Click here to return to home page

< Click logo to return to home page

2007-07C

Newstips Electronic Editorial Bulletin       Issue # 2007-07c

     News for when lightning strikes non-union clouds

NEW, MORE ECONOMICAL 3-CHIP 1080 EVERIO COMING
 In September, the Everio line gets its second 3-chip HD camcorder
 with a 60GB hard drive that holds up to 5 hours of uncompromised
 MPEG2 1080i video & boasts a stabilized 10X zoom. The wires have
 more details but there's one detail we can share now: its initial
 price point is $400 less than the current GZHD7 (which it does
 not replace). Challenge Chelsea to get you onto the reviewers
 list. Contact: Chelsea Vander Groef, JVC COMPANY OF AMERICA
 (Wayne, NJ) 973-317-5000x5312 mailto:cvandergroef@jvc.com
 http://jvc.com

MEDIS PROJECTS IPHONE TIP AT SAME TIME AS RETAIL
 The Medis 24/7 Power Pack 1Watt Fuel Cell ($20 plain, $30 with
 full kit, 3Q07) supported gear roster should include (barring
 snags; they're working on it now) the iPhone by late September,
 when these fuel cells hit retailers. Adding one more phone or
 player to the list that its power converters & adapter tips can
 handle should be no big deal, but in the case of the iPhone with
 its soldered-in battery, swapping in a spare is not an answer for
 extending its run time in the field. If there's any specific gear
 you want to ask about (in terms of the fuel cell being an
 effective field charger for it), send a message to Michelle &
 she'll get you its status. Contact: Michelle Rush, MEDIS
 TECHNOLOGIES LTD. (Brentwood CA) 925-516-3837
 mailto:mrush@medistechnologies.com http://MedisTechnologies.com

MOGO WEB SPILLS SECRETS
 You may not have known about the Bluetooth headset that slips
 into a notebook's PC slot to recharge; so far, it's been an OEM
 (not retail) product from the house that brought you the MoGo
 Mouse, but visit http://MoGoMouse.com & you'll see it's slated
 for an upcoming intro. Ditto the new MoGo Dapter that barely
 bulges out a USB port to add Bluetooth 2 support to a lot of
 notebooks or desktops that may still be at lesser standards or
 have no Bluetooth at all. It's also a place to check out the new
 X54 standard & pro high-res MoGo Mouse multifunction models. Take
 a look through, make up a wish list & see if Jack can't make it
 come true. Contact: Jack Corrao, NEWTON PERIPHERALS (West Newton,
 MA) 858-792-0944 mailto:jack.corrao@newtonperipherals.com
 http://NewtonPeripherals.com

HOW TO GIVE WEATHER FOR CHRISTMAS
 Here we are talking Christmas in July; what will we talk about
 next, the weather? Yep. Ever since we found out the size of the
 population of weather geeks (people who spend money to get more
 than free reports, between 1 in 200 & 1 in 600 households), we've
 been intrigued. And Justin tells us that they can buy year-long
 subscriptions to the AccuWeather.com premium online weather
 service for about $80. Nobody had to put a ribbon around that
 idea for us; almost anything that makes us chuckle seems like a
 good candidate for a story. Contact: Justin Roberti, ACCUWEATHER,
 INC. (State College, PA) 814-235-8756
 mailto:roberti@accuweather.com Http://AccuWeather.com

C2 IN SOHO: ROI IN JUST ONE WINTER, JUST ONE SUMMER
 The new Herman Miller C2 personal comfort appliance ($285) uses a
 solid state thermoelectric Peltier device to either heat or cool
 a small bubble in a personal workspace, bringing comfort to an
 area that might otherwise be too hot or too cold. It was designed
 for modular office workspaces in big companies, home turf to
 Herman Miller, but that's not the only place where it makes
 sense. For people who work at home or in a small office, a C2 on
 the desk lets you adjust the thermostat for the rest of the space
 to something that costs you less; the difference of a few degrees
 warmer before the air conditioner kicks in for the summer, or a
 few degrees cooler before the furnace kicks in during the winter
 can cover the cost of the C2 in just one season. Ask Mark.
 Contact: Mark Schurman, HERMAN MILLER, INC. (Zeeland, MI)
 616-654-5498 mailto:mark_schurman@hermanmiller.com
 http://HermanMiller.com

TREND SETTER FOR SPREADER DREADERS
 If you think lawn care begins & ends with mowing, that just
 doesn't cut it. You have to feed, sometimes seed, prevent weeds &
 address other needs, which can be expensive, sometimes
 unnecessarily so. If you have a lawn, are there bags of leftover
 lawn care stuff in your garage? Buying the right amount is
 tricky, in large part because we all keep guessing at the actual
 lawn area we have to cover. It's easy to cut the guesswork with a
 digital camera & iPhotoMeasure software; place its target in each
 shot & see accurate lateral measurements of everything that is
 lawn & everything that isn't (like your house, which we assume
 you don't seed, weed or feed). Do that for the front, back & side
 yards & you can know the area of your lawn down to square inches.
 Pester Paul for a copy. Contact: Paul Minor, DIGICONTRACTOR INC.
 (Tarzana, CA) 818-888-3687 mailto:paul@iphotomeasure.com
 http://iPhotoMeasure.com

SECTOR SNOOPING PREVENTS LENGTHY LOOPING
 What you can restore is a lot more important than what you back
 up, but most backup software is not good about letting you
 restore everything. The challenge others have yet to beat
 involves open files & files not yet written to disk. Double
 Image-O uses sector snooping & the same approach to life as
 Windows Explorer to get past that. In the first 15-45 seconds of
 the file copying phase at the start of a new backup session,
 before its snapshot point (a key element to its ability to back
 up open files), Double Image-O is reading the disk sectors of
 open files that Windows needs to (but has not yet been able to)
 write; that snags the most complete possible state of the file.
 Sector snooping remains active for the remainder of the backup
 session, a necessity to cover any new file writes. Since you
 don't know of any other backup software capable of doing that,
 isn't it time to take a look at Double Image-O? Bug Bryant to set
 you up. Contact: Bryant Kittelson, HOST INTERFACE INTERNATIONAL
 INC. (Marysville, WA) 425-746-4361 mailto:b.k@hostinterface.com
 http://hostinterface.com

EMBRACING BRACES WITH A CLEAN TEEN MACHINE
 We can't yet tell you about a major study that's about to begin
 on this subject, but we can tell you that HydraBrush is raising
 eyebrows in terms of its effectiveness at improving the hygienic
 status of kids with braces. Even perfect brushing habits
 (unlikely as they are) can leave food trapped in the wiring; the
 bristle pace & positioning of bite-surrounding HydraBrush heads
 seems to be doing a significantly better real-life job of leaving
 fewer decay-starters behind; the study will establish to what
 extent that's true & how HydraBrush results compare to
 alternatives. One point that we as parents should acknowledge:
 anything that, like HydraBrush, gets the job done faster is
 likely to see more effectiveness in the hands of the kids. Ask
 Bill. Contact: Bill Dendiu, ORALBIOTIC RESEARCH INC. (Escondido,
 CA) 702-736-6536 mailto:bdendiu54@cs.com http://HydraBrush.com

BACK TO SCHOOL WITH DOCUPEN
 Since it's time to prep all that back-to-school coverage, here's
 a fast briefing on all the ways a DocuPen portable color scanner
 can fit. For the early years, it's more of a fit for parents than
 for kids, with a handy way to scan the artwork, report cards &
 other mementos of that era. As soon as the middle school
 research-based papers begin or any other reason for investing
 hours into or hauling freight out of the library, the freight
 loses weight when those critical pages all get scanned into a
 DocuPen; even photos & charts remain usable. To get even more
 dramatic, DocuPen can scan & capture what's displayed on a
 monitor when those research resources are mostly online. Crank
 the usefulness of all that up a notch in high school & college,
 where it's also an extremely convenient way to share class notes.
 And as the business end of a scanner, DocuPen is also the capture
 end of a copier; any time you want a hard copy of the pages it
 harvests, just let the PC print it out. Or attach the scanned
 page files to e-mail messages to share with classmates. Ask Doug.
 Contact: Doug Verkaik, PLANON SYSTEMS SOLUTIONS, INC.
 (Mississauga, ON) 905-507-3926x225 mailto:dougv@planon.com
 http://www.planon.com

WHY ILOAD SPORTS SO MANY PORTS
 You can understand why iLoad would have one USB port (to connect
 an iPod) & maybe the second (to do iPod-to-iPod sharing or
 iPod-to-USB drive backups), but those aren't the only
 connections. There are speaker/mike/line-in mini-jack sockets, a
 mouse port, a keyboard port, an S-Video connection, an Ethernet
 port, RCA A/V connections & more. What are they for? Ask Bernie.
 Contact: Bernard Kaplan, WINGSPAN (Campbell, CA) 408-626-0009x237
 mailto:bkaplan@iload.com

SPECIAL REPORT: MEDIA & THE EEK IN ECONOMICS
 Once you hang around newsrooms for a few decades, memory has a
 funny way of turning into little term papers of the mind; our
 case in point is the newsroom itself. Half a century ago, when ad
 dollars left an editorial budget worth managing, editors &
 reporters & broadcast news producers were almost all educated
 males, mostly with college degrees. A decade later, consolidation
 reduced the field of competition for newspapers & ratings races
 (which were good for fattening ad rates) made TV news healthy,
 more women with degrees were competing for jobs & often got
 hired. (Whatever other motives may have been afoot - and at the
 time, they were definitely, wink-wink, afoot - these women would
 accept jobs for less than their male counterparts were paid). A
 decade after that, cable's competitive influence combined with
 some weakness in the general economy in ways that actually helped
 being newsrooms closer to a gender balance, more non-Caucasian
 hiring was done (it was an era of pressures there) & the
 competition for larger broadcast newsrooms, more bureaus for
 newspapers, more magazine titles & other growth elements played a
 role. There are always limits to any growth game; in the
 following decade, between rapid growth in cable competition &
 rapidly rising news operations costs (satellite news vans & whiz
 bang weather radar & increased day-part coverage for TV, color
 presses & computerization for newspapers), growth was likely to
 slow anyway, but that was exacerbated by the downsizing or
 disappearance of department store ad budgets as the fortunes of
 those steadfast perennial advertisers were eroded by the
 burgeoning growth of discount department stores. Then came the
 dot-com boom & "new media" diverted huge chunks of ad budgets
 away from traditional media while creating the additional costs
 of trying to establish their own presence in this brave new
 virtual world. Then along came the dot-com bust & the economic
 doldrums of the post-Clinton era. The intensely dedicated
 reporters of the Murrow era, their risk-taking producers, the
 emperors of newspapers & other scions of that bygone era are
 gone. The local TV station's producers today are often young
 women without much outside experience, earning money that's
 adequate to the needs of somebody not long out of school. Many
 newsroom jobs remain empty, with no one willing to take them at
 the small salaries they offer. Less-than-celebrity senior
 journalists are compelled to cling to what job security they can
 muster, since lateral career migration is next to impossible. We
 know the pain of that. We can offer some small advice: your value
 is in the people you reach. Demonstrate to your bosses that they
 turn specifically to your work & your bosses can make sure that
 this special appeal gets communicated to the advertisers who
 nourish the food chain of media economics. And the best way to
 get a bigger audience to turn to you is to ask them what it is
 they love & especially what it is they hate when they do that.

SPECIAL REPORT BONUS REVIEW: MOTOROLA SURFBOARD SBG900
 For people with cable modem service, choosing what you plug into
 the cable makes a huge difference in how much you have to plug
 into the cable & what you can get out of it. We've been on cable
 modem service for years & the cable system's most recent cable
 modem for us, already several years old, was a Motorola SURFboard
 (5100 series), which we plugged into a Buffalo wireless router.
 Now Motorola sent us a new SURFboard model SBG900 that includes
 an 802.11g wireless gateway & an advanced firewall, both built
 in. Comparing new to old is like looking at a slightly magnified
 (about half an inch taller, a smidge wider) version with one more
 light on the front, a rubber ducky WiFi antenna on the top &
 absent the earlier model's Standby button. The way this thing
 works is a "gimme" & it's the best solution on the consumer
 sections of the Motorola Web site, but we've seen some other
 goodies at trade shows & a little online hunting leads to a
 strangely split recommendation. Note the Online description of
 the SBG940, with all of these features plus a 4-port wired
 Ethernet 10/100 router. We've also seen prototypes of beefier
 packages that also include 2 lines of VOIP over house POTS wiring
 & a built-in battery backup. So our mixed-review bottom line
 about the SBG900 says: It's just about everything you've hoped
 for, all in one box, but not quite as much as they can put in a
 box; if you don't need VOIP or a wired router or an integrated
 UPS, it's a perfect choice.

SPECIAL REPORT SECOND BONUS REVIEW: SODA CLUB FOUNTAIN JET
 Is anybody else old enough to remember the Howdy Doody Show with
 Clarabelle the Clown (played by Bob Keeshan, better known for his
 later role as Captain Kangaroo)? Clarabelle had a big box over
 his belt buckle; inside the box was a terrible weapon: the
 seltzer bottle (aka soda siphon), which served as something of an
 earlier decade's Super Soaker. The Seltzer bottle also appeared
 in many movies, including several in the Thin Man series; a small
 CO2 cartridge in its handle would make ordinary water effervesce
 into seltzer (aka soda water or club soda) for Scotch & soda, for
 example. The same technology is also behind the past 100+ years
 of the soda fountain, though the carbon dioxide tanks in those
 are far from small. We just tried a somewhat newer countertop
 alternative, the Soda Club Fountain Jet Edition 1, somewhere
 between the size of a coffee maker & the size of a milkshake
 blender. This hides a salami-size CO2 canister in its base; it
 doesn't plug in or use batteries. You place cold water in one of
 its bottles, screw the bottle into a fitting, push the button a
 few times to carbonate the water, remove it, add a cap-full of
 flavoring, close the bottle, shake it a few times, then pour &
 enjoy. In return for the counter space & these activities, you
 get pretty good tasting carbonated beverages (in any of a variety
 of flavors, including diet varieties), you consume a lot less
 sodium, eliminate manufacturing & disposal of a bunch of plastic
 bottles & maybe pay less. (Their site says 43 cents per liter).
 We tried the orange mango & the diet root beer; they're both
 pretty darned good. So where's the balance? The thing is
 interesting to look at, but may be tough to stow away. The costs
 are good but not exactly unbeatable; we sometimes see 2-liter
 bottles at 69-79 cents. The rigmarole may be a bit much if you
 just want a drink of something now. On the other hand, it's a bit
 of an activity center that a family can enjoy together & it is
 much more environmentally conscientious than disposable bottles
 on store-bought soda pop, not to mention a great way to cut
 pounds of sodium out of your intake every year. Bottom line:
 bottom's up! It's worth keeping around.

NEW BRIEFING PAPER: THE ETHICS OF REVIEWS
 Should you pay to receive a review product, to ship it back or to
 insure it? We think there's a clear ethical standard here: no
 reviewer should ever be compelled to invest in a company whose
 product is being reviewed; these expenses amount to investment,
 since they underwrite the company's cost of doing business. So
 does any agreement to pay full list price if they don't get it
 back the moment they expect it. All they really need to see is
 that we understand that placing it in our possession doesn't give
 us ownership & that they expect us to take reasonable care of it.
 We added to our collection of advice briefings for PR pros with
 "Sensitivity to Editorial Ethics in Managing Product Reviews";
 it's on our Web site now & if you want, we'll be happy to send
 you a copy. Contact: Martin Winston, NEWSTIPS (Novelty, OH)
 440-338-8400; mailto:marty@newstips.com http://Newstips.com

THE BIG EVENT: HOLLYWOOD & HIGHLAND, FRIDAY OCTOBER 5
 See http://TheBigEvent for all the details; by the end of the
 weekend, we'll add the menu (high probability of drooling) & a
 special discount arrangement with the Renaissance Hollywood
 hotel. You can use the site or drop a line to RSVP. And come to
 Las Vegas early next January so you don't miss Cherry Picks,
 Sunday morning, 9-12, 1/6/08, at The Wynn.

                # # #

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 PR Pros] [Bulletins] [Back Issues] [Cherry Picks] [PD Profile] [Contact Us] [Privacy]