Out of the Box

A few weeks ago, I tried out the StarTech Wi-Fi Finder, which is nearly identical to an earlier product put out by prolific networking vendor ZyXel. Both look like extra large thumb drives with an LCD and display hotspot names as well as their channels. They have internal batteries that are recharged via USB and can actually also work as 802.11g network adapters, which might be helpful for a desktop as it’s been built into notebooks for some time. A third product in the vein from TrendNet, also released some time ago, added some embedded flash memory to the mix.

The granddaddy of the LCD-equipped hotspot locator is Canary Wireless’ Digital Hotspotter and it looks like the company — which has branched off into embedded wireless modules — will soon be taking the wraps off the pictured Digital Hotspotter 2..If nothing else, it seems to up the style of the original. What I’d really like to see in this category is a product that could confirm not only whether an access point was open, but whether it was actually providing Internet access by pinging some server somewhere.

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The reports turned out to be true. Despite Movie Gallery having both my email address and a direct digital link to my MovieBeam box, I received the official confirmation that the service was shutting down via quaint snail mail — quaint enough to arrive two days after the service was slated to be terminated. Moviebeam.com finally reflects the service’s defunct status.

There were still a few movies listed on the service for a while, but then the device began an unusual self-destruct procedure where it started erasing the titles featured on the service. I could just hear cries of “Dave… my mind is going.” in the background.I thought it somewhat poetic that the last film listed on my box was the Nicholas Cage movie Next.

Word on the street seems to be that — unlike the hard drive in the defunct RCA Akimbo box — the MovieBeam receiver’s hard drive is unfit for reuse due to use of an encryption chip (clearly developed before the current green trend) so it looks like the only souvenir I will keep from the product is its antenna that I’m going to try to reuse as a picture frame.

However, it’s not nearly as cool as the little Newscatcher pyramid that I still have from the vintage 1997 AirMedia Live push service.

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Since the end of the iTunes song giveaway at Starbucks, I’ve noticed the addition of performance videos in promotion of James Taylor’s One Man Band live album. I’ve also seen more consecutive songs by the same artists from the same album, such as the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss duet album Raising Sand.

In my experience since the launch, the performance of the Tunes integration has been somewhat inconsistent. I intermittently get messages in iTunes saying that it cannot connect within the Starbucks and then the song list suddenly appears (and then disappears later). This seems unrelated to Wi-Fi as my connection stays active even during these period

All this leaves me wondering more about the system that Starbucks uses to drive the Sony LCD TVs in its stores. Is a PC mounted behind the screen? Is the application Flash-based? How often are new playlists downloaded?

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For most of the time I’ve been aware of his platform proclivities, my cousin Alan, a cardiologist, was not much of a Mac fan. However, he recently purchased a MacBook Pro and is loving it. I think he is an interesting case study for how Apple is attracting more Windows users.

He first bought an iBook for his wife, a computer novice. Then he had interest in a way to run two computationally intensive Windows-only medical programs on a Mac. After debating Parallels and VMWare, he chose the latter. The result, he says, is just "amazing"; the programs are running well in VMWare’s "unity" mode which allows the running of Windows applications in the context of the Mac operating environment. He also praised the program’s automatic configuration for Windows XP.

He’s not blind to the Mac’s faults and still prefers the way Roxio dealt with rewriteable DVDs and CDs so he’s using that Wndows program under VMWare as well.

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The potential of electronic ink as a watch technology was dramatically demonstrated when Seiko showed off its $2.200  Spectrum bangle available only in Japan back in 2005. A similarly priced sequel is in the offing.

Nevertheless, a Hong Kong-based company called Art Technology is offering a more traditional design at a far more affordable price of $250 under the Phosphor watches brand. Still, I have to agree with this Gizmodo review that these initial faces fail to exploit the technology’s potential. The Phosphor Web site characterizes its current offerings as "the first in an entire line of next generation watches" so I am looking forward to future releases.

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Sorry, Woz, I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it to Segway Polo camp this summer, but this weekend’s broadcast match reminded me that this month marks the sixth anniversary of the once highly anticipated Segway HT. One reason the device hasn’t broken out much past the tech elite, law enforcement and tour groups has been that its price remains at more than $5,000.

Part of that is likely due to low volumes. According to an article cited in the Segway’s Wikipedia entry, Segway had sold fewer than 25,000 transporters as of September 2006

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With Blu-ray and HD-DVD being relatively new on the video scene, it’s not surprising that each has a logo to let consumers know that a disc is compatible with its respective formats. The HD-DVD one is an extension of the DVD logo (pictured), which informed consumers that the shiny disc they were considering contained more than just music. Each of the major video game console vendors also brands compatible software with the appropriate logo as well.

Thinking about my Vudu column posted today on Engadget and the news that the company is offering The Bourne Ultimatum in high-definition, I’m wondering how consumers other than Vudu owners might know that the movie is available on the service. Awareness of broadband video services is very low. It would benefit several companies at this early stage to develop some kind of logo signifying that a movie was available for legal digital rental or purchase. There have been a few on-air promotions showing that certain video content is available via iTunes, but I’ve mostly seen these for television shows.

It may be hopeless as, unlike with physical media, many of the video download services (iTunes, Xbox Live Marketplace, Vudu, Fanfare) are vertically integrated. However, a broadband video alliance might also have more leeway in negotiating with studios for better terms, such as the ludicrous 24-hour limit to finish watching a movie once it’s started (not that I’ve been burned by that… twice). None of the services (except maybe Vongo) seem to be competing on usage terms.

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Technology retailer TigerDirect seemed to have had its heart in the right place when it rebranded Black Friday "Pink Friday" in honor of a campaign to aid the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast cancer charity. I ordered something from the retailer a few days later and, lo, it arrived today in a pink box in honor of the effort. Even the invoice came on stationery with pink print. Kudos to Tiger Direct for some fun follow-through on the Pink Friday campaign and for supporting the charity..

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With the 2008 Macworld Expo around the chronological corner and Apple finally in (and by the looks of initial success, for the long term) the cell phone and set-top categories, rumor-mongers are running out of easy targets. One of these is an Apple ultraportable or MacBook mini. It’s not an unreasonable one at all as Sony, for example, is already in the sub-12" market.

In general, ultraportable notebooks have been slow sellers in the U.S. That was before the invasion of the cheap Asus EEE (and coming competitors) but Apple isn’t generally known for swooping in at the low end of the market.. Also, Sony has the right idea in embedding WWAN connectivity in its ultaportables; Apple, on the other hand, has even put off 3G in its cell phones. Still, Apple’s notebook market share continues to grow, so the timing may be right.

As I’ve written, Apple can take a few different paths here. The company could do a great job of something integrated with Foleo-like physical dimensions (sorry, 7" is just too small for OS X (and arguably other desktop operating systems, too), bundling an iWork suite for more of a mobile productivity appliance for $599. If it went this route, the device might not even be called a MacBook. But if Apple’s notebook family grows by shrinking next month, it’s far more likely that it will be a premium-priced 12" MacBook Pro with an SSD.

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The Beeb reports on Western Digital’s decision to limit file sharing of certain kinds of files using its Anywhere Access software. This is likely to generate as much if not more backlash than the Belkin router “parental controls” spamming fiasco of 2003. It smacks of someone in legal cautioning the company about limiting liability, but hardware companies are better off excluding the feature wholesale than driving bad PR in taking the moral high grand regarding what their customers should be able to do. Let DRM do its job. Or not.

This move is particularly ill-timed as more options are opening up for the legal sharing of music.

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