Earlier today I tweeted that I had found my Polar S625x and I was able to get it working with the speed and cadence sensors that are installed on my Trek 1500 before I rode it this morning.

This heart rate monitor is my favorite of all the models I've ever tested. The things I like most about it are its near indestructibility and its flexibility in that it works well in the three sports that I participate in most.

I started talking about the S625X on January 26, 2005, which means that I've been using it for over four years without a battery change or any service to the receiver. Over that time, I've ridden hundreds of miles on my bikes with the S625X strapped to the handlebars. I've also worn it during many hockey games, which is a great statement about its durability-- it's taken more than one direct hit from a puck.

The main claim to fame of the S625X is its support for running. This is accomplished through the use of a footpod which measures foot strikes and imputes distance traveled based on that. I don't care as much about accurate distance measurement when running as I do when cycling. I tend to run the same courses in training and measured distances in the 5 and 10k races that I run in from time to time.

The speed and cadence sensors for biking are simple to install and use. They simply measure how many times the front wheel and crank of my bike rotate by counting the number of times small magnets pass each of them. The sensors transmit their telemetry to the watch unit which acts as a receiver.

About all I can say that's truly negative about the Polar S625X is that the software that came with it, Polar Precision Performance Software Version 4 is out of date and only runs on Microsoft Windows. If you buy it now, you get newer software that's still Windows-only. I am hoping to start evaluating iSmartTrain from OTAG Technologies that provides similar functionality on Mac OS X, but I need to find the most compatible interface for it. iSmartTrain describes that as "a Polar IR-Serial interface and a USB-Serial converter".

I don't see the Polar IR-Serial interface on sale in a lot of places in the USA, so I'll have to ask where it can be purchased.

If you have any suggestions for where I can buy the IR-Serial interface, email me at daiello [at] operationgadget.com.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been wanting to talk about my experience with iPhone headphones and exercise for some time.

In my opinion iPhone headphones manufactured by Apple are consumables. I have never had a set last for more than 4 months. They get so much use from me that the rubber holding the earbuds together wears away.

I tried carrying the headphones in several different plastic containers, but each of the containers made constantly connecting and disconnecting the headphones too slow. This says nothing of the problems that occurred when I exposed them to large amounts of my perspiration.

The first set of headphones that I noticed experienced severe wear and tear was a set that I had been using during a period of heavy road biking in June and July. The action button on the in-line microphone on my headphones started to become unreliable. The button stopped working entirely shortly after that, and I suspected that sweat infiltration was the root cause.

In July I started working full-time in Manhattan. At that time I started working out at Newtown Athletic Club five days a week. My workout consisted of riding a stationary bike or running on an indoor track for 40 minutes, followed by sets of pushups and situps.

Because I was working out indoors, there seemed to be an increase in my perspiration level. The new headphones lasted less than a month.

Two major problems occurred:

• the action button on the in-line microphone stopped working,
• the rubber holding each of the earbuds together disintegrated at an accelerated rate.

I bought another new set of iPhone headphones from Apple, and a much less expensive set of headphones without an in-line microphone from a warehouse club. I used the inexpensive headphones during workouts at the gym. I used the iPhone headphones everywhere else.

The result is that the iPhone headphones have lasted a great deal longer. I think I've gotten about four months use out of this set of iPhone headphones. I'm only now beginning to consider replacing them, because the rubber gasket that holds each earbud together is wearing away.

In talking to a number of friends and acquaintances who have iPhones, the consensus is that no third-party headphones are much more durable than Apple's. For the most part, they are just more expensive.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The BlueLounge SpaceStation is a desk organizer for laptop users that acts as a USB hub for all peripheral devices.

BlueLounge SpaceStation [ Photo courtesy of the manufacturer. ]

The photo I've chosen shows the bottom of the SpaceStation. The rubber feet set the SpaceStation 5mm above the surface of the desk. This allows the USB cables to pass underneath the organizer where they can be coiled and connected to the USB hub.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• How to link Twitter to Facebook - A Twitter Tutorial on AJVayerchuck.com: A concise explanation of how to install the Twitter app within Facebook and allow it to update your Facebook status.
• Clutter War II: Attack of the Giant Baby on 43Folders: "...you might be able to guess where my head is right now. Yep. It’s on clutter, and on what I need to do to get my face back into Peter Walsh’s excellent de-cluttering book as a means for regaining domestic sanity and striding toward the possibility of a life without tripping, piling, or losing what’s left of my sleep-deprived mind."
• Hi-Res YouTube Hacks on O'Reilly Digital Media: A great little article that covers why YouTube rocks for casual video sharing and how to force YouTube playback to the highest resolution possible.
• LCD Scrub cleans those stubborn stains from your screen on TUAW: "While LCD screens aren't nearly as likely to run into image persistence issues as older CRTs, they aren't immune to damage, as developer Daniel Sandler... learned to his dismay a year ago. After his flat-panel got munged by green static overnight, he whipped up a pattern-shifting screensaver to repair the burned-in pixels (based on Apple's recommendation of leaving an all-white image over the affected areas). Whaddaya know, it worked.... "
• Mac 101: Zoom and pan images in Quick Look on TUAW: "Is your laptop not among those that can do Multi-touch? Don't feel badly, you can replicate those great features!" I didn't know you could do zooming and panning in Quick Look.
• Media Center: Roll a Mac Mini Media Center with Leopard on Lifehacker: "We've talked about building a Mac mini media center and other ways to pimp your mini in the past, but blogger Jon Hicks revisits the Mac mini media center with a focus on using it with Leopard and EyeTV (a Mac DVR solution). While Apple TV is doing its best to justify a place in your living room, it still doesn't time-shift television, and many Mac enthusiasts still find that the Mac mini still outdoes Apple's latest media center offering."

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The first book I bought to try to get new ideas on how I could better leverage my iPhone as a multimedia Swiss Army Knife was iPhone Fully Loaded by Andy Ihnatko. I have been really impressed by this book because it has some really excellent tips and techniques that go beyond many of the ideas I've seen discussed on iPhone-related blogs and websites.

Andy Ihnatko is a freelance journalist who writes a technology column in The Chicago Sun Times and appears regularly on The Early Show on CBS. He hit my radar screen through his regular gigs on The Apple Phone Show and MacBreak Weekly podcasts. Some of the concepts he discussed on those programs, such as using Smart Playlists to fill your iPhone with a constant amount of music that you like but haven't listened to recently (mentioned previously on Operation Gadget), and using Handbrake to convert chapters of DVDs that you own to clips that are playable on your iPhone, are prominently featured in this book. However, there are a lot more ideas that go far deeper into Mac and PC technology to pull together content that you have access to, package it in a form that's storable on your iPhone or iPod touch, and get it transferred on to your device.

There are also ideas that didn't appeal to me personally, but were interesting to read about from a general knowledge perspective. Andy is a big fan of comic books, so he includes an entire chapter on finding comics on the Internet and transmogrifying for your iPhone. He also talks about extensively about electronics and software that can be used to record radio programs for later playback on your iPhone. I used to listen to a great deal of radio myself, so this is interesting to me, but podcasts have largely replaced my radio listening habit since I got my iPhone, and I can barely keep up with the podcasts that I'm subscribed to now.

There are a number of other good iPhone-related books, such as The iPhone Pocket Guide by Chris Breen of MacWorld Magazine, but few are as jam-packed with ideas for filling your iPhone with content as iPhone Fully Loaded. This book always seems to be sitting near my MacBook Pro, and I think it will stay there for some time.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Apple introduces Aperture 2.0 on MacNN: "Apple on Tuesday released Aperture 2.0, a major revision of the company's professional photo editing and management application. The upgrade brings in a new, sleeker user interface that allows users to flip between Browser and Viewer modes with a single key press and a heads-up display that makes the most of the screen area while still allowing quick access to editing or navigation controls." This was the only change that Apple made at the Apple On-line Store today.
• 8 Tips For Using Running As a Productivity Booster on LifeDev: "There is a certain type of activity that is my absolute favorite for clearing the mind for some really productive thinking. It has the ultimate blend of physical activity, low mental resource usage, and a change of atmosphere. A perfect storm for some good ‘ol fashioned subconscious problem solving. Nothing adds a shot of productive thinking to the day like a spirited run."
• Make iMovie '08 find movies on other drives on MacOS X Hints: Using a symbolic directory link allows iMovie '08 to utilize movie content from secondary or external drives.
• {Leopard Update} 10.5.2 makes your {World of Warcraft} go faster on TUAW: "After hearing that the patch made reader Jason's Mac play faster, WoW Insider's Adam Holisky saw his FPS jump from 30 to 50 on his first-gen Intel iMac (he also has 2gb of RAM, and installed the graphics update with 10.5.2)."
• 30 Benefits of Ebooks from Epublishers Weekly: "Read an Ebook Week is a yearly event, and this year (2008) it runs from March 2 to March 8. To encourage the celebration of this little-known happening, here is our list of 30 Benefits of Ebooks. We love pbooks (paper books), and hope that they are never replaced by their electronic grandchildren. Yet ebooks are a worthy companion to their paper elders." [ via Lifehacker ]
• Run Your Personal Wikipedia from a USB Stick on Lifehacker: "You don't have to lease server space or keep your home computer always on to access a personal web server—you can run a web, FTP, and database server straight from a USB drive. A slim web server package called XAMPP fits on a USB stick and can run database-driven webapps like the software that powers Wikipedia, MediaWiki. Almost two years ago you learned how to set up your "personal Wikipedia" on your home web server to capture ideas and track document revisions in a central knowledge repository. Today we'll set up MediaWiki on your flash drive for access on any Windows PC on the go." It's incredible that you can run MediaWiki on a thumb drive now.

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

I expected to be wowed by Steve Jobs' 2008 MacWorld Expo Keynote a lot more than I actually was. However, I was doing other things while the event was going on (real work), and the products that I was most interested in (mainstream Mac laptops) didn't get addressed in this keynote at all.

Bummer for me. I could have bought my MacBook Pro two weeks ago if I had known that the Penryn upgrade wasn't immediately forthcoming.

Here are my comments on the other aspects of the keynote:

• iTunes Movie Rentals / AppleTV Take 2: Clearly the announcement with the most business disruption potential. I agree with one of the commentators on MacBreak Weekly who suggested that Apple is making a play to be the digital media hub in the house, usurping services like Netflix, as well as Television services providers such as Comcast and Verizon FiOS.
• MacBook Air: This is a machine aimed at people who travel a lot or who want a portable machine that is a shadow of their desktop Mac. I could see some very well off Mac users owning the big iMac and a MacBook Air. The MacBook Air is incredibly thin. It's hard to believe a machine with a laptop-like display and keyboard could be any thinner than this and still be usable.

• Time Capsule: This is an interesting extension to the AirPort wireless base station line. Time Capsule is an AirPort Extreme with a 500G or 1T hard disk in it, functioning as Network Attached Storage (NAS).

  My first reaction was, "Bummer. Kathleen just bought me the AirPort Extreme." But then I realized that I would prefer NAS that used RAID 1 or RAID 5 storage anyway. It also costs more than we want to spend on network appliances at this point.



• iPhone 1.1.3 Update: There's some good stuff here. I loaded it on my iPhone already. The cell tower triangulation in the Maps application works pretty well. That feature makes the iPhone version of RinkAtlas viable. Expect an announcement from me on that front soon.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

• Isolator- Concentration Application For Mac OS X on LifeDev: "I don’t think I have to tell this blog’s readers how hard it can be to stay on task when working on the computer. That’s why “concentration applications” are great tools to have. If you’re a mac user, check out the elegant Isolator for blocking out all of those outside distractions associated with working with a tool that can do soooo many things...."
• Avoid needless delays in System Updates on MacOSXHints.com: "While installing the 10.4.11 Server and subsequent 10.4.11 security patch, I had to wait a very long time (over an hour) while the Installer was configuring the install. I peeked in on the Installer process..., and found that it was searching through every directory on all mounted drives on the machine for files to update...." [ Does this pertain to MacOS X workstations or just servers? If so, does it pertain to Leopard or just Tiger? ]
• Weekend project: Wire Your Home On-the-Cheap with DIY Network Cables on Lifehacker: "The video demonstration above from electronics retailer TigerDirect details the relatively simple process of cutting your own Ethernet cables so you don't end up spending more than you need wiring your home or office (you also won't end up with 10 feet too much or a foot too little like you often will when you buy pre-cut). Wireless home networks are convenient, but if you regularly transfer large files or stream HD-quality video, nothing beats a solid wired network....
• Test-Driving a Sno-Park Maserati in The Wall Street Journal: This article compares a $4.99 snow saucer from L.L. Bean to a $279 inflatable "body board for the snow" imported from Switzerland. Although the writer expected there to be little difference in the fun had on the two sledding devices, she actually found that the $279 was far more fun and less jarring than the basic model.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kathleen gave me an Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station for Christmas. I installed and configured it tonight while we were watching ER on our DVR.

I was impressed with the improvement in the performance of our wireless network that immediately occurred when the AirPort Extreme started working. Configuration of the AirPort Extreme was by far the easiest of any wireless network base station I've ever installed.

I got the impression from articles I read on the Internet that it would be complicated to bridge the FiOS router (an Actiontec MI424WR) with the AirPort Extreme, but it was as simple as:

1. plugging the AirPort Extreme into the FiOS router using a Category 5 cable,
2. letting the FiOS router assign the AirPort Extreme an IP address using DHCP,
3. logging into the FiOS router and shutting off the integrated wireless base station on it.

(Note that I had earlier determined that the Actiontec MI424WR had to stay on the network because it serves as a bridge between coaxial cable and Category 5 cabling in our FiOS installation, and it also acts as a receiver for FiOS TV guide information and FiOS Video On Demand. Therefore, I never attempted to attempt to fully replace the router Verizon gave us, just to beef up the wireless network we're running here in The Home Office.)

I didn't spend much time using Kathleen's MacBook with the new router, but I'm sure they will perform better together than the MacBook did with the wireless network provided by the Actiontec router itself.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

I got a Nokia N800 through the Nokia Blogger Relations Program several months ago. I found this device quite interesting, but I never had the opportunity to dig into it as deeply as I had wanted to. I started to think about it again about a week ago, when I was thinking about creating a webcam for our Christmas Tree at my house.

I started Googling around, and I found a three-part series of articles on IBM developerWorks that provide a detailed explanation of how to write your own webcam client for the N800.

Part one is called Developing for the N800 and talks about the environment you need to use to develop a maemo package. Maemo is a Linux-based development platform for Internet tablets such as the N770 and the N800. The article talks extensively about Scratchbox, a cross-compilation toolkit that most people use to make maemo package development easier.

Part two of the tutorial is Accessing the Nokia N800 camera which discusses the maemo Camera API and a multimedia application framework called GStreamer.

By the time I finished reading part two of the tutorial, I began to wonder how the editor of this site could consider this project to be "introductory level". If that's the case, then some of the stuff on this site must be ridiculously complex and/or technical in nature.

The third part of the tutorial is Auto-uploading Nokia N800 photos. This explains in detail how to best extend the on board software and services of the N800 with your own code in order to develop an automated uploading tool. When you combine this with previous code to access the camera and convert images that it outputs into an uploadable format, you end up with a webcam client.

I was really impressed with these articles, and I got a much better understanding of the N800's potential by reading it.

The thing that stopped me from building the webcam application according to the instructions is the prerequisites. I didn't have a machine that had enough free space to build up a Linux virtual machine that would be an appropriate build environment for a maemo package. It would have taken me time to free that space. I may end up waiting to do this until I get my MacBook Pro sometime in January.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Bills return to Buffalo by bus after loss in Cleveland, The Associated Press on ESPN.com: "Mother Nature sure had it in for the Buffalo Bills this weekend."

  "Bad enough that a blizzard contributed to Buffalo's loss at Cleveland on Sunday, ending the team's playoff chances. Then, following an unscheduled overnight stay because of bad weather, the Bills were forced to bus home Monday after their charter plane got stuck in mud off a runway in Cleveland...." [ Thanks Julie Howson ]



• Who's #1? on ESPN.com: ESPN Classic's "Who's Number One" show will be running down the most important technological advances in sports on ESPN Classic, 10:00pm ET, Dec. 19, 2007. This is definitely something I'll have to TiVo if I can't watch it live.


• Why Wireless Isn't Wide Open on BusinessWeek.com: "Even as the wireless industry chants a new gospel about opening mobile-phone networks to outside devices and applications, some of the biggest U.S. carriers are quietly blocking new services that would compete with their own...." [ via Andy Abramson on VoIP Watch ]


• Canadian surprised by $85,000 cell bill on SeattleTimes.NWsource.com: "Piotr Staniaszek normally pays $147 a month for his cell phone. So he was more than a little surprised to learn his November bill had ballooned to $59,000. And then it got worse. When he called to inquire about the high figure, he was told that his bill this month was $83,000." [ Thanks Martin O'Donnell ]



• Verizon FiOS with only a Apple Airport Extreme {sic} on Elecktronkind.org: Excellent article on the things you need to do to replace the ActionTec router that Verizon provides to most FiOS users with an Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station. Something we hope to do in The Home Office in Newtown sometime after Christmas.

  One key fact to note from this article: You do need to keep the ActionTec router on the network if you have Verizon's digital cable service that's delivered over FiOS. Hopefully we can turn off the wireless capability of the ActionTec and put the AirPort Extreme Base Station behind it.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here are the FedEx Tracking Details
from the $30 Apple Store order
that got shipped from China.

I crushed one of my iPhone earbuds the other day in the parking lot of BJ's Warehouse Club in Langhorne, PA. I dropped my headphones while trying to load the car during a shopping trip with Kathleen and Jimmy. I apparently ran the earbud over with at least one of the wheels of my 2007 Honda Accord.

It stinks to have an iPhone with headphones that don't work properly. I don't have the money or the time to decide which aftermarket headphones are actually better than the Apple headphones. So, I took the easy way out and ordered a set of replacements from the Apple Online Store for about $30.

Here's where the story gets interesting.

A lot of times when I order something from the Apple Online Store it ships from a warehouse somewhere in Pennsylvania, so I get it quite quickly. This time, however, Apple decided to vend this item from their supplier in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone in China. I have the FedEx Tracking Data to prove it:

• Nov 14, 2007
• 12:29AM | Package data transmitted to FedEx
• 9:45AM | Picked up | SHENZHEN CN
• 2:11PM | Left origin | SHENZHEN CN
• 3:55PM | In transit | LANTAU ISLAND HK
• 1:51PM | Departed Fedex location | ANCHORAGE, AK
• Nov 15, 2007
• 12:10AM | Arrived at FedEx location | INDIANAPOLIS, IN
• ...
• 6:13AM | At dest sort facility | PHILADELPHIA, PA
• 7:59AM | At local FedEx facility | BRISTOL, PA
• 8:07AM | On FedEx vehicle for delivery | BRISTOL, PA
• 9:39AM | Delivered | NEWTOWN, PA

Of course the packaged gained a day crossing the International Date Line.

FedEx delivered the package to my house in Newtown, PA before 10:30AM on Thursday, one day before they promised. All this package contains is a set of iPhone replacement headphones. I got free shipping on this order.

Imagine how much it would normally cost an individual to ship a package of any size via FedEx from Shenzhen to here at this speed?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today, Jason Fried of the web application service provider 37 Signals reported that he had noticed an improvement in the responsiveness of the Comcast DVR thanks to the most recent software update pushed by Comcast. According to Fried:

I have a Comcast DVR. It recorded on time, the menus and interface were decent (I prefer TiVo’s UI, but Comcast’s is fine), and it was reliable.

But it was slow. Click fast forward and it felt like there was a 1-2 second delay. Hit stop and wait another 1-2 seconds. Sometimes more. The waiting killed the convenience....

... I just noticed that Comcast updated the software..... Now menus selections are sharp, button clicking is crisp, and things happen when you ask them to happen. The experience is finally satisfying.

I agree with Jason when he says that it's rare that products with significant software components get faster as they mature, even as more features are added. Apparently this is one case where a set-top box has actually improved rather than degraded. And, believe it or not, Comcast is the company responsible for this improvement. Will miracles ever cease?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've got a five year old Linux server in the basement at the Home Office. It was state-of-the-art before 9/11:

• Built by one of the biggest Linux-hardware companies of the early days: VALinux (now called VA Software).
• Big disk capacity: 72 Gigabytes of SCSI-based hardware RAID. That was great five years ago.
• 2U case

A copy of every disk file that Kathleen, Jimmy, and I can't afford to lose is stored there. This machine is probably way past its MTBF on a number of components, so I need to consider my options and figure out my budget.

The thought occurred to me to rebuild the server to 2006 standards by buying individual components and integrating them on the basement workbench. This would mean I would build another 2U server, probably with SATA RAID this time. That's an option I'm willing to consider for certain applications, but it's probably not a good idea for the file vault.

A better option is a 1-Terabyte Network Attached Storage appliance like the Infrant ReadyNAS RN600-1000. You can have about 630 Gigabytes of RAID 5 storage up and running with one of these servers in practically no time. The price is also reasonable, considering you are getting four 250 GB Seagate SATA drives in a well-designed enclosure with gigabit Ethernet with large data frame support, and some pretty intelligent NAS software.

Some of the comments on the ReadyNAS RN600-1000 at Amazon.com are worth reading also:

• From Philip Greenspun of Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing: "... It took about fifteen minutes to plug in and set up the Infrant. My Windows XP desktop machine automatically recognized the newly available shared folders served by the Infrant. The Infrant is very quiet (Net wisdom is that this is quieter than the competitive Buffalo NAS), producing about 10 percent as much noise as the desktop PC, which was custom-assembled supposedly as a 'silent PC'.

  "I use the Infrant as the core of a whole-house music system. When the Windows machine needs to be rebooted or is suffering a 100 percent CPU load doing photo processing the Sonos music boxes just pull the MP3 files directly from the Infrant...."

• Another person commented: "Unlike a lot of the low-end NAS boxes, this one is designed and supported in the USA and it shows. The designed-in-Asia NAS boxes have much more cryptic interfaces, less elegant firmware, fewer features and marginal documentation."

A 600 GB file vault ought to do fine for our house for at least five more years. I think we could do a lot worse than to buy either the Infrant ReadyNAS RN600-1000 or the Buffalo HD-H1.OTGL/R5 TeraStation. Hopefully I'll find the money to make this purchase in the next month or so.

Technorati Tags: ReadyNAS RN600-1000, Buffalo TeraStation.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Brad Feld's Treadputer: Venture capitalist
Brad Feld added a 3.2-GHz IBM ThinkCentre
to his Vision Fitness T9450HRT Treadmill.
This lets him get his runs in while he's on
conference calls. [ Photo: Brad Feld ].

Brad Feld is a managing director at Mobius Venture Capital based in Boulder, Colorado. He challenges himself by running marathons, and has set a goal of running a marathon in every state in the nation within the next 10 years.

Around the beginning of the year he and his coworkers built a "treadputer", a fitness club-quality treadmill with a big, fast Windows PC, and three 19-inch LCD displays.

The amazing aspect of Brad's story is that he finds he can use his PC while walking and running on this treadmill. According to the article:

It turns out that the Treadputer is highly functional when I’m running, which enables me to do some of my longer runs during the day while I’m on a call rather than having to get up at 5am to get them in before the day starts....

When we first assembled the Treadputer, {a co-worker} was skeptical that I would be able to read the screen while walking and assumed that reading while running would be impossible. While the three monitor setup helps a lot, it was surprisingly easy to read while walking or running. We’re running all three monitors at their standard 1280x1024 resolution and haven’t juiced up the font sizes.

Brad's article includes more details about his treadputer's configuration, and what he's learned about typing and mouse / trackball use. I found it quite interesting.

At least one other person bent on improving his life has built a treadputer. Walking Guy has begun a blog discussing his experiences building and using his treadputer. He says he began this quest because he needed to take off at least 40 pounds but was stuck in front of a computer 80 to 100 hours a week. He has his treadputer setup and has already gotten himself mentioned in the Lifehacker Coolest Workspace Contest.

I wonder how many more treadputer setups already exist, and how many will be built now that these articles have appeared on the Internet? I'll have to start looking for "bikeputer" articles as well.

Technorati Tags: fitness gadgets, treadputer.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My wife Kathleen spent yesterday afternoon at our friend Jen Colangelo's house watching The Chronicles of Narnia on Jen's big, new plasma television. When she got home, Kathleen said the movie (which was played on a progressive-scan DVD player) looked "amazing" compared to movies on our old, analog, 480i TV.

All a progressive-scan DVD player does is transmit images in 480p, the so-called EDTV format, instead of 480i. This is a huge advance in picture quality, which becomes more obvious as the size of the monitor increases. That's why DVDs look so good on HDTV sets.

A new generation of DVD players with higher resolution than 480p is on its way. There are actually two competing standards: HD DVD and Blu-Ray. Both will offer the ability to project images to an HDTV at 720p or 1080i depending on the format that the producers chose for the movie. The questions for many home theater fans is, at what point do I upgrade to a more advanced DVD player, and which format should I choose?

Martin O'Donnell pointed out a syndicated article from The Los Angeles Times by David Colker where he reviewed the first HD DVD players from Toshiba and came away less impressed than he expected. Colker said, "unless you already have a high-definition television at least 40 inches in size, you won't notice much of a difference."

His recommendation to people who have not yet bought the HDTV set of their dreams is to invest the $500 that a first-generation HD DVD unit would cost in a bigger HDTV monitor. "In the time it takes to save up another $500, the price of HD disc players will probably drop and a pending format war may well be decided."

The article includes some surprising revelations:

• HDTV sets without HDMI component interfaces may not be able to display HD DVD movies at anything above 480i resolution.
• Smaller HDTV sets with HDMI don't benefit from HD DVD as much as you'd expect because the difference in resolution is a lot less obvious on small monitors.

The article barely mentions the fact that HD DVD and Blu-Ray movies are virtually impossible to get at the moment. Thankfully, HD DVD and Blu-Ray players are backward-compatible with standard DVDs, so if you did decide to spring for the new technology, you could replace the standard DVD player in the component stack.

Technorati Tags: home theater, HD DVD, Blu-Ray, HDTV, EDTV.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:02 AM | 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)

The ViewSonic VX2025 won a 20-inch Widescreen Monitor Group Test published yesterday at Bit-Tech.net. The VX2025 was judged the best value for the money against the following competitors:

• BenQ FP202W
• NEC MultiSync 20WGX, apparently not available in the U.S. but the closest model is the NEC MultiSync 20WMGX2-BK
• Acer AL2032WA

On performance alone, Wil Harris liked the NEC, but it was 25 percent more expensive than the ViewSonic. Unless you need the highest possible LCD response for gaming, you'll probably find the ViewSonic to be the best buy.

Technorati Tags: ViewSonic VX2025, BenQ FP202W, NEC MultiSync 20WGX, Acer AL2032WA, widescreen LCD monitors

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We had some nasty weather in the Philadelphia area on Saturday and Sunday. The temperature fell from 55 to 25 degrees Fahrenheit in about four hours on Saturday evening. During that time rain changed to snow, creating a scene reminiscent of Narnia. At about 9:30am on Sunday, the power went out due to downed trees in the area. Electric service wasn't restored until almost 6:00pm, so we were without electricity for about 7.5 hours.

One of the things that Kathleen and I had wondered since we moved to Newtown was, how would our Voice over IP-based home telephone service work in emergency conditions? Up to now, we hadn't experienced a weather-related emergency. This would be our first chance to see if calls could still be made after a power failure.

Since we moved in, I installed two rather large APC Uninterruptible Power Supplies from the Small Business product category. We felt we needed one in the Home Office and one in the basement where the VoIP and DSL equipment live. The UPS in the Home Office was mainly there to keep our PCs from crashing as a result of power fluctuations. The one in the basement was intended to keep the DSL connection and the VoIP lines running in the event of a power failure.

I was pleased to find out that the APC UPS in the basement kept our DSL router, firewall, and two Motorola VoIP telephone adapters running for just over three hours before the battery was drained. During this time I made several calls to the electric utility. All of those calls were connected properly. There were no call quality issues whatsoever. Kudos to our DSL and VoIP provider, Speakeasy for engineering their network so that a local power failure didn't interrupt our DSL and VoIP service. I know they use Covad for their local network services and Level 3 for VoIP network engineering. Both of these providers' local gear kept running during our power failure.

Most power failures that we experience around here are pretty short and have to do with things like automobile accidents that take down utility poles. All we're trying to do with our UPS equipment is survive this sort of brief outage, in case someone calls in to us on one of our VoIP numbers. Kathleen and I have mobile phones that we can use to make outgoing calls and that will probably keep working during extended outages like the one we experienced yesterday.

Now that we've experienced a day-long power failure, I definitely recommend that people who are replacing their old-style telephone service with VoIP invest in a UPS that has the capacity to power their terminal equipment (including their router, firewall, and TAs) for at least three hours. I would segregate these devices onto their own UPS even if you have other devices that you want to protect. This will simplify your planning because you will not have to arrange for the shutdown of non-essential electronic equipment in order to maximize the runtime of the UPS that supports your VoIP phones.

Your VoIP phones may not survive every outage with this safety margin, but they'll keep running during many of the power failures that we experience in the Continental United States.

Technorati Tags: VoIP, APC, UPS

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Yesterday, Cool Tools highlighted an inexpensive electric power usage meter called Kill-A-Watt. This product, which costs less than $30 at Amazon.com, has the potential to save you hundreds of dollars a year if you identify appliances and other devices with higher than necessary electrical usage, limit their usage, and eventually replace them.

At my house, we have an old Gibson Frost Clear Refrigerator / Freezer. This looks like a potential power hog to me, but who knows? Any appliance that comes from an Energy Star-rated product group, but isn't Energy Star-rated itself is a potential source of significant savings.

We also run a number of computers on a 24/7 basis here at The Home Office. How much are we spending to keep them running annually? I have no idea, but with a Kill-A-Watt power usage meter, I will soon find out.

Technorati Tags: Kill-A-Watt, electricity use

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | 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)

My father-in-law has gotten back into LPs lately after the family got him a stereo with an integrated turntable. When he got it, the thought crossed my mind that someone who has a big vinyl collection and liked the sound would have all kinds of trouble ripping those tracks to their iPod. Ubergizmo reported yesterday on what sounds like a good solution. The Ion iTTUSB Turntable with USB Record works with USB-enabled PCs running Windows 98, 2000, or XP or Apple Macintosh computers running MacOS 9 or greater. No special USB drivers are required.

The iTTUSB Turntable works with 33 1/3 and 45 RPM records. It has adjustable anti-skating controls, line level RCA outputs, and pitch control for up to 8 percent.

The turntable comes with Audacity, a free, cross-platform sound editor that is often used by podcasters, as well as a trial copy of BIAS SoundSoap 2 which is a similar commercial product.

Update: On December 13, 2006, I decided to recommend the TEAC LP-to-CD Recorder Stereo System (also known as the TEAC GF-350 Turntable / CD-Recorder) instead of the iTTUSB Turntable. The reason is that the Audacity software that ships with the iTTUSB at this time is too complex for many PC users tastes. People who are not expert-level software users should consider the LP-to-CD Recorder Stereo System instead. Read the full article for a more detailed explanation.

Technorati Tags: Ion iTTUSB Turntable, iPod, Audacity, BIAS SoundSoap, LPs, 45s, USB peripherals

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Belkin Kickstand Case for 5G iPod is
available in black or white. [ Photo: Belkin
Corporation ]

I just noticed that Belkin has shipped the Kickstand Case for 5G iPod. It's a really innovative design that doubles as a Video iPod case and a stand. You simply flip the upper half of the leather case down and it will prop up the Video iPod so you can have a hands-free viewing experience. Why didn't I think of that?

Belkin makes it in black and white, although it may be tough to get either one before Christmas and Hanukkah. Good luck finding it-- it's not even available at Amazon.com yet.

When I visited the Apple Store in King of Prussia on Sunday I didn't see a case that I would buy for my own new Video iPod. I think the Belkin Kickstand Case is the case I'd buy if I had to buy one today. [ Kudos to PopGadget for scooping the gadget blogosphere again. ]

Technorati Tags: Video iPod, iPod, iPod accessories, Belkin Kickstand Case, Christmas gifts, Hanukkah gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On Sunday, Kathleen and I trekked out to the Apple Store at The Plaza at King of Prussia in the western suburbs of Philadelphia. We had some business to do there and were curious to see the Fifth Generation iPods, since neither of us had held one in our hands before.

I was surprised at how different the 30 Gigabyte iPod with Video Playback felt in my hand than previous iPods. Most of my iPod usage experience comes from the 10-Gigabyte iPod that I gave my wife for Christmas two years ago.

The new iPods are almost exactly the same height and width, but they are about half as thick. The 30-Gigabyte model is 0.43 inches deep, while Kathleen's 10-Gigabyte iPod is 0.78 inches. The 60-Gigabyte model is 0.55 inches deep. The Fifth Generation iPods we looked at on Sunday weigh in at 4.8 or 5.5 ounces, compared to 6.5 ounces for my wife's iPod.

I thought the new iPods were wider than the old ones, but that's probably because the screen are 2.5-inch diagonal color screens while the older iPods are 2-inch diagonal in the same space. The resolution of the new screens is roughly twice as good: 320x240 color, while the old ones are 160 x 128 black and white.

We compared the black and white models of the iPod with video playback, to see which one we preferred. Kathleen felt that the black model had better contast when we were watching movie trailers and music videos that had been preloaded on the Apple Store demo units. I wasn't sure. My concern was which one would show more scratches if I bought it. I think this is less of a concern with units shipping today than those shipped immediately after these models were announced,

I want to make a couple of comments about traffic in our local Apple Store. I was surprised at how easy it was for us to spend time playing with the Video iPods. Most people in the store seemed to be engaged in two other tasks:

1. Standing in line to buy iPods as gifts for friends or relatives. Those people were generally on a mission and didn't do any playing with merchandise.
2. Looking for iPod accessories to purchase. The area stocked with iPod cases, aftermarket earphone, and external speakers was quite crowded and people were spending a lot of time there. We got away from that part of the store as fast as we could.

The demographics of the two groups was also quite different. The first group was generally parents, grandparents, and young adults with plenty of disposable income. The second group was considerably younger.

Technorati Tags: Video iPod, iPod, iPod accessories, Christmas gifts, Hanukkah gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

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)

I started researching sound isolating earphones that are placed in the ear canal because so many of my friends are dissatisfied with the earphones that came with their iPods and wanted to know more about the earphones that are considered better. Through this investigation, I found that aftermarket earphones are available at a wide-variety of prices. There's also some serious disagreement about which models are the best available today.

I want to start out by reporting that CNET awarded the Shure E4c it's Editors' Choice in the category. They said:

The Shure E4c headphones represent an evolutionary advance in Shure's popular in-ear E series. They feature a new Tuned Port Technology, which enhances the tiny earphones' bass response by improving airflow around the driver. The E series' earpluglike designs block background noise so that you can listen at lower volumes in noisy trains, buses, and planes. And unlike noise-canceling headphones, the E4cs don't rely on batteries to power their hushing abilities.

The Tuned Port Technology is why I would pick the Shure E4c Earphones over the Shure E3c Earphones that were recently touted by Russell Beattie. If you read his comments, you'll see he's using them as a concentration aid when he's in the office:

I *am* a professional office worker, and I'll tell you right now, these are *the* headphones to have in that sort of environment where there's any sort of constant noise and interuptions. I pop them in, and bam, I�m in a cone of silence, perfect for concentrating and thinking (which is what knowledge workers are supposed to do, right?).... Three people can literally be having a loud conversation in front of you, and you hear nothing except your Vivaldi played at a comfortable low volume. It's like having a virtual office that you can take with you anywhere: Put the headphones on, and bam, perfect silence and privacy.

These aren't the earphones I'd want for daily use. I use earphones with Kathleen's iPod in a home office environment and I need to hear background noise. The Shure E4c and E3c are definitely not appropriate for outdoor exercise of any kind because of that "cone of silence". Whether these earphones can be safely used when doing yard work or operating walk-behind machinery is your call.

If sound isolating earphones make sense for your uses, you should check out CNET's Shure E4c review and Russell's E3c review to help you decide which sound isolating earphones to purchase. Also note that Shure makes an even more professional version, the Shure E5c.

Technorati Tags: Shure E4c, Shure E3c, Shure E5c, iPod

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I just resolved a bizzare problem that kept me from using my Motorola HS850 Bluetooth Headset with my Palm Treo 650 for a while.

When my Motorola HS850 successfully connected with a Treo 650 to which it has already been paired, the HS850 would play a very quick set of three ascending tones that lasted for about 8/10ths of a second. However, recently when the HS850 tried to connect, the Treo 650 would play a four tone sequence that sounded like notes played on a piano and lasted for more than a second. After that, there would be no connection between the headset and the Treo.

Some aspect of the data pairing the two devices apparently got corrupted. I was able to resolve the problem by following the instructions in the Palm Knowledge Base that called for deleting and re-establing the Trusted Device pair.

I was surprised to see this work because I thought I had tried this before and not been successful. Nevertheless, I got the devices to re-pair with each other and I'll have a lot more productive use of my Treo 650 for voice calls as a result.

Technorati Tags: Treo 650, Motorola HS850, Bluetooth

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

miniVox MV100: Speakerphone
for VoIP is available through
Amazon.com

Yesterday, Andy Abramson of VoIP Watch pointed out a portable speakerphone for use with VoIP services called the miniVox MV100 USB Speakerphone. I had never heard of this before Andy mentioned it. He said:

If you think Polycom makes the best desktop speakerphones, these guys deliver something at a fraction of the price that goes with you and works very well. In most cases it has caused me to abandon using the headset entirely.

This little box is about two-thirds of the size of my Treo 650 and it plugs into your PC using a mini USB cable. It's used mainly as a speakerphone, but you can also plug a mobile phone headset into it for privacy.

mVox also has a Bluetooth device for considerably more money called the mVox MV900 which interests me because I'm always looking for things I can use with both my mobile phone and VoIP.

More information about both of these products is available at http://www.mvox.com/.

Technorati Tags: Bluetooth, VoIP, mVox

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I received my Motorola HS850 Bluetooth Headset from Amazon.com yesterday and I've already used it during a 100-mile roundtrip from Newtown to West Chester, PA for a hockey officiating meeting. The sound quality was good on my end and the people I called thought I sounded good as well. This article focuses more on the process of getting the HS850 working for the first time.

I was glad I read the Motorola Bluetooth Wireless Headset Quick Start Guide. It's an 8-page fan-folded document a little larger than a credit card that told me how to:

1. charge the headset,
2. pair the headset with my phone,
3. turn the headset on or off.

The brief explanation of how to turn on Bluetooth on your mobile phone is Motorola-specific and meant to serve as an example in the event that you have a phone from another manufacturer. I have a Palm Treo 650 and it helped that I regularly use the Bluetooth feature of the Treo to sync it with my Blogging Workstation. I already had Bluetooth turned on and more or less knew how to search for the HS850 from my Treo and pair the two together.

Technorati Tags: Bluetooth, HS850, Treo 650

Continue reading "Getting My Motorola HS850 Bluetooth Headset Working With a Treo 650" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I've decided to buy a Motorola HS850 Bluetooth Headset for use with my Palm Treo 650 and my PC. I thought about this for a couple of weeks before I made the decision. Much of that delay was the result of a lack of consistency I found in Bluetooth headset reviews on the Internet.

I'd like to review a number of Bluetooth headsets, so I have to start somewhere. On MobileBurn, I read that the HS850 has the same design as the HS810. The improvements from the HS810 are better battery life and Bluetooth 1.2 compatibility. The HS820 is cheaper, but has more problems with wind noise when used outdoors, because it lacks the boom microphone.

I'm planning to use the HS850 to familiarize myself with Bluetooth headsets and as a baseline for future headset reviews.

Regular readers may ask why I didn't buy the Cardo Scala 500, which seems to be a great deal at Amazon.com? I have to admit that I was influenced by the changes that Treonauts made to their review recently. I have never used a Bluetooth headset, so I have to take reviews from major blogs fairly seriously. I think I may come back later, try the Cardo Scala 500, and compare it to the HS850.

Technorati Tags: VoIP, Bluetooth

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been talking to Martin O'Donnell and Andy Abramson recently about getting a Bluetooth headset in order to be able to use it with both my Palm Treo 650 and my PC when I'm using Skype and Google Talk.

Many of the Bluetooth headsets that are currently on sale will do double duty in this manner, but some of them are Bluetooth 1.2-compatible while others are only compatible with Bluetooth 1.1. I wasn't sure if it mattered whether I had Bluetooth 1.2 compatiblility, so I had to do some research.

It turns out that the Treo 650 only supports Bluetooth 1.1 anyway and that Palm says it has "no plans to upgrade the Bluetooth technology in the Treo 650 smartphone to version 1.2". In addition, most Bluetooth USB adapters like the Belkin F8T003 that I have installed on my Blogging Workstation are only Bluetooth 1.1 compatible.

If the Treo 650 and my PC had both supported Bluetooth 1.2, I would have excluded Bluetooth 1.1 headsets from my product search. I clearly don't have to restrict myself now.

Technorati Tags: VoIP

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today, I was talking to Martin O'Donnell about a plug-and-play VoIP terminal called PhoneGnome. PhoneGnome is a small appliance that you can use to make Internet telephone calls, but you "buy and own it" and no monthly subscription fee is charged.

A lot of the VoIP services encourage you to use them for all of your telephone calls. PhoneGnome is designed for users who:

1. have broadband already,
2. want to keep their local phone line for basic services like unmeasured local calling and 911, and
3. want to use VoIP when it's convenient and when it results in significant savings.

The PhoneGnome appliance straddles your regular phone line and broadband connection. It extends to the local telephone line some of the advanced services that VoIP users take for granted, like voicemail with email delivery, call waiting, and three way calling. Once you install the PhoneGnome, you can drop some of these services from your local phone line. Most local phone companies charge at least $7.00 per line per month to provide voicemail service.

When a PhoneGnome appliance is installed, it gets programmed with the phone number for the regular telephone line that's connected to it. That number is registered in a directory of PhoneGnome devices so that other PhoneGnomes know to route calls to it via peer-to-peer VoIP. This is how PhoneGnome delivers VoIP calling that's free of monthly fees and per-minute charges.

If you spend a great deal of time on calls with other PhoneGnome users, you can save a lot of money by reducing the cost of those calls to $0. That's why PhoneGnomes can be purchased in a two-pack (although they can also be purchased individually). I think people with overseas relatives or friends and family members far away will save a lot of money this way.

PhoneGnome is Session Initiation Protocol-compliant (SIP), which means that VoIP calls can be placed using an SIP address rather than a phone number. This feature is unlikely to get extensive use by the non-technical portion of the PhoneGnome user base, but more computer-oriented users will probably figure out ways to put SIP addresses on speed dial and save themselves additional money.

PhoneGnome can also be used to make VoIP calls to any phone number in the world, but those calls must be routed through a VoIP service provider for delivery back to the local telephone network or a mobile phone. A list of PhoneGnome-compatible VoIP services and rates is available.

PhoneGnome seems like a very unique product that approaches VoIP telephony in a new and different way. I'm sure it will be a God-send to people who have large long distance bills today and don't have the technical skill to use Skype or a more computer-oriented VoIP service.

I hope to get a PhoneGnome for review so we can put it through its paces and report on the experience of using it.

Technorati Tags: VoIP

See also:

1. Introducing PhoneGnome on Gigaom.com, and
2. PhoneGnome: The Hot Rod of ATAs on Voxilla.com.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today Engadget pointed out a review of the R-Driver II USB to IDE cable adapter that retails for less than $35. The review they noticed was published on theGadgeteer.com and gives basic information about the product. I did some research on this and other USB 2.0 to IDE solutions and the review I liked best is found on DansData.com.

Quick and dirty tools like this are great if they work and you need a cheap, temporary solution. Other people like Martin O'Donnell swear by little drive enclosures that they buy at places like Fry's Electronics or on EBay. YMMV.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Amazon.com put many APC products including Genuine APC Replacement Batteries on sale. I discovered that I needed a replacement battery the other day when the power at the Home Office sagged for a moment. All of the computer equipment in the basement including my Linux development server, VoIP Telephone Adapters, DSL modem, firewall, network switch, wireless access point, and phone system spontaneously restarted.

When I saw this I said, "I must need a new battery, but why hasn't the UPS been beeping at me?" I ordered a replacement battery the next day. That night at 1:30am, I woke up because I heard the UPS alarm beeping in the basement.

If you run your home or work phone service using Voice over Internet Protocol, make sure you have a UPS providing power to your DSL modem and VoIP Telephone Adapters. If you already have a UPS, make sure your battery is good.

I like to buy Genuine APC Replacement Batteries for two reasons:

1. Genuine APC Replacement Batteries preserve any applicable warranty coverage.
2. APC sends a shipping label with Genuine APC Replacement Batteries so you can send the spent battery back for proper disposal.

Technorati Tags: VoIP

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

CanoScan LiDE 500F Flatbed Scanner:
I got my new, inexpensive CanoScan
scanner on Wednesday. I bought it to
replace my fax machine in the new
VoIP-based Home Office.
[ Photo: Dave Aiello ]

I received my CanoScan LiDE 500F Flatbed Scanner the other day. It's a very inexpensive color scanner that fits on my desk between my flat panel displays and the place where I keep my laptop.

I've opened a new CanoScan LiDE 500F photo album. This currently has a bunch of "box unpacking" photos, but I'm planning to add example scans in the near future. Check them out if you're interested.

At well under $150 this scanner is a great deal. I can use it to scan documents that I will faxed using my eFax Plus account. I can also use it to scan 48-bit color images at 4,800 x 2,400 dots per inch.

I got the idea to buy this from Jeremy Zawodny and I agree with him that the LiDE 500F is:

• small,
• quiet,
• light, and
• pretty fast.

Technorati Tags: VoIP

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I IMed with Hubert Nguyen from Ubergizmo.com yesterday who told me about his nice review of the Ftech Solar 7 Bluetooth GPS Receiver. There are a lot of buzzwords in that product name, so let me summarize. This is a solar-powered GPS that can communicate with a Bluetooth-capable handheld or notebook so you can add navigation functions when you need them.

The innovation here is solar power. The tradeoff is the size of the GPS which is larger than many competitive products because it incorporates a solar cell.

The Ftech Solar 7 is about $130 and you still need a piece of navigation software for your handheld or notebook. Having said that, I like the idea of a self-powered GPS for the car, and it would clearly interface well with my Treo 650. I doubt that I'd ever need to charge it as long as I put it on my dashboard whenever I was going to use it.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As we progressed through the process of replacing our POTS lines with VoIP for the home office, we ran into a couple of issues that needed to be researched. One important one was the issue of how to send and receive faxes.

Several people who I've talked to about the trade-offs of using a single number for voice and fax versus a dedicated fax number have said that the key issue is that people using a single number are perceived to be hobbyists rather than serious business people. Also some businesses are more fax-centric than others. A good example of this is the medical field.

Kathleen needs to be able to send and receive faxes from insurance providers since most of them establish relationships with doctors on an individual rather than a per-practice basis. The effort she has undertaken to get listed as a health care provider with all of the major medical insurers that serve customers in the Pennsylvania suburbs of Philadelphia has required lots of faxing.

Many VoIP services include some fax capability. Speakeasy VoIP/Home provides the ability to receive faxes as email attachments. However, faxes must be sent to the same number that you use for voice calls, otherwise you have to buy another line at $23.95 per month. This is slightly different from how providers like Vonage handle fax, but the charges and performance of the VoIP service aren't entirely comparable either.

What I chose to do was to get a eFaxPlus account and use that as my fax solution. This gives me a separate, dedicated fax number in my area code for $12.95 per month plus $0.10 per outgoing page and provides many of the same email-integration features I would get from using my Speakeasy VoIP/Home number for both fax and voice. The big difference is that I'm saving $11.00 per month in service fees, which means I'd need to send more than 110 pages of faxes per month in order to lose money on the deal.

Once I made the fax service decision, I focused on the right device to use to scan papers for faxing. I don't want to use my Xerox WorkCentre 385 if it isn't connected to a phone line in the traditional manner. The scanning capability it has isn't very good and it also uses too much power when I use the laser printing engine in it to copy or print documents.

I'd prefer an inexpensive, compact scanner that is portable enough to use with my laptop if necessary. The one I chose is the Canon CanoScan LiDE 500F Color Image Scanner. I got the idea to purchase this from Googling around. Jeremy Zawodny's article I Like My Canon CanoScan LiDE 500F Scanner made a good case for it.

The price is definitely right. I like the fact that it gets its power entirely from the USB 2.0 connector. This means I can hook it up to my Blogging Workstation most of the time. The scanner itself is no bigger than a laptop when laid flat on the desk, so it won't take up as much room as typical flatbed scanners. I can also set it up so it sits on the desk in an upright position [ see photo on that page ], which makes it look like a partially-opened book.

At about $120, purchasing the CanoScan LiDE 500F eats into my expected savings, but I feel that its additional features make the expenditure worth it at this time. I can use it to scan documents for faxing, but it will also come in handy for scanning pages from magazines for digital storage or photos for which I can't find the negative.

Technorati Tags: VoIP

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | 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)

I wanted to ask for a photographer's vest for the Dodge Tour de Georgia, but I didn't feel that I had the right camera to make it worthwhile. If I had one of those vests, I could have stood inside the barriers just beyond the finish line and gotten shots of riders throwing their bikes at the line to try to be first.

The right camera would be a very good digital single lens reflex camera, like the Canon EOS 20D. This is an 8.2-megapixel camera capable of shooting 5 frames per second for 23 consecutive shots. It has a startup time of 0.2 seconds. The EOS 20D isn't the most expensive digital SLR out there, but it has a good price/performance trade off, and it uses a better grade of some of the same technology that I already use in my Canon Powershot A95.

In order to do this right, I'll need a very large Compact Flash card that can be written to at the fastest possible speed. The Lexar Media 2-Gigabyte 80X Pro Series looks like a good choice. If I wanted to economize, there's a 1-Gigabyte version of the same product.

The lens that we would want to shoot finish line photos at a pro cycling race could easily cost us a lot of money. If you remember the article about the photo that professional sports photographer Harvey Levine took of me riding my mountain bike, he used a 400mm F/2.8 Nikkor lens for that. The cost estimate on it was $6,000 used. Most people rent it.

The closest Canon lens available through Amazon.com and its affiliates is a Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L USM Super Telephoto Lens. It's much cheaper and probably significantly slower. Some people say it's fast enough for sports and that might be true if the action is coming right at you, as in a pro cycling race finish line shot.

If I'm shooting, I want something smaller so I can use it without a tripod or monopod. How about the Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM Telephoto Lens? That's half the cost of the 400mm Canon lens, plus it's significantly smaller, lighter, and faster. I can deal with only having a 200mm telephoto lens if I have a photographer's vest. About the only thing to think about here is the lack of image stabilization.

If I need something to stabilize my shot I'm going to try a Manfrotto 684B Bogen Neotec Monopod, although I'm sure someone will come along and tell me I'm wrong. I've never purchased a monopod before, what do I know?

The whole rig, camera, memory card, lens, and monopod will set us back something like $2450 and we'll also get a Canon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 autofocus lens for the shots a normal person's camera could take. This setup won't turn me into Graham Watson overnight, but I'll be a thousand times more likely to get the shot that they use on the cover of VeloNews or Cycle Sport than I am with my PowerShot A95.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

About a month ago, I reported that I installed a second computer on my desk, an AMD Athlon XP 2500+-based tower system with a 17-inch flat panel display running at SXGA resolution (1280 x 1024).

I've been trying to figure out how to maximize my blogging efficiency and the number one thing I craved was more screen space to fit two windows side-by-side without overlapping. My choices as I saw them were as follows:

1. Replace my 17-inch SXGA flat panel with a new 20 or 21-inch DVI-driven Flat Panel that can run UXGA (1600 x 1200) like the Samsung 213-T.

   The total cost when you throw in a new PCI Express video card like the ABIT RX600 is between $950 and $1,100, depending on where you shop and which models of each device you buy. That results in a 46 percent increase in screen space.

2. Add a second 17-inch SXGA flat panel and buy an AGP video card that supports dual displays. I already have a Samsung SyncMaster 770 that I like very much, so I would want to try to find another one of those reconditioned or through eBay so that it matched the other flat panel as closely as possible. If I had to buy a matched set of 17-inch SXGAs, I might go for the SAMSUNG SyncMaster 712N. The video card for this setup could be as simple as the ATI Technologies Radeon 7000 Graphics Card with 32MB of DDR memory. ATI's a good choice because they provide Hydravision which adds a number of multiple monitor productivity tools to most Microsoft operating systems.

   The total cost of the dual flat panel setup is more like $750 to $850, if you had to buy both flat panels. I only needed one, so my cost would be more like $400. This configuration would double my screen space.
   

What would you have done?

I went for the second flat panel. It seemed like a no-brainer because I am a web developer and weblogger who does some photo editing. I don't need the ultra-fast response that a gamer might want. If I needed the speed and the screen space, I probably would have spent the money and bought the 21-inch flat panel instead.

Some of Operation Gadget readers will question the fact that I didn't even consider a flat panel like the Hewlett-Packard L2335 Widescreen LCD Monitor or something slightly smaller that can run at 1920 x 1200 (a 16:9 ratio). These units are more expensive because manufacturers are trying to shift production to HDTV-friendly geometries and encourage demand for them with extensive advertising. I'll buy a Macintosh or a Media Center PC if I want an HDTV-like experience.

Two analog flat panels running at SXGA are sharp enough and fast enough for my application. So, I'll save the $500 to $700 I otherwise would have spent for my next gadget purchase.

Look for a photo of the newly enhanced Blogging Workstation at the end of this week, after I have time to receive my new equipment and install it. [ Thanks to Ed Anuff and Martin O'Donnell for technical advice / review of the configuration options. ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Dan Washburn of ShanghaiDiaries.com visited 18 Chinese provinces on a single trip recently. Now he's reported on how each of his electronic gadgets fared during the trip. Included in his report are evaluations of the:

• 40-Gigabyte iPod from Apple,
• Media Reader for iPod from Belkin,
• Backup Battery Pack for iPod from Belkin,
• iTalk iPod Voice Recorder from Griffin Technology,
• iPAQ h2215 Pocket PC from Hewlett-Packard,
• PM828C Compact Flash GPRS Mobile Internet Card from Panda,
• Foldable keyboard for iPAQ from HP,
• eTrex from Garmin,
• PowerShot S30 from Canon, and
• PowerShot A80 from Canon.

I particularly liked what Dan had to say about the PowerShot A80:

... this little camera saved my ass, and it does everything my PowerShot S30 did � and more.

With the S30, I was often forced to take more vertical shots than I would like to due to the way the camera focuses. The A80 fixed that issue, by adding focus hot spots throughout the field of view. The S30 only had three hot spots, left to right across a horizontal shot. The A80 has nine hot spots, located everywhere. So now, horizontal landscape shots can now have the sky and the land in focus and colored properly. What a concept.

The A80 also boasts a pull-out LCD monitor that swivels, rotates and turns. So the photographer doesn�t necessarily need to be pointed at the same thing the camera is. This is perfect for taking candid shots of people who think you�re busy looking at something else. Finally, the A80 uses four AA-batteries, not the Canon-only rechargables the S30 did. So, if you happen to be in a remote area, unable to access electricty, all you need to do is pack some extra batteries or buy some at a store.

The Powershot A80 is very similar to the Powershot A95 that I discussed yesterday. His findings sort of confirm my suspicions about why you might want an A95 if you were purchasing today, instead of an A75 or A85 (neither of which have the "Variangle" LCD (pull-out LCD monitor that swivels).

Kathleen and I visited Guilin, Yangshuo, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen in 1996, and our experience with use of technology was similar to Dan's. If you venture outside of major cities take your ruggedest, most flexible gear, otherwise you may be disappointed. I'm surprised that he tried to bring a Mac-formatted iPod with him. That seems unlikely to be useful, even eight years after my visit to China.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

MacMinute pointed out that Apple has pre-announced a sale that will take place on the day after Thanksgiving, Friday, November 26, 2004. The sale will involve both the Apple Online Store and Apple Retail Stores throughout the United States.

The "Black Friday Sale" has a dedicated page on the Apple website: http://www.apple.com/retail/thanksgiving/. I could use an iPod, if anyone's buying.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

MobileBurn published a terrific review of the Sony Ericsson Akono HBH-600, a Bluetooth headset that is compatible with a large number of mobile phones. The Akono HBH-600 is very similar in outward appearance to the HBH-65, its predecessor. The difference is that the HBH-600 tries to separate background noise from conversation in order to conserve battery power. This increases battery life significantly. As reviewer Michael Oryl said:

This kind of technology is going to force me to rethink the way I test headsets in the future. In a real world scenario, you are likely to get an amount of talk time much closer to the 4 hours than the torture test's 2 hours, as a very large part of human conversation consists of silence. But as always, your milage may vary.

The torture test that MobileBurn has used in the past is to send a continuous stream of music through the microphone on the headset and to have a PC paired with the headset send the music back to the the earpiece.

The results of MobileBurn's HBH-600 test indicate that they are evaluating products in a very conscientious manner. I will look for more opportunities to highlight their reviews in the future.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

CNET News.com reported that flash memory manufacturers Samsung Electronics and Toshiba have slashed prices in order to preserve their dominant market shares. These companies are under pressure from Infineon Technologies, Micron Technology which are recent entrants into the market.

These companies are wholesale manufacturers. The players in the retail market, Lexar Media, SanDisk, SimpleTech, and Viking InterWorks are passing the savings on to us through retailers like Amazon.com and their affiliates.

An example of the kind of deals that are out there today is the Lexar Media 512 MB CompactFlash card. It can be had for less than $100 and the price seems to be dropping relentlessly. Good deals are also available on MMC and Secure Digital, SmartMedia, XD cards, and Memory Sticks.

I wish I needed flash memory as much as I need gasoline in my day-to-day life. If you are in the market for one of these devices, look for the sweet spot from a pricing perspective. In the Compact Flash market, the price differentiator seems to be transfer speed: 6-megabit-per-second and 9 to 10-megabit-per-second are common transfer rates. You have to decide whether the difference in these transfer rates matter to you. For instance, in some cases your digital camera may be able to take pictures more quickly with a faster Compact Flash card.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Fazal Majid asked an important question on Saturday in an entry on his weblog entitled Are Americans becoming second-class consumers? He cites several situations where manufacturers shipped products with the same name in two different markets, but the U.S. version had fewer features or lower quality components than the equivalent product destined for other markets. He cites:

• the Sony Clie PEG-TH55 Handheld, which ships without Bluetooth in the U.S. This was discussed on Operation Gadget on March 5.
• The Canon EOS Digital Rebel with 18-55mm Lens, which "has the smooth and fast USM ultrasonic motor in Japan, but uses the inferior AFD micro-motor in the US". That's news to me.
• The Epson Stylus Photo 2200 Inkjet Printer, which "does not include in the US the gray balancer, special software and calibration sheets used to improve the neutrality of black and white prints."

Majid also cites laptops and portable electronics imported by vendors like Dynamism that U.S. subsidiaries of international electronics companies consider poor fits for the largest single electronics market in the world.

These are all good points. But, when we discuss products that make it to the U.S. market late or not at all, how about GSM phones like the Nokia 6600 that's been out in Europe and Asia for months, but has only been made available in the USA by T-Mobile within the last week? This phone is hot and it's hard to understand why Nokia would not want to ship as many of these in this country as it could. I'd think this would be particularly important, considering Nokia's recent problems achieving predicted handset sales volumes.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dylan Tweney of Mobile PC Magazine recently reviewed the Canon i80 Color Bubble Jet Printer and liked it a lot. He said:

Unlike most portable printers, the i80 doesn't ask you to compromise on print quality. Black-and-white text printouts are clear and crisp.... Text printed on general-purpose paper shows a little ink bleeding around the edges of letters, which gives a slightly fuzzy appearance to very small type and to the edges of bold display type. But when printing photos on photo-quality paper, the i80 really shines.

This printer is really portable, with an optional battery kit that allows you to print a couple of hundred pages with each charge. With the battery, the i80 is just over 5 pounds, without it, about 4.6. (Amazon.com says that the battery kit is for the i70 printer, but Canon's website says that it works with the i80 as well.)

The only real issues with the i80 are print costs and speed. Everyone knows that printing photos isn't cheap, and this printer is no different from most. Regarding its speed, Dylan said:

Although Canon rates the i80 at 14 pages per minute for black-and-white text, it delivered only a tenth of that-- 1.2 pages per minute in our tests. Switching the printer to draft mode doubled the speed, to 3.2 pages per minute, although draft-mode printouts look a little like dot-matrix printouts....

But, in the end, he really liked it: "At $250, the i80 is a great deal for mobile professionals and photo enthusiasts with limited desk space. The only real downside: At almost a buck a page for full-size photo paper, you'll need to exhibit some restraint when cranking out those prints or you'll soon find your paper costs exceeding that of the printer itself."

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I look at buying home photo printers from time to time, and I always end up coming back to the part of the market that offers photo printing, photo scanning, and light duty printing and copying. If fax capability comes in the feature mix, so much the better.

CNET ran a review of the Canon MultiPass MP390 the other day and it caught my eye. I was interested because it looked like it might fit the bill. But, the review prominently said:

Small ink tanks and the lack of an automatic document feeder limit the MP390's potential for busy medium-size office use, however, and this machine doesn't scan slides or film, so digital photographers should turn instead to the six-ink Epson Stylus Photo RX500.

So, then I checked out the review of the Epson Stylus Photo RX500 and realized that this is a product that meets my needs better.

I like the RX500 because it makes has a good scanner that includes a slide and negative scanning adapter. It produces good prints of photos, although it is on the slow side, and text and graphic output is not quite as good. The RX500 also has slots for digital camera memory cards, as many photo-oriented printers now do.

I think that photo printers have to use ink efficiently in order to be worth buying, no matter what you pay for the printer itself. The RX500 uses six separate ink tanks. This seems to be an economical setup, in that individual colors are only used as needed. CNET's review says:

In terms of consumables, the Epson Stylus Photo RX500 was on a par with other six-ink photo inkjets we've seen, averaging $1.05 per page when printing our 8.5x11 test photo. If you print mostly 4x6 photos, your real-world costs will be about half that. Unlike HP and Lexmark, Epson uses separate ink tanks, so you replace only the color that runs out instead of buying a new multicolor cartridge.

This is a good printer/scanner for the money although it probably wouldn't be the only printer I'd have in my home office if I did a lot of work there. Nevertheless, it's strengths (scanning and printing photos) are obvious.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Toshiba's Storage Device Division is displaying design concepts for devices that could be built based with its 0.85-inch hard disk drive at CeBIT 2004 in Hannover, Germany. Reportedly, the 0.85-inch drives will have a capacity of 2 to 4 Gigabytes and begin quantity shipment in the third or fourth quarter of 2004.

To put 0.85-inch hard drives in perspective, think about products currently on the market. The Apple iPod mini contains a 1-inch Hitachi 4GB MicroDrive which is embedded in a CompactFlash card. The Toshiba 0.85-inch drive is 15 percent smaller and can be built into commesurately smaller devices, particularly if the drive is not packaged as a CompactFlash card. The specifications indicate that Toshiba is awfully close to the size that they would need to be in order to fit in an SD card.

Toshiba's concepts include a Multimedia Eyeglasses that have an embedded heads-up display, a Wristwatch PDA with a high definition capabilities, a Digital Wallet/Data Key, and an MP3 Headset. [ image courtesy of Toshiba ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tom's Hardware published a very helpful review of the Logitech QuickCam Orbit. I guess the reviewer really likes this webcam, because he begins the review as follows:

Simply put, the Logitech QuickCam Orbit is a superb high-end Webcam which stands out from the rest thanks to amazing technical innovations, for less than $130.

When sending a video message or taking part in videoconference, a software utility coupled with a precision engine follows the filmed face through an angle of 180 degrees from side to side and 90 degrees up and down, so the face is always perfectly centered in middle of the image.

When I first started talking about the QuickCam Orbit back in November, I didn't really take it seriously. Maybe this was because of the way it was described in Time Magazine. But, after reading a review like the one in Tom's Hardware, I'm much more interested in the product.

One thing that the review doesn't seem to address is platform compatibility. According to the information on the Logitech website, the QuickCam Orbit works with both PCs and Macintoshes (running OS X). If you are a Mac user, check the product factsheet to ensure that you are satisfied with the software that the webcam supports before you set your heart on having it.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the early articles that appeared on Operation Gadget was Logitech QuickCam Orbit: Cool New Webcam that May Not Make It in Time for the Holidays. Well, I checked Amazon.com this morning, and the QuickCam Orbit is now available. So, if you're interested, you could probably order it and receive it in time for the holidays.

As I said in the previous article, the interesting feature of this webcam is that it uses face-tracking technology to keep you in the camera's field of view as you move around your desk. This means that the camera moves and focuses by itself. Time Magazine put likened the movement to that of a Jim Henson character, so it's motion must seem a little idiosyncratic when you're sitting nearby it.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just noticed a new webcam called the
Logitech QuickCam Orbit that's got an interesting feature set. It uses face-tracking technology to keep you in the field of view as you move about your desk. If you are the kind of person who likes to pace during conference calls, this may be your opportunity to get into video conferencing.

Logitech has done a good job getting the word out. They got a photo and a favorable mention in the November 17th issue of Time Magazine. According to the article, "Logitech's QuickCam Orbit... with it's unblinking camera eye and luminous red LED, evokes the HAL 9000, though its quirky, jerky movements suggest the work of Jim Henson."

There's only one problem: the product is still unavailable; So much so that Amazon doesn't have a picture of it in its on-line catalog yet. I'm always surprised when companies do a good job promoting a product for the holiday season, but fail to deliver it to retailers in time for people to choose it. If it starts arriving in the next week or 10 days, I guess they'll do OK. But the fact that they're not already in stock at the major on-line retailers is worrysome.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)