Hardware and gadgets

Ford offers parental controls

acohill — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 06:05:23 -0700

Ford has announced that parental controls will be available on some of their new cars, beginning with selected 2010 models. The controls will allow parents to set the top speed of the car, limit how loud the radio can be played, and the car will beep continuously if the front seat belts are not in use.

Now if only they could also include a parental control that forces teenagers into the car at 11 PM and drives them straight home--that is a feature a lot of parents would be pay for.

New iPod Touch is ready for VoIP

acohill — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:12:48 -0700

Wired's Gadget Lab reports that new audio capabilities have been built into the new iPod Touch. The first generation Touch did have the necessary hardware to support voice in, so voice memo applications did not work, and neither did VoIP applications. But the new Touch has support for voice input, meaning you could run a VoIP app and make phone calls with the iPod when you have access to a WiFi hotspot. For some people, that might be good enough, and certainly a lot less expensive than an iPhone and the monthly AT&T service charges.

Finally, the first pocket projector

acohill — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 05:50:49 -0700

3M may finally be the first to market with a real pocket projector. Numerous companies have pre-announced these gadgets for several years, but the sticky note company may grab an early jump in this emerging market space with their $359 device.

It does not have the light power to provide a good image for a large room full of people, but for desktop use, impromptu small group presentations, and even cheapo home theater use, it is likely to be very popular.

iPhone breaks more records

acohill — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:59:05 -0700

The iPhone continues to break records. According to some estimates, Apple has sold 3 million phones in the first 4 weeks after the updated iPhone 3G was released. Last year, it took Apple three months to sell 1 million. One estimate suggests that Apple will continue to sell 800,000 phones a week for many months.

The App Store, which supplies hundreds of software applications, has also broken records, with more than 60 million downloads of software for the iPhone in the first month, and the store has been averaging $1 million per day in sales (some apps are free).

T-Mobile is feeling the pressure from the iPhone, as the company has announced it is also pursuing an online software store that will work with any of the phones it provides--a rather ambitious undertaking that spans several different cellphone operating systems. T-Mobile has been losing customers to AT&T as customers switch providers to get the iPhone, which only AT&T has.

AT&T and the iPhone

acohill — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:19:35 -0700

AT&T, perhaps partly by accident, has probably created success story that is likely to become a business textbook case study classic. Its partnership with Apple has succeeded beyond the company's wildest dreams. Once a kind of also-ran in the cellular industry, customers are switching in droves to AT&T just to get an iPhone. And AT&T has wisely beefed up its network and is making massive investments to ensure its customers have a good signal in more places.

The iPhone is creating a majro change in the portable device and cellphone business, and I think the day of the cellphone is over, meaning that within five years, very few people will have a portable device that is primarily a phone. Going forward, every portable device will have to have a substantial feature set that provides many of the same functions and features of the iPhone.

Apple is probably not greatly worried, as the iPhone's potential is just now barely beginning to be tapped. The iPhone runs a version of the company's flagship OS X operating system, meaning iPhones are full-fledged computers, not just phones with a few extra features like an address book wedged in.

3G iPhone smashes all records

acohill — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 05:36:11 -0700

Apple's second generation iPhone was released for sale last Friday, and promptly broke every consumer electronics record. Apple and AT&T sold an astounding one million phones in just three days, making it not only the most popular cellphone in history but the most popular consumer electronics device ever. Even more incredible, there are still long lines of buyers waiting for phones--according to numerous reports, all 1800 AT&T stores are completely sold out, and most Apple retail stores are out of stock.

What accounts for the phone's popularity? It is not the hardware; the phone has some incremental improvements over the previous model, but nothing groundbreaking. A combination of lower price and an open platform seems to be the appeal. As the iPhone was released, Apple also rolled out thousands of free and low cost applications and programs for the iPhone, making the phone not just a phone/PDA but a true platform that can be customized by the user. This is the key difference now between the iPhone and most other cellphones. The Palm Treo and the RIM Blackberry have had this ability, but both devices have been relatively expensive. More importantly, both the Treo and Blackberry have small, cramped screens and low quality interfaces. The large, very high resolution iPhone display is startlingly clear and easy to use compared to any other portable device.

Samsung and LG have rolled out new phones that look a lot like the iPhone, and cellular providers like Verizon are advertising them heavily. But you can only have what the cellphone provider will let you have on those phones, and many of the add-ons come with steep per month subscription fees. The iPhone App store offers hundreds of free programs, and hundreds more programs that average about $5 in cost. Over time, the other cellphone providers will have to move to this model, or everyone will end up as an AT&T customer and an iPhone user.

Terabyte hard drives are here

acohill — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:17:16 -0700

Seagate, a big manufacturer of hard drives, has released a new hard drive that breaks yet another capacity record--the firm now has a 1.5 terabyte hard drive. This is 1500 gigabytes. It was less than fifteen years ago that I agonized over the enormous expense (at the time) of buying a one gigabyte drive. It cost a whopping $1200. This new Seagate drive, with 1500 times the capacity, will probably cost less than a third of that old 1 gig drive.

GPS not an autopilot

acohill — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 12:12:30 -0700

When I tell people that I don't use a GPS device in my car, they are often shocked. The seem to assume that anybody who has a day job in the telecom business should be using the popular devices routinely.

This article demonstrates perfectly what happens when blind faith in technology replaces common sense. A bus driver, staring perhaps a bit too much at the GPS on his dash, sheared off the top of a tour bus by trying to drive through a low tunnel, apparently because the route was displayed on his GPS. Fortunately, the occupants of the bus received only minor injuries. It could have been much worse.

Myka, BitTorrent, and the slow death of TV

acohill — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:40:07 -0700

There is lots of video on the Internet, but you don't always want to watch it in a little window on your computer. If you have ever tried to play a YouTube video clip with three or four people peering over your shoulder, all trying to see the tiny picture and listen to the tinny sound, you know what I mean.

This new device, called a Myka, is just one of a new generation of devices that takes IP-based video, movies, and TV clips and puts them on your TV (bigger, better picture and better sound) without a lot of fuss.

The device looks suspiciously like an AppleTV box, which is no accident--the AppleTV pioneered the Internet-direct-to-TV device marketplace. But the Myka simply takes BitTorrent streams, stores them on a hard drive in the Myka box, and then gives you an easy way to play them on your TV.

This is the kind of box that makes Comcast and Verizon network managers lie awake at night in a cold sweat. As more and more people simply skip TV altogether for the convenience of Internet-delivered video of all kinds, the old copper-based DSL and cable modem networks are groaning under the strain. These networks were all designed for the old, rub two sticks together Internet, where most people did nothing but email and a little light Web surfing. Video increases demand on these networks by a factor of 100 or more, meaning they just don't have enough bandwidth if everyone decides to watch the YouTube dog on a skateboard video at the same time. It's why places like Danville and Galax are building digital roads made of fiber. It is the new community broadband--digital roadways to every home and business.

iPhone is the best mobile Web browser

acohill — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 06:53:29 -0700

A new study of mobile Web browsers shows that the iPhone has captured the top spot, beating all other mobile phones and PDAs. The iPhone and the WiFi only iPod Touch not only have extraordinarily sharp and clear screens, they have big screens, and the touch interface makes browsing easy. Overall, the iPhone has a mix of features that makes it a very compelling device.