Archive | March, 2009
Lithium Battery Breakthrough Cuts Charge Time Down to Seconds
Imagine that you could charge a car battery as quickly as you fill up a tank of gasoline today. Stop imagining –it has become possible. Researchers have developed a new lithium battery technology that can charge and discharge in a matter of seconds.
The journal Nature is reporting that Byoungwoo Kang and Gerbrand Ceder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a glass-like Lithium mixture for electrodes that allows a charge to be rapidly stored inside of a battery. The battery is designed so that lithium ions move more freely, moving the charge in and out of storage from cathode to electrolyte. The material also retains its capacity through charge cycles.
However, don’t expect laboratory performance at home just yet. Ars Technica has noted that the battery are not entirely compatible with today’s electric grid. For example, a cell phone battery would drawn 360W in ten seconds– for a single charge. Cue the blown circuit breakers.
I’m certain that some happy medium will be reached, and we can all look forward to more advanced batteries in our electronics. This breakthrough eliminates many of the restrictions that today’s batteries place on device manufacturers, and will should lead to more powerful mobile hardware and a greater variety of devices. It’s a big win for consumers and the industry alike.
iPhone Prototype Seller Speaks: Phones Are Still in Private Hands
11. March 2009
After reading Harry’s posts about the auctioning of two iPhone prototypes on eBay and auction and accompanying YouTube video being removed at Apple’s request, I decided to dig a little deeper. Early today, I conducted an interview with the seller of the prototypes, Jon F. (aka $$billions_of_money$$), via email about his rare and historically important offerings. Interestingly, he has no official connection to Apple.
He previously documented his iPhone find on the MacRumors forum in January.
Note to Self: Don’t Pack Tech When Flying
11. March 2009
One of the stories linked in today’s 5Words had me grumbling.
A Yale University student is suing US Airways for losing his Xbox 360, which was packed among his checked bags. But it’s not a simple matter of lost luggage; the kid opened his suitcase after pulling it from baggage claim to find all his belongings inside except the console and accompanying components. He wants $1 million for damages, but that’s not the part that shocked me.
In the story, reported by the Cincinnati Enquirer, a US Airways spokeswoman said the airline isn’t responsible because “publicly available baggage policies specifically exclude liability for electronics checked in luggage.”
Is this common knowledge? I know most people understand that fragile items may not survive the rigors of baggage handling — we’ve all seen luggage carelessly tossed about the tarmac — but the idea that airlines take no responsibility whatsoever, even if the item magically disappears from a suitcase, seems pretty wild to me.
I pulled up the baggage liability limitations for all the other major U.S. airlines — American, Continental, Delta and United — and they all say the same thing. To paraphrase: You’re welcome to bring your electronics on board or in checked baggage, but don’t blame us if anything goes wrong. Continental’s policy even excludes liability for CDs, DVDs and cell phones.
The other factor, besides the airlines, is the Transportation Security Administration. Travel writer Christopher Elliott wrote a lengthy article filled with horror stories of TSA agents swiping things (“Taking Something Always,” he calls the administration) and tips on how to hang on to your stuff. Basically, it boils down to one piece of advice: Keep it in your sights, or leave it at home.
Duly noted.
Come Join Us on Twitter
11. March 2009
Funny but true: More and more, Technologizer has been living a double life. It is, of course, a Web site. But an awful lot of general chatter and discussion of specific T-stories is going on over at Twitter, where I’m @harrymccracken.
(Actually, Technologizer has a triple life if you count the official Technlogizer Twitter feed, which is @technologizer. That one’s an automated feed of all Technologizer posts. But @harrymccracken is a mix of links to posts and original stuff, and it’s far more bustling.)
Below are some of the Tweets I’ve gotten today on my post about the new, extra-minuscule iPod Shuffle–good stuff all. (I’ll probably bring you some other Tweets about Technologizer stories from time to time, too.) If you haven’t checked out Twitter, consider this my personal invitation to stop by and hang out with us there…
Office Depot’s Protection Racket
11. March 2009
Recently, I made a shopping trip to my local Office Depot (which is, incidentally, two storefronts down from the Circuit City I’ve been haunting). While I waited for the mysteriously absent manager to resurface (she was the only person with a key to the room where they stored the copy of TurboTax I was trying to buy), I noticed a sign neatly tacked up above each register, in plain view not only of the cashiers but of customers.
Obama’s Broadband Initiative off to Slow Start
11. March 2009
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While President Obama has made much of his efforts to bring broadband in the US up to par with other countries — his Administration is spending $7.2 billion on it — it appears the initiative is not off to as fast a start as some of Obama’s other programs.
The government held a informational meeting at the Commerce Department on Tuesday which was well attended according to BusinessWeek. However, important questions — such as the government’s definition of “unserved,” the recipients of the lion’s share of the money — were not answered.
Officials with the the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) deflected those questions, saying it was still looking for guidance from industry leaders and the public. Every other question about allocation was answered in the same way, BW reports.
So what was the point of this meeting? No one seems to know. What it does seem like is a collosal waste of time if the government wasn’t ready to announce anything substatiative. For an Adminstration that’s hanging its hat on eliminating government waste, meaningless events like this could be a good place to start.
There are more public meetings scheduled. These will take place in Washington, Las Vegas, and Flagstaff, Arizona, and be open to industry leaders and other interested parties. One hopes by this time they will know what they’re doing.
MagicJack: The Aftermath
11. March 2009
Oh, my, but you’re a vocal bunch. When you like something, you tell me. Ditto for when you don’t. If you’re new here, read magicJack: The No-Brainer Money Saver.
Here are some responses that landed to my inbox–and a few of my comments.
* Some of you couldn’t believe I had a perfect, landline-quality connection with magicJack. That’s not quite what I said. When it works well, I said, it’s terrific. At times, though, I’ll make a call and the voice quality is dreadful — snapping, popping, and crackling. So I redial. Since I started using MJ, about 75 percent of the time I get good calls on the first try; 25 percent of the time I have to redial. And yes, bad connections and redials are annoying. But in this economy, so was paying AT&T over $300 a year for my extra landline. Now my yearly cost is $20.
* As with all things technological, kids, everyone’s mileage varies. Bad connections could be because of your ISP’s lopsided tubes, your kids downloading music on a networked PC, or the USB 1.0 ports on your ’486.
* MagicJack doesn’t like Canada as well as it does in the United States. That’s obvious because magicJack doesn’t carry any Canadian phone numbers. Using magicJack in Canada means you’re stuck registering it with a U.S. phone number, and your Canadian buddies have to call the U.S. number. But you folks have great medical care, and very few paparazzi, so I guess it’s a trade, eh?
* I had a dozen messages wondering if magicJack steals passwords, sends spam, or kidnaps children. The most notorious of these accusations — read it on BoingBoing– is a year old. It’s all been proven false. Bob Rankin, a trustworthy journalist, wrote about it in his “Magic Jack – Good or Evil?” series: part 1 and part 2.
* In this corner are the lovers of Skype– and there are lots of you. Funny thing, I use Skype to speak to my Web designer in Singapore for free. But I don’t use Skype often because I already have a headset for my phone; I don’t like needing another one– a USB headset — just for Skype. (That may change: I’m testing Jabra’s GN9350e, a cool-sounding, dual connection wireless headset that lets me swap between the PC and my landline. I’ll keep you posted.)
[This post is excerpted from Steve's TechBite newsletter. If you liked it, head here to sign up--it's delivered on Wednesdays to your inbox, and it's free.]
5Words for March 11th, 2009
11. March 2009
Let’s get newsy, shall we?
Details on Windows Mobile store.
Analyst thinks Snow Leopard’s lagging.
Europe gives Microsoft an extension.
PlayStation gets NBC Universal content.
Reuters: Apple Ordering 10-inch Touchscreens
11. March 2009
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The drumbeat in the media claiming Apple is developing some type of netbook or tablet PC for later this year is growing louder. Reuters says souces in Taiwan report that the Cupertino company has placed an order for 10-inch touchscreens with supplier Wintek.
That firm has received orders for these screens, and Apple is a client of the company. However, it would not comment on the report, and Reuters’ source declined to offer any more information.
Either way, delivery of these devices is expected in the third-quarter. Reuters’ story also marks the third news outlet to report something about these touchscreen devices from Apple.
A Chinese business daily reported the original news earlier this week, and a Taiwanese government listed Apple and Sony as customers of Quanta, a contract laptop manufacturer, in 2009 (this was last year).
So despite a lot of analyst predictions that Cupertino would slow down as a result of the slowdown, it now appears the company is still going full steam ahead.
The iPod Shuffle Gets Even Smaller
11. March 2009
Apple usually announces new stuff on Tuesdays, but just to keep us on our toes, it’s making an, ahem, small announcement today. There’s a new iPod Shuffle that’s almost 50 percent smaller than its predecessor, and smaller than an AA battery, yet which is still the first Shuffle capable of putting the iPod’s traditional 1,000 songs in your pocket (or on your person–the new Shuffle retains the built-in clip):
The company achieved the further shrinkage by moving the controls off the player onto a tiny remote that’s embedded in the headphones (making this, I guess, the first iPod that can’t be used with third-party headphones, unless someone comes up with some sort of adapter):
[UPDATE: Apple says you'll be able to buy an adapter for third-party headphones. Better than nothing--especially if you're the type of person who associates Apple headphone with a stinging feeling in one's ears, or with them just falling out--but adding an adapter certainly eliminates some of the appeal of the Shuffle's tininess.]
The new Shuffle also introduces a new feature called VoiceOver that reads menus, song titles, and the like out loud in a robotic voice; it can also read playlist names, allowing this to be the first Shuffle that supports playlists. Apple’s demo video shows how it works. Apple’s promotion for this new player says it’s the first talking MP3 player. Not so. It may have the most sophisticated text-to-speech interface, but the current iPod Nano also has a speech option.
(Side note: The video demonstrator, who says she’s an Apple Store employee, talks about how the remote control lets you use the Shuffle while on a “ride.” If she lives in Apple’s headquarters state of California, that better not be a bicycle ride–covering both your ears with headphones while biking is illegal here.)
At this point, Apple is presumably shrinking the Shuffle because, well, it can, and because some folks will buy a new one simply because it’s smaller. But it’s hard to imagine that anyone found the previous one uncomfortably bulky.
(Second side note: I wonder whether Apple will release a software update for the old Shuffles that gives them VoiceOver?)
The new Shuffle is made of aluminum, comes in silver and black (you gotta think that Apple will restore the old Shuffle’s rainbow of colors eventually), and is available in one storage capacity: 4GB for $79. It’s shipping today.
Just to refresh everyone’s memory, here’s what the previous-generation Shuffle (which dates from September 2006) looked like. It was, arguably, a cooler piece of industrial design, or at least a less Spartan one:
And here’s the original Juicyfruit-sized iPod Shuffle, announced at Macworld Expo in January 2005, and strikingly small at the time:
And here’s a hasty artist’s conception of what next next-gen Shuffle could look like:
Microsoft Dives Deeper Into the Laptop Accessory Business
10. March 2009
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Even Microsoft’s most impassioned critics will concede that it makes a darn good mouse, and with the rising popularity of netbooks, its hardware group is capitalizing on the opportunity to sell even more accessories. The company announced today that it will be introducing a notebook cooling base in July, and delivering more colors for its Arc Mouse later this month.
Microsoft has been a major PC accessory manufacturer for 25+ years, thanks to the Microsoft Mouse, and its move into the notebook accessory category is a logical extension of its hardware business.
Earlier this month, a Gartner Research report projected that notebook PC shipments would increase approximately 9 percent in 2009 from 2008 despite the worldwide economic downturn’s overall negative effect on global PC shipments.
While its hardware business is benefiting, the netbook trend has hurt Windows client licensing revenue. Microsoft’s diversification is filling its coffers, but it will have to sell a lot of Arc Mouses (Mice?) to make up the difference.
Apple’s Stance on iPhone App Language is Silly. I Swear!
10. March 2009
[UPDATE: While I was working on this post, Apple decided to approve the Tweetie update in question after all, as I suspected it would. Good news. But I think the post remains relevant.]
[WARNING: Actually, I don't swear in this post, but there are 150+ examples of one particular bad word in it. A very, very bad word. Mostly with asterisks, but three uncensored instances at the very end. Cover your little ones' eyes; keep this post out of U.S. states with laws against public cursing. Thank you.]
This is just embarrassing. A new version of Tweetie, the most popular Twitter client for the iPhone–and probably the best-regarded one, too–has apparently been rejected from Apple’s App Store on the grounds that its trends feature, which can display popular Twitter hash tags, showed a hash tag that happened to be the F-word at the time that the app was in for review at Apple. Never mind that the trends feature isn’t new to Tweetie, and that other iPhone Twitter clients have it. Or that every Twitter client may display dirty words if they show up in Tweets. Or that there’s no imaginable obscenity that the phone’s Safari browser isn’t capable of displaying if you know where to go, or happen upon examples accidentally.
The iPhone Prototype is Gone. But Not, One Hopes, Gone Forever.
10. March 2009
File this one away under “Any Other Outcome Would Have Been Startling.” Apple has had the eBay auction for what was supposedly two 2006 iPhone prototypes pulled. It also had eBay yank the interesting very interesting video walkthrough of one of the phone’s rudimentary user interfaces.
As far as I know, Apple hasn’t acknowledged that the proto-UI was real, but asking for it to be pulled from YouTube is a near-acknowledgement, at least. After all, how could Apple file a copyright claim if it weren’t for a real piece of Apple software?
Sprint a Little Wishy-Washy on WiMax?
10. March 2009
GigaOM is reporting that Sprint has reportedly begun testing LTE equipment, a move that may suggest it may not be completely confident that WiMax may be its eventual route for 4G.
Sprint owns 51 percent of Clearwire, a company commited to bringing near-nationwide WiMax access by 2010. However, its competitors have all decided that LTE is the way to go for next-generation data, leaving the company as the odd man out, so to speak.
The company is not denying that it is testing out LTE, explaning it as a method “to monitor and assess the competitive landscape and any potential impacts to Sprint’s plans.” But you have to think, being that its the only provider comitted to WiMax that maybe it may be having some second thoughts.
Add this to the fact that Clear’s WiMax equipment was built to be converted later to LTE, and one has to wonder.
An Afterlife For Your Online Accounts
10. March 2009
A startup called Legacy Locker is launching today with a weighty mission: helping folks plan ahead–really ahead, one hopes–by recording login info for online accounts such as e-mail, social network, and photo sharing sites, and specifying who should be given access to them in event of the Legacy Locker user’s death. Co-founder Jeremy Toeman told me that the idea for the company was inspired in part by what happened when his own grandmother passed away at 94: She was an avid e-mail user, and her relatives wanted access to the family-related correspondence that remained in her inbox.
Legacy Locker plans to make its service available starting in April. Users specify two people who are responsible for informing the company of the user’s passing; once Legacy Locker has confirmed that person is no longer with us, it will disperse account information to the individuals specified by user. It’ll will cost $30 a year or $300 for, um, lifetime service, and Legacy Locker plans to work with financial and estate planners to market it to their customers.
It’ll be interesting to see if the service catches on–as Jason Kincaid points out at TechCrunch, using it indicates that you think Legacy Locker will be around after you aren’t. Which certainly isn’t a given, since startups tend to die a lot earlier and more unexpectedly than human beings do. And most people still don’t think of digital assets as, well, assets: In a world in which so many individuals can’t remember their passwords, period, how many will plan far enough ahead to think about taking steps to preserve their passwords after their own demise?
Still, if nothing else, Legacy Locker might get you thinking about the value of your online world. If my Twitter status remained mysteriously static after I went to my reward, it wouldn’t be a tragedy. But on both my mother’s and father’s side of the family, we’ve treasure the photos, letters, and other mementos that have survived for decades after the folks who first possessed them left us. With so much current family correspondence being in the form of e-mail rather than beautifully hand-written letters, and all new family photos being digital, it’s not a given that any of this stuff will be around decades from now.
Legacy Locker isn’t really about ensuring that memories are preserved for future generations; if anyone reads my e-mail or looks at my photos a century from now, I kind of doubt it’ll be because Gmail and Flickr are still around and accessible. But if you’re the type who has an up-to-date will and is otherwise willing to confront the uncomfortable fact that any of us could be gone tomorrow, you might be the sort who the company is trying to reach.
Any thoughts on your online accounts, activities, and possessions and what would happen to them if you weren’t around to take care of them?
5Words for March 10th, 2009
10. March 2009
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Today’s headlines incline dancing news!
Even more Apple netbook rumors.
iPhone developers can’t renew contracts.
Woz can’t dance, still lovable.
Will these ten newspapers die?
Cydia’s unauthorized iPhone app store.
Craigslist: “erotic services” ads dwindling.
YouTube kills British music videos.
Palin hacker’s in bigger trouble.
Jimmy Fallon! Palm Pre! Together!
Broadbrand growth is on decline.
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11. March 2009
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