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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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