The Technology Tailor Blog: A Low-Tech Approach to Consumer Electronics

More Super: At the Stadium or On the HDTV?

I live in Chicago, so my Chicago Bears typically play in the freezing-cold open-air Soldier Field. It's not just sort of cold there. It's so cold that the freeze gets into your bones (and I'm not a little guy), and you're still cold when you get home. The next day, you're still cold. In the hot shower, after a day at Soldier Field, I'm still freezing inside.

Which means that on most Sundays of the year, there's no question that I'd rather be parked on my couch, munching on snacks, and enjoying the room-temperature environment. Mostly, I'm enjoying watching my Bears play on our HDTV.

You can just see so much more of the game. You don't miss plays. (Sometimes when I watch football at the stadium, I feel like I do not receive adequate warning before a play begins. It just starts, and by the time you figure out where to look, it's over. I think the quarterback should be required to somehow signal the crowd that he is about to begin the play.) You see endless replays from endless angles. You sometimes get helpful commentary from the announcers. And, again, your body temperature does not drop.

Next Sunday, however, my Bears play in the Super Bowl. In Miami. Where it's not freezing.

So the question is -- if money were no object (tickets are currently running between $3,000 and $6,000 each) -- would you rather watch the Super Bowl live in Miami, or live on your HDTV?

Me, I'm watching it in HD glory at home. Twenty-one years between Super Bowls is too long to be missing plays!

What about you? Which is better, a high-definition Super Bowl, or a Super Bowl live, at the stadium?

Five Potential Problems for the iPhone

With its new iPhone, which is scheduled for a June release, Apple intends to rock the cell phone market much like its iPod revolutionized the music player category.

Thing is, it's a different time in consumer electronics. And a very different market.

Therefore, five potential problems Apple faces with its iPhone:

1. It's too expensive.

The eight-gigabyte iPhone model will run a cool $600. An iPod Nano with the same amount of memory costs $250, or about 60 percent less. Six hundred dollars is a whole lot of money for a music player that can only hold 2,000 songs.

Sure, it's a phone and a Web device in addition to being a music player, but most people already have cell phones. And those who are going to buy an iPod have pretty much already bought it (note the miniscule increase in iPod sales for 2006).

The point: only business users can justify $500 or $600 for a phone. And this ain't a business device. It's certainly not going to replace my Blackberry's email functionality.

The iPhone is meant to become my wife's (or my parents') next iPod. But they need more than 8 gigabytes of music storage. And if you're anything like my family, you'll be hard-pressed to justify spending so much money on a device that replicates the functionality of gadgets you already own.

On the other hand, Apple has clearly proven that it can successfully sell a product (the iPod) that costs more than most of its competitors.

2. Apple announced the iPhone way too early.

I interviewed Rob Enderle, a technology analyst for the Enderle Group out of San Jose, Calif. for Monday's Chicago Tribune column. Here's what he had to say:

"Apple almost never announces a product in advance of shipment," Enderle said. "It's starting to look like Apple is getting deperate and they're announcing things before they're ready for market."

Why is a five-month lead time an issue? Because the cell phone industry moves really fast. Far faster then the MP3 player manufacturers moved in the late 1990s.

"They're on a cycle time that runs on months, not years," said Enderle. "And they've given everyone time to duplicate a lot of the capabilities."

Especially the really cool ones, like the finger-touch-screen, that the media has been fawning over.

So don't be surprised if similar competing products -- or, at least, features -- hit the market from other manufacturers before June.

3. Battery Life

Estimates have the battery life at five hours (not sure if this is talk time, standby time, or neither). And, the battery is not replacable, meaning no spares. My iPod doesn't go five hours now. My Blackberry -- I use the new Pearl -- can go significantly longer for both talk time and standby time. 

But the iPhone will be playing music, showing videos, surfing the Internet AND making calls. Five hours? Ouch.

4. Slow Network Speed

The iPhone will run on Cingulars Edge network, which averages data speeds between 75 and 135 kilobytes per second. Other companies' networks (and some of these are still being rolled out) run many times faster. Much more on this in this Information Week article.

What's the problem with this? Really slow Web browsing. Slow e-mail attachment downloads. Slow iPhone.

5. A  Bigger Boon to Cingular than Apple

"I would argue the iPhone is bigger for Cingular than it is for Apple," Enderle said. "Cingular stores will use it for store traffic, but once a person gets in there, they'll down-sell it. The biggest advantage is it will drive store traffic into Cingular."

Meaning, you'll go in to look at the iPhone but walk out with any Cingular phone you want, all of which will be cheaper than the iPhone.

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What has happened this week has followed the typical pattern for Apple announcements:

1. Steve Jobs announces an exciting new product.

2. Media wets itself. (See my blog post immediately below this one.)

3. People start asking questions.

"This is what happens when Steve gets on stage," Enderle concluded. "People say 'hey this is gonna take over the world.' Then you think about it, and all of a sudden it's not that great."

The iPhone: A Big Freaking Deal

Talk about a big freaking deal. Today, years of intense, breathless rumors -- first on blogs and then in the mainstream media -- finally proved true when Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, announced the  company's first mobile phone.

Called the iPhone, this baby is sleek, slender and incredibly sexy. Functionally, it sounds almost too good to be true:

It's a full-blown iPod music and video player.

It's a full-blown cell phone, too.

It also seems to be a fully-equipped smart phone:

It runs Apple's computing operating system, Mac OS X (for ten).

It synchronizes everything -- contacts, calendar, task list, iTunes music library, your digital photos, your videos -- from your computer, Mac or  Windows.

Bluetooth and Wifi connectivity is built in.

Note that the picture at right hardly has any buttons. That's because they're all on the screen. It's a "multi-touch" display, meaning you can hold down shift with one finger, and the letter you're typing with another -- on the screen!

And I did say "finger." No stylus here. “We are all born with the ultimate pointing device—our fingers," Jobs said during his keynote at the San Francisco-based MacWorld conference. "And iPhone uses them to create the most revolutionary user interface since the mouse.”

There's even a built-in sensor that disables the touch-screen when you're holding it up to your ear, so you don't accidentally push buttons.

The phone will be sold in two models: a 4-gigabyte version for $499 and an 8-gigabyte model for $599. It will be sold through Cingular only...at first.

Release date: June, 2007.

If you read my work or listen to my radio show, you know that I focus on products that matter for us consumers. If it's "not for most people," I say so. In fact, I say so quite often while covering new technology. I said it for many of the products I saw at this week's Consumer Electronics Show (think  freaky detached robotic Elvis head that talks and blinks...really).

But this iPhone, it's for most people. It's for us. It's made by Apple, which means it'll be a joy to use. And it will do what it does -- everything, apparently -- very elegantly.

That said, a single product that does so much is bound to have faults. And this is a new device, which means there will be bugs to work out. Most new Apple products have to have kinks worked out in their early weeks on the market.

It's also quite expensive. This is a lot of money for most consumers to spend on a phone. Sure, it's not much more than a phone plus an iPod, but most people who want both products probably have them already.

Still, a single product from a single company has stolen the thunder from the entire consumer electronics industry's big event.

Remember when the metal-necked iMac desktop computer made the cover of Time Magazine during wartime? Watch your national magazine covers this week and next.

Because this new iPhone is a big freaking deal.

President Bush Uses The Google

President Bush did an interview on CNBC with Maria Bartiromo this week.

She asked him if he had ever Googled anyone.

According to CNBC's transcript of the interview, this is what he said:

Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see that. I forgot the name of the program, but you get the satellite and you can — like, I kind of like to look at the ranch on Google, reminds me of where I want to be sometimes. Yeah, I do it some.

The name of the program, of course, is Google Maps. Or, if he was looking at satellite images, he was using Google Earth.

The Yahoo has a maps tool too.

Question: Doesn't being President come with access to the government's own satellite technology which (I'm just guessing here) is a bit better than Google's?

 

Later in the interview, our president had this to say. Please, follow along:

“I tend not to email or — not only tend not to email, I don’t email, because of the different record requests that can happen to a president. I don’t want to receive emails because, you know, there’s no telling what somebody’s email may — it would show up as, you know, a part of some kind of a story, and I wouldn’t be able to say, `Well, I didn’t read the email.’ `But I sent it to your address, how can you say you didn’t?’ So, in other words, I’m very cautious about emailing.”

Isn't there some kind of super-secure, classified White House e-mail that his I.T. folks could implement?

Imagine the conversation if President Bush had to make a technical support call. Perhaps he would get a technician in India. The kind who repeats everything you say back to you before responding (this makes the conversation needlessly long and always frustrating). That would be a fun chat to listen in on.

War of the Web Browsers: Firefox 2.0 vs. Internet Explorer 7

Browser bedlam!

The New Internet Explorer 7

Last week, to much anticipation, Microsoft finally released its new Internet Explorer version 7. Playing catch-up to its main competitor, Mozilla's Firefox browser, the new Explorer features:

• Improved security (protection against phishing sites, which try to obtain off your personal infomation, is built in).
• Tabbed browsing, allowing multiple Web pages to be open in the same Window. Think of Excel tabs in a Web browser.
• A pop-up window blocker.
• An integrated search engine bar.
• Better RSS functionality, which automatically pulls in news and blog stories from sites you subscribe to.

These are nice improvements. And IE7 appears to be more secure than its predecessor, making it a must-have program from every Windows user. And since it's free, there's no reason not to get it.

You can download it here now. (Within a month, Microsoft will begin "pushing" this browser onto your computer. This means you'll be automatically prompted to download it.)

Thing is, nearly all of these features have been available on Mozilla's Firefox for years.

The New Firefox 2

And, on the heels of Microsoft's long-awaited announcement, Mozilla today made its own lesser-hyped product release: Firefox version 2.

The new Firefox touts its security and speed improvements as well as:

• Improved on  tabbed browsing functionality, letting you close each tab individually with [X] buttons.
• Also, built-in spell checking for blog posts like these make it harder to make mistakes.
• Finally, "live" bookmarks and page titles display important information from your Web pages (think eBay price, auction time left, etc.)

You can download the new Firefox here.

Mac Users, Who Loves Ya?

Firefox 2 does. Internet Explorer 7 does not. There's no Mac version available of IE7. So we Mac users are "limited" to the highly-secure Safari browser, made by Apple, or the highly secure Firefox browser. For what it's worth, I use Firefox.

What Should You Do?

Windows users should download both IE7 and Firefox 2. They're not mutually exclusive, and there's no reason to limit yourself to just one. Still, I suspect you'll find yourself using Firefox more than Explorer.

Mac users should not think twice about downloading Firefox 2. I think it's quite a lot better than Safari.

The best part about these "browser wars" is that all parties involved are free.

Enjoy!

How to Cool That Flaming-Hot Laptop

I don't know about your laptop, but my new MacBook laptop operates like a stove top.

For some reason, many of today's laptops give off a hellish heat.

When I brought up my burning-hot MacBook on Saturday's radio show, callers phoned in their complaints with Gateway, Sony and H-P laptops operating at high temperatures too.

Which led to these two fantastic discoveries:

Several listeners recommended these two sub-$25 solutions for not burning yourself "down there" when you've got a steaming laptop.

The Lapinator: A heat barrier designed to go between your laptop and you, the Lapinator uses "Thinsulate Insulation" to keep things cool for about $25. It's pictured at right

The Coolpad: Another laptop heat blocker, available in two versions: a $20 travel version and a $25 "podium" unit that's pictured at left.

If your laptop's bottom is too hot to bear, these products can help. Your fellow consumers went to the trouble of phoning in to the radio show, unsolicited, to talk them up.

1,000 Scanned Photos For $50

One of the best and most useful digital photography deals around right now is at a California-based services that will scan up to 1,000 of your printed photos for a measly $50. If you think about the amount of time it would take to scan just 100 pictures yourself -- several hours easy for most flat-bed scanners -- this becomes something close to the steal of the century.

The service is called Shoebox Reprints.

Whenever I talk about it on my radio show or bring it up anywhere, I always get e-mails that ask something like "What was that shoebox company that scans old photos?"

Here's how it works:

You send in your printed pictures, preferably via FedEx.

The company runs your shots through their high-speed scanner, and sends you back a DVD with digital photos and your originals.

1,000 pictures scanned for just $50. And many hours of tedium saved.

It's a beautiful thing.

Who's Talking About Going Digital

If you've never listened to a podcast, here's your chance! The current edition of the Digital Photography Show, a podcast hosted by Scott Sherman and Michael Stein, features a lengthy interview with me about my new book, Going Digital.

The Digital Photography Show mostly focuses on topics of interest to photo enthusiasts. Things like tips for shooting with digital SLR cameras, and PhotoShop techniques. It's free, and each show is packed with useful tips and suggestions.

To listen, just click here, and then click the play button under Show 16. Our interview begins around the 20th minute.

Also this week, Farah Silver, who edits the highly useful SheFindsMom.com site kindly put up a review of Going Digital today. If you're a mom, have a look at SheFindsMom.com, as it lists countless "shopping finds." Yes, this site, along with its parent site, SheFinds.com, helps women shop. As if you need it! (My wife says you do.)

You can find Going Digital at Amazon.com for a measly $10. On my Web site, you can learn more on the Going Digital Home Page, which includes several excerpts.

The Magical Digital Picture Frame

If I were forced to pick a single digital photo product that represents the amazing things you can do with your pictures it would be the Ceiva Digital Photo Receiver.

I'll take it one step further:

If your parents or grandparents are around, whether they're technically-proficient or not, there's one gift you must purchase for them: The Ceiva Digital Photo Receiver.

It may be the warmest and fuzziest tech product currently on the market.

Here's an excerpt from my book, Going Digital, which ran in the Chicago Tribune yesterday.

Going Digital, by the way, as just released today from HarperCollins. It runs a measly $10 on Amazon.com and is full of neat ideas and projects for your digital pictures and home movies.

Excerpt from Going Digital:
Mom and the 'Magical Picture Frame'

Shirley loves getting pictures. She has children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews, even grandnieces and grandnephews. Once a week, sometimes more, Shirley's daughter, Joyce, sends her pictures of the family.

"I'm the keeper of the family photos," says Joyce, 58. "Most of the family members send me pictures, and I'm in charge of getting them to Mom."

And so Joyce receives the pictures, sorts through them, and sends them along to her 87-year-old mother.

The pictures don't go to Shirley as printed photos. Instead, they land squarely on her digital picture frame, where they play as a slide show, rotating until Joyce sends the next update.

Shirley received a Ceiva Digital Photo Receiver (about $130, www.ceiva.com) for her 85th birthday. It consists of a 5-by-7--inch LCD screen, surrounded by a wood frame. It plugs into an electrical outlet for power and a regular phone line for receiving pictures. Then, like a TiVo digital video recorder, in the middle of every night the Ceiva "frame" dials in to check for photo updates. Any new photos are downloaded, replacing older ones. The Ceiva receiver can store 30 pictures at a time on its internal memory.

How does the frame know which pictures to download? It gets only pictures that you upload. Joyce uploads the photos she wants to share with her mom to Ceiva's Web site, and then every night the frame checks for and downloads any pictures. Anyone who knows the password can add pictures to Shirley's frame, which means she can get pictures from family members from all over the country.

"Every morning, Mom goes downstairs and checks the Ceiva first thing," Joyce said. "And she says, `Oh my! There are new pictures!' And she calls Joycie at 7 a.m."

This is an ingenious, effective and incredibly rewarding way to share your pictures with the non-technical family and friends in your life. No computer is required. No high-speed Internet connection is needed. Just an electrical outlet and a phone jack.

Often, Joyce adds text to her pictures, explaining details such as dates and locations. These annotations can be added on the Ceiva Web site next to each photo. She also uses the frame to send her mom digital holiday cards. Joyce calls herself an "exhibiting amateur photographer" and uses her favorite artistic shots in the cards she sends to her mom's frame.

All of this leads to the ultimate bottom line for any kind of digital tool: It makes Shirley happy.

"Oh, there's nothing like it for her. This is an absolute proven joy gift. It's ensured happiness."

Want more from Going Digital? You can visit the Going Digital Home Page on my Web site.

The Launch of My First Book, Going Digital

I can't tell you how excited I am about the launch of my first book,
Going Digital.

After years of work, sweat, and at times, frustration, my little book is hitting the market! It's a 200-page paperback about the amazing things you can do with the digital photos on your hard drive and the home movies on your shelf.

Today (one day before release), Going Digital maintained an Amazon.com sales ranking of between 500 and 700 for most of the day. This is a terrific position for a new book in what is essentially a new genre: technology advice.

Lifestyle technology.

The goal: The New York Times Best Seller list! Ironically, in publishing, the more people that buy the book, the more people that buy the book. Readers reach readers.

Thank you a thousand times for your support.

I'll have much more about the process that led to the this book's publication, as well as excerpts, examples and lessons from Going Digital, in upcoming posts.