Click here to return to home page

Home of the
world-famous
Newstips Bulletin

< Click logo to return to home page

2009-09E

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

                               # # #

Newstips Bulletin [Novelty, OH] +1.440.338.8400 http://Newstips.com

(c) Copyright 2007 Martin Winston and TwandaCorp - all rights reserved.

[Home] [For Press] [For Vendors] [Bulletins] [Back Issues] [PD Profile] [Contact Us] [Privacy]