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Newstips Electronic Editorial Bulletin Issue # 2009-09e
Frosty windy chills of news
Fallout 3: PS3 catching up, GotY ramping up
There's somebody out there who hasn't yet played Fallout 3
(Windows or Xbox or PS3); if that's you, tell Tracey & she'll fix
that. If you (or the people you reach) are playing on a PS3,
they'll be thrilled to know that the 5 DLC (downloadable content
aka add-on) packs started becoming available this week ("Broken
Steel" 9/24, "Operation: Anchorage" & "The Pitt" 10/1 then "Point
Lookout" & "Mothership Zeta" 10/8). For anybody else who hasn't
played yet - well in time for the holidays - the Fallout 3 Game
of the Year Edition ($50 for Games for Windows, $60 for Xbox 360
or PlayStation 3) hits store shelves Tuesday, October 13. Marty
still hasn't beaten his F3 addiction; if you're ready to engage
your own, tell Tracey. Contact: Tracey Thompson, Bethesda
Softworks (Rockville, MD) 301-354-4216 tthompson@bethsoft.com
http://BethSoft.com
Puzzling NYT brain games frankly Franklin
Welcome Franklin, probably best known for their calculator-style
language & reference aids but also the source for electronic
games & brain workout gear under the New York Times brand (it's
just a license, gang, so it's OK for those of you not at the
Times to cover these, too). The New York Times Brain Partner
($60) has 20-some language, logic & math games. The New York
Times Merriam-Webster Crossword Puzzle ($60) has a dictionary, a
thesaurus, solvers for crossword & jumble & anagram puzzles &
more. New York Times Sudoku ($25) generates its own puzzles at
any of 3 skill levels or lets you enter 9x9 Sudoku puzzles from
elsewhere then use its touch-stylus as you work out the solution.
Aline is delighted to get you any or all you'd care to review -
plus almost anything else of interest from their Web site.
Contact: Aline Boutin, Franklin Electronic Publishers
(Burlington, NJ) 609-386-2500x4434 aline_boutin@franklin.com
http://franklin.com
Nothing is unsecure when your Liberty is secure
You're at an Internet café in a sleazy port town populated by
pirates (a really bad kind: data & privacy pirates) & you're
pretty sure the rent-by-the-hour "Love For Sale" computer you're
using has been infested by a lot worse than the roaches that
scamper across the floor. How do you get on the Web, send &
receive messages or do other work without leaving your personal
or company fortunes behind? You lock out trouble with a key
(well, a USB key) so that the PC itself has no record of what
you're doing. The key is part of Liberty ($100) & lets the real
work, browsing & connecting all happen in your BlackBerry
handset, making the PC a terminal that's so dumb, it doesn't know
what you're doing. When you leave there, you leave nothing behind
& nothing naughty can make its way into your stuff (well, not
your electronics stuff; we might recommend a hand sanitizer).
Tell Mark to give you Liberty or give you definitely fascinating
info about it. Contact: Mark Andress, Bayalink Solutions Corp.
(Waterloo, ON) 416-399-4969 mark@bayalink.com
http://Bayalink.com
Intel at retail - Atom does little theater
Half a century or so ago, kids could build little log cabins out
of Lincoln Logs or any number of assemblies from an Erector Set.
A lot of that spirit survives in folks today who may be too young
to remember those items, but who love what they can put together
with an Intel Atom kit. A lot of them are using the kit that
includes an Atom CPU on a small-footprint motherboard (street:
less than $80 at many retailers) to build dedicated home theater
gear, like "tuners" for streaming content. Aside from these
low-cost, small-footprint pieces of home theater gear, the Atom
is also powering hobbyist robots, do-it-yourself home control
systems & a lot of other neat applications. We can't plug you
into customers, but we can plug you into retailers & you can ask
them what their customers are up to. The part we love is that the
Atom kit can be such an amazing catalyst to inventiveness;
getting your own hands-on experience is as easy as chasin' Jason.
Contact: Jason Saganski, Intel Americas Inc. (Santa Clara, CA)
908-837-9828 jason.saganski@intel.com http://Intel.com
Trick versus treat is wise versus cracks
It doesn't take a Halloween night to realize the horrors a silent
flying cinder can do to a camera lens. The trick that pros use to
protect their lenses is a simple screw-on Tiffen UV Protect
filter (price varies with size, but these are among the least
expensive filters everywhere). The treat comes in the light of
day, when its UV filtering deflects a major source of exposure
errors. The cracks come no matter what, but wise users would
rather crack an inexpensive filter than an expensive lens. Hilary
can tell you more about these mysterious disks, or better; let
him know the thread size (printed on the lens) of your SLR or
camcorder & he'll be happy to get you a UV Protect filter to
review. Contact: Hilary Araujo, Tiffen Company (Hauppauge, NY)
631-273-2500x1216 haraujo@tiffen.com http:/.tiffen.com
Special Report: Wireless wideband disconnect
If Marty's daughter didn't live in Chicago & if the 4G World
hadn't promoted femtocells, we probably wouldn't have bothered
investigating WiMax & other wireless wideband during our half day
(didn't need even that much time) at the show. What we discovered
(in combination with what they had not thought through) seems
consequential enough to treat as a Special Report. We can begin
with a reality check: product managers at some of the biggest
companies there confirmed that it will be 2012 before wireless
wideband even touches all of the top 50 US markets & 2020 before
there's any significant user base. Between the lines: they hope
municipal initiatives will pay for the build-out. Only one of the
competing standards seems to have a chance for inclusion in cell
handsets & none of the players seems to have approached the auto
makers about placing gateways into cars. It seems to us that
there's more than a hype misfire here; we're sensing a
fundamental disconnect with a contemporary transformation that
can be consequentially disruptive to the wireless wideband
products being peddled at the show. Not one of the vendors we
asked had considered the impact of the current Administration's
promised build-out of a smarter electrical grid. We spelled out
what we could for them (as we will for you) & it became obvious
that none of it had entered their thinking. Inevitably, any path
to achieving a smart electrical distribution grid involves
IP-connected telemetry to monitor at least Voltage & current at
selected nodes; it seems likely that telemetry data should also
include temperature, wind speed & humidity, if not more. While
there's a widespread assumption that the IP communication will be
over the power lines, we think that will ultimately prove less
reliable than collocating one or more fiber runs. An optical
fiber fabric along power line routes would almost certainly
become a national security concern (even if it weren't there
because of Federal initiatives) with obvious applications to
secure military & government communications (much like the
original Internet). The explosion in weather monitoring data
points would be of consequential benefit to NOAA, FEMA, aviation
& public safety interests, among others. We would also gain a
very broad footprint for very inexpensive wireless wideband
nodes, since broadband IP connectivity & power are already in
place at these nodes. Note that there's also a lot of pressure on
Federal projects to be deficit-neutral; let's add the FCC to the
picture. The FCC can (with or without new legislation) instruct
the current wireless wideband experiments to halt, or limit them
to a trial phase only. The FCC can mandate what parts of the
wireless spectrum can be used for these nodes (which we believe
would be different from the frequencies being used in most
current deployments). And the FCC can conduct auctions to
determine which organizations will be allowed to connect to this
fiber IP network & transmit on these designated frequencies. With
a single standard, wireless wideband connectivity can lead to new
alternatives in personal handset communications, mobile
computing, telematics in both commercial & passenger vehicles
plus a new way of issuing location-specific emergency messages
that anyone can get. There would be other consequences, some of
which would lead to lobbyist-led opposition. A larger web of
lower-power communication alternatives could ultimately make cell
towers & cell services significantly less relevant. Privacy
interests may be concerned about telemetric nodes also
incorporating video surveillance, or about wireless telematics in
cars performing personal tracking. We also note that there are
already initiatives to add wireless features to utility metering,
making it likely that point-of-service nodes might ultimately be
part of this fabric; if & when that happens, that bandwidth at
the wall could provide new in-home or in-office alternatives to
cable TV, satellite & telephone services. We note that it is easy
& inexpensive to add more fibers to the bundle as a fiber optic
cable is jacketed, so essentially infinite bandwidth everywhere
is a possible outcome to this kind of infrastructure
architecture. That's bad news for the 4G World exhibitors. It may
also be disruptive news for cable, satellite, telephone &
cellular companies - especially so since it would be such
wonderful news for all of us.
Special Report Bonus Review: Vivitar ViviCam T328
Every once in a while we run into a camera that looks like
something desirable but only until it's put to use. The Vivitar
ViviCam T328 has all the right specs to make buyers think it's a
great choice: 12.1Mp sensor, 3X optical zoom, 3" LCD, touch
screen, HD video mode, a $120 street price, etc. It's a perfectly
adequate camera until you need to take a picture, when it turns
both slow-witted & dim-witted. You'll wait 5 seconds after you
turn it on before it can take its first photo & 2 seconds between
pictures. Snap the shutter when a whale breaches the surface of
the water & its tail will be fully submerged before the picture
gets taken. It offers rich color with the right amount of light
but it's easily confused in low light situations. The touch
screen (which, by the way, only participates in some camera
functions) is not foolproof & often fails to respond; the 4
LCD-labeled touch-buttons adjacent to it sometimes duplicate
touch screen functions & at other times perform functions when
the touch screen won't. The overall design is extremely awkward
for left-handed users. Dexterity issues aside, this camera makes
it really easy to take bad pictures & really hard to take good
pictures. Bottom line: the Vivitar T328 ViviCam is a perfectly
satisfactory camera for right-handed people who take pictures by
having people stand still in bright light, but for the rest of
us, it's a camera you'd only want to buy because you have to give
a gift & the recipient is somebody you don't like.
Special Report Bonus Review 2: PNY Optima Pro SDHC
Since few review cameras come with enough memory to take more
than a picture or two, we treat our camera reviews as
simultaneous opportunities to review camera memory cards; in this
case, PNY sent a 4GB Optima Pro SDHC card. The first test of any
SD card is to determine whether a camera takes any longer to save
to it than to internal memory; if there was a difference with
this PNY card, we couldn't measure it.As a Class 6 device, it has
to be able to write 6MB/second; a 10-12Mp image needs 4-5MB of
storage, so the image transfer to the card happens in less than a
second. While the 4GB capacity is one of the smallest that PNY
offers in this series (4, 8, 16 &32GB), it's enough to hold
800-1000 photos at 10-12Mp or an hour of 9Mbps HD video or about
100 minutes of SD video. One of the nice things about flash
memory products for a reviewer is that they generally either work
or don't work, with current-vintage products generally offering
enough size & speed to accommodate the current-vintage of gear
that uses them. That's the case here. Bottom line: the PNY Optima
Pro SDHC card exhibits the necessary speed & performance to work
well in today's data-intensive, speed-needy gizmos.
Special Report Bonus Review 3: Electrolux UltraSilencer Green
While the aboriginal Electrolux canister vacuum was shaped more
like a scuba tank, its newest models have more of a ladybug
shape, but they also do more tricks. The company decided to take
on the Green theme at full force with a new model that uses less
juice, makes less noise, incorporates more recycled materials in
its construction & packaging & will more readily face recycling
when its useful life comes to an end. The Electrolux
UltraSilencer Green canister vacuum impressed us as very quiet
indeed when we first plugged it in & turned it on, but it fooled
us; its topside suction power adjusting control was set to the
max & when we adjusted that downward, it became even quieter. The
dogs didn't run away, as they do from most vacuums; in fact, they
didn't budge. Even at the low setting, it made quick work of the
dog & cat hair, tracked in mud, spice overshoot droppings, carton
packing material detritus & other remnants of normal living. The
top of the canister has a big green button for power, a big black
button to retract the power cord & the suction power slider but
even cooler are the flip-up handle & a special slot to let it
stand on its butt while clipping the floor nozzle in place for
very compact stowage. While we haven't torn the unit apart to see
how they got it hushed, we're impressed that they did. Bottom
line: The Electrolux UltraSilencer Green canister vacuum does
more than most to save the planet, but we're even more impressed
by how well it cleans without raising an audio ruckus.
Special Report Bonus Review 4: MindTracks audio briefings
What can you learn in 8 minutes? The folks at iMinds offer
professionally narrated 8-minute MP3 files with well-written
briefings on any of many (at the moment, 72) topics. We asked
them to send their MindTracks offerings covering Film Noir & The
D-Day Invasion specifically because we have access to third-party
expertise on both. It's obvious that nothing is going to be
encyclopedic in 8 minutes, nor would we expect an expert to learn
anything new from so short an audio book, but these litmus tests
would tell us whether or not these briefings offer value,
regardless their price. The verdict: each proved a more than
satisfactory introduction to its subject matter, provided both
depth & nuance in describing it & could turn ignorance of a
subject into a conversational grasp of it after just a listening
or two. Individual tracks are offered both via iTunes & via
Audible.com for a penny less than a buck each. Bottom line:
iMinds MindTracks audio mini-books offer a good value whenever a
subject they cover can help you patch a pothole in your own
omniscience.
The fourth quarter
We're hitting it, gang - things start getting busy & maybe
interesting now. There's the whole issue of gadgeting up for
winter, a few days of trick or treat tech, then the flood of
holiday drool bait. Will consumer confidence let retailers do
well? Is there enough churn in commerce to inject a few ad bucks
into the balance sheets of the people who write our paychecks?
Since we're not bashful about suggesting an occasional slant to
your coverage, here's one that we think can help a lot of people:
find things that excite you & let a little of that excitement
leak into your reporting. As always, Marty is pretty broadly
plugged in & happy to help you with that. Contact: Martin
Winston, Newstips (Novelty, OH) 440-338-8400; marty@Newstips.com
http://Newstips.com
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Newstips Bulletin [Novelty, OH] +1.440.338.8400 http://Newstips.com
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