Once again I have not posted in a while. Not like there haven’t been things to write about, the palm pre, iphone 3gs, n97 all released last month. Unfortunately I’ve been too busy to put my thoughts down. Finally got caught up on my podcasts today so hopefully getting back to writing isn’t far behind.
Using _flashy_ gadgets in the _real_ world
Nokia N97 Picture Gets Clearer
Nokia N97 (via Nokia USA)
And now my favorite tech story of the week Nokia Europe and Nokia USA both began accepting pre-orders for the N97 yesterday. I have been excited for this phone for a while now. Mainly because I LOVE my N95, and it is currently being held together with electrical tape and a prayer. ( Photo of my dinged up N95 is in another post ) I am optimistic about the new OS they are putting together for this device aside from some memory issues I have had good luck with the N95’s S60 series 3 software, so I am looking forward to putting the series 5 software on the N97 through it’s paces.
When I saw the N97 at CES shortly after it’s launch in Europe I couldn’t _really_ play with it since it was littlerly tethered to a Nokia rep. What I did see was impressive, which was a bit surprising since I believe this one of the first touch phones offered by Nokia.
I am slightly concerned about the camera on the N97 since it appears to have different optics and sensor then the N96. ( from visual inspection only ) The Nokia rep at CES in January assured me it is the same camera from the N96.
I am going to to be in the market for a new phone this year. Most likely candidate is the N97 flowed closely by the E75 which arrived in Nokia Stores today. There is an outside chance that the Palm Pre may get me to move back to Sprint but I’m not holding my breath. My experience with Nokia and the N95 in particular leans me towards them. Another option is always to keep using the N95 since it works perfectly fine, just looks like its been through a war (I’m pretty hard on phones)
The Kindle Grows Up
Amazon Kindle DX (via amazon.com)
In a product market where everything seems to be getting smaller Amazon released a new version of the Kindle today, the Kindle DX. The Kindle DX is considerably larger then the current Kindle 2 or the original Kindle. The Kindle DX appears have generally the same features of the Kindle 2 with some big additions.
The largest (pun intended 
) is the screen which is now just over 9″ this is something that seemed to come up when the Kindle 2 was released as a complaint, then quickly fade into the background. I don’t feel screen size was something that people were really clambering for. That being said after seeing the shots of how it displayed graphs and tables it dose seem very appealing.
The most important feature added was NATIVE pdf support. This opens up so many possibilities I can’t even start to count them. This is definitely a feature that I want on my Kindle v1 ( which i currently own ). On the other hand I understand why it is only available on the larger display model. Since most PDFs are formatted for a 8.5×11 sheet of paper they would need to be considerably zoomed or paned on the smaller devices which would make them difficult to use. For this reason I’m not really expecting this feature to be added to the other Kindles currently out, even though I really would like it to be. PDFs open so many doors being able to ‘print’ a document I am working on to a PDF on my kindle . Using the O’Rieley store which sells books as PDFs. Pouring endless technical documents onto my Kindle for easy searching and reference.
Many people have commented that they wish it supported other formats nativity such as DOC, PPT, etc . My response would be why not just print a PDF of those files, not like you would really want to edit the files on the kindle, just make notes with the notation feature of the kindle and change the document when you get back to your computer. The Kindle is not the type of device that would do well editing documents due to the relativity slow response of the eInk display. I say, let it be an eReader not an eReader/Writer.
The last main feature they added was adding an accelerometer to the device so that automatically switches between landscape and portrait. I think amazon just wanted to join in on the accelerometer party , I am not overly excited about this. Not to mention I’m sure running that accelerometer all the time stunts the battery life. Depending on how accurate this is I would probably turn it off.
Now, with all this Amazon is trying to push into the textbook market, which I have always thought makes perfect sense for the Kindle’s earlier versions. They have signed some new partnerships with textbook companies and colleges to try this out this fall. Now, I’m not in college anymore ( wish I was sometimes ) but I think the big rub here is this only makes sense if the textbooks on the Kindle are significantly less then the printed version. I would want to be able to have a ROI of at most two semesters for the device, anything longer then that loses my interest quickly.
The other push Amazon is making is to attempt to rescue the newspaper industry. They announced today that NY Times, Boston Globe, and Washington Post will offer subsidized Kindles in exchange for a long term subscription to their paper on it. It remains to be seen how subsidized they will be, since the average rate for the newspaper subscription on the Kindle is about $10 I wouldn’t suspect that they will do much for the price.
Unlike some other people I have talked to today about it, I do think something like this could save the ‘Newsroom’ method of gathering and reporting news. $10/month especially if they are offering discounted devices and get a large number of people to bite may be enough to keep operations running. Even with a Kindle edition of a paper there will be some changes, but I think in generally they will be able to retain the ‘waterfall’ method of delivering news, employing staff reporters, and editors.
Ok, all this stuff is great, and as I was watching the live feed on Engadget I was all ready to buy one. (pretty much right after the PDF announcement) Then I saw a tweet after tweet scroll up on twitter mentioning the price $489. All of a sudden I was much less excited. Yes I should have expected this, much bigger, more features it’s gotta be more expensive. I guess I was hoping maybe they would lower the price of the Kindle 2 and make the Kindle DX $359. I think twitter user feiticeira put it best “Kindle DX = Damn Xpensive Kindle” Now I’m someone who actually didn’t balk at the original price of the Kindle but I do feel this is too much. We will see what deals the newspapers come up with, but unfortunately I won’t be running out to buy this one.
Excuses, and more news then I know what to do with
So it’s been too long since I posted, the short story is I have been busy, and generally in no mood to write when I get home. I plan on making up for it by hopefully getting May off with a bang since two of my favorite topics have had some major developments in the last few days the Nokia N97 and the Amazon Kindle line. I’m going to split them up into separate posts so…stay tuned.
PS If they both don’t make it up tonight you can blame my friend Erin, for hooking me on another TV show ‘The Unusuals’.
Seattle P-I To Print Last Issue Today
Seattle P-I Home Page
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer announced that it will print it’s last issue today 3/17/09. This is a sad thing for Seattle for sure, though they will still have a daily paper with The Seattle Times. There is something very different about reading a newspaper compared to a computer screen of even a eReader. Unfortunally daily printed newspapers don’t fit into how people are getting news today, or even into the news cycle as a whole.
While I am far from your typical news follower, but a good example of this is how I found out that tomorrow was the last day the PI was publishing. While listening one of my daily podcasts, Buzz Out Loud, someone in their chat room they monitor while taping mentioned it to the hosts. They hadn’t planned on talking about this story and may or may not have known that they were even announcing their last printing that day, but they took it and ran with it.
The little that I know about newspapers tells me they are not nearly that nimble, yes, someone could run into the printing room and shout ’stop the presses’ ( not just movie lore it can be done ) but the financial impact of that would be enormous. Plus, once the paper is printed and out the door it can’t be changed, the only way to amend it before the next edition would be to print an ‘Extra Edition’, again at a large financial impact. These are problems easily addressed with digital distribution. I have a feeling that we saw our last wide scale ‘Extra Edition’ printing in the US on 9/11/01.
Like I said there is something about ink on newsprint that is nice, but in order to survive I feel papers need to also have a digital supplement to their printed editions, much like CNN did with their cable channel. I don’t know any stats off hand but I’m sure even the 24hr cable news stations are being hurt with this push to online news delivery. CNN realised this and is one of the most popular sources for ‘reptuible’ news online.
All that being said when the Seattle P-I came out and said that they would be going to online only distribution the BOL podcast I mentioned before brought up it may be a prefect testbed for the ‘Hearst Reader’. Hearst owns the Seattle P-I and has come out saying that it would like to release its own eReader to compete with the Amazon Kindle, specifically in the newspaper and magazine markets. (InformationWeek) Seattle would be a logical market for Hearst to test out this technology due to its high number of people in the tech industry.
If Hearst can find a way to effectively sell advertising on such a platform to heavily subsidise the cost of the reader it could really work. I think this will happen before we see the prices come down due to cheaper materials or manufacturing processes.
GrandCentral gets Googlefied
Image: Google Voice Blog
Looks like Google has finally gotten around to bringing the GrandCentral site closer into the Google family as ‘Google Voice’. The site will get a make over that closely resembles the gmail interface. In fact it would have been really cool if it was integrated into gmail at some point, which still may happen down the line.
Some really interesting new features have been added the main ones that sounded appealing to me is the addition of text messaging to your Google Voice number, and also the ability to conference up to six parties. They also added an outdial service with similar rates to skype which others may find more interesting then me.
Right now I use GrandCentral as my ‘home’ number since I only have a cell phone and like the ability to turn off calls if I don’t want to get telemarketing calls on a friday night out or something like that. With these new features I may end up using it even more.
I am eagerly awating my GrandCentral account to be upgraded and I’ll let you know how the stuff actully works. In the mean time click through for the Google Voice Blog
Kindle 2 Thoughts
Photo: Amazon.com/Kindle2
From what I have been reading there are some fairly common complaints about the latest version of the Amazon Kindle. The most popular of these seem to be, lack of touch screen, no color screen, no ‘open-ness’ and price. All of these I think would be nice features to have, but would come at a cost. I currently own a first generation Kindle and don’t see myself upgrading to the newer version as there are not that many new features that are important to me. Tough if you are debating getting into the eReader game I don’t think you can go wrong with the Kindle 2
The touch screen addition is I think the most useful. The major problem with adding one to the Kindle would be price. The iRex Illiad has had an eReader with a touch screen for a little over a year now. There are a few reason the iRex isn’t widely know, the main one is there are so few out there starting at $750 not a whole lot of people are running out to pick one up. The other is while it does support PDF and other popular document formats they have not built a content system around it like Amazon has done for the Kindle. I think if Amazon were to buy iRex and offer a ‘Kindle Pro’ that was the touch screen Illiad and have access to the Kindle library you may see wider adoption. This leads me to what I really think Amazon should work towards, which is they should license the ability to read books. Although I would prefer this to just be an open standard I think the licencing plan is more realistic.
The other problem with the touch screen idea on the Kindle would be it would hurt the battery life considerably when the touch screen was active. iRex did a cleaver thing to get around this by putting a switch in the stylus holder that turns off the touch screen when the stylus is in the device.
The color screen will come as technology pushes on. As of now there are no full scale production of color eInk displays. Using a LCD on the device would defeat the purpose of an eReader. I’m sure even with a color eInk display it will come at a cost of some battery life but I wouldn’t think it would be anything that would be unmanageable. I don’t see this as a requirement though, I am perfectly happy reading a book in black and white like most of the print books I own.
The ‘open-ness’ of the device I would lump in there with the lack of native support of alot of common formats such as PDF and DOC. These formats can be read on the Kindle via a conversion process. The Kindle also natively support the common MOBI ebook format. The need for a conversion makes sense in formats such as PDF which are page based and to a lesser extent DOCs but it would be nice if Amazon provided a PC/MAC/Linux application to handle this conversion. I suspect they do this to make some money with the ‘convert and send’ option which is very convenient. As I said above I would like Amazon to open up the format more but I will not hold my breath, they are following in Apple’s footsteps here and it seems to be working. I do think they will end up in the same place as Apple though a few years down the road as far as DRM is concerned.
The last concern is the price. I have mentioned this to some extent. While I wouldn’t say I have payed for my Kindle with the money I’m saving on books the savings are significant. I am also reading more partly because of the ‘I paid $300-something for this think I probably should use it’ but also because it makes reading more convenient for me.
Excuses, Excuses.
Sorry for the lack of photo, didn’t want to link one from another blog and it’s late, but I just have to comment on this.
From reading a post on Engadget it seems that their are at least some that feel that Apple pressured HTC into not installing a3.5mm headphone jack into the popular Google Android phone the G1 due to patent issues. Now I don’t think it’s impossible this is true, and am not a patent lawyer (or even close) but common sense to me is that they wouldn’t have much of a leg to stand on since phones have had these jacks (yes even with music control) for longer then Apple have even been rumored to be working on a phone. The Motorola Rokr, and a long list of Nokia phones come to mind.
The multitouch does make sense that apple could have pressured this issue and at least in my mind could be legitimate, while apple is not the first to use multitouch, they are the first to make it practical and widely used. Under some circumstances I could even see some of the gestures and interface schemes considered intellectual property as well.
While this is a necessary evil of our capitalistic economy, it is unfortunate that it is going to stand in the way of good products coming out.
Sorry if this seems rant-ish, lately it seems like either the tech news has gotten increasingly insane or maybe I have been in a bad mood. Next post should be soon, have a topic in mind just need a bit more research before I spout off again.
UPDATED: Definitely didn’t articulate that well, hopefully someone gets where I was going with this. Promise the next post will be better.
This is new? The Verizon Hub.
Yes this is technically a new product from Verizon, only because for some reason none of the major carriers haven’t done this yet. Which is frankly pretty shocking. High speed internet has been readly available for over 5 years,voice over IP (VOIP) for home use has been common for the last 3, why is someone just now taking a next step from the old, voice only telephone.
The reason you have not seen this from a major carrier is that they are so scared that this ‘VOIP’ fad is going to cramp their bottom line. They are with few exceptions just trying to bury their heads in the sand and hope they come out ok. How much longer will two twisted wires coming into our houses make sense? I know I don’t use the ones that come into my apartment.
In the enterprise arena it has (only slightly) been a different story with a few companies realising that if you ask someone (a company) to spend lots of money on a new VOIP PBX they would probably like some new features. One of the most common was a nice big screen, generally the most popular use of this nice big screen was an integrated directory. This has all been around sine the late 90s. I remember he first time I saw a Cisco IP phone, i believe it was in 2000 thinking, “oh in a few years this type of thing will be everywhere” apparently not.
With all that, I am not all that impressed with the Verizon Hub. Again it’s only now because its being released. I feel the next logical step for these type of devices is to integrate one of two things, or both. The device should have been either used the cell network for its communication, maybe with an option for an external antenna, or it should have incorporated a femtocell inside the device so that your existing phones would work better in your house. The third option since these features are pretty much mutually exclusive would be to have both features and have the user decide how they would like to set it up.
Another reason I am not overly excited about it is that according to PhoneScoop (via engadget) the device will cost $200 after a rebate and a contract for $35/mo. At that price why not just buy the netbook of your choice and put it on the table next to your phone? You could even add a skypeout account to make calls if that’s important to you.
Mobile Privacy
Photo By: Ryan Sutton, All Rights Reserved
James Kendrick over on jkOnTheRun took an interesting leap from an a post written by