Product Reviews – Page 3

(mini) Canon SD850is review

Posted on June 12, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

Just finished replacing my stolen hardware with the brand-spankin new Canon SD850is. I had actually purchased the SD800is last week, but just before breaking the 15-day-return seal from Best Buy, I did a little homework to discover the 850 was showing up “mid-June”. And with my typical “must-have-it-now” obsessive nature, I started calling CompUSA, Best Buy, Circuit City, and the local Wolf Camera every day until last night.

It’s a 8-megapixel point-and-shoot camera with 4x optical zoom, facial recognition, and image stabilization technologies. In other words, it’s pretty much the top point-and-shoot camera on the market right now, and while I’m rarely one to get “the best”, I love the Canon SD line (ever since the SD100 I had, which was, also, stolen), and I figured I might as well pick up the latest & greatest since insurance is covering it anyway. Not to mention the fact that it is the technical replacement for the SD700is I used to have (the SD800is is technically a separate line, as it features a wideangle lens instead).

So far, the picture quality looks great, and like my old 700, it’s a very fast, very easy to use camera. The speed in this case matters, as the total time from pushing power until taking a picture is under 2 seconds, and in continuous mode it seems to get up to about 4-5 shots per second. Not like my first-gen Kodak digital camera, with 3+ seconds bootup plus a good second or two just to click and shoot.

Eight megapixels is a grand amount for me, I can do all sorts of wonderful cropping and whatnot and still have printable photos. Like the 700is, this unit also has 4x zoom, and again, I’m very impressed with the quality. This is probably the point in the review where die-hard digital camera aficionados are rolling their eyes, so if that’s you, head on over to DPreview.com for a much more technical, in-depth overview.

Also new to the 850 is a lot more options in the menus. First up, the vestigial “Send-to-printer” button is now programmable – I set it to go straight into movie mode. Next, there’s a lot of categorization, basic editing, and red-eye features built-into the unit – I haven’t tried them all out yet, but it seems like it’s fairly powerful, yet in Canon-style, not too complicated to use.

Last but not least is the continued inclusion of a viewfinder, which is really handy on very bright days. I don’t mind sacrificing a little screen real estate for it. I do really like the facial recognition technology. If you haven’t seen it in action, it puts little white boxes around every face it “sees” and uses them for autofocus. Very cool. More of my pix are on flickr. So, to summarize:

Pros

Lots of features AND…
Easy to use
8 megapixels
4x optical zoom
Fast shutter speed

Cons

Pricey
One of the larger point-and-shoot cameras

If you have $399 to shell out, I definitely recommend the SD850is. If you want to save a little, pick up a 700 or 800 (although I’d avoid the 750, 900 or 1000 – terrible naming system) – you can still find them in plenty of spots (all links are to Amazon product pages).

Jabra BT620s review: My life in blue

Posted on April 16, 2007 by ron

For most of us, Jeremy’s recent post about the wires in his apartment made us think of a drawer, closet or box somewhere that looks similar (unless you’re Dave Mathews, the other one. I hear his apartment looks like Snakes on a Plane, but with wires … and I guess no plane. So basically, just a lot of wires in an apartment. But you can see how I got there, right?). My wife is a lot less tolerant of ~~snakes~~ wires than Jeremy’s, so I’ve been having fun with a couple of Bluetooth products from Jabra.

The first product I’m trying is the BT620s (with A125s adapter) which enable you to use a wireless headset with your iPod. This means no stylish white-headphones to show off that you stand out from the crowd by having an iPod (which is so 2004 anyway).

In my opinion, the main benefit of having a wireless headset is it frees you from being tethered to the device. Instead, throw your iPod in your backpack or put it in a drawer at your desk. You can still control all the important functions with your headset (volume, skip track, pause, etc.). If you have a bluetooth phone it even lets you pick up a phone call with the same headset (there’s a mini-microphone on one of the earpieces). I’ve been working in a cube-farm for ages and am used to plugging headphones into my computer. In a “Darwin Awards” kind of way, once a year, I pull away from the desk and have the earbuds ripped out of my ears. Going wireless means I can do some Office Space spins in my cube with full freedom. Ah, simple pleasures.

I’d love to say that configuring the units was simple, but I can’t. Jabra optimized towards minimalism in terms of buttons and action-feedback on the unit so much so that you have to actually consult the manual just to get started (I really did. I had to!). For example, they define pushing a button in three ways:

Push and release.
Push for a couple seconds, then release.
Push and hold.

Each one of these causes the blue LED to blink at different rates although it isn’t exactly clear which speed of blinking lights applies to which state. Combine that with multiple buttons combinations and it gets even more confusing. For example, the unit has a blue-blinking LED around each earpiece when the unit is “paired” with the transmitter. When you’re wearing the headset you look like something out of “pimp my ride” and generally get stared at in public (more than normal, I mean). Natch, I wanted to turn this off which meant “Push #3 on left and right center-ear button simultaneously”. Not exactly intuitive considering the many combinations of options of Jabra-Push-Types (see above) and the fact that there are two buttons on the headset and 1 on the A125s iPod unit.

I’ve used the Jabra BT620s headset on planes, trains (Bart) and ~~automobiles~~ buses with great success. The only challenge I’ve found, besides the “Pimp Your Head” glares on the 41 Union, is that when you turn your head the bluetooth cuts out. This is true not only when I put the ipod in my backpack, but even if I have it in my pocket on the right-hand-side (as it says in the manual. See, I told you I read it.). You’re probably asking, “who needs to turn their head.” I know. I live a crazy life. To be clear on this point: it only happens when my iPod is in my pocket, not if it’s on my desk, and the sound does come right back about a half second later if I turn straight again.

Overall I’m very happy with the headset. It frees me from untangling my iPod earphones and I can throw my iPod in my bag and control everything I need without missing a call. It’s not exactly the ideal setup for me personally to use long-term, but I know that my issues don’t necessarily reflect everyone elses.

The only major downside to the vision of wireless is: you don’t really get rid of wires, you just transfer them. Now I have a charger for my adaptor that plugs into my iPod and a charger for the headset. In essence, I’ve reduced the wires I carry around with me, but haven’t solved the wire problem in my apartment. In fact, it made it worse.

Oh, and when writing this, Jeremy asked me to also summarize who is the target market for the BT620s. Here’s my bulleted list:

Those few people that have iPods

As an aside, my prediction is that the next gen of iPods to come out (around the time of iPhone) will have Bluetooth embedded.

Amazon links for BT620s and A125s.

Ruckus Laptop Backpack review: Simply Awesome

Posted on April 10, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

I try not to just gush about products I like, because just about everything has a fault somewhere. Sometimes however, I use something that I find is leaps and bounds better designed than others in its class. Some of my absolute favorite gadgets in recent memory include Sonos, TiVo series 1 (because 1 was ahead of its time and 2 and 3 are both good, but not awe-inspiring), Slingbox (ok, not fair, I’m biased, I admit it completely), my first generation Toshiba Tecra laptop, and now, the Pacific Design Ruckus Laptop Backpack. I like it so much that I made a video showing off its capabilities (running time 2:53):

Some highlights of why I think this bag’s so great:

It’s a comfortable backpack with enough room to fit all the stuff I carry around frequently.
The laptop area is sectioned off from the rest of the bag, which simplifies removing my computer when I need it (really nice touch for going through airport security).
Lots of sectioned pockets for things like: iPod, cell phone, sunglasses, business cards, pens, extra cables, etc.
Special pouch just for the laptop’s AC adapter.
Stylish enough (for me) that I can carry it casually, yet still walk into a business setting and not feel like a goofball (other than for obvious reasons).

As far as laptop backpacks go, the Ruckus Laptop Backpack is my #1 pick, and I don’t see anything taking it’s place anytime soon. I do have a new messenger bag to try out, but that’s a whole ‘nother category in my opinion. So for $69.95, you can pick one up here, because it’s most definitely LD Approved!

NETGEAR EVA8000 Review: Hands on with the Digital Entertainer HD

Posted on March 16, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

Intro
In 1999 when I cofounded Mediabolic, we had a vision of the “connected home” that we pitched all over the world. In 2000, I first started hearing (and using) the phrase “THIS is the year of the Digital Home” (yes, in all-caps). I’ve heard that phrase every year since, but have yet to see the vision come even close to reality. So when I saw the first demo of NETGEAR’s Digital Entertainer HD at CES 2007, I was fairly impressed, and began pestering them to try it day-in, day-out. With my current role as the company’s current guest blogger, I got exactly that – early access to play with the EVA8000 (which formally launched earlier this week).

Unfortunately, I got my unit with less than 10 hours before I hopped on a flight to the East Coast, but like any good geeky blogger would do, I spent about half the night playing with it. Not only that, I spent most of that time videoing my efforts, and edited it down to about 20 minutes (most of which shows the interaction with the device, it’s GUI, etc). The videos are available on YouTube (in 3 parts, because of their filesize limitation) and you can watch them here (for people in RSS readers, here are direct links to parts 1, 2, and 3):

Product Details
For those of you who don’t want to watch the video, here’s a quick summary of the main EVA8000 features:

Connects to your TV and your home network
Streams music, photos, and videos from connected PCs as well as from the Internet
Support for numerous video formats, and stream quality is up to 1080p HDTV resolution
Works with YouTube, Flickr, and BitTorrent content, and can display RSS feeds
Networked DVR (“TiVo-like”) features to stream live TV from PCs with TV tuner cards
~~Makes a mean bowl of tomato soup~~

Pretty simple and straightforward, eh?

The product retails for $399, which is probably high in the long-term, but for now is a decent price point. Since we’re still in such an early adopter timeframe for digital home products, I don’t think there is a real urgency to focus on the mass market. Further, if you consider the pricing on HD/BluRay DVD players, it really fits in pretty well (especially since the amount of content it can play is staggering). Obviously sub-$300 prices would be ideal, but, as someone who comes from the other side of the field, I understand exactly why it’s priced this way. Also, don’t forget that it’s always possible to have a sale, but never possible to raise a price…

Using the Digital Entertainer HD
Onto the EVA8000 itself. I liked the user interface (GUI) in that it’s simple and navigates quickly (much faster than, for example a MovieBeam or Comcast HD-DVR menu). If you’ve ever used a TiVo or Media Center PC, you shouldn’t have any problem getting it up and running. The installation is also quite simple, and the unit has all the important outputs (HDMI, SPDIF, and optical audio) as well as the less-important-but-probably-necessary-ones (component, composite, and stereo audio). For connectivity it has built in wireless 802.11g (with support for all the security formats – excellent), Ethernet and a couple of USB ports as well.

The setup went mostly smoothly (although I think I found a weird bug in the HDMI settings, but that’s a minor thing), and it was able to find my network, get online, download an update, and find my networked hard drive with me just following along with the remote. This is very important people – I didn’t have to install any software, drivers, or anything, and was able to get my music, photos, and videos all streaming in a matter of minutes.

There was one exception to the above: if you want to watch YouTube videos, you do need to have the PC software installed. Furthermore, please remember that I already have a properly configured networked drive (Maxtor Shared Storage Plus) streaming music to my Sonos, so I didn’t have to adjust any settings. If you haven’t ever streamed media on your home network before, this might take you a little longer, and you may need to use the PC software.

Regarding media playback performance for a moment. I looked at quite a few photos, and I didn’t really feel they were being displayed at the maximum resolution possible. This could be a trick of the eyes, but I was expecting the pictures to look “HD-like” since they are all resolutions of 720p (at a minimum), so I’ll have to look into this further to see if it was just user error or if the box can’t display them at full resolution. Music playback was spot-on, with only a minor delay between songs. Again, I need to dive deeper to understand the feature set around queuing music, making playlists, and performance with huge collections, but when I selected “play something” from my 15,000-song MP3 (and WMA) collection, it did exactly that. Last up is video – I didn’t have a chance to really put the HD features to a test, but will do that next week. The videos I played were in a range of formats, and the highest bitrate I used was a 2Mbps WMV clip, which looked perfect (yes, even wirelessly). I am curious to see how it stands up once I get the 6+Mbps videos going, but I don’t have any reasons to doubt its potential there.

One key set of features with the EVA8000 is its ability to act as an extension of a PC with a TV tuner card. This means you can have a PC in one room of the house and stream its live/recorded TV to the living room. As a Slingbox owner, this wasn’t something I needed personally, but if you do have a TV Tuner and use Orb or another service, you should look into the Digital Entertainer HD. Also, the hardware was designed to support multiple Entertainers on the same network, and even have them control each other (there’s actually a whole suite of “Follow Me” features that I missed out on since I only had the single unit). Naturally, I wasn’t able to try any of these features myself, so I’ll hope to come back and revisit in the future.

One ding to the product is in the PC software. While it was easy to install and seems to have a pretty low impact to performance, it did create a whole new “sound card” in my computer. This means Windows thinks there is another audio output, and it threw off a couple of programs until I realized it had happened. I didn’t see any way to disable this on installation, so once you’ve completed setup, you might want to double-check your PC’s audio settings.

I really enjoyed the integration with both YouTube and Flickr. I was browsing through my own content in just a few minutes (you can use the remote control’s 10-key for text entry the same way you use your cell phone’s keypad). While I couldn’t quite navigate the collections and all the settings both services offered, the EVA8000 is remote upgradeable (I’ve already gone through one upgrade process – worked fine), so I’m sure the folks at NETGEAR can react and add new options dwn the road. The unit also is compatible with RSS feeds and has a few built-in offerings, including some weather features that were quite nice (even a snow report for the Tahoe crowds). I didn’t try the BitTorrent services, since I am not a user (believe it or not, I’ve never ‘Torrented).

Conclusion
If you skipped the videos and just read the text, you missed half the story, so here are (again) links to parts 1, 2, and 3. Now Apple TV is coming soon (possibly within days or hours), and the Xbox 360 has a lot of personal media services as well. I like the EVA8000 against Apple specifically because it can play so many different file formats and is focused on open services, while Apple’s will have a much narrower set and is a completely closed platform. It seems like everyone’s utterly ceded control of music to them, I sure hope it doesn’t happen again in the living room. With products like the Digital Entertainer HD, it’s good to see they have a pretty strong set of competitors.

Overall, the product impressed me (a lot more than I was expecting – no knock to NETGEAR, but I’ve just seen so many similar products that were just terrible in the past). Perfect? No, but I’ve yet to see a single product in the “connected home” that is. The interface was clean and simple, and the unit performed as it should. A few nice bells and whistles of Internet content services did a great job rounding out the personal media streaming features. $399 is a little high (it’s $349 on Amazon), but it’s also the only game in town with both full 1080p support and the built-in integration with YouTube content, all delivered direct to the boob tube.

I really have to dive in even deeper to understand the full spectrum of features the unit offers, and figure out which ones I like/dislike, but most importantly – the product’s basic value proposition is definitely delivered in a good way. With the feature set I’ve seen so far, it is a very strong contender (quick and simple setup as well as HD streaming is a huge factor there). So if you are looking to find a way to play your digital videos on your TV, stream your MP3s to your stereo, and bring some Web media services straight to the living room, the EVA8000 is a solid option for you.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, I am working on a consulting project with NETGEAR, but this is of no bearing to this review. Furthermore, my Guest Blogger status merely granted me access to a unit, I was given free reign to write the review as I saw fit.

Nokia N80 – For the Power User

Posted on February 18, 2007 by Guest Contributor

Overall

Moving from a Nokia 9500 to a Nokia N80 was as a tough choice.

The Nokia 9500 packed everything I ever wanted from a mobile office, with Fax, E-mail, programmable OS, Word processing/Spreadsheet, Calendar and PC suite, through either Bluetooth, Infra Red or WiFi connection. Heck, you could probably even use it to control a guided missle.

So what else could Nokia pack into their phones, in this day and age?…… Absolutely Nothing, you think?

But then they realised, “Hey! Let’s have all the above features, and more! Into a smaller device.”

The Nokia N80 comes with pretty much every function the Nokia 9500 had, Smaller Form Factor – Full QWERTY Keyboard = N80.

What’s in the Box?

From an Australian stock box kit comes the phone, battery, CD, manuals, stereo headphones, DKU-2 sync cable, charger and 32 MB MiniSD card.

Appearance?

The N80 from the overall shell, isn’t housed by a cheap plasticky feel, however is anodized at the front in either Silver or Black (I actually wanted the Black version, but due to a mix up from a reseller I ended up with a Telstra branded Silver one.) The silver looks good, but I recommend you becareful and stay away from any “Service Provider Branded” Firmware-d phone.

From an overall form factor perspective, the slider design isn’t a bad idea as a clamshell would make it look fat and clunky. The keypad is awesomely gripped for fast smsing traction. The chrome inserts definately give a needed accent to the keypad area. The High Resolution screen is amazing, it is bright and vibrant and reasonably sized.

Top slide consists of 8 buttons in total, a center navigation key, 2 selection keys, a call and end key, quick message settings, menu, a cool fast access menu and clear.

The terminals on the bottom are exposed like the 8 series phones, and power is now changed to a very thin connection rather than the standard nokia fat power plug. However a converter is given to use backward-compatible with old nokia chargers.

Features?

There are two cameras, a 3 Megapixel with flash and auto censor on the rear, and a 3G video call camera on the front. You can access both cameras through the Camera function. This is the cool part, when you hold down the “Snap” button on the side of the camera, it turns the phone into camera mode, where you then hold the camera sideways as you would for an actual camera.

Quality of images at 3MP are O.K in bright conditions, in a dark Macro environment the flash distorts the image, nothing very friendly for a non-camera person. There is a delay writing to both Phone memory and Card memory, and is noticeable. This problem will lead to a blurred image if you don’t hold the camera in position for a few seconds after taking the shot.

Although the S60 platform is more complex and feature rich, Nokia still managed to keep navigation intuitive. The only downside I feel that Symbian needs to work on, in both their S80 and S60 platforms together with Nokia is to reduce the processing and execution times. There’s an annoyingly noticeable delay when accessing functions and scrolling around the phone.

The phone does take a MiniSD card which slides conspicuously onto the left hand side of the phone.

Battery life isn’t Nokia-Tastic, it would last just about a day with full use. I.e MSN permanantly on, Light – Medium SMSes and calls during the day. Recommend that you charge your phone whenever you can. The battery on the 9500 lasted 1 Week with constant use.

Connectivity?

Connectivity wise, Wifi, IR and Bluetooth are easy to use and stable with no real need to upgrade anything to cure any connection issues that some phones have had. This phone is also HSPDA compatible on a 3G network for fast internet surfing.

Fun Stuff?

Nokia themes for the S60 are available for free around the web,with Pay Per Theme from Nokia also available. There’s a built in music player and a radio player. “Snakes” Game has been redefined by a new 3D view and soduku is also thrown in to exercise your logic.

Pc Suite

Personally I synchronize my contacts and calendar with Lotus Notes on my N80. Everything operates automatically, correctly and trouble free even in a bluetooth connection. The only thing I couldn’t sync with the N80 is emails in both Lotus and Outlook, where previously the 9500 could handle it.

Who is it for?

As it is only my opinion, I would categorise this phone for Tech Heads and mobile warriors. It’s a bit too fragile for a young Teen, and a bit too feature rich for a user who wants a simple phone. It does look professional, and it has enough functions to keep you going whilst away from the terminal.

Brilliant Image review: Analog Art from Digital Pictures

Posted on February 8, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

If you’ve owned a digital camera for a few years, you are probably like the rest of us, accumulating a ton of digital pictures (after editing, I still had over 200 from my week in Mexico), maybe emailing/sharing them online, occasionally printing a few, or making a coffee mug or a t-shirt once in a while. If you’re a little ahead of the curve, you’re probably starting to consider purchasing a digital picture frame this or next year. But at the end of the day, most of them are sitting on a hard drive, and if you’re smart about it, backed up in more than one location. I found one interesting new service that’ll let you take those pictures a little further than you’ve probably considered in the past, Brilliant Image. They take your digital pictures and turn them into pieces of art.

I was able to try out placing a sample order, and I’ll start by saying I’m quite happy with the results. As you’ll see by their online order form, there are quite a few different options, so you can have your own creative expression of what you want to make. While the form looks complex, it’s pretty straightforward. Step one – select a photo. I picked one of my wedding pictures – since our photographer was all-digital (which I can’t recommend highly enough), everything he took was extremely high quality, so I wanted to see what “the best” would look like. You can either upload the photo or mail it to them separately (you can even mail a printed picture if you want).

Step two – pick your style. I went with the “gallery wrap”. There are tons of options, depending on the size of what you want, including square, rectangular, or rounded options. Also, you can pick from a variety of different frames, all with different prices.

Step three – choose effects. For a small additional fee, they can retouch your photos, create collages or add effects. You can also go black&white or sepia for no extra charge.

Step four – place your order. The total fee for the option I selected would normally be about $75 plus shipping, although some options are much more expensive. For example, the 30″x40″ Mahogany Black with a High Res proof is over $450. But hey, it’s art, right?

Mine showed up about 10 days later, well-packaged (see the photo above). When I opened it, I was stunned by the effect. It really looked like someone had painted the picture! Maybe I am impressed too easily, maybe other folks are used to this, but it was extremely compelling in my opinion. Take a look at some of these pictures and the zoomed-in details I took. There’s the canvas, and there’s no pixelization whatsoever.

It’s definitely more expensive “photo printing” service than anything out there (although SmugMug most certainly comes close for reasons I still cannot fathom), but then again, these aren’t just glossy photos. This looks, feels and possibly tastes (didn’t really try that one) like art.

If you want to add a little class or a touch of art to your home, and you want to use your own photos to do it, I highly recommend Brilliant Image’s services. They were professional and easy to work with, and provided a product that was better than I was expecting. I did ask their recommendation for megapixels to make a photo “paintable” and they recommend 4MP for “most reasonably sized paintings” (more details here).

Whether for you or as a gift, they are most assuredly “LD Approved” and my painting is hanging on the wall as you walk into my apartment (you can see a few more pictures here). It consistently gets a “that’s cool” when friends visit.

UPDATE: They’re offering a little promo to LIVEdigitally readers, simply enter the code “LIVDIG” for 10% off your order!

Hold on to your popcorn

Posted on January 28, 2007 by Guest Contributor

First, thanks to Jeremy for inviting me to join his blog and be one of his “friends” musing on consumer technology. I have started my own blog but we both thought it would be fun to combine a few things. Here is my first post….

Recently at the Barrett-Jackson auto auction in Scottsdale, Arizona I had the chance to test and talk to the folks at Custom Theater Solutions. They are the creators of a new and impressive custom motion seating design. After testing their new setup, all I can say is
spill your popcorn

Their motion seating puts you into the movie like never before! After sitting in their seats I expected clunky movements, a little vibration and swaying. What I got was full action movements, smooth, fast and completely natural. There are not many things that can impress me this much, to actually make me grin like a child, but this was definitely one of those times. We were watching scenes from Terminator 3. Every movement, vibration, explosion you feel. Camera zooms in, you zoom in, vehicle accelerates and you feel as is you are too. But it’s not just all about the action scenes, you feel it when the camera zooms in, pans, or just sit there quietly during slow scenes.

How do they do it?
They don’t use hydraulics or bulky mechanisms, they use metal actuators. These actuators are fast and strong.
They can give you up to 2Gs of acceleration! They simply hook up the actuators to their seats and using a pivot point they can give you complete pitch, roll and yaw.

How do they tell the actuators what to do?
My first guess was from the audio portion of the movie, boy was I wrong.

The seats, mounted on a platform with all the electronics inside the platform are programmed with something called, ‘motion codes’. “When you need motion codes for the latest DVD, you connect a special set-top box to your internet connection and also to your DVD player. All your motion codes will be downloaded automatically as soon as they come out. Keep in mind that the motion codes aren’t part of the actual DVD, so it doesn’t matter if your movie is rented, store bought or downloaded from the internet. The system will automatically find the specific motion code for that movie and cue it up in real time. There are already over 600-plus movie motion codes available, with more than five new movies coded every week. The CTS system also has an alternate audio feedback mode for video games and TV shows.

They also can hook the actuators to almost any seating setup. Want your whole couch to move, no problem. One, two, three or four theater seats, no problem. This makes the system very versatile.

All in all I give this system a wow factor of 10.
Pros and Cons

Pros

Less expensive than other systems on the market. A three seat system is around $17,000.
Very versatile, can be made to fit any home theater environment.
If local they can bring their special built demo trailer directly to your home to test.
Wow your friends factor of 10.

Cons

Have to download the motion code before watching latest released movies, or check if availble before you purchase the movie.
It’s almost too much. After watching for awhile, it’s so intense you need a break.
Doesn’t work with regular TV… Yet.

Shure E500PTH Review: Headphones + a Microphone!?

Posted on November 7, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

Want a surefire way to make the best headphones on the market even better? Easy, add a mike. Confused? Well, Shure (the makers of my favorite E4c and runner-up E2c headphones) did just that, and believe it or not, it all makes perfect sense.It turns out you can divide people into one of two camps when it comes to headphones: innies and outies. Innies are the people who enjoy wearing in-ear headphones, the ones that go inside the ‘lobe and pump the sound right into your brain. Outies prefer on-ear headphones, such as the Bose QuietComforts, which sit on top of your ears. I’ve tried quite a few of both, in a variety of situations, and am quite certain of the fact that I’m an innie. I like being able to fall asleep with the buds in my ear, I find the Bose set makes my head get a little, sweaty, and I find they simply can’t block out the sounds of a wailing child three rows behind me.

Until a short time ago, the Shure E4c’s were my favorite headphones. I’d even tried the E5c’s, and while the sound quality was stunning, they just weren’t comfortable for a 13-hour flight to Hong Kong. The E4c’s were the king of the innies in my world, with only one major nag: the process of removing/inserting them is unpleasant to repeat on a frequent basis. Welcome to the Shure E500PTH’s.

Packaging
As with all Shure products, the headphones are nicely packaged inside a small box. The box has an inner metallic shell with a very nice finish, and inside that shell is a molded foam case to hold all the pieces. Nice, simple, luxurious, and not overly wasteful.

Contents
When you buy the E500PTH’s you receive:

The headphones
The microphone
A mini-extension cable
A 1/8″ to 1/4″ adapter
Oval carrying case
Lots of extra earbuds

Headphones
I’m going to stay a little light on discussing the headphones themselves this time. Others like Gary Krakow have already reviewed the overall sound quality of them (here’s Gary’s take on the E4c’s, and he’s about 100x a discerning listener compared to me) and CNet made them an Editor’s Choice. Suffice it to say – they sound as good, possibly better, than the rest of the Shure lineup. You’ll have nothing to complain about when it comes to the sound quality, be it at home, on a plane, or anywhere else you are using the E500PTH’s. They sound great.

Microphone
Now this is where the E500PTH’s get interesting. Their noise-cancelling capabilities are tremendous, but as I said above, taking out and shoving in little rubber buds in your ear every time the person next to you wants to share some little detail of their life and why they love their home town can get, well, annoying. And I have a hunch quite a few of Shure’s customers shared that sentiment with the company, since the E500’s specifically address that situation.

Through some quite clever ingenuity (in my opinion), Shure added a microphone and a little on/off switch to the headphones. When switched “on” (which does require a single AAA battery), the E500’s effectively mute the incoming audio source, and amplify the microphone. This translates to: when you turn them on, you can hear the outside world again. There’s actually a little volume control dial to adjust the level of amplification, and while it took me a little tweaking and a lot of getting used to, I finally got it right.

The next time the flight attendant walked by my seat (my original fiddling with them was on a plane), I was able to order my drink (and, of course, thank her for it), without whispering or screaming at the top of my lungs. Again – it takes some getting used to, but once you’ve tried it for a few minutes, you’ll find yourself hitting the switch and carrying on a conversation as if you weren’t wearing the headphones at all. Very very impressive!

Overall
I have only a single annoyance with the Shure E500PTH’s, which is the size of the carrying case. Granted, I was spoiled by the “fits in the palm of my hand” size of the E4c’s, and it’s still nothing compared to the mega-case which carries the Bose QuietComfort 2’s (forget the 3’s, they make ya puke). So chalk that up as the only negative thing I have to say, otherwise, the E500’s are a winner. Another nice touch is if the microphone battery dies, the headphones still work (unlike most over-the-ear noise reduction headphones).They are now, in fact, a permanent addition to my laptop case, and should be in yours as well. However, they do cost over $400 (Amazon link), so if you already have headphones you like, you can opt to purchase the “push-to-hear” component instead (Shure site).

Out Damned Spyware, Out!

Posted on November 2, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

Things like spyware, malware, spam, viruses, and the popularity of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan (although she was Hot in Mean Girls) all completely baffle me. I understand that everyone wants to make a buck, but I just don’t get how people can really sleep at night. Thankfully, for as much energy as the evil people put into developing their tricks, there is a lot of goodwill being done at the same time. Our old pal Jonas put together a roundup of several free anti-spyware tools, and it’s a good read (unless you are on the Microsoft Defender team, in which case you have some coding to do).

Feed Reader Comparison: IE7 vs Google Reader vs Bloglines

Posted on October 23, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

With last week’s launch of IE7 (see the massive coverage here), and the recent improvements to Google Reader, I thought I’d do a little compare and contrast with these tools and Bloglines, my RSS reader of choice. Now I’m going to preface the whole article by saying I still feel RSS is a very young technology and has a long way to go before getting into the true mainstream population. In fact, as much as I as a “techie guy” understand how to leverage RSS for both personal and professional use, I still find my email newsletters are an easier way to digest news content. So disclaimer aside, let’s take a look at the state of these tools today.

Internet Explorer 7
In many ways IE7 is a significant improvement upon IE6, and is really a very usable browser (I’m not getting into a Safari, Opera, Firefox debate – use whatever you like, I picked IE and that’s that). Microsoft added a “Command Bar” which includes a Feeds option. Simply enough, when browsing a Web page with any RSS links inside, the Feeds button lights up. Click it, and you can fairly rapidly add the feed to your favorites feeds.

Clicking on this option brings up a new page, that shows you a preview of what the feed looks like, along with an option to subscribe. Personally, I found this option pretty unnecessary, and could be accomplished much faster with a popup dialog. When you do subscribe, a simple dialog appears to sort which folder you want this new feed added to. I think this two-step process should definitely be merged into a single interface.

Once added, it appears as one of your favorites, when you choose to view your favorites feeds. Which you unfortunately have to do manually. In the favorites feeds view, all you can see is the number of new items and when it was last updated, and the only way to even see this much information is by hovering your mouse over the feed. The last option with IE7 feed support is a properties dialog:

Microsoft decided to treat Feeds roughly the same as Favorites, which I really dislike. Ultimately, it’s a sign to me that, for whatever reason, Microsoft either isn’t taking RSS feeds seriously or they just don’t get it. If I were grading them on it, I’d give them a D-, it’s a totally unacceptable mechanism for dealing with an emerging technology. I wish I had two more hands so I could give it four thumbs down.

Google Reader
The last time I tried Google Reader it was a pretty poor experience. Everything was too techie and too clunky, basically it had that “built by engineers for engineers” Google-ish feel to it. With their most recent upgrades, I found it was a lot friendlier to get started, you are immediately prompted to enter a URL or term and off you go.

Once you’ve added a feed, the reader displays a view of What’s New (which shows you, well, what’s new with the feed(s) you are subscribed to). I added in a few of my favorites, and had a pretty easy to understand view that showed the feeds together. Also, on the right side of the screen was a display of the various keyboard shortcuts available while using the reader, which I’ll address in a moment.

Google Reader has a nice variety of viewing and display options, and I was easily able to set the view to default to a list display, in date/time order. Everything was looking good, so I decided if I wanted to put it really to the test, I’d need to use my whole list of feeds (which at ~40 is already a ridiculous amount of incoming discussions, but that’s another topic). I exported from Bloglines and imported into Google, a process that took literally under a minute and worked flawlessly.

The interface (shown above) for configuring a larger number of feeds was fairly unpleasant to use, but thankfully I didn’t really need to do anything else at this point. Where Google Reader really started to shine for me was several hours after I had imported my blog/RSS list. At this point, the list view made it very easy to see all the headlines aggregated together chronologically.

As I mentioned before, Google implemented a ton of keyboard shortcuts for quickly navigating the feed display. For advanced users, this is pretty neat (Robert Scoble loves it), but I still feel their interface is missing the mark on getting average users up and running with RSS. Google is often praised for their simplicity in interfaces, but frankly I find both Reader and GMail ugly and overly complicated. There is nothing to usher in a user’s learning process, it’s more like being thrown into the deep end of the pool and then being chided by all the kids who already know how to swim. Overall, I’m granting Google Reader a solid B (but I feel they already have the features necessary to get up to an A, so it’s up to the UI guys now. they do have a few, don’t they?).

Bloglines
Bloglines was actually my second attempt to integrate RSS into my world (my first was Attensa 1.0 for Outlook, which I didn’t like at all, although I hear v2 is better). For a long time it was really Bloglines vs using bookmarks/favorites, and even now I still just run through links about 25% of the time. The actual clincher that got me to adopt Bloglines was their mobile integration, which gives me access to all my feeds from my PPC6700, which I’ll discuss in a moment.

Adding a feed to Bloglines is pretty easy, and one nice feature is all the options you’d want to have accessible are present as you add the link. Once added, Bloglines uses a simple framed layout to present your subscriptions on the left side of the screen (complete with icons to represent the pages, using the favicon standard), and the right side is your “reader” window. Click on a feed, see the results on the right.

That’s it, couldn’t be simpler. Also, the company added a piece of technology to integrate Bloglines as an option when adding feeds to IE7 (here’s the link to the plugin):

Only thing is, now that I’ve tried Google Reader, I’m really wanting to see an “Aggregate View” option within Bloglines. Other than that, I find Bloglines a great option. It also has a ton of features I’ve never even dabbled with, including integrating to your own blog (I’m trying it now with this post) as well as clipping services. Overall, it gets a B+ (yes, I prefer it to Google Reader for now).

Mobile Access
Just wanted to touch on getting to mobile subscriptions. Both Bloglines and Google Reader have integrated mobile access into their readers, and both have similar feature sets. I found the Bloglines version was much easier to read on my 2.2″ phone screen, but again I think Google’s got a slightly more compelling feature set. It’s probably a bit of a toss-up as to which one I’d ultimately go with if your priority is mobile (but you can definitely rule out IE7).

Overall Conclusion
Clearly RSS is here to stay, and clearly it’s way too complex to hit the masses yet. As I’ve said before, technology needs to become invisible to get mass acceptance (in other words, adding and viewing RSS feeds should be as clear and easy to use as bookmarking and viewing Web sites). For now, I’d have to say Bloglines is my “mass viewer” recommendation, and Google Reader is my “power user” recommendation. And IE7 needs to get back to work on integrating RSS into the browsing experience.

HTC MTeoR review: best Smartphone yet!

Posted on September 18, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

HTC MTeoR Due to my job, my blog, and well, me, I have a tendency to play with a lot of different gadgets, especially new cell phones. The term ‘smartphone’ gets tossed around a lot, basically covering any phone that does more than just flip open and dial numbers. To me, a smartphone should be a smart phone – it should have enough intelligence to offer me useful services that meet my needs.

Some people want 3D gaming, some people want social networking, me, I want productivity with a little dose of entertainment on the side. I need access to my email, access to browse Web pages, Solitaire, and SlingPlayer Mobile – that’s the cake. Everything after that is, well, icing. After using the HTC MTeoR for a few weeks, I think it’s more like a cookies & cream (with real Oreos) ice cream cake with a layer of mint chocolate chips, covered in hot fudge, and a nice dollop of whipped cream on top. Okay, it’s just a phone, but it’s the best darn smartphone I’ve ever used.

HTC logo HTC is unquestionably producing the hottest phones on the market today and their roadmap is so far ahead of the curve that it almost seems fictitious, only they keep shipping more and more cool stuff (like the upcoming Excalibur, which, trust me, is going to be huge)! The MTeoR is a phone that recently started shipping, and most importantly for the company, is their first foray with their own brand. In the past, their phones were typically OEMed (resold) by other companies, ranging from Sprint and Verizon to QTek, UTStarcom (the company who bought Audiovox – thanks Mike) and others.

The first thing you notice right away when you pick up the MTeoR is how well weighted it is. Some have called it heavy, but I think it’s exactly right. You’ll also notice the high quality of the materials used. Everything about it feels well-polished and refined – this is not a junky piece of plastic, this is a phone for the professional. The buttons and keypad also feel right, there’s never a question as to whether or not you properly pushed in a button, you can feel everything you do.

Also, the front cursor/joystick is centered well in the phone, so when you hold it in the palm of your hand, you can easily navigate the Windows Mobile (SmartPhone edition) user interface. The only thing I don’t like about the button arrangement on the MTeoR is there is a button for videocalling, a feature I find is a bit of a waste. I’d much rather have an extra button that is user-programmable than the forced-fit setup the device has. Also, instead of a jog-wheel (like a Crackberry) it has a scroller on the left side of the phone, but it really doesn’t feel as satisfying as a wheel does.

The MTeoR is a very well-sized phone. While I like the PPC6700 as a mobile organizer, it’s too big to fit in a pocket and be comfortable. The MTeoR happily coexists with my keys, wallet, etc. In fact, it’s probably only about one-third the mass and footprint of the 6700.

I believe one of the big changes in phones and convergence in the next year is going to focus on the cameras. Until very recently, most cameraphones peaked at about .6MP, which is barely enough to be viewable on a computer screen, let alone printable. The MTeoR actually has two cameras, with the rear one offering 1.3MP pictures. This is key, because once you hit above 1MP, you can actually watch and share the photos in an enjoyable way, and they do more than just photo-caller-ID! The next few pictures were taken with a few different settings. If I have any real complaint, it’s the lack of a flash. As an aside, I also think the camera has too many features, including digital zoom, sepia and B&W modes, and various ISO settings, all of which are pretty much useless at this stage (but will probably be a requirement within two years).

The second camera is located on the front of the unit, and takes sub-0.5MP pictures and is primarily for video-calls. Utterly useless in my book.

For one more demonstration of the camera in action, take a look at the pictures below, one taken with the MTeoR, the others with my friend’s 7MP Panasonic Lumix.

Windows Mobile Smartphone edition is typically the poor, unwanted stepchild of PocketPC, as the lack of touchscreen and quick functionality is typically a big drag (although if you are used to flip phones or BlackBerry’s, it can be a big jump up, depending on your particular needs). The MTeoR features three screens of settings pages for you to configure your mobile settings. While you can customize quite a few options, I found it quite glaring that I couldn’t remap any of the hardware buttons. I’m sure there’s some third-party application I could try out, but I think this should be built-into the phone.

As an organizer, it’s not nearly as slick as the PocketPC phones or even the Motorola Q with its keyboard. That said, I was able to surf through some Web sites, and browse and compose emails as well. Actually, I found the T-9 implementation on the MTeoR was extremely well done, with a perfect integration with the Windows Mobile OS to allow for rapid autocomplete and suggestions. In fact, once you get the hang of quickly swapping between ABC and T-9, and have a good feel for the keypad, you can type pretty fast. After some practice I was SMSing faster than a 12-year-old kid playing Dance Dance Revolution.

Additionally, the MTeoR has built-in UMTS support, which allows for transferring data at close to 2Mbps. This is key as we look to the future of mobile devices, with better Web browsing, real-time data access, and, of couse, entertainment applications.

There are exactly three entertainment applications (not including some simple gaming) I want to have on my mobile phone:

Pandora or Rhapsody access – get either my library or my stations, any time. Goodbye iPod.
Sonos control – if my mobile was a Sonos remote (and even better: playback zone), I’d be quite near heaven.
SlingPlayer Mobile – okay, I’m biased here, but using my mobile to watch my TV when in a taxi or in a long line at a Starbucks is just sweet.

The first two don’t exist in this context yet, but the third does. While I was in Sweden and Hong Kong last month I had the chance to use SlingPlayer Mobile with the UMTS connection, and it was pretty amazing. I was consistently watching (and controlling) my home DVR at or near 30 fps (frames per second), with a great picture. The screen is extremely bright, and sized nicely with 320×240 resolution (when rotated 90 degrees). The performance overall was great, and left me a bit jealous with the connection quality we get here in the US.

I was thoroughly impressed with the HTC MTeoR. In fact, if it were available with CDMA (I’m a Verizon customer), I’d probably adopt it as my primary phone. For anyone interested in a smartphone that easily fits in your pocket, has full access to all email and data services, and looks and feels great, I have to recommend you check it out. It’s absolutely LD Approved!

Some other useful links:

Bengalboy review of the MTeoR with a bikini-clad model – lots of pictures, mostly PG-13
Detailed HTC MTeoR specifications
Two posts (here and here) on HTC’s roadmap

Sonos 2.0 – the best gets better!

Posted on September 15, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

I first heard about Sonos pretty soon after it launched. In fact, I found myself at CES 2005 “face to face” with them over and over again, competing for various new product awards (I think we split evenly, but I’m not positive on that one). Saw them again at an Engadget meetup, and then sooner or later ended up getting a ZonePlayer 100 Bundle. I added a ZP80 to the mix when it debuted, and was pretty happy with my home music configuration.

I always had a few little gripes about the Sonos features, and, as one might expect, never hesitated to voice them to the company. My two biggest ‘wants’? Alarms and better Rhapsody integration. Well guess what, looks like I wasn’t the only one with the idea, as the newly launched Sonos 2.0 features now includes both (and more)!

First, my setup. I have 2 ZP100‘s (the original ZonePlayer unit with a built-in amplifier), 1 ZP80 (the newer unit, with no amp), and a controller (the remote control). One ZP100 is in the back bedroom (I use it to listen to music in my backyard), another in the kitchen, and the ZP80 is in the living room (didn’t need the amp there). All my music (about 80GB of ripped CDs in WMA format) is stored on a Maxtor 500GB Shared Storage Plus.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Sonos interface, it’s braindead simple to use. The screen shows a list of options, you have a little wheel (similar to iPod), and a few buttons with fixed and programmable controls give you access to all the features in the system. Actually, rereading that it still doesn’t sound as simple to use as it really is. It’s EASY. When friends come over, I generally hand them the controller and say “play something” – nobody’s gotten in wrong so far!

When I picked up my controller, I was informed there was an update available. The Sonos system automatically downloads and installs the update on its own, and worked flawlessly for me. In fact, I didn’t even have to touch my PC to do anything! Next time I went to the main menu, a “Clock and Alarms” item was listed there.

Setting the clock was simple, and it’s capable of synching with Internet time – again, virtually no technical configuration needed to get this working. I would like to see the Sonos interface include the clock throughout the graphical user interface (GUI), as its presently only visible when you push a button to show you the clock. I think they can easily add it to the ‘status bar’ at the top of the screen.

Along with the clock comes two other important features. One is sleep, which lets me have the music automatically shut off after a certain period of time. This is good, but what meant even more to me was the new alarms feature.

With alarms, I can have music wake me up. This is nice. But what is outstanding is the amazing flexibility of the alarms. I can…

set multiple alarms, all with completely different parameters
assign radio stations, chimes, or playlists to each alarm
set virtually any type of recurrence to an alarm
have each alarm go off at different volume levels
link zones (or not) to each alarm

Most importantly, I can snooze. Because no alarm system is even worth trying if you can’t snooze your way through the first hour of the morning.

I’d like to make two very minor suggestions in the alarm feature. First, I think an icon should appear (also in the status area) reflecting that an alarm is set. Second, as an advanced option, having a fade-in for each alarm would be a lovely touch. As a troubled sleeper, one thing I’ve learned is the ‘best’ wakeup for people is a slowly brightening room and slow increase in volume of background noise. It’s supposed to be a bit more therapeutic than a sudden entry of sound. Which is why, I think, we all need coffee in the mornings.

While Sonos and Rhapsody have always worked together, in the past it was solely through Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) technology, which was a bit of a rudimentary integration. You were able to access your own Rhapsody music library, but only when your PC was online with the Rhapsody software client running. Now, Rhapsody can stream direct from the source to your Sonos zones. I’m a huge Rhapsody fan (although Pandora is definitely a new impressive contender), so this is an extra win in my book.

With Sonos 2.0, I have complete access to all the Rhapsody services and features. Not only my playlists and music library, but all the ‘live’ aspects too, such as:

Top Charts (albums, artists, and tracks)
Genre and Artist samplers and Key Albums
Staff Picks
Rhapsody Radio

This is one of those cases where the whole is truly greater than the sum of the parts. Sonos 2.0 plus Rhapsody is an amazing combination for music lovers.

If you haven’t heard of Sonos before, there are already some great reviews out there, and I agree that it’s about the best system out there for streaming music around the home. That said, it’s going to set you back at least $1000 to get started ($1200 for the amplified bundle), so this isn’t the solution for the price-sensitive. If you have the money, there’s nothing out there that’s even close. And now with version 2.0, the best around just got even ~~more bestest~~ better.

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