A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my satisfaction with the Kensington Digital FM Transmitter and Car Charger for the iPod. I got a question back from Ryan Kelly from Haplography:

Just curious - which Philly frequencies have you found work best?

My response was:

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you on this. I found unused FM frequencies in Philadelphia using the Sirius Satellite Radio Website. The URL you should look at is:

http://fmchannel.sirius.com/

It allows you to enter your zip code and it returns a set of frequencies you can try.

I've used 92.9 most of the time in the area from Princeton, NJ in the north, Exton, PA in the west, Chester, PA in the south, and Jackson, NJ in the east. I've been quite satisfied with the sound quality my car stereo receives from my iPod.

Sirius provides this valuable service because so many Sirius receivers use FM transmitter technology. It's important to note that FM frequencies identified by this website work with XM Radio receivers also.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kathleen and I had lunch with our friend Jennifer Colangelo over the weekend. She is is the proud owner of a huge, new plasma HDTV set that she mainly uses to watch DVDs and play games on her Xbox 360. As we discussed her new TV, I found out that she receives no HDTV channels using it. I asked why, and she told me that she couldn't figure out a way to get HD channels from Comcast without paying at least $70 per month.

Jen said that she would consider paying that much for cable during the NFL season because she thinks HD adds alot to the experience of watching the game, but even then the price is more than she wants to pay.

Jen has a viewpoint that I hadn't considered before. She's very technically sophisticated, and knowingly spent several thousand dollars on a beautiful HDTV receiver without planning to receive HD channels at all. DVDs and video games in high definition were enough for her.

My question to her was: Why not get an antenna to receive HD channels over-the-air?

Back in January 2005, I helped a friend install a home theater with DirecTV and over-the-air HDTV, so I knew this was possible. The difference is that Jen lives in an apartment, so I needed to find an antenna that could be discretely mounted inside or on a small exterior wall that's available to her.

The antennas I found that look promising are:

• Terk TV-55 HDTV Indoor/Outdoor Amplified Antenna
• TERK HDTVLP Indoor / Outdoor HDTV Antenna

I like the clean design of the Terk TV55, but the Terk HDTVLP is a more recent model. LAaudioFile.com has a great review of the Terk TV55 that was published about three years ago. They say, "The TV55 has an operational bandwidth of 54MHz to 806MHz and covers the full spectrum of the conventional antennas found on roofs decades ago. An inline amplifier has a gain of 10dB for weak signals and a bypass mode for the stronger signals."

Other comments about these products indicate that:

• these antennas are very directional, so you need to align them properly with the location of the transmitter you are trying to receive. AntennaWeb's over-the-air transmitter locator allows you to enter your address and learn the orientation and distance of each nearby TV transmitter. Choose "Show Digital Stations Only" for HD transmitters.
• these antennas require the proper cabling. Use RG-6 cable for the antenna lead-in to the receiver, not the cheaper RG-59.

Technorati Tags: HDTV, over the air, antenna, home theater.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Todd Fryburger reports that he will be at Woody's Gap again this year to watch Stage 4 of the 2006 Ford Tour de Georgia. Stage 4 of the 2006 Tour de Georgia will take place on Friday, April 21, 2006.

Last year Todd provided some great on-the-spot information from Woody's Gap, including the MPEG movie clip that we published in How Bad Was the Weather on Woody's Gap? which shows an intense hail storm.

Todd wrote:

{Many of us} in the Atlanta cycling community plan on sitting atop Woody Gap on Friday to watch / listen as TdG Stage 4 unfolds.

We will be using Cingular EDGE / GPRS service via my cellphone attached to my laptop to receive the web-based updates from http://www.velonews.com/ and http://www.cyclingnews.com/. In addition, we will be monitoring Nexrad weather radar via http://www.wunderground.com/radar/map.asp as well as a few
other sites - do not want to repeat the hailstorm experience of last year. We are using Cingular service as we understand the Verizon does not have broadband coverage that far North. We will use a Wilson omnidirectional
external "trucker" antenna to ensure we have the best bandwidth performance via Cingular - it won't be broadband, but should be sufficient for the text-based race updates provided by these websites.

Read on for additional resources that Todd and his friends will have to follow Stage 4, radio frequencies that Todd thinks will be useful, information about how to get to Woody's Gap, and when to arrive....

Technorati Tags: Tour de Georgia, pro cycling, race radio.

Continue reading "How Pro Cycling Fans Will Watch the 2006 Tour de Georgia at Woody's Gap on April 21" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kevin Ward asked:

Do you have any ideas on listening to the "Radio Tour" Channel, 450.8875 MHz at the Ford Tour de Georgia? I am going to try a NASCAR type scanner from Radio Shack. The scanner I have will also decode the CTCSS quiet code so that I can listen in to the team chat when the peleton gets close. My only concern is that they may {use} digital and not analog.

Race radio is the frequency on which race officials broadcast the current race conditions, including leaders, injuries, accidents, and mechanical problems. The media listens to race radio in cars and at the media center near the finish line of each stage of the race. Web sites where you can read updated race status, such as the VeloNews Tour de Georgia Event Ticker, transcribe information from race radio.

Kevin is correct that the race organizers have chosen 450.8875 MHz for their race announcements.

Kevin, I'm sure you'll be fine with the radio you are using. I've looked into this, and the radios recommended for this type of listening are scanners like the Uniden BC92XLT Bearcat Handheld Scanner. This scanner has 200-channel storage capacity, which would be ideal for NASCAR races where every team uses a different two-way radio channel and the Nextel Cup and Busch Series are racing in the same, confined location.

You will need a lot fewer channels to listen to the Tour de Georgia race radio and the chatter between riders and their team cars. Each team will probably choose a separate frequency for communication, so there will probably be less than 30 channels in use.

A couple of years ago, I mentioned that the U.S. Postal Service Cycling Team (now the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team) used Alinco DJ-C5T two-way radios at the Tour de France. These are credit-card-sized radios that have transmit and receive capability. You can be sure that the riders are using similar radios to the DJ-C5T in the Tour de Georgia (maybe the DJ-C6E), but they will be tuned to frequencies that are legal for two-way communication in the United States.

Technorati Tags: Tour de Georgia, pro cycling, race radio, NASCAR, Nextel Cup, Busch Series.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This Chistmas, my father and my sister-in-law both received digital cameras as gifts. My father got a 5-Megapixel Nikon Coolpix 5600 and my sister-in-law got the 4-Megapixel Nikon Coolpix 4600. This was an interesting coincidence, because the cameras were purchased independently by different people.

In my sister-in-law Mary's case, she received the camera and a set of four rechargeable AA-sized batteries, but didn't receive a memory card on which to store photos. This means that she has plenty of power available to shoot photos but can only store between 10 and 15 shots in the Coolpix 4600's internal memory before having to upload the photos to her PC. The question then became which memory card should be purchased for this camera?

I shot about 150 photos on my Canon PowerShot A95 on Christmas Eve and didn't fill up a 256-Megabyte memory card, so I recommend that people buy memory cards for their digital cameras that have capacities of 256 Megabytes or higher.

I looked at the cost of SD memory cards at Amazon.com and I was surprised to find that you can get a 512-Megabyte SD Card for less than $35 including shipping. Look for the Kingston 512 MB Secure Digital Card for that deal. In my opinion, if you are willing to buy a memory card from an on-line retailer like Amazon.com and you're not in the market for anything else at the moment, you need to try to buy one that costs a bit more than $25 to take advantage of the Free SuperSaver Shipping offer. Most of the 256-Megabyte SD memory cards I saw at Amazon.com fall just above or below the $25 minimum order threshold.

I also want to point out that most of the digital cameras currently being marketed by Canon, Kodak, and Casio generally take SD card memory. Fujifilm cameras take xD memory cards instead.

Technorati Tags: digital cameras, Nikon Coolpix 5600, Nikon Coolpix 4600, Secure Digital Memory Card, xD Memory Card, Christmas gifts, Hanukkah gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the questions that Operation Gadget readers have about the Leapster L-Max learning game system is which Leapster games play on the television with the L-Max?. Here's a list of games that are known to work on your TV:

• Leapster Kindergarten,
• Leapster 1st Grade,
• Leapster 2nd Grade,
• Leapster Batman,
• Leapster Bratz World Jet Set,
• Leapster I-Spy Challenge,
• Leapster Math Baseball,
• Leapster Math Missions,
• Leapster Mr. Pencil Learn to Write & Draw,
• Leapster Reading with Phonics: Moles Huge Nose, and
• Leapster Thomas & Friends

LeapFrog takes a different approach. They provide a list of Leapster games that don't project on the TV with a Leapster L-Max. LeapFrog says that these games won't project to the TV for "quality and licensing reasons".

As far as I know, all of the L-Max games project to your TV. If I find out about any that don't work on the TV, I'll update this story. [ See also Leapster L-Max is a Popular Gift for 4 to 10 Year Olds ]

Technorati Tags: Leapster L-Max, Leapster, Hanukkah gifts, Christmas gifts, toys

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A few Operation Gadget readers have written since we redesigned our pages to point out that the page sidebars are out of alignment on their browsers. Most of the people who are experiencing this are using Firefox 1.07 or earlier. These alignment problems are fixed in Firefox 1.5.

Firefox 1.5 has just been released. To get it, visit http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On Thanksgiving, my cousin Brian Lynch and I exchanged emails about our dilemma as owners of DirecTV Series 2 digital video recorders. Brian said:

My DirecTV Tivo has two USB ports in the back. The instruction book says the ports are for "future use". Do you think I can hook a USB cable from the Tivo to my computer and get movies & shows from Tivo to my computer? My laptop has a DVD burner... So that would be valuable to me.

He and I are in similar situations because I have a Philips DSR708 which was sold to me by DirecTV in July 2005. My response was:

... it's unlikely that {the USB} ports will ever work unless you hack the OS. DirecTV forked the OS before TiVo rolled out many Series 2 features.

I looked into this back in July when we moved to Newtown. Someone has done an unofficial kit to upgrade the DirecTiVo to Series 2 features, but I wasn't interested in doing that level of modifications at the time. We could look at it again now that DirecTV has {stopped selling} TiVo-based units.

I went back and reviewed the information available on the Internet, and found that PTVupgrade.com offers some upgrade kits that enable many Series 2 features. These upgrades are about as plug and play as you can get. You simply open up the enclosure following the instructions, install the replacement hard drive, reassemble the enclosure, attach a compatible wireless network adapter, and restart the DirecTiVo.

Matt Haughey of PVRblog reviewed the PTVnet DirecTiVo drive upgrades back in February 2005, and he was impressed. He includes screenshots of most of the new features that are enabled by the upgrade.

As good as this upgrade looks, it still voids your DVR's manufacturer's warranty, so make sure you understand that you are taking a risk before ordering an upgrade.

Technorati Tags: DirecTV, TiVo, TiVo Series 2, TiVo upgrade

Continue reading "DirecTiVo Owners Have a Pretty Simple Upgrade Option to Get Series 2 Features" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today Claude Sanford wrote to me with the following questions:

I have a computer running windows 98 that has been giving me a lot of trouble...freezing up, taking forever to crankup, etc. I am on Road runner and I feel like its all the spy programs and firewall stuff that they have. I know I need more memory as the system indicates I am about 60% usage without a program running. When I attempt to copy a CD into the computer for my music machine, It will stop about half way through, it will freeze....

• Would it be better to add more memory and change to Windows XP?
• Can I load XP over the 98 or will I have to reformat?
• Should I just look for another machine, mine is Pentium3, 750 mhz?

Windows 98 is an awful operating system that isn't supported by anyone anymore. You are right to think about changing operating systems. The question is "How?"

Claude, take a look at what $620 buys at Amazon.com. The HP Pavilion a1220n Desktop PC includes a 2.93-GigaHertz Pentium 4, 512 Megabytes of RAM, a 200 Gigabyte hard disk, a dual-layer DVD/CD burner-- all running on Windows Media Center 2005.

In my opinion, if you have both an old operating system and a memory issue with your PC at this point, you're probably best off shopping for a new PC. I estimate that you'll spend at least $200 to upgrade when you add the cost of a legitimate copy of Windows XP to the cost of half a gig or a gig of memory. When you're done with the upgrade, your CPU will be running at less than one-third the speed of a new machine.

Getting the new machine is going to solve a lot of problems that the upgrade won't address. You'll have a DVD burner and a very fast CPU, along with a properly-installed copy of a multimedia friendly OS. You might still want to upgrade to a gig of RAM or more, but at least you'll be doing it to a brand new PC.

I'd also recommend throwing in something like AlohaBob PC Relocator Ultra Control 2005, which gives you a hand migrating your files and application settings from one machine to another. YMMV on this software-- I haven't used it myself yet.

Technorati Tags: Windows 98, PC upgrade, HP Pavilion a1220n

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My friend Ralph Guarrieri has a rear-projection standard definition television, wants to upgrade to a new HDTV set, and asked me, "Which HDTV set should I buy to replace my Rear Projection TV?" Like practically everyone I talk to, he had already heard about plasma televisions and asked if I thought buying one was a good idea.

Plasma TVs may be the coolest looking High Definition sets on the market. I tend to see them installed in newly-constructed houses and in houses that have undergone significant additions or renovations. They are capable of displaying images with unbelievable brightness and excellent contrast. They are also extremely thin and light enough to be wall mounted.

My immediate reaction to Ralph's question, however, was to say that plasma televisions are not necessarily the right choice for every home theater for a number of reasons. Here are a few reasons why you may want to consider other technologies:

• Brightness degradation: Plasma TVs are eye-poppingly bright when they're new, but become gradually less bright over time. Most people I know who have conventional picture tube TVs expect them to last for years with little change in picture quality.
• Power consumption and heat production: Consumer Reports warns that plasma sets "use a lot of power and generate a lot of heat". I live in an area with relatively high electricity rates, so I would think twice about buying a plasma set.
• Reflections possible in brightly lit rooms: If you plan to put your HD set in a naturally lit room, plasma TVs sometimes have problems with screen reflections.

Alternative technologies include traditional cathode-ray tubes designed for HDTV use. They are big and heavy, with most large screen sets weighing over 100 pounds. I helped install a 34-inch Sony HD set in a home theater last January and I thought the picture was excellent. Another option is liquid-crystal display technology (LCD). These TVs are thin and light like plasma sets, but become more expensive than plasma at the largest sizes, and can have poor contrast.

I like the Panasonic TH-42PX50U Plasma HDTV if you are in the market for a 42-inch screen. If you have the money to spring for a 50-inch model, you'd be hard-pressed to find a model better than the Pioneer PDP-5050HD.

Technorati Tags: HDTV, Plasma TV, LCD TV, CRT TV

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the recurring problems that Operation Gadget readers have is how to replace their iPod earbud headphones? Although some people never liked the earbuds that came with their iPod and pay big bucks to get better ones, other readers use their iPod earbuds until they fall apart, break, or get lost.

If you want to replace your iPod earbuds with earphones that perform better but are still inexpensively priced, I recommend the KOSS Spark Plug Stereo In Ear Earphones. These earphones are far less expensive than the Apple iPod Remote and Earbuds, which are the closest things Apple offers to replace the originals. The Spark Plugs have received some nice reviews, but are particularly popular with earphone hackers who like to create "Koss Hybrids" by replacing the foam-rubber tips that come with the Spark Plugs with aftermarket alternatives such as the Etymotic ER4 Replacement Eartips.

Another fairly low-cost alternative is the Sony MDR-EX81LP Stereo Earphones. If you can get over the fact that they loop over your ears, these earphones are less expensive than Apple replacements and perform reasonably well.

There's also the Creative Labs EP-630 which seem to be available mainly in Europe. Frank Koehntopp raved about these earphones, saying that they were worth the €30 he paid for them at Amazon.de.

Technorati Tags: Koss Spark Plugs, Koss Hybrids, Sony MDR-EX81LP, Creative Labs EP-630, iPod replacement earphones, iPod

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

2005 Tour of Hope DC Fundraising Ride:
This is our best guess at the 50-mile
route map. I used Gmaps Pedometer
to convert a cue sheet to a map. Click
on the picture of the map to see the route
in a Gmaps Pedometer window.
[ Image: Gmaps Pedometer / Google Maps ]

Bryan Katz, a fellow Tour of Hope DC Fundraising Rider and Rensselaer alumnus, sent me a cue sheet for the 50-mile route of the Bristol-Myers Squibb Tour of Hope DC Fundraising Ride along with the following question:

OK Mr. Gadget... is there software anywhere that would translate the route sheet to a map?

The easiest way I know to do it without a GPS tracking file is to plot the map using Gmaps Pedometer, which is what I did. Kudos to Maria Norton who told me about Gmaps Pedometer back in August.

There are a couple of unresolved issues with the route as I've plotted it:

1. The route through Rockville is a little messed up. The cue sheet isn't clear on the turns when you're skirting around the downtown area. I'm guessing that the route will go from Norbeck Road/MD 28 onto Wootton Parkway, but the cue sheet doesn't say that.
2. In that same area, I followed the wrong road between Muncaster Mill Road/MD 115 and Norbeck Road. This is probably why the route length I've plotted is only 47.78 miles long.

I'll correct those problems and update the article when I have time.

Updates:

1. Bryan Katz provided the URL for the cue sheet: http://www.tourofhope.org/ride/2005_dc_ride/dc_ride_route_log.pdf.

Technorati Tags: Tour of Hope

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Science of
Lance Armstrong DVD
is available from the
Discovery Channel
On-line Store.
[ Photo: Discovery Channel ]

Martin O'Donnell watches TV Cinq from France Television on Comcast in order to practice his French and keep up with what's going on there. The other day he asked:

Discovery Channel is getting massive publicity on French TV thanks to Lance Armstrong's team. How many Discovery networks are available to people in Europe? How important is Europe to Discovery Channel's cycling sponsorship strategy?

I looked into this and talked to a few friends in the pro cycling community and here's what I found:

• Discovery Channel networks are available in at least 14 countries in Europe and the Middle East including:
  • Belgium
  • Czech Republic
  • Germany
  • France
  • Italy
  • Hungary
  • Netherlands
  • Norway
  • Poland
  • Sweden
  • United Kingdom

• The Science of Lance Armstrong was recently aired as a "Watch with the World" event. It was broadcast to 160 countries in 35 languages.

• The Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team is the "most international" team on the Pro Tour circuit. They have riders from 15 different countries including the USA and Canada, several countries in western and eastern Europe, Russia, and the Ukraine.

• Discovery Communications was reportedly heavily involved in the signing of Fumi Beppu, a Team Discovery member from Japan. They probably feel that having a Japanese rider will be good for building public relations in Japan.
  

One of the points I made in Leblanc Made the Tour de France a Top International Television Event was that Discovery Communications wouldn't have chosen to sponsor a professional cycling team if the massive growth in international interest in the Tour de France hadn't happened over the past seven to 10 years. I think that Discovery and its co-sponsor AMD have benefitted a lot more from the media exposure that the team has generated this year than the team's previous sponsor, the U.S. Postal Service did during its sponsorship.

Technorati Tags: Tour de France, Lance Armstrong, Fumi Beppu, Discovery Channel, AMD

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As I mentioned on Monday, Beth Seliga, a freelance photographer who covers pro cycling, asked me which email client to use on her new palmOne Treo 650.

I had strong opinions ready when she asked this question, so I'm going to repeat them and enhance them with links for the benefit of everyone who reads Operation Gadget. In an attempt to keep it simple, I'm breaking the results down into two categories: what may work and what probably won't work:

• What May Work

  • Chatter Email: This is the email client that Kathleen and I both use. I chose Chatter Email because of:

    1. the Strong IMAP Support: I decided to standardize on IMAP-enabled mailboxes so that what we saw on the desktop we would also see on the Treos.
    2. my Selection of the Unlimited Data Plan: I was willing to pay $39.99 per month for unlimited data service for our two Treos.

    If you do not choose to go on an unlimited data plan with your Treo, that doesn't mean that Chatter Email would be a bad solution for you. However, you should realize that using the push email capability may cause you exceed your bucket of wireless data kilobytes.

  • SnapperMail: This email client appears to be aimed at the POP3 email users of the world, rather than IMAP users like me. If you use the Post Office Protocol for email, I would definitely give SnapperMail a try. I think it's clearly more stable than VersaMail.
    

• What Probably Won't Work
  
  
  
  • VersaMail: I realize that this is the email client that most Treo 650 users try first, mainly because palmOne installs it and puts part of it in ROM. There are a couple of issues with this program that are show stoppers for me:
    
    
    
    1. Instability: Versamail just crashes too often. It seems like Versamail crashes on people whenever they try to show me their Treos running it. Most of the time the demonstration starts like this: "Why does this program crash so often? Oh darn...."
       

    2. Faux IMAP Support: The folks at palmOne don't seem to understand the design philosophy behind IMAP-- specifically, that IMAP users are supposed to keep their email permanently on the mail server. If you need clarification on this point, refer to In Order to Understand Wireless Email, First Understand the Purposes of the Protocols.

       When you use Versamail to manage your IMAP mailbox, it loads copies of part of each email on to your Treo and keeps them there-- just like the way it handles email messages under POP3. The only thing is it doesn't discard those messages when you finish looking at each message. It also doesn't discard those messages if you choose to constrain the number of messages in your Inbox to those messages that arrived in the last "n" days.
       

    
    
  
  

Those are my opinions on the three biggest email clients for the Treo 600 and 650. I've had my Treo 650 for 11 weeks now and taken it on a two week business trip, so I think I can be reasonably confident that I'm not missing anything in the basic functionality of these three programs. However, if I receive new information, find out something new, or a serious competitor materializes to these three, I'll mention it here.

I'm intentionally leaving out clients that are specific to one mobile phone carrier. I know that Cingular has one. I don't think it is worth using because the number of users from whom you can learn will be so much smaller than if you chose a mainstream Treo email client.

If you have any alternatives that I haven't mentioned, feel free to post a comment and I will take a look at it.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

As I mentioned in an earlier article, Sammarye Lewis, co-author of the new book Tour de France for Dummies asked me how to make her H-P iPAQ h6315 work smoothly with a Garmin GPS 10 Deluxe or another handheld GPS, so that she can get directions to places along the Tour de France stage routes.

I did some research on this, and here is a summary of my findings so far. I'm breaking the results down into two categories: what may work and what probably won't work:

• What May Work

  • Garmin GPS 10 Deluxe with Bluetooth and Garmin Que Pocket PC Software: This maybe the easiest solution to get working straight out of the box if it meets your needs. The bundle includes the GPS unit, Que software for Pocket PC, corresponding software for a Windows PC, and a CitySelect North America CD containing map data. The entire package is reviewed in considerable depth on PocketNow.com.

    The concern I have with this solution is that it doesn't provide maps of France out of the box. Maybe there is a bundle available that contains a Europe rather than North America CD?
    

  • CoPilot Live Pocket PC 5 from ALK Technologies: There are three separate North American offerings priced between $299 and $349. I know that there is also a European version with the same options, but the European site directs potential customers to authorized dealers.

    According to ALK's European site, the European map CD is available for £100. I don't know what the price is if you buy it in the USA.

    PocketGPSWorld.co.uk has a great review of CoPilot Live PPC 5 (which is continued in Part 2) that makes it look like a very good candidate for this job.
    

  
  
• What Probably Won't Work
  
  
  
  • Microsoft Pocket Streets 2005 plus a handheld GPS: This looked like a good solution at first, but if you read the feature set carefully, Pocket Streets does not support route planning.
    
  
  

I'm going to add information to this story if I find other solutions or further information about the solutions already mentioned.

If you have any suggestions that I haven't mentioned, feel free to post a comment and I will take a look at it.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After last week's HDTV home theater installation article, Operation Gadget got a number of questions asking for an explanation of the terminology used to describe HDTV. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I thought I'd point to a few articles where much of that information already exists:

• Defining TV Jargon by Walter Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal: This article defines the different types of flat-screen televisions (Plasma, LCD, and DLP). It also points out that not all large, flat-screen TVs are capable of receiving HDTV signals.

  Walter Mossberg strangely leaves conventional CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) systems out of his article. As you know if you read the HDTV home theater article, we installed a Sony WEGA KV34HS420, a 34-inch HDTV-capable CRT. This set is a great value if you are OK with its size and weight.

• Fine-Tuning The HDTV Picture by Stephen H. Wildstrom of BusinessWeek: This article explains the difference between the display formats (1080i and 720p). HBO HD broadcasts much of its content in 1080i in order to show the most detailed images available. ESPN HD uses 720p to broadcast a better picture than conventional television with faster on-screen action than the 1080i format can handle.

  We were careful to take pictures of the Sony WEGA KV34HS420 when it was showing both of these channels, so you could see how that TV handles each format. Check out those photos in the Operation Gadget Photo Gallery.
  

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's a mobile phone question that came in yesterday that I don't have a great answer for. Maybe some of you Operation Gadget readers can offer some suggestions?

Randy Stevens wrote:

Dave,

May be you can help me, I’m a bit desperate at this point. My daughter dropped her Cingular phone in the water. Called Cingular Customer Care who said since you are still under contract and have no insurance your best bet is to buy a new phone off EBay. I bought a phone that the person told me was unlocked however when we put her sim in it is asking for the subsidy code which as I understand it means it is locked, to T-Mobile. Cingular will not help me and T-Mobile says I have to have an active account. I can’t get T-Mobile service where I am anyway so I can’t even have an active account. I seem to be hung between two companies who are unwilling to help me. What can I do other than throw the phone through the window and contest the sale through EBay which could take months and she will have no phone all that time?

Thanks for any help you can provide,

Dave Aiello replied:

Randy,

That's a real unfortunate series of events. Several instances of fraud and deception connected with mobile phone sales on eBay have been pointed out to me, so I'd say that people need to exercise extreme caution when buying replacement handsets that way.

I purchased a reconditioned, unlocked Treo 180 via eBay back in May. Although the unit looked good when I received it, it developed a problem with repeated crashing and I returned it to the seller. The good news for me was that the seller (a company) guaranteed the device and refunded my money when it couldn't provide me with another Treo 180 that worked.

You said that the seller represented that the phone was unlocked. Did you tell him that the phone was not unlocked and ask him to take it back? Based on what you've said, I think the eBay seller is the only person with a responsibility to you with respect to that replacement phone.

If you have soured on eBay and you still need a phone, Amazon.com now sells a limited number of mobile phone models that are already unlocked. I trust Amazon to stand behind what they sell. (FWIW, many other Amazon partners such as Target, Toys R'Us, and J&R Music World are similarly trustworthy, although they are not selling unlocked mobile phones at this time.)

Good luck getting your daughter back on-line. If your eBay seller misrepresented his merchandise or is unwilling to replace the phone you bought, I would do everything in my power to make his life miserable, including complaning to his state's Attorney General. On-line auction fraud really needs to be stopped.

If any Operation Gadget readers have anything to add to my suggestions, or want to offer different advice, feel free to post a comment. Thanks.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)