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Newstips Electronic Editorial Bulletin Issue # 2009-11a
Winners or losers, we're newsers for choosers
Special edition Franklin dictionary targets vision impaired
Last time, we mentioned the upcoming Franklin Bill Reader
(November $300) that speaks currency denominations for the
visually impaired; on that theme, we should also bring your
attention to the Franklin Speaking Language Master Special
Edition Merriam-Webster handheld electronic dictionary ($450
complete with headphones, AC adapter & pouch). The display
supports a range of type sizes & the speech output lets users
adjust the voice speed. It speaks 10,000 basic Spanish & English
words, offers 300,000 definitions & 500,000 thesaurus entries,
has 10 built-in educational games, offers phonetic spelling
correction & more. The device can also save up to 26 stored
messages to replay aloud as an augmentative speech device. Ask
Aline for more info or a unit to review. Contact: Aline Boutin,
Franklin Electronic Publishers (Burlington, NJ) 609-386-2500x4434
aline_boutin@franklin.com http://franklin.com
Mail envy comes with Liberty
In describing how the Bayalink Liberty ($100) USB key &
BlackBerry software combo makes a PC the screen & keyboard for
the applications & accessibility benefits in a BlackBerry, we may
have misled you into thinking it's just a giant Blackberry screen
on the PC screen. It's quite a bit more, perhaps best evidenced
by the Mail function. In the Liberty window on a PC, you don't
just see the usual list of messages; you also see the handset's
complete collection of folders. Work with the mail all you want -
read, respond, create, etc. - without exposing any of your
messages to any insecurity through the PC; everything except the
user interface is happening on the BlackBerry. Did you ever try
printing a message from a BlackBerry? With Liberty, any printer
attached to the computer can print any BlackBerry message.
Messages are just one example of two good things working together
with a third thing to make even better things happen - which is
the kind of thing you especially like to review, right? Tell
Mark. Contact: Mark Andress, Bayalink Solutions Corp. (Waterloo,
ON) 416-399-4969 mark@bayalink.com http://Bayalink.com
Intel at retail - drive them crazy for the Holidays
Folks who may not be able to add new computers to their Holiday
shopping lists can make their gift recipients just as crazy-happy
with an Intel SSD, available from stores with Intel inside. The
speedy boot time, snappy responsiveness of their old system with
these new drives & the companion ability to brag about it to
their friends make it a great gift choice. For info, images or
hands-on, give Ginger a jingle. Contact: Ginger Monte, Intel
Americas Inc. (Santa Clara, CA) 781-254-1049
virginia.j.monte@intel.com http://Intel.com
For the Holidays, this kind of naughty is nice
Would Santa approve of fisticuffs & gunplay? He might if the gift
you have in mind is the new Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition
($50 for Games for Windows, $60 for Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3);
here's why. The game is ultimately about moral choices. Even when
facing characters who are purely evil & will kill without remorse
(in some cases, with glee), a player can choose to run away or
hide rather than fight. There are myriad groups with whom a
player can choose alliance or opposition, each time with a
separate outcome. In its own way, the game presents parables of
the player's here & now. Tell Tracey if you'd like info, images
or a copy to review. Contact: Tracey Thompson, Bethesda Softworks
(Rockville, MD) 301-354-4216 tthompson@bethsoft.com
http://BethSoft.com
Snow fooling light meters
Check out last winter's photos that you took out in the snow; are
you noticing how often your subject is underexposed? That's
because the exposure automation in the camera is getting fooled
by the high brightness of reflected ultraviolet light (to which
it's also sensitive). The cure is in just about the lowest price
screw-on lens filter you can get: UV/Protect. We generally
emphasize the protection part, since a flying cinder does a lot
less financial damage destroying a filer than it does destroying
a lens. With snows ahead, it's cool to also understand how it can
protect your photos. Drop Hilary a note with your lens thread
size & have him send you a UV Protect filter for review. Contact:
Hilary Araujo, Tiffen Company (Hauppauge, NY) 631-273-2500x3216
haraujo@tiffen.com http:/.tiffen.com
Special Report: Ford Sync as a distracted driver antidote
Lots of cars have Bluetooth dashboards, but we began to suspect
that there's more going on in Ford Sync than the "Play artist
Korn" commercial was revealing, so we got geeky with an insider
at Ford. The upgrades for 2009 added a lot of cloud functionality
& reached a little deeper into the on-board ARM processor (400MHz
Freescale i.MX31) that networks engine & driving system readings,
status reports, commands, controls & alerts. It seems that's just
the beginning. One of our first concerns is distracted driving;
one of Ford's concerns is that so few cell phones support the
Bluetooth Message Access Profile (MAP), which would allow
incoming text messages to be read aloud & to some extent,
responded to using only voice commands. Sync is motion-aware &
position-aware, so this kind of interface could also tell a cell
not to traffic in text messages until the car pulls over & stops.
That's an interesting start, but we went deeper. Today's Sync is
able to initiate many kinds of queries, like those many
navigators can handle; it can also accept incoming data on things
like traffic conditions. Since Sync is mostly a software entity,
they are looking at a way to provide location-based alerts
(severe weather, Amber alerts, bridge or road outages, etc.) in
cooperation with next-generation NENA (911 network) operations &
to establish 2-way links when the vehicle is directly involved in
an emergency. We wondered if it would make sense to provide a way
for greater cooperation between Sync in the vehicle & features
within cell phones or other gear; the speedy detours in their
answers to our queries on this alerted us to some immediate
sensitivity to this line of inquiry (which we hope to report on
once we get a little luckier with follow-up investigations). We
did learn that every process in the car that the ARM processor
sees is potentially available to Sync & that there has been a
deliberate migration in Ford vehicle design to making more & more
of the functionality of things within the car integrate with that
onboard network. As the network's hardware becomes more
integrated, its software can become more nimble; we don't
anticipate the car driving by wire, but there are already things
happening (like pre-tensioning the seat belts if a collision
seems imminent) that make the car work a lot more like a living
thing with a nervous system. Today, Sync speaks & listens to help
keep the driver's eyes & attention on the road & the library of
functionality is growing. For tomorrow, Ford is behaving a lot
like a consumer electronics company, driving up functionality at
a rapid pace & trying to balance added features against the
ever-changing thresholds of driver annoyance.
Special Report Bonus Review: Microsoft LifeCam HD USB vidcam
We admit, Microsoft hit one of our soft spots with the new
LifeCam Cinema USB-connected HD 720p video camera. It's capable
of broadcast-competent full-frame-rate 720P (1280x720) 16:9 video
if you give it enough light; its performance in dim lighting is
good for most applications, but doesn't seem (we haven't done
metrics) to support full (30fps) frame rate & does seem to make
latency more noticeable in dim lighting. We don't want to mislead
with that: the frame rate in dim lighting is at par or better in
comparison to most Webcams at their best; it never drops to the
slow & jumpy animated-neon-sign frame rates we've seen elsewhere.
Compared to other USB video cameras, its low-light performance is
outstanding & a lot cleaner than we expected. It features
autofocus (from about 4" out) on a fairly wide angle (74 degree)
lens; that makes it hard to get into one of those situations
where your head is always bobbing out of the frame. Its rubbery
mount works well on the edge of most monitors or notebook
screens. There's a topside noise-canceling mike, along with a
call button that works with Windows Live Messenger, if you use
that. The companion software lets you capture audio, video or
still photos to the PC & adjust a long list of attribute
settings. Without adjusting anything, it works with a lot of
Windows Live software (which we don't use) & with Skype (which we
only rarely use). List pricing is about $80, making its
performance all the more remarkable in comparison to the
significantly more expensive cameras from the commercial
videoconference brands. There are some performance compromises.
It is not good with motion; wave your hand rapidly & you'll see
trails. It does have some latency (we haven't done metrics here
either, but it seems to be more than a quarter & less than a half
of a second). This would be an outstanding choice for performance
versus price for field news reporting or for a sit & deliver
bureau. The white balance is adequate but imperfect. Inside the
Newstips bunker with background walls a light green & with
daylight color temperature lighting, skin appears a little too
pink, browns a little too orange, oranges a little too yellow,
greens a little too turquoise, blacks a little too gray & grays a
little too puce. When we hold a piece of white paper up to the
camera, color renditions become much more accurate. (Dear
Microsoft: please consider a white balance lock control on the
software interface). Bottom line: amazing as it is to find a
broadcast-competent HD Lipstick video camera for eighty bucks,
the Microsoft LifeCam Cinema USB-connected HD 720p video camera
is the best entry we've seen so far in what we feel will be an
increasingly significant product segment.
Special Report Bonus Review 2: Plantronics Voyager Pro
With Bluetooth so long in the tooth, you'd expect very little
innovation in products. We've seen some brands focus on bling,
some on stunts (like noise canceling that works on jackhammers
but not on loud music) & some on miniaturization. Plantronics
(long ago a sponsoring client here) has been in the headset
business since long before Bluetooth, so when cell phones emerged
as an even higher-volume segment than office headsets, they knew
where to plant their flag. One other important thing about
Plantronics: their corporate philosophy is to create products
with a market presence of only about 6 months each, so they tend
to get creative or innovative at a fairly impressive pace. When
they suggested that we review one of their new Bluetooth headsets
(in response to our editorial call for antidotes to distracted
driving), we were less than excited but agreed. Now that we've
seen the Plantronics Voyager Pro, we're somewhat more impressed.
The main body goes behind your ear, like a 60s-style hearing aid.
The earbud is on a soft rubbery arm that goes over your ear
shell, which means there's an elastic tension rather than simply
a rigid body to keep it in place, making for a very comfortable
fit. A soft (feels like silicone rubber) collar (they include
sized substitutes for this) keeps the earpiece well positioned in
the ear canal without adding the usual irritation of most
earpieces. The microphone boom arm arcs out from the earpiece,
placing the mike about halfway to your lips; the top of this arm
also is the location for the main activity button (answer,
initiate, etc.). The volume control (press both + & - to mute) is
at the top of the part that's behind your ear with the power
switch & charging connector at the bottom. The audio quality is
satisfactory (nothing over Bluetooth is extraordinary). Bottom
line: thanks mostly to its clever choice of materials &
construction the Plantronics Voyager Pro is one of the most
comfortable in-ear Bluetooth headsets we've ever worn.
In case you wondered, Marty didn't win
In the election for 2 members of the Board of Trustees of Russell
Township, Marty came in fourth with 300 votes, which he figures
is pretty good for a first run & a total campaign expenditure of
$96. There's another election for one seat in 2 years & Marty
believes he'll dominate in that one. 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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