing. I’m sure he wanted to see what we were doing with the iPad, because he picked up his ThaiPad stand before he started trying to get on the bed.

In the following week, Gracie said that George loved using the iPad and was working much harder at his oral exercises. By the end of the week, he passed his swallowing test and was allowed to have food by mouth for the first time since August 7th. I’m not saying that one week of the iPad improved him so much that he passed the test, but I am saying that he didn’t balk so much at doing his oral exercises. Gracie said they took the iPad to one of his speech therapy appointments and showed his therapist the apps. Gracie said the therapist liked the apps and said they were exactly the exercises George needed to do.

They’ve had the iPad about a month now. George was released to go home early in September, and he’s continuing physical, occupational, and speech therapies at home. He’s continuing to use the iPad to do his oral exercises. He also plays his games, and he’s started to go check the scores at ESPN and use the Rush Time Machine app (the Canadian rock group) that I put on there because he loves Rush music more than anything. Gracie feels all his time on the iPad would be better spent doing his therapy apps, but I think he’s using his mind and his motor control to do these other activities. Movement and control has started to return to his left hand and arm, and his speech is improving daily. Turns out Gracie loves the iPad 2, also. I think they both get some exercise racing to grab the iPad before the other person can get it.

As a note, I only had a short time to show Gracie how to use the iPad in general and how to do general maintenance functions. The next weekend, I asked her if she wanted me to show her how to do anything we had talked about or anything new she’d thought of. She looked at me like I’d lost my mind and said she didn’t need any refreshers. The iPad 2 is so intuitive, she only needed a couple of minutes of instruction and she was off and running.

For his 50^th birthday last week, George received a Wii Fit Board. We’ve heard about how the Wii helped senior citizens maintain and improve their physical abilities. Hopefully the Wii Fit works as well for stroke patients and will help George continue to improve his strength and balance as the iPad has helped with fine motor control and speech. Apple haters can scoff all they like, but I think Steve Jobs hit the nail on the head when he said the iPad is magical. At least it’s helping George work some recovery magic.

Note: Brain picture is from PubMed Health. Product pictures are from their respective vendors.

Filed in categories: Articles, iPhone, iPad, iPod related

Tagged: iPad app, Stroke recovery

Using the iPad 2 in Stroke Recovery – My Family’s Experience originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 30, 2011 at 12:00 pm.

After months of rumors, blurry pictures of prototype cases (or someone’s old loafer) it appears that Apple is going to introduce a new iPhone model and I see little reason for all this excitement.

Okay, give me a few minutes before you grab your torches and pitchforks. The iPhone is a fine smartphone. It has a nice web browser, allows you to play Angry Birds and even allows you to download a slew of apps that let you pretend it’s used for serious work. I even heard that some Verizon customers actually use it successfully for phone calls.

This year’s model will probably be lighter, thinner, have a bigger screen, run a little faster and maybe even have a better camera. Nice features, but hardly a reason to camp out at your local mall. What makes an iPhone special is the operating system (iOS). Apple is set to release the latest iteration of iOS sometime in mid-October. Because of the developer beta releases we all know most of the new features. That operating system will run on an iPhone 4 and even the two-year-old iPhone 3GS.

Over on the Android side of things it’s even worse. About twice a week, Samsung, HTC, or Motorola announces another phone that looks pretty much like the last phone. It’s then given about 12 different names by the various carriers. Sure, there are differences. Some have bigger screens, some have keyboards that slide out, some are a bit faster, they all play Angry Birds, and some even make phone calls.

Google also has a new operating system coming out; they’re calling it “Ice Cream Sandwich”. If nothing else, this is proof that we have run out of good names for our technology projects. Unlike Apple though, Google and its phone manufacturing partners and carriers like to make the upgrade process much more of a mystery.

We seem to be stuck in the same place that the PC industry has lingered for about a decade. The phones all pretty much lookalike, and even with the various operating systems they all basically work alike. After waiting months, standing in line for hours and spending hundreds of dollars you end up realizing you’re still playing Angry Birds and hoping your phone call goes through.

While the operating systems are incrementally getting better there’s little to get excited about. C’mon while iOS 5’s new notification system is certainly welcome…it’s hardly a game changer.

So, I’ve decided to make a short list of what I’d like to see in the next generation of mobile phones and phone services:

1. Screens – I’m tiring of peering at tiny screens, zooming in, zooming out and sliding back and forth. Let’s start projecting that display out to nearby TVs, computer monitors, car navigations screens…or my windshield for that matter. Sure, there are times when you want to use the smaller, more private screens, but most of the time we find ourselves near a bigger display unit. I know someone may suggest holographic imaging, but I’m going to save that for my list in 2016.
2. Battery Life – Yes, I know it’s getting better, but I still have to carry a charger around…and for every improvement in battery size there’s a new feature to drain it even faster. In the old days our home phones didn’t require a “wall wart” or battery and were able to live off the power that came over the phone line. I’m thinking it’s time for the carriers to come up with a way to send a few amps along with those text messages.
3. Too many radios – My current phone has a GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, 2G, 3G and 4G radios inside. They’re now starting to include NFC (near field communications) in the devices. Multiple radios means added complexity and added battery drain. Let’s cut this down and speed the whole lot of it up.
4. Text input – Fix it. I’m tired of typing on glass, or tiny keyboards. All of the auto-correction systems should be renamed “auto-aggravation” . Voice input works sometimes, but generally leads to frustration and the utterance of a few words that seem not to be in the device’s dictionary. There’s got to be a better way.
5. Phone Size – Remember when the hottest phone on the market was the Motorola StarTac and even better the Razr. I know that some consider their phone a fashion accessory…to me it’s just pocket ballast. The smaller and lighter the better. I guess I’m one of the few that liked flip phones. Perhaps something similar in style to the old Treo 300 would be possible.
6. Phone Call Quality – For many decades after Alexander Graham Bell (or Antonio Meucci if you prefer) the quality of phone calls improved. By the 1970s you could actually hold a comfortable conversation over the device and there was really no such thing as a dropped call. When cell phones were introduced things were a bit dicey at first, but we’re now almost 40 years out from the first mobile phone and things aren’t getting much better. It’s time garbled voices and dropped calls become history.

Motorola gave us mobile phones, Handspring, Palm, RIM and a few others bumped us to the next level and then Apple and Google made smartphones more than email or texting devices. Who’s next? Can Microsoft re-enter the contest after years of sub-par products?

Better yet, maybe a couple of people will meet in line at the Apple Store, grab a napkin and start to design a revolutionary mobile communications and computing device. Just make sure it plays Angry Birds too.

Filed in categories: Android related, Articles, iPhone, iPad, iPod related

Tagged: Android, iOS, iPhone, Mobile Phone

The New iPhone is Coming; the New iPhone is Coming…Who Cares? originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 27, 2011 at 2:28 pm.

Dear Gadget Diary,

Happy first day of Fall! Things have really cooled off here and the leaves are even starting to change a little. I have had the GardenWatchCam snapping pictures of my woods line for at least a week now. I’m looking forward to the time lapse video I’m going to see once the leaves have completely changed and fallen. It should be cool and I plan to add it to my review.

Yesterday I had to go into the Cancer Center at Columbus Regional Hospital for my regular appointment with my oncologist Dr. Mak (great guy btw). I seem to be pretty popular there with 2 of the nurses that always stop in and ask me questions about the iPad and Android tablets. One of the nurses had purchased an Android tablet through one of the home shopping channels on TV and was having problems connecting it her home WiFi. She brought the tablet in for me to see and I was able to successfully connect it to the hospital’s free WiFi. I then proceeded to show her a few things and was instantly disappointed for her when I noticed that this tablet did not have the Android marketplace app. Instead, it had the same alternative market that the Nextbook I reviewed has – SlideME Marketplace. All the Apple / iPad haters can roll their eyes right now, but even though there are a bazillion Android tablets to choose from, it’s a shame that the experience isn’t the same on all of them. That’s one big thing that Apple has done right. The other nurse who had purchased an iPad for her husband mentioned that when they see the Apple iPad commercials on TV, they feel like they aren’t getting no where near the same ‘fun’ out of theirs. I asked if they ever visit the app store on iPad and she said yes, but all they ever notice are the games. I told her that there are so many more things that they can use the iPad for in addition to games. I pulled out my iPhone and showed her a piano application, some photography apps and other things. She then said that I need to teach a class and to let her know if I ever decided to do that as she would definitely sign up for it. That got me to thinking and wondering if I’d enjoy setting up some sessions like that every so often. It might be fun… or a hassle. Anyone else out there done anything like that in your town?

On a very sad note, my beloved Waterfield Wallet is starting to fall apart. It’s not in critical condition at the moment, but an interior seam is starting to fray. I’m debating over whether I should go ahead and order 1 (or 2) more, move on to something completely different or if I should finally get busy on trying to create my own wallet. I’m sure not moving very fast on that project though. This is mainly because I’m waiting to learn the dimensions of the iPhone 5, in case I want the wallet to hold my phone too. At least that’s my current excuse for my procrastination.

BTW: Am I the only one that spends way too much time on sites like this one? http://pocketvomit.tumblr.com/

Thoughts for today:

When you can’t find the perfect X, do you try to make your own X?

I guess I only have one thought today. Have a great weekend everyone!

Filed in categories: Android related, Articles, iPhone, iPad, iPod related

Tagged: gadget diary

Julie’s Gadget Diary 09-23-11 originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 23, 2011 at 4:46 pm.

Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, sent me an email apologizing for the way Netflix communicated their most recent price increase. Some of you (okay maybe 20 million of you) also received a similar message. Mr. Hastings opened up and told us about his deepest fears and then he broke the bad news…it would be better for all concerned if the happy family of DVD and streaming content split up.

We’ll see the re-named, “Qwikster” every few days when we receive our beloved red envelopes and now they’ll even include video games. We’ll stay with Netflix and its streaming movies and TV shows. Mr. Hastings told us that this divorce was necessary so that both companies could provide us with better service.

I understand the reasons behind the split, focus is important for any business organization. We all know that sometime down the road the DVD will go the way of the VHS tape. (This will happen despite the constant foot-dragging of the content owners, but that’s a different column for a different day.) While this change is inevitable, it’s not going to happen this year or next. It will be several years before the amount of top-tier content (major movie and TV studio releases) available through streaming (other than pricey PPV models) services begins to rival what’s available on DVD. So, DVDs are getting old, the Blu-ray facelift for the technology didn’t catch-on (thanks in part to the content owners), but did Netflix have to send it away so soon?

Many homes are not prepared to live with streaming alone. Connecting a DVD has become easy, getting a high-quality internet connection to the living room with a friendly user interface and control function takes a bit more knowledge and skill. The cable and satellite companies spend millions of dollars every year on home service people who connect cable boxes, setup the TV and show people how to use the remote. I’m not saying we’re a long ways off, but we’re still a generation or two of TV equipment away from the “no-brainer” ease-of-use that’s necessary.

The current world of internet provided streaming content is a fragmented mess (as is the equipment offerings that receive that content) and this split just makes it worse. Say you just saw the advertisement for the new Nike “Mag” sneakers and want to watch “Back to the Future”. A few years ago you would hop in your car drive to Blockbuster and hope they had it in stock, or put it at the top of your Netflix queue and wait for delivery. While those options weren’t perfect you at least knew where to go for the movie.

Things got better, Netflix introduced their streaming solution and by 2008 had signed a deal with Starz (which recently announced they would not renew their agreement with Netflix) for increased content and while the library wasn’t huge there was a reasonable chance you could find your movie or at least something of interest. It was wonderful, one service, one search and I would quickly be able to watch or add the item to my DVD queue. Netflix was my one-stop shop for movie content and a nice helping of TV as well.

Well, just like the children of a separated couple, Netflix subscribers are going to have to deal with shared custody. We’re going to have to visit netflix.com, and qwikster.com to do the same search. Hey Mr. Hastings, how about you sharpen your focus, divide your teams do whatever is necessary, but why do I have to be in the middle of it? Why the need for two websites?

When I search for a book on Amazon’s website I see all of the possible formats; hardback, paperback and Kindle. One place, one account, one search, one set of recommendations…it’s nice and it’s simple. Watching TV is supposed to be entertaining not an online scavenger hunt.

If Netflix is going to charge more and then make us look in two places, why not make the second place Amazon, Hulu, Crackle, HBO Go, etc. Instead of being my primary source for video content Netflix has relegated itself to one of many, several of which charge lower rates or are free.

In the last few months Netflix has done significant damage to what was a very positive brand image. When I talk with non-subscribers I no longer hear “I really want to get that service.” The almost-arrogant roll-out of the price increase made Netflix seem like just another cable/satellite company. This latest action is going to make people all the more hesitant.

The significant failing wasn’t the communication of the price increase. It was an internal problem; Mr. Hastings and the rest of his executive team either hadn’t completely figured out what they wanted to do or they had and didn’t want to tell their shareholders and employees. The result is they’re now facing a nervous workforce, a huge hit to their stock price, made it more difficult and expensive to remain a customer and caused prospective customers to hesitate. This is hardly a formula for success. I almost wonder if Netflix is working with the same playbook that Hewlett-Packard seems to be using lately.

However, Mr. Hastings isn’t entirely wrong. He is correct to be concerned for his company’s future. He cited AOL and Borders, but the best example of what could happen is BlockBuster. BlockBuster never seemed to understand where the market was headed, they held onto poorly managed retail stores and customer unfriendly pricing models and late fees for way too long. They continued to operate like they were the only game in town and failed to take Netflix and Redbox seriously until it was way too late. If I was Mr. Hastings I’d also be afraid of winding up like their former nemesis.

Another serious and potentially more ominous problem for Netflix involves the US Postal Service. Netlfix is one of the Postal Services largest customers. It’s the lifeblood of their DVD distribution model and through some pretty neat technology they have pretty much mastered the art of receiving and sending out DVDs. It’s hard to foresee a profitable future when your most important partner is threatening large price increases and reduced delivery days. Mr. Hastings knows that one less delivery day means greater customer discontent.

I am sure that Qwikster will be shopped around quite actively. It will be sold off to another company and eventually fade into a niche provider.

So, Mr. Hastings, really, we do understand what you’re facing, It just seems that instead of working through the issues and rolling out a strategy you did things a bit backwards and cost yourself a lot of good will in the process. Hey, breakups are tough, but a little better planning and you might have had a more understanding audience both in the living room, your offices and on Wall Street. Also, it would have been nice if you could have just stuck together a little longer…for us kids.

Update: I read an interesting research note this morning from Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities. He believes that Netflix may have split off the DVD service to allow Amazon to buy the streaming video side without incurring sales tax liability for its overall business in the locations where Qwikster/Neftflix has distribution centers. Were that to happen it would have some interesting ramifications as Amazon is gearing up to take on Apple in the digital content distribution marketplace.

Filed in categories: Articles, Audio, Video, TV Gear, News

Tagged: Blockbuster, DVD, Netflix, Qwikster

Dear Netflix – Think of the Children! originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 23, 2011 at 11:00 am.

In 1992 Nintendo won a lawsuit against Atari and was able to lock-out third-party software vendors from providing games for its gaming systems unless they purchased a key (license). Since then the Holy Grail of gaming, smartphone and now computer system companies was to bring to market systems where they had control of every third-party device and program for that systems. By control, I mean, they get paid an upfront licensing fee, a per-unit sold payment or both.

The market has shifted to the point where all of the available gaming consoles operate that way. Today, if you buy an Xbox 360, Sony PS3, Sony PSP, Nintendo Wii, etc. you’re only going to be able to purchase software and hardware from licensed developers.

Compelling customers to purchase all products and services related to the base product from the original manufacturer is not unique to the computing industry. Through various means everyone from razor manufacturers to auto makers utilize the practice to varying degrees. As companies have discovered they can lock out competition for those add-on sales through technology and the courts it has grown more and more prevalent.

At times the consumer may benefit, at least initially, from this practice. Many manufacturers will price the base item lower than they normally would. Of course, they expect to make more money once the purchaser begins making additional purchases.

In addition, there are some that will argue that the original manufacturer is also the best possible entity for checking add-on products for stability and compatibility. That’s potentially true if that’s really being done. Unfortunately, there’s more than enough evidence to indicate that there really isn’t a lot of stability testing going on before items are released.

So, let’s talk about the downsides; Recently, Sony’s ineptitude at standard network security highlighted a huge issue. If the only place you can purchase software or receive necessary services goes down for any reason the device you have may become little more than a paper weight. What happens to iOS customers if Apple’s App Store or iTunes is brought down for any extended period?

Many of Sony’s PlayStation Network customers recently went without online play for weeks after Sony was unable or unwilling to secure its network. Many of Sony’s customers were angry about the outage and Sony’s lack of care with their personal information; some even brought a class-action lawsuit.

Well, if you can’t hire quality systems security professionals the next best thing is to hire good lawyers. Sony has decided to change their PlayStation Network License to disallow any further class action lawsuits. That type of clause isn’t all that unusual, many companies would rather have all complaints brought against them be heard by arbitrators. Let’s just say that companies don’t lose very often when the Judge owes his income to that company. But, when a company changes their terms and demands all existing customers either accept the new terms or stop using the service it becomes what we lawyer types call a contract of adhesion. That’s a contract where one side has all the bargaining power and the only choice the other side has is to agree or leave.

If you’re purchasing a piece of software and you don’t like the license terms you generally have the right to return the software. While you may be unhappy you really haven’t been hurt financially. But, can that be said for someone who has invested hundreds of dollars in a PlayStation system? If you don’t agree to Sony’s new rules you’re now unable to participate in the service that very well may have been the reason you purchased the system and because the system is closed there’s no other place to procure those types of services.

Okay, so that doesn’t bother you. There are too many class action lawsuits and the network outage wasn’t Sony’s fault anyway…how should they have known there were hackers out there? Let’s walk down the path of closed systems a bit further. As I wrote earlier the primary reason for these types of systems is to increase profits to the company. One of the ways a company makes money is by extending the sales life of products.

During the 1990s Microsoft was found to have acted in an anti-competitive way towards several of its competitors most notably a web browser company called Netscape. Microsoft allegedly engaged in unfair technical hurdles, bundling and sales tactics to slow and block Netscape (and others) from selling their products meant to run on Windows. With a closed system it becomes much easier. If a company comes up with the next big thing to run on your system you either delay approval of the technology until your competing product is improved or don’t approve it at all. They can also force companies to remove features from their product to make them less desirable (Apple recently forced all eBook apps to remove the built-in links to their book stores).

Finally, the tin-hat crowd out there claims an even bigger risk. Corporations can use their control over the system to censor apps and content they find objectionable or promote content they believe to be in their best interest. Few would complain if the capability is used to block child pornography, but what if it is utilized to promote a political agenda that’s favorable to the corporation? Or censor something they find to be unfavorable (Apple recently removed an App that highlighted serious problems with one of their manufacturing partners, Foxconn Technology Group).

The market leader in smartphone OS is currently Google’s Android which is an open system. Google does provide its own market, but competitive stores are also available, including one by Amazon. It’s also relatively easy to install apps from other sources (side loading). Unfortunately, Google really doesn’t have a competitive answer to MacOS or Windows. Chrome OS is available, but the early versions leave much to be desired. Google will have to find a way to provide a platform that works well throughout the computing spectrum or find itself forced out of the operating system market.

I like choice. I like being able to buy my software from a wide variety of vendors. I like that a couple of people working in their garage can still come up with a revolutionary piece of software and be able to distribute it without the current market leader having the right of review and refusal. I believe things are headed in the wrong direction for the consumer and I hope others begin to see the problems we’re facing and make smart choices going forward.

Filed in categories: Android related, Articles, iPhone, iPad, iPod related, Windows Mobile related

Tagged: Android, Desktop, ecosystem, iOS, Mobile, operating system, Windows

Technology Ecosystems – Good for Profits, Bad for Consumers originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 22, 2011 at 11:00 am.

About a year and a half ago Steve Jobs introduced the iPad and declared that we were now in the “Post PC Era”. I purchased an iPad, then I bought an Asus eee Transformer (with dock) and finally bought an HP TouchPad. They all do about the same things with various strengths and weaknesses; overall all of the tablets are pretty much the same when compared to the functionality of a PC. (For the sake of this article a PC is a desktop or notebook running Windows or Mac OSX.)

Tablets have allowed me to move easily away from my desk to read email, read some websites, check Twitter, Facebook, watch some videos, use apps and, of course, play games. This increased mobility is great and this has provided both entertainment value and, in some cases, productivity gains over a PC. Tablets can be a useful tool.

Now, if that’s all you need from a PC then Mr. Jobs is correct and for those people it is the “Post PC” era. But I believe a great many of us do quite a bit more and would suffer major productivity losses if we found ourselves without PCs.

The greatest failing of the tablet is data input. On-screen keyboards for phones are problematic, but we put up with them because we’re rarely typing more than a sentence or two. On-screen keyboards for tablets are just horrendous. You can either put yourself through the torture of thumb-stretching in portrait mode or try laying the device down on a flat surface and hoping it doesn’t slide, rock, or shift screen orientation while you hunt and peck on a keyboard that can require shifts, functions keys and keyboard changes to do something as mundane as typing your address. All the while giving up half of an already too-small screen and guaranteeing that your display will quickly look like it was the test blotter for a fingerprinting kit.

Much to the chagrin of some, I happen to write documents longer than a two sentences. Call me crazy (you won’t be the first), but I’ve even been known to have five or six applications open and running at the same time. Sometimes I even utilize two monitors.

Those aren’t things that Tablets do very well if at all. When it comes to replacing the computer…I just don’t see the tablet taking its place. Sure, it is a substitute for some functions, just as it also serves the purpose of a gaming console, portable gaming console, and TV at times. Actually, if anything, it’s the TVs and gaming consoles, which have the most to worry about from tablets.

While a tablet won’t take the place of your 60-inch flat screens it is stealing the TV’s lock on our attention. For years companies have been trying to bring the internet to the TV screen. There have been devices that allow people to read their email on a TV, browse the web and lately they’ve been pushing accessing Facebook and Twitter on our big screens. Problem is the only thing worse than typing on a tablet is trying to type on a screen that’s 10-feet away. It doesn’t work, and why would anyone really want to do it anyway?

Now, while we’re watching that episode of “Jersey Shore”, we’re bringing the internet with us to check on whether Sammy and Ronnie really worked it out. Some are even skipping the TV altogether and watching their video entertainment entirely on the tablet.

We also use tablets the same way we use TVs. Instead of clicking a remote and going from CBS, to NBC to HBO…you’re going from You Tube to Facebook to Angry Birds and then maybe to Netflix or Hulu. The newer tablets like Sony’s S1 and Vizio’s VTab both include extensive TV remote control functionality and all of the manufacturers continue to expand their entertainment offerings.

Recent studies have shown that more than half the homes in the United States have three or more televisions. I see that number beginning to shrink as the TV becomes more of a special events product. Sure, we’ll probably all gather around the large screen for big events like the Super Bowl especially if the TV developers can come up with workable 3D technology that doesn’t require everyone in the room wearing a battery-powered pair of Groucho Marx glasses.

As for the PC, I believe it to be a long way from dead. Yes, just as gaming consoles took over as the major gaming platform from PCs, tablets may begin to erode PCs being used for non-productivity web use, portable gaming and basic video entertainment viewing. But it’s the keyboard/mouse, larger displays and significantly more powerful processors that will keep the PC as the primary computing device at work, at schools and in the home…just not the living room sofa.

Filed in categories: Articles, Miscellaneous

Tagged: Android, HDTV, iOS, iPad, post pc, steve jobs, Tablet

Post PC? It Looks More Like the Post TV Era originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 20, 2011 at 11:00 am.

Every Netflix subscriber – and most everyone else who reads or hears the news – learned a couple of months ago that Netflix was drastically increasing their rates. (Scroll down to July 12th’s entry.) Instead of $7.99/month for one DVD at-a-time or $9.99/month for one DVD at-a-time plus unlimited streaming, the DVD mailing service would remain at $7.99/month and unlimited streaming would also be $7.99/month. There was still a combo plan, but it was $15.98/month – no discount. Apparently the price increases were necessary to better reflect the costs of the services and to help them compete with other streaming services. As I recall, Netflix compared the rate increase to the price of a coffee from Starbucks. This comment, while true, seemed a bit flippant and angered many people so much that many were threatening to drop Netflix altogether.

Apparently many people followed through with their threats, because Netflix recently lowered their US subscriber forecast by 1 million, as reported by Reuters. And you can see from the above photo (captured from the Bloomberg app on my iPad 2 this morning), Netflix stocks took a hit in mid-July when the price hike was announced and have continued to slide.

This morning, I (and all Netflix subscribers) received an email from Reed Hastings, co-founder and CEO of Netflix, with an apology for how he handled the rate hike. You can see the text of that email at the Netflix official blog. He says “For the past five years, my greatest fear at Netflix has been that we wouldn’t make the leap from success in DVDs to success in streaming. Most companies that are great at something – like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores – do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us) because they are afraid to hurt their initial business. Eventually these companies realize their error of not focusing enough on the new thing, and then the company fights desperately and hopelessly to recover. Companies rarely die from moving too fast, and they frequently die from moving too slowly.” He says the changes Netflix had made in the past had been successful without much CEO communication, and he assumed that would hold true so long as Netflix kept growing and improving.

He goes on to say “But now I see that given the huge changes we have been recently making, I should have personally given a full justification to our members of why we are separating DVD and streaming, and charging for both. It wouldn’t have changed the price increase, but it would have been the right thing to do.” He says that the DVD mailing service might not last forever, but they want it to perform well for as long as possible, so they are separating that service from the streaming service. The streaming service represents the future of Netflix, so it will continue under the Netflix name. The DVD service will now be called Qwikster, and it will soon also be offering a game rentals upgrade option for “those who want to rent Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 games”, among other planned improvements. The Qwikster website will be online in the near future.

The two services will be two separate companies, with separate billing. If you continue both services, you’ll have two charges on your card, and you’ll need to go to both companies to update should you ever need to change your billing information.

Go to the Netflix official blog to read more details of the new services and to watch a video of Hastings and Andy Rendich (the new CEO of Qwikster) explaining the changes.

I had dropped the DVD rentals some time ago and continued with only the streaming service, so the rate hike didn’t impact me. I’ll admit that I could see the need for the price increases, but I thought that perhaps they should have done a couple of incremental increases to make the bitter pill go down easier. I had actually forgotten about it until I saw the news reports recently about the stock prices for Netflix. The email I got today is proof that Netflix is admitting they approached things incorrectly and are trying to address that now. What do you think? Will this apology and changes to the company help soothe angry customers? (Are you one of those angry customers?)

Filed in categories: Articles

Tagged: Netflix

Netflix Announces They Are Splitting into Two Services originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 19, 2011 at 1:00 pm.

Dear Gadget Diary,

It’s been a gorgeous early Fall Saturday here in Southern Indiana. We went to the local Farmer’s Market this morning to check out the fresh produce, baked goods, crafts etc. Then we headed out to our small municipal airport for breakfast / lunch at the Hanger 5 restaurant. I brought along my iPhone 4 and the Pixeet fisheye lens that I’m currently reviewing so that I could take advantage of any photo ops that I might come across while we were running around in town. I managed to snag a few shots, but will have many more in my full review to be posted soon. 

The Pixeet can capture 180 and 360 degree panorama shots. Here are two 180 degree shots. I’m still trying to perfect the 360.

Columbus, IN Farmer’s Market:

Columbus, IN Municipal Airport:

Now I’m completely obsessed with iPhone photography gadgets I wonder how much better (hope it’s not worse!) the iPhone 5′s camera will be? I’m very much looking forward to being able to use one of the volume buttons as shutter button.

Filed in categories: Articles, Digital Cameras and Gear, iPhone, iPad, iPod related

Tagged: gadget diary

Julie’s Gadget Diary – 09-17-11 originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 17, 2011 at 4:13 pm.

It all started 7 years ago when I started my third  business, a computer retail and service store.  I was happy with my other two businesses which uses Verizon Business for our phone services.  So I decided to use them again for the computer store.  I ordered a few phone lines, fax / credit card services line, security line, etc.  The sales representative added everything a-la-carte and never told me about any package deals at all.  At that time the cost of everything “seemed” reasonable so I went ahead and ordered it.

Fast forward 7 years later,  I recently got a letter from Verizon Business stating that my contract was almost up and that I should contact a sales representative.  I proceeded to call them up and talk to a helpful sales representative which took her time to see what I have and recommended to me that I go with a package deal which not only lowers my cost of everything by like 30% but also includes a free DSL connection.  Sounds like a great deal right?  Of course it is!  So I agreed and had them schedule the rollover to the new plan after my current one expires.

That’s when the nightmare started.  The sales representative said that nothing would change and that there wouldn’t be any service interruptions because it was just a billing issue.  The only thing Verizon had to do was to just activate the DSL service on my fax / credit card services line.  Sounded easy enough and should be just a switch or setting on Verizon’s end to make it all happen.  Well…it wasn’t as smooth as that.  First I received an email from Verizon Business stating that my DSL would be activated in a few days.  A few days later I got another email stating that the DSL line is active and ready to go.  So I plugged in the DSL modem and the first webpage I got was the Verizon DSL activation page.  I followed all the directions but the activation never completed.  I then called up tech support and they said that they would fix it and that my DSL would be up and running by the end of the business day.  Well that didn’t happen and what’s worse is that now my fax / credit card services line is totally dead!!  This is a retail store business and the credit card services line has to work!  I called tech support up again and ran through their checklist of questions only for them to tell me that it’s a line problem and that they will send a phone service repair technician out.  Now I’m thinking, how could it be a line problem when everything was working up until they tried to “fix it” the first time?!?!  I tried to explain everything to them and that I was convinced that it should be something on their end that’s messed everything up.  But they insisted it was a line issue and that they would send someone out.  I explained to them that this is a business and that we needed that line to be active.  At this point I didn’t care about that free DSL connection.  I just wanted my fax / credit card service line to just work.

My store opened the next business day without a working credit card line.  We explained to our customers that the machine was down and they understood and paid with cash or checks.  A few were annoyed since they had to go back home to get their checkbooks or cash.  The Verizon phone repair technician finally came in the afternoon.  I prayed that it was a competent technician.  I was lucky he was.  I explained what has happened and he agreed that it shouldn’t be anything to do with the wiring in my store.  But he went back to the building’s phone switch board to check on the wiring there to make sure it was correct.  And guess what he found.  He said our original fax / credit card service line was cut and that a new one line was just hanging there.  So he explained that it was probably another technician that came out the first time to “fix” my problem by wiring a new line from the outside telephone phone but forgot to punch that new line into the switch board.  My frustration was why didn’t that first technician come into the store to make sure everything was working or at least inform me that they were working on the line.  I had no clue that they even came here and there weren’t any notes on Verizon’s end about that first technician coming here.

So at the end everything is working now.  Now all I have to wait is to see if they messed up anything on the billing at the end of the month.  Wish me luck.

An advice for Verizon Business: Tell your left hand what the right hand is doing!  And keep your customer’s informed before cutting any wires!

Verizon…big enough to suck yet too big to fail.  And that’s the same with the other 3 letter phone company.

Filed in categories: Articles, Miscellaneous

Tagged: verizon, verizon business

My excruciating experience with Verizon Business originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 15, 2011 at 5:15 pm.

One of the first places many folks in gadget circles may have gotten a glimpse of their first gadgets may have been a local Best Buy Superstore. They are located in just about any city of decent size, and usually carry many small electronics, in addition to larger things like computers, TVs, car audio, and the like. Driving home from work today, I thought about my days of wandering around the cavernous showroom, compared to my current habit of checking things out online, or in an Apple store. What’s the difference? Why has one died off while the other has grown? Since many Best Buys also carry official Apple products, and have an Apple employee assigned to the “store within a store”, it can’t just be the difference in the products. You can buy most of what’s in an Apple store in a Best Buy.

Best Buy today took a beating in the Stock Market, reflecting the beating it’s been taking in the market over the last year-plus. Investors are worried that management has no solution to pull the big box store from the morass that is the post-brick-and-mortar revolution of this new decade. I’d like to make a few humble suggestions which I think would make it a mecca for those searching for new technology and expertise, as well as a place to learn about and try out tech solutions.

If you’ve visited one of their cavernous locations recently, I’m sure you were shocked by the amount of bare floor space. What was once a crowded, packed store with racks and end caps overflowing and people milling about is now a ghost town. No longer are all the cool kids listening to current hits via headphones placed every few feet in the racks upon racks of CDs. (You remember CDs, right? Those were the shiny discs folks used to get before iTunes and other download sites put physical media in the Museum of Ancient History.) So, why so much open space? No one buys physical media anymore is the short answer. A longer answer includes lower prices of online retailers that can sell for less by not paying the meager salaries of clerks who do little more than point you to a product and try to press the extended warranty or Reward Zone program on you. Hmmm… Have it today with hassle, or wait until tomorrow without having to firmly say “no, thank you” seven times in a transaction. I’ll go with online, says America.

But, walking past any Apple store in any mall anywhere tells quite a different story: scores of young folks, all hunched over iPads playing Angry Birds or CritterBall, or posing with friends for pictures taken with Macs that they can upload to FaceBook. Do they buy products? Maybe, or maybe not, but they are all allowed to freely explore unfettered products, check email, and hound salespeople with random questions about technology. If they ever do buy, which place do you think they will go – to the folks that helped them get comfortable and learn about their tech lives, or the ghost town down the road where the few things of interest are bolted down in an almost unusable state? Yeah, that’s kind of a no-brainer.

So, what’s my great suggestion? Use the room in the center of the store to attract a more hands-on crowd. Do some training sessions on various tablets, smart phones, and software programs. I’m sure Microsoft would front a few marketing dollars for a good presentation of MS Office or OneNote or their latest mobile phone. Same for other manufacturers. Get some discounted hardware (not end-of-life junk, but current stuff you’d really like to sell/buy) and lightly secure it so that people can actually use it, heft it for weight and feel, etc. The layout could be many different configurations, or even flexible, depending on which product is being showcased.

Also, put in a coffee bar with free wifi. Let folks use the demo machines to check their webmail, Facebook, or Twitter accounts. Encourage hanging out, rather than bugging folks to death. You’ve already got the space, and with a little additional training, you could make your Geek Squad into true rock stars by letting them show off their knowledge to your customers. They want to show off, and your customers want their knowledge. This is not something you’re leveraging at all currently. The only way you’re getting money from the GS folks is by having them at the bench doing repairs, or doing the occasional home theatre install. Imagine if you could entice folks into being so devoted to the Squad that they would pay for training? What? Crazy talk!

While you’ve got that nice open presentation/training space, encourage outside technology groups to use it for meetings. In my local area, we have a Mac User group, a handheld/portable tech group, a Ruby group, a Linux group, a PhotoShop group, an Android development group or two and several iOS programming groups at various levels. You know what each of those groups need that is in short supply? A meeting place with good coffee, free high speed wifi, and a presentation system that they don’t have to pay for, or can rent for a buck a seat or so. Sure, this is free space you’re giving away, but it’s all about what is not happening currently – getting warm bodies into the building and having them stay and value the experience.

Wise salespeople will tell you to get the customer to agree to several things early in the conversation. This gets them used to saying yes in your presence, makes you seem to understand them more, and puts them at ease. For the same reason, being helped in small ways while being made comfortable, having a place to hang with friends and share, and being shown that you’re in the presence of true experts who can solve your technological issues makes you more likely to purchase something without putting up a front.

Or you could let leases expire and get smaller stores that no one will visit, rather than the big ones no one is visiting currently, like the current management is suggesting.

What do you folks think? Are the days of the big box store over, or can they re-brand themselves into techno hubs and foster a learning community? Think it’d fly in your Best Buy?

Filed in categories: Articles, Miscellaneous

Tagged: Opinion, thoughts

A Cure for Best Buy’s Ills? originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 14, 2011 at 1:16 pm.

I use my iPad 2 a lot.  I recharge it almost everyday because I’ve run the battery from 100% to less than 10%.  It’s not unknown for me to recharge it twice per day or continue using it after it’s been plugged in.  Most of the time I’m using it, I have my Smart Cover contorted into the shape you see in the top picture; I do that because it helps spread out the weight of the iPad 2 when I have it sitting on some part of my body.  You can imagine that all that use is taking a toll on my Smart Cover.  There’s really nothing wrong with it, but the molded-in folds are starting to get a little ruffled on the edges, and there are dirty places on the microfiber interior.  I like my gadgets and accessories to look perfect, so I starting thinking about getting a new cover.  And I wanted a red one.  I didn’t want to pay twice as much for a red leather Smart Cover and get it dirty in only 3-4 months like I did the polyurethane cover.  I had noticed a lot of “Smart Covers” on eBay that were half the price of the PU Apple covers.  When I saw they had a red PU cover, I decided I’d buy one.  But I learned once again – you get what you pay for.

Some of the pictures in this review can be clicked for an enlarged view.

I’m not mentioning the eBay vendor, because he probably wasn’t associated with the manufacturer.  There seemed to be several vendors selling the same cases.  The knock-off cover cost $18.95 with free shipping – about half the cost of the $39 Apple polyurethane Smart Cover and considerably less than a third the cost of the red leather Smart Cover.  The package looked very much like the Apple Smart Cover package, but the back was covered with alarming stickers warning that I should “observe precautions for handling electrostatic sensitive devices.”  I quickly realized that these stickers seemed to cover up any mention of the word “Apple”.  They probably could have used cartoon character stickers if they had them, because the warning wasn’t important – the coverage was.

Anyway, the red was a nice rich color, but the cover didn’t feel like a Smart Cover.  The exterior seemed harder to the touch than the exterior of my blue Smart Cover.  It had the molded-in folds, but they weren’t as flexible as the ones on my official cover.  And the interior surface didn’t have the soft, velvety microfiber fabric; instead it was a barely textured plastic.  The interior of the knock-off cover won’t be offering any screen cleaning like the Smart Cover does.

I put the red cover on and immediately took it off and started to the trashcan to toss it out, but I stopped because I realized I should write this up and hopefully save someone else from wasting their money.  What could possibly be so wrong with the cover, you ask?  Plenty.

Real Smart Cover lies flat, but the red eBay cover doesn't

First off, the cover doesn’t lie flat at the open side.  The package claims the cover has the sleep/wake function, but it’s not going to do anything as the cover floats in the air.  I ended up spending quite some time to see if I could bend and re-bend that case so it would lay flat, but it never did.  Strike one.

Smart Cover - magnets on open side

eBay cover - magnets on open side

Blue Smart Cover on top, red eBay cover on the bottom

Next, I decided to check the position and strength of the magnets.  It does have them, but you can see from the pictures (above) that the open side of official Smart Cover (top) has a wider magnetized area than the faux cover has.  I can hold the iPad 2 with the screen toward the floor and the magnets can hold the Smart Cover closed.  The red cover just flops open.

Since the magnets on the open edge are what hold the official Smart Cover folded into the triangular stand, I worried that the red cover wouldn’t work as a stand. You can see that the knock-off cover does roll up, but it’s not held into a very tight triangle.  The weight of the iPad 2 leaning against it pushes the red cover open a bit, and this makes the iPad 2 lean back further than it does with the Smart Cover.

I also checked the magnetic areas along the metal attachment arm, and I found that both cases seemed to have magnetic areas about the same size and placement.  I did find that the knock-off case doesn’t hold on to the iPad 2 as well as the Smart Cover does.  When I get the attachment arm on the Smart Cover close to the correct side of the iPad 2, they grab together with a loud click.  The red cover didn’t connect quite like the Smart Cover; it didn’t seem to grab as quickly nor as strongly, and the click was not as loud as the Smart Cover connecting.  I had seen someone testing how strong the Smart Cover attachment was by dangling the iPad 2 from the Smart Cover over an Apple store floor.  I mentioned in my review of the iPad 2 that I had tried that test, too, but I had done it over my bed.  I repeated this test, and the Smart Cover required three hard shakes before the iPad 2 dropped to the bed.  The faux cover required one shake.  Strike 2.

Smart cover in the top frame, eBay in the bottom

Smart Cover at top, eBay at bottom

The eBay cover isn’t sized properly.  It’s bigger than the Smart Cover, and it hangs over the sides of the iPad 2.  It doesn’t show up as well as I’d hoped in my picture, but even the plastic tube that connects the metal hinge isn’t cut properly.  It’s just a bit too long, and it’s wrinkled up on one end.  Strike 3, and you’re out!

You can see that the pictures all show an iPad 2 with an uncovered back.  I usually use a back cover on my iPad 2, but I thought maybe the knock-off cover wasn’t fitting properly with the back cover on.  I took it off and discovered the problems had nothing to do with the back cover and everything to do with the cheap cover.

So in conclusion, I can only warn you not to be foolish like me.  Buying the eBay cover didn’t save me almost $20.  It cost me $20, and I have nothing usable to show for it.  There’s nothing wrong with my blue Smart Cover other than the dirt on the microfiber side (and my longing for a red cover), so I’ll continue to use it.  Remember these two words when considering buying knock-off accessories for your electronic devices – caveat emptor!

Filed in categories: Articles, iPhone, iPad, iPod related

Tagged: Accessories

You Get What You Pay For – Buying Cheap Accessories on eBay Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 6, 2011 at 8:00 am.

The forthcoming Amazon tablet is now officially leaked thanks to MG Siegler’s (TechCrunch) hand’s-on look at the device. It’s going to be a 7-inch color touch-screen with no physical buttons running Android…well, sort of. Amazon has elected to use a version of Android prior to 2.2 (Most new Android-based tablets are running 3.2 or the soon to be release 4.x) as the base and then created an entirely new interface completely integrated with Amazon’s own apps like Kindle Reader, MP3 Cloud Player, Amazon Instant Videos, Amazon’s Store, Amazon Appstore, etc.  From what I’ve read none of the Google-supplied Apps will be on the device. Whether the browser supplied on the device will run Adobe’s Flash content remains to be seen. If you want more technical details take a hop over to Mr. Siegler’s article.

It appears that Amazon is creating a device much like Apple’s iPad, with three key differences; size, price and, most importantly, content provider.

The new Amazon Kindle will be substantially smaller than the iPad and while we don’t have the actual weight yet it will most likely be considerably lighter. That’s wonderful for portability and for reading books and listening to music, but may not be that great when it comes to watching videos.

Amazon is reportedly going to sell the tablet for around $250 and include a no-additional-charge subscription to Amazon Prime service (It’s unclear if there will be a renewal fee or not). Prime normally costs $79 a year and grants subscribers no-charge 2-day shipping on many items and a “Netflix-like” library of instant-watch content.  While the Prime instant watch library isn’t huge it has been growing and with the Netflix/Starz breakup could end up being close in the number of titles available.

The third key difference between the new Amazon tablet and actually the whole family of iOS devices (iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad) is also their closest similarity. When the iPad was launched it was labeled as a “content consumption device”, more specifically an Apple provided content consumption device. While possible, Apple makes it difficult to load outside content on its devices much preferring you buy your music, videos, games, apps and books all through Apple-branded stores provided on the device.  All of these Apple stores produce revenue for Apple. Apple went so far as to forbid Amazon and others from having links to their own stores in apps running on iOS devices.

Amazon is going down the same path, but at a lower price and throw-in a fair amount of video content at no additional charge to boot. It will be interesting to see if the Amazon Appstore will allow for the distribution of the Barnes & Noble Nook reader with its store built-in (Presently it’s only available through the Google Market which will not be included in the Android Kindle tablet.)

This is why I wouldn’t call what Amazon is releasing just another Android tablet. It has little to do with Android, screen size, CPU speeds and all the other techno stuff that the other tablet manufacturers seem to be playing up. It’s also decidedly not directed at the devices like the slightly smaller Samsung Note that are directed more at productivity. In many ways the new Kindle tablet more closely resembles a large iPad Touch, or a game console for adults. It will be sold at a low price, perhaps at or below cost and then create multiple locked-in revenue streams for Amazon.  Amazon is not competing with the iPad they’re competing with what many call the Apple eco-system.

But wait…there’s more! (And you thought Billy Mays was gone), Amazon has not only created a real competitor for Apple, but has taken a nice shot at going after Amazon’s other large rival, Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart? Yes, Wal-Mart. Amazon still makes the vast majority of its revenue by selling and shipping products to customers. Their chief competition has always been the “Walton family’s businesses”. People still prefer to buy from retail stores because they don’t have to deal with the time or cost of delivery.

Remember the first benefit to an Amazon Prime subscription?  Yep, Amazon may end up with millions of people with access to a prominently featured Amazon Store App as well as no-additional charge 2-day shipping. Couple that with Amazon’s ability to avoid charging sales tax in a great many states and they may take  sales away from their very large, brick and mortar competitor.  A percentage point or two increase in sales in a market that size is big, big money.

So, while the technology fans are going to talk about a fork in Android development and the ramifications of fragmentation I believe this is far bigger than a technical issue. Amazon is  going to be the first tablet to truly go after what Apple created and at the same time potentially reap some rewards in their core business as well.

Is this an iPad killer? No, I don’t believe so. I do think that over time we’ll see Apple’s market share shrink, but as Steve Jobs once said about the Macintosh, “Apple’s market share is bigger than BMW’s or Mercedes’s or Porsche’s in the automotive market. What’s wrong with being BMW or Mercedes?” Absolutely nothing, Steve, and it now appears we’re going to have Amazon attempting to play the role of  Toyota.

I am excited about the new Kindle, but I’m hoping they don’t stop developing the pure reader devices. I like tablets, but when it comes to reading books (a small percentage of the content marketplace) I really appreciate the much-easier-on-the-eyes e-ink displays.

Filed in categories: Android related, Articles, eBook Readers and Gear, iPhone, iPad, iPod related, News

Tagged: Amazon, Android, Apple, iPad, Kindle

Amazon’s New Kindle Tablet – An iPad for the Rest of Us? originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 4, 2011 at 10:00 am.

I’m not sure why I’m writing so much about the HP TouchPad lately. I like the device and I like webOS, but the tablet is really my wife’s. I’m kind of stuck on my Android-powered, Asus Transformer. Nevertheless, the story of the HP TouchPad seems to be continuing with more twists, turns and odd occurrences than a season of “Fringe”. Here’s a recap.

A few years back Palm, Inc. started working on a new operating system to replace their aging PalmOS to better compete with the then new kid on the block, the Apple iPhone. They created webOS and launched it on a couple of smartphones (Palm Pre and Palm Pixi). Unfortunately, for the company it was too little, too late and their investors sold them off to Hewlett-Packard in mid-2010.

HP turned on their press release machine and announced they would be using webOS on all sorts of devices including a new smartphone and a tablet. Unfortunately, the CEO who had made the purchase of Palm resigned after being accused of some less than proper behavior. Under pressure to get something in the marketplace to compete with Apple and the rising Google Android wave, HP released a tiny smartphone called the “Veer”, and then in early July the HP TouchPad was launched.

The TouchPad was to be a “more serious” device than the iPad directed at executives. So, in keeping with that message HP hired comedian/actor Russel Brand (Arthur), and Lea Michelle (Glee) for comm

The reviews were lukewarm at best, based on webOS 3.0 bugs, somewhat inadequate hardware, a small app offering and pricing that matched Apple’s iPad at $499 for a 16GB model. They send out a couple of updates to webOS and things seem better, but sales remain bleak.

HP reacts and offers a $50 discount and then a week later a $100 instant rebate for a weekend. Three days later they decide to make the price change permanent. Reports started to circulate that BestBuy, Inc. was pulling the TouchPad off their shelves and would be returning 250,000 units (which was more than the total sold to consumers).

Then on August 18, about six weeks after its launch, HP announced that they were discontinuing the TouchPad and their smartphone line. The next day the TouchPad was quietly put on clearance at $100 for the 16GB model and $150 for the 32GB model. Within hours the discussion forums, tech blogs and twitter were buzzing with the news – retailers’ and HP’s online store were crashing from the demand. BestBuy faced with lines of eager customers did an about-face and started selling the TouchPad again. Within a couple of days the TouchPad was sold out everywhere but eBay where some profiteers were attempting to cash-in on the frenzy.

When HP announced the discontinuation of the TouchPad and coming smartphones they also stated that they were going to continue developing webOS. Many, including me, just took that for corporate double-speak and continued writing our obituaries. But, to their credit, HP’s webOS team has released an update to give the device true document editing capabilities, a free app promotion and have stated a new  over-the-air system update is nearing release.

Perhaps the sounds of jammed customer service lines or warehouse people scurrying around to cover the back-orders caught someone’s attention at HP because there seems to be a movement afoot to bring the TouchPad back to life. Todd Bradley, the leader of HP’s Personal Systems Group, stated today that the company could resurrect the TouchPad as part of its strategy as they split HP’s PSG into a separate entity.

Will we now see the 7” HP TouchPad “Go” that had cleared the FCC just a week or so back? What of the Pre 3 smartphone? Will there be a new 10” TouchPad in the offing? Will Samsung buy the group from HP?

As I finished the latest chapter in this tale, HP announced that it would be making at least a limited quantity of new TouchPads available in the next few weeks.

Filed in categories: Articles, webOS

Tagged: HP TouchPad, webOS

As the TouchPad Turns… originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on August 31, 2011 at 2:00 pm.

Dear Gadget Diary,

Yesterday was chemo day. The treatments take about 5 hours, so I had to figure out something to take with me to keep me occupied and entertained for that whole time while sitting in a chair with an IV hooked up to the port in my chest.

I decided to kill 2 birds with one stone by taking my iPad 2 and the Crux360 keyboard case that I’ve been needing to  test. I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to find the perfect back to carry it in and ended up going with the Waterfield Muzetto 10″. The iPad / Crux360 fit perfectly along with my iPhone 4, wallet, iPad AC adapter (just in case) and a few other odds and ends.

Nope, that’s not a laptop on my lap, it’s the iPad 2 in the Crux360. I’m not going to use this diary entry to review the Crux360… I’ll be doing that with a regular review very soon…

For those of you who roll their eyes when I talk about trying to use the iPad (or an Android tablet) as a laptop replacement, yesterday is a prime example of why I keep trying. Answering and sending emails for several hours would be less than fun without a physical keyboard. Also, tablets tend to have better battery life than a laptop, are lighter weight except when you stick them in a case that turns them into a laptop More about that in the review.

I was able to knock my inbox down to a manageable level and do a little gadgeteer writing while getting juiced up with yummy Taxol and Herceptin.

During lunch time, I watched part of a lame movie via Netflix. It’s actually the first time I’ve used the app on my iPad to try to watch a movie. I was surprised that it played without any hiccups using the hospital’s free WiFi.

The nurse watching over my treatment saw the iPad and told me that her daughter had just won one recently and was very excited about it.

My iPad started out at 100% battery life when I left the house that morning at 7:30am, but by 1:30pm, it had dropped down to about 45%. I guess using Bluetooth and WiFi for 5 hours will do that. I’m not complaining though.

I did get bored checking my email after the 100th time, checking for new comments on the site, reading my RSS feeds, etc. I happened to notice that there was a person sitting with the person getting treatment next to me. I couldn’t see the patient, but her visitor had her back to me and on the floor I could see she had a bunch of embroidery floss spilling out of her purse. When the nurse came by to check on her, she commented about how neat what she was doing was. So me being my normal nosy self, I said “excuse me… I couldn’t help by overhear that you’re making something, can I ask what it is?” The girl turned got up and turned around and I saw that she had tied the colored floss around her thigh and was weaving a friendship bracelet, which looked really cool. I told her how neat it looked and she thanked me and went back to work. When my treatment finished, I gathered my things and was getting ready to leave she turned around again and told me she had made me a bracelet.

Isn’t it cool? That was so nice to make a total stranger (me) something like that. It had to have taken her at least 2 hours or longer to do it. I didn’t even get her name. That’s the 2nd time in the this last week that a total stranger has done something nice for me. This past Saturday, Jeanne and I went to Cracker Barrel for lunch and after the waitress took our order, she came back a few minutes later to tell us that an anonymous person was going to pay our bill. We have no idea who or why someone did that… Just goes to show you that there are nice people in the world who do things for no other reason than because it’s nice.

I did a good deed today when I had to go back to the Cancer Center for my Neulasta shot (white blood cell booster). I took a few iPad cases, screen cleaning cloths and styli for the nurse’s daughter who had won the iPad and also for the nurse who I had demo’d the Samsung tab to the week before (see my previous gadget diary entry) who had bought an iPad for her relative. Hopefully they will both enjoy the goodies.

Today I tried out a new wallet that I bought a few weeks ago. It’s the Urban Wallet from Bill’s Custom Cases.  I used it to carry my iPhone, money, credit cards and lipbalm. I’ll have a review of it soon too It worked well for me today, but I still have my own modular wallet project in the works. I hope to start on it this weekend. I stopped at Joann Fabrics for more more plastic canvas. Stop laughing… it’s just to prototype. I’ll probably end up making it from leather or canvas if I can actually create something decent.

Thoughts for today:

I take back all the times I’ve said that people are overrated. People can be wonderful. Just goes to show that you never know how something YOU do can impact someone else. So go out and be nice to someone right now. Even the littlest things can make a big difference.

The iPad makes a good companion when you have 5 hours to kill.

I’m feeling all crafty after seeing those friendship bracelets. I can’t wait to start on my wallet idea this weekend.

Filed in categories: Articles, iPhone, iPad, iPod related

Tagged: gadget diary

Julie’s Gadget Diary – 08-19-11 originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on August 19, 2011 at 11:39 pm.