Chasjo Mitch's List: gadgets

• releasing the almost ridiculously fitting Architecture series, beginning with the Frank Lloyd Wright Collection, six planned sets including the Guggenheim in New York and Fallingwater, the iconic cantilevered waterfall-house outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

• Sling’s stand-alone hardware products, which start at $180 and plug into televisions, have been largely confined to the homes of a few hundred thousand technology geeks who love the cutting edge and don’t mind braving the dust devils behind their entertainment centers to get there.
• Part of EchoStar’s plan is to then license Sling technology to other satellite and cable TV operators and consumer electronics companies. The idea of “place shifting” or “Slinging” shows to any device, the company hopes, will become a standard trick performed by most high-end cable boxes.
• And cable operators can extend the reach of their traditional programming lineups and prevent their users from flocking to Web video sites, which have fewer and less valuable ads.
• In selling the Sling concept to other television and satellite companies, EchoStar will likely run headlong into something even more formidable: longstanding industry grudges.
• “He’s got a hard slog in the U.S. If you are an overseas cable operator and you don’t compete with Dish, maybe there is an opportunity,” said John C. Malone, chairman of Liberty Media and a major shareholder of DirecTV, in a brief interview last week at a tech conference.

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• Google signaled its intent to introduce a program by that would enable publishers to sell digital versions of their newest books direct to consumers through Google. The move would pit Google against Amazon.com, which is seeking to control the e-book market with the versions it sells for its Kindle reading device.
• Google’s move is likely to be welcomed by publishers who have expressed concerns about Amazon’s aggressive pricing strategy for e-books. Amazon offers Kindle editions of most new best sellers for $9.99, far less than the typical $26 at which publishers sell new hardcovers. In early discussions, Google has said it will allow publishers to set consumer prices.
• Google has already made its 1.5 million public-domain books available for reading on mobile phones as well as the Sony Reader, the Kindle’s largest competitor.
• Google has discussed such plans with publishers before, but it has now committed the company to going live with the project by the end of 2009
• Although Google generates a majority of its revenue from ad sales on its search pages, it has previously charged for content. Three years ago, it opened a Google video store, and sold digital recordings of N.B.A. games as well as episodes of television shows like “CSI” and “The Brady Bunch.” This year, Google said it might eventually charge for premium content on YouTube.
• Mr. Turvey said Google’s program would allow consumers to read books on any device with Internet access, including mobile phones, rather than being limited to dedicated reading devices like the Amazon Kindle.
• He said that Google would allow publishers to set retail prices. Amazon lets publishers set wholesale prices and then sets its own prices for consumers. In selling e-books at $9.99, Amazon takes a loss on each sale because publishers generally charge booksellers about half the list price of a hardcover — typically around $13 or $14.

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• Microsoft announced new relationships with the social networking giants Facebook and Twitter as well as Sky, the big British satellite television provider that is a unit of the News Corporation.
• More far-reaching was Microsoft’s new deal with Sky, under which Xbox Live users in Britain will be able to watch live television, including professional soccer, over an Internet version of the Sky service
• Users will be able to watch television in a virtual party room with their friends, discussing the program as they are watching, they said.

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• Panasonic regrettably does not include wireless capability nor does it sell a wireless dongle, although, according to the company, third-party wireless bridges or powerline adapters will work fine.
• New for 2009, in May Panasonic will add the capability to access Amazon Video on Demand content via a free online software update (PZ850U owners will also get the update). Currently, Panasonic also offers the capability to connect the TV to networked cameras for household monitoring.
• Panasonic touts the G10 series' power-saving chops, thanks to its so-called NEO PDP panel. But in reality, this is still one of the more energy-hogging TVs you can buy (see Power consumption).
• The TV lacks picture-in-picture and cannot freeze the image temporarily to catch a phone number, for example.

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• This Panasonic plasma has the same deep blacks that grace its less expensive little brother, and adds a couple of key improvements: better video processing to handle 1080p/24 sources, and more picture adjustments that allow it to transcend the limitations of THX mode. Its picture should satisfy all but the pickiest of videophiles, and it also outperforms any LCD-based display, LED or otherwise, we've ever tested
• We think the V10 looks more attractive and sophisticated than the G10, and indeed it's one of the coolest-looking TV designs we've seen this year.
• The panels' depth dimension, on the other hand, is just 3.3 inches--not quite as thin as Samsung's 850 series plasmas or Panasonic's own Z1, but thinner than the 4.2 inches of the G10 models.
• Beyond the panels and stands, the V10 models are pretty much identical in design to the G10s.
• One is the ability to refresh the screen at 96Hz, which allows the TV to properly maintain the cadence of film when fed a 1080p/24 source--typically from a Blu-ray player
• The V10 models also offer THX Display Certification. When you engage THX picture mode, the V10's color accuracy, shadow detail, and numerous other picture characteristics improve significantly without you having to make a bunch of adjustments. THX comes close to a "one-step calibration," but in the V10's case it's not as effective as using the Custom mode and Pro adjust settings.
• It connects to the Internet via an Ethernet port on the back of the TV. Panasonic regrettably does not include wireless capability nor sell a wireless dongle, although it says third-party wireless bridges or powerline adapters will work fine.
• New for 2009 Panasonic has added the ability to access Amazon Video on Demand via VieraCast. The pay-per-view movie and TV service is integrated nicely into the television, includes access to so-called high-def content, and can supplement or supplant cable or satellite PPV offerings with its significantly larger catalog.
• We liked that all five of the global picture modes, including THX, Studio Ref, and the dim-by-design Standard mode (see below), are adjustable and that the sixth, called Custom, is independent per input.
• Panasonic also offers ways to avoid temporary image retention, a.k.a. burn-in, and address it should it occur. A pixel orbiter slowly shifts the image around the screen, and you can elect to have it happen either automatically or in user-set periodic intervals.
• in reality this is still one of the more energy-hogging TVs you can buy
• The TV lacks picture-in-picture and cannot freeze the image temporarily to catch a phone number, for example
• In all the Panasonic TC-PV10 series delivers the best picture quality of any flat-panel TV we've tested so far this year
• With our V10 review sample we actually saw worse picture quality in THX mode than we saw on the G10.
• For those reasons, and also because the V10 allows significantly more picture adjustments than the G10, we decided to use the Custom mode, adjusted with our standard user-menu calibration, for our evaluation instead of THX.
• Power consumption: Like all Panasonic plasmas the TC-P50V10 used a lot of juice compared with similar-size LCDs, but at least it's more efficient than older plasmas.

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• Area drivers looking to outwit police speed traps and traffic cameras are using an iPhone application and other global positioning system devices that pinpoint the location of the cameras.
• The new technology streams to i-Phones and global positioning system devices, sounding off an alarm as drivers approach speed or red-light cameras.
• The greater D.C. area has 290 red-light and speed cameras -- comprising nearly 10 percent of all traffic cameras in the U.S., according to estimates by a camera-tracking database called the POI Factory.
• PhantomAlert mimics radar detectors — which are outlawed in D.C. and Virginia — by alerting drivers of nearby enforcement "points of interest" via global positioning system devices. PhantomAlert keeps up to date on traffic enforcement through its users, who contribute information online.
• Photo radar tickets generated nearly $1 billion in revenues for D.C. during fiscal years 2005 to 2008.

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• Generally, unlocking has been most prevalent in the consumer space where AT&T users have wanted to break out of their contracts and put the iPhone on a carrier they like. The business world stayed away from unlocking iPhone devices simply because the iPhone wasn't enterprise-friendly. The iPhone largely ignored the enterprise until the release of iPhone software version 3.0 and the iPhone 3G S.
• In order for the iPhone to provide more value in the enterprise, it can't be locked down to a single carrier. AT&T might be great in one part of the country, but it's not universal. A quick glance at the company's coverage map will tell you everything you want to know about AT&T coverage:
• It might seem silly to some who say unlocking an iPhone for the sake of having one on different carriers is ludicrous. They'll say it's easier to simply get a BlackBerry and stick with it. There's no debating that unlocking the iPhone 3G is far more labor-intensive than simply acquiring another device. But the iPhone is a special device that's worth treating with special attention. It offers enterprise functionality, it's what the employees want, and for the most part, it's a great device.

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• The BlackBerry Tour is easily the best smart phone on Verizon Wireless, and we actually prefer it’s compact design to the beefier BlackBerry Bold.
• We would have liked integrated Wi-Fi, and perhaps access to V Cast TV, but overall the Tour is a winner. You get a very good keyboard, a zippy processor, excellent call quality, and strong data performance, not to mention RIM’s trademark push e-mail goodness. BlackBerry fans looking to upgrade will be happy with this device.

• The touch screen is really stunning, measuring 3 inches diagonally, which is a hair larger than the 2.81-inch display on the Voyager.
• On the whole, we found the touch-screen interface to be quite responsive. There's a touch calibration wizard that you can go through to help with your precision and sensitivity, and the haptic feedback makes the phone vibrate whenever your touch registers
• Despite all this, the touch-screen interface takes some acclimation. This is especially true with the Web browser, where you need to tap a particular icon just right for it to register. We had to tap links several times before it got through, for example. Also, when scrolling through menus, we would sometimes launch an application accidentally. We got used to it after awhile, but it was frustrating at first.
• The enV Touch has an internal accelerometer, so you can activate the QWERTY keyboard by rotating the phone horizontally. When using the QWERTY keyboard, each key magnifies as you touch it to show that you selected it, much like the keyboard on the iPhone.
• Thankfully, the QWERTY keyboard on the enV Touch is just as easy to use as on the Voyager. The keyboard is spacious, with keys that are raised above the surface and have a nice give when pressed.
• The enV Touch also comes with a document viewer, which will let you read Microsoft Office documents from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, plus Adobe Acrobat .pdf files
• Other advanced features include mobile instant messenger (AIM, Windows Live, and Yahoo), GPS with VZ Navigator support, e-mail, and visual voice mail. Do note that the Verizon visual voice mail service will cost you $3 a month.
• As for e-mail, there are three options; mobile e-mail, with which you can get e-mail from a variety of services (like Yahoo, AOL, and Windows Live) directly into your in-box; mobile corporate e-mail courtesy of RemoSync, which lets you sync your work e-mail and calendar; and mobile Web e-mail, which gives you shortcut access to a variety of Web e-mail services like Windows Live, AOL Mail, and Yahoo Mail--this latter option opens up the Web browser. Do note that the mobile e-mail application costs $5, and in order to get corporate e-mail you'll have to sign up for a $9.99 monthly subscription to RemoSync. The corporate e-mail option works with Microsoft ActiveSync, so you need to know your company's mail Exchange server address.
• The enV Touch has a 3.2-megapixel camera, which is an upgrade over the Voyager's 2-megapixel lens
• Photo quality is very good for the most part. Images look sharp, without a lot of blurriness, and colors looked bright, as well.
• Video quality was pretty good for a camera phone, without a lot of blur.
• We were impressed with the call quality.
• Even when we activated the speakerphone, they couldn't tell the difference.
• The enV Touch's EV-DO Rev. A is supposed to be faster than just regular EV-DO, and indeed it is. V Cast videos took around a second to load with little buffering time, and loading a full and complex Web page like CNET's front page took around 15 seconds
• We were also surprised that the video quality on V Cast videos was quite good. Usually we complain about the pixelation on the video, but not with the enV Touch--perhaps because of the 1,600,000-color support and EV-DO Re

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