Talk About School Gadgets, Win a Half-Terabyte of Portable Storage

[UPDATE: The contest is over--thanks to everyone who entered. We'll announce a winner shortly; if you have a comment here, you're in the drawing.]

Hey, it’s back-to-school time! I’m just glad I’m not going back to school myself, and I’m kind of amazed that it’s here already–back in the day, I don’t remember school starting until September. But we’re going to celebrate by giving away a snazzy 500GB Seagate FreeAgent Go Special Edition portable USB hard drive to a lucky member of the Technologizer community. (No, you don’t need to be a student at the moment to win it.)

The drive is a $169.99 value, has a red aluminum case (as shown at left), and comes with a docking station, and is provided courtesy of Seagate. I certainly would have found it useful in college, when I stored my data on 72KB floppy disks, although I seem to remember cranking out most of my papers on an electric typewriter–at least it had a built-in correction feature.

To enter, respond to this message in the comments and tell us about the gadgets you found (or find) most essential for high school or college–and/or the ones you wish you had but didn’t (or don’t). Please fill out the e-mail address field so we can contact you if you win the FreeAgent–it won’t be displayed publicly, and we won’t use it for anything other than conveying the happy news to you. (If you’re logged in as a WordPress.com user, you won’t have to enter your e-mail address–just make sure that the address associated with your WordPress account is current.)

We’ll close this contest at 5pm PT this Friday, August 21st 2009, choose a winner at random, and notify that person by the following Monday, August 24th. If you’re shy, you can also enter by dropping us a line with your e-mail address using this form.

Your favorite gadget for classwork could be something like one of these…

Or this…

Or this…

Or even this…

Or maybe it’s something weird and unexpected.

Good luck and have fun!

Tech, Politics, and Ed = TechPolitik

Ed Oswald is Technologizer’s most prolific, longest-serving blogger who isn’t named Harry, which is pretty good evidence that he’s deeply interested in personal technology. If you know Ed, then you’re aware that he’s as interested in politics as he is in tech. Now he’s combined these two passions into a new blog called TechPolitik (a neat name, and reassuring proof that it’s still possible to register great domains in 2009).

RealPolitik TechPolitik is completely focused on matters such as tech-related public policy and the use of tech by government officials and politicians. I’m glad that Ed is doing it and plan to be a regular visitor–but I’m also relieved that he’ll still be blogging here, too.

If you’ve got any interest in this stuff, bookmark the site–and hey, it’s on Twitter, too. Congratulations, Ed!

We’re Using Facebook Differently. Is Your Personal Info Safe?

With the mass migration from MySpace to Facebook by a good portion of the social mediarati, the ways we are using the service is certainly changing. Before, the two sites had rather distinct user types. This lead to the sites being used in different ways.

MySpace always seemed to be more casual, and personal use ruled. The atmosphere was less formal, which meant functionality such as personal information really was not necessary. The people you were adding weren’t always necessarily your true “friends.”

Facebook was different. It’s roots as a connection between college students, and later on businesspeople, made it much more formal. Typically, if you were adding somebody on Facebook, you either knew them, were friends with them, or worked with them.

Thus, Facebook by design allowed you to enter personal data such as contact information. A good portion of us, myself included, likely put this information here because we wanted those on our Facebook to have that information if they needed it.

I have tons of people on there that I completely lost contact with and have reconnected as a result of the service, which I am pretty grateful for.

But things are changing. With MySpace out of vogue, that crowd is coming to Facebook. This means that the less formal use of MySpace, including adding people you might not necessarily directly know, is much more commonplace.

There’s just one problem. The way Facebook stores your personal data has not changed. I found this out the hard way, and didn’t realize it until my contact information was used in a stalking incident by a person I had added who I really did not know.

Laying out in the open as long as they were on my friends list was just about every bit of personal information about me, including address, phone number, email, and IM contact information. I was shocked that I had forgotten this data was there, because typically I am very good with maintaining control over personal information.

Facebook doesn’t make it easy to block the information, either. It’s privacy settings left little to be desired.

Essentially, I would have had to go through every single friend, adding them one at a time, to show my information to select people. This led me to think, how many other Facebookers may be inadvertently sharing information they may not be comfortable giving out?

Take this as a cautionary tale. Double check your Facebook to make sure you’re comfortable with the information you’re giving out: otherwise, you might find out the hard way.

Should Facebook do something? Probably yes. The methods to select who sees your data is a bit too cumbersome. Rather than making it a manual process, it might be better for the company to allow you to group friends, and from there allow/deny access to personal info.

I’m curious as to whether or not the ways you use Facebook have changed in this “post-MySpace era.” Have you checked to see how your data is being shared?

A Blockbuster Deal for Motorola

Select Motorola phones will gain the ability to stream “thousands” of movies to their devices from Blockbuster’s OnDemand video service under terms of a deal announced on Tuesday. An OnDemand application would be preloaded onto these phones from the factory.

Details are rather scant, and it is unclear at this time exactly which models would gain the new feature. Consumers would have the choice to either rent or purchase titles outright from Blockbuster.

The deal is potentially a very positive one for the movie retailer, considering the bruising battle with Netflix that left it in poor financial shape and near to bankruptcy. If successful, it would add a much-needed revenue stream and put the company ahead of competitors in a still largely-untapped market here in the US.

Blockbuster had made it a priority earlier this year to expand its reach to as many devices as possible. It appears that the service would be available regardless of cellular provider as it is a Motorola-offered feature.

Five Questions About the PS3 Slim

I’m taking a page from Harry here, as I know he likes prodding on upcoming products when their makers intentionally ignore salient questions. With Sony finally revealing a 36 percent lighter, 33 percent smaller, 40 GB roomier and $100 cheaper Playstation 3 today, I’m left with a few queries of my own.

What will become of the Playstation 3 Big?

Yes, I think it should be called the Playstation 3 Big, for as long as it exists. For now, the existing 80 GB model will be sold for $300, and the 160 GB model is reportedly going for $400. If the Slim is slated for an August 24 launch, as expected, will we eventually be able to scoop up the remaining Bigs for a discount? How about as a bundle with some software?

Will Sony send out more value comparisons?

Sony lost the early gamble on releasing a powerful but pricey gaming console, ultimately forcing the PR machine into action. It must feel good to finally be competitive on pricing, so I’m interested to see how Sony will flaunt it going into the holiday season. Finally, fresh ammunition for the console wars.

What are we looking at for bundles?

Right now, you can get an 80 GB Playstation 3 with LittleBigPlanet (a $60 value) and Wall-E on Blu-ray (a $20 value) for $400. That’s not a bad deal if you’re interested in the game and the movie (I am). When the Slim hits stores, will buyers get any discounts on pack-in games?

Why hate on Linux?

For most users, the PS3 slim will have the same functionality as the old model, but homebrew developers and Linux Lovers will be disappointed to see the removal of the “Install Other OS” feature. This allowed users to run other operating systems on the console, turning the PS3 into a personal computer or hub for homemade applications. I wonder what the harm was in leaving this feature on board.

The PSP Go is only $50 Cheaper?

Okay, that’s not really a question, and it doesn’t pertain to the PS3 Slim, but it’s a puzzler in light of Playstation’s rebirth as the value brand. Since I’m all about bundles, how about enticing consumers to buy both the slimmer console and the tinier handheld? I hear they work wonderfully together, after all.

What’s the Future of the BlackBerry?

BlackBerry maker RIM is a remarkably successful maker of handheld devices and has been so for a very long time–but it doesn’t get a fraction of the press given to that phone-industry upstart Apple. Today, however, RIM is the subject of multiple upbeat stories. An analyst says it and Apple will lead the smartphone market. Fortune has a long and largely positive feature on the company (focusing on the competition with Apple) and says it’s something Apple isn’t: the fastest-growing company in the world.

Seems like a good time for a T-Poll:

Smart Security for Small Businesses

Just a quick reminder: I’m hosting a Webinar on small business security tomorrow, Wednesday, August 19th at 2pm EST. I’ll cover real-world security tips and strategies, especially those that can help prevent problems from happening in the first place. I’ll also field questions from the audience.

The Webinar will happen at Verizon’s Small Business Center, and if you can’t make it tomorrow, it’ll be available in prerecorded form, too. Here’s a page on the Small Business Center’s program of Webinars, and here’s the registration page for mine.

Hope to see some of you there!

Facebook is About to Get Better on the iPhone

I’m not sure if I’d rate Facebook’s iPhone app as one of my favorites, but it’s definitely among those that I admire most–it’s an ambitious and thoughtful recreation of much of the social network in phone-sized form, and it feels both like Facebook and an iPhone app. Facebook has submitted a new version to the iPhone App Store, and AppAdvice has a preview with screenshots. It’s got the new Facebook newsfeed, “Like,” events, and more, and generally looks impressive.

5Words for Tuesday, August 18th 2009

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Chrome bookmark syncing is coming.

Are your iPhone e-mails gone?

Microsoft introduces a 720p Webcam.

Apple sells 25% of songs.

Exploding iPhones are “isolated cases.”

Update on Twitter hacker defense.

Verizon’s making progress on LTE.

Pre developers can sell apps.

Flickr users love the iPhone.

Satisfaction: Apple slips, others gain.

For Immediate Release: Sheer Fantasy!

There is a place where the people of planet Earth were profoundly grateful for Windows Vista. A place where the iPhone’s Safari eliminated the need for native third-party apps. One where Palm’s Foleo made history, Circuit City fired its way to success, and both eBay’s acquisition of Skype and the AOL Time Warner merger ranked among the most brilliant corporate decisions in history.

That place would be the land of press releases, where everyone and everything’s a winner. I’ve dug out a bunch of vintage releases and annotated them with tidbits about just what happened after the news hit the, um, fan.

Read “The Press Releases of the Damned.”

The Press Releases of the Damned!

In the land of the press release, all news isn’t good news–it’s fantastic news. Every product is revolutionary. Each corporate merger is historic. Even layoffs are masterstrokes that will turn around troubled companies. When the stuff announced in press releases hits the real world, the results can be surprising, disappointing, and occasionally catastrophic. Yet the releases remain available in online archives, remorselessly documenting the initial irrational exuberance.

Herewith, seven press releases that turned out to be less than prophetic–all in excerpted form for the sake of brevity, and all annotated with the facts as they actually transpired in the days, weeks, months, and years after the releases hit the wire.

CDC Survey: Many Gamers are Depressed and Obese

A survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that gamers were more prone to depression and obesity than non-gamers. Gamers were also older than they are customarily assumed to be.

The survey was taken in the Seattle-Tacoma area, and the sample was 500 adults between the ages of 10 and 90. Forty-five percent of respondents identified themselves as gamers. It found that female gamers were more likely to be depressed than non-gamers, and male gamers had higher incidents of obesity.

That may not defy stereotype, but surprisingly, the survey also found that the average gamer was 35 years old. The BBC cited a 2002 study in its coverage that mirrored that finding.

The CDC chose the Seattle-Tacoma area, because it has the highest Internet usage in the United States. Interestingly, Seattle was ranked as the seventh most physically fit city in 2008 by Men’s Fitness magazine.

“Health risk factors, specifically a higher BMI and a larger number of poor mental-health days, differentiated adult video-game players from non-gamers,” CDC’s Dr. James B Weaver said in a prepared statement. “Video game players also reported lower extraversion, consistent with research on adolescents that linked video-game playing to a sedentary lifestyle and overweight status.”

I would like to see more studies taken as a follow up to this research to determine whether there is an actual correlation between gaming and negative health consequences. That said, more games that require physical involvement couldn’t come soon enough.

TomTom GPS Comes to the iPhone: So Far, Not So Good

TomTom’s long-awaited–relatively speaking–GPS navigation software for the iPhone is now available on Apple’s App Store. It’s $99.99 for a version that includes maps for the U.S., Puerto Rico, and Canada–pricey for an iPhone app (and almost three times as much as CoPilot Live, which I haven’t tried yet) but not outrageous given the extreme usefulness of turn-by-turn driving directions.

This isn’t a full-blown review, but I’ve been using TomTom for a few quick trips around my neighborhood, and so far I’ve found it far less appealing than AT&T’s Navigator (a $10-a-month iPhone service powered by TeleNav)–even though the two products are comparable in many ways and TomTom is packed with worthwhile features.

That’s for two basic reasons:

A) TomTom offers spoken directions available in multiple languages with a variety of voices in both genders with a variety of accents. They sound nice and crisp. But so far in my trips, they’ve never spoken the names of roads–not even major highways, let alone neighborhood streets. Navigator offers only one voice (plus a Spanish-language option) and it sounds pretty muffled even over my car stereo. But when it tells me to turn, it mentions the street by name. Every time so far.

B) When TomTom wants to give me a heads up that I’ll need to do something before long, it specifies distances in yards. Odometers, most road signs, and my brain all use fractions of miles. And so does Navigator.

Between the lack of spoken road names and the frequent references to yardage, I’m finding it mighty tough to follow TomTom’s directions through the audio instructions alone; I have to glance at the iPhone a lot, and even then it’s not always clear what TomTom wants me to do. With Navigator, by contrast, it’s pretty easy to keep on track simply by following the spoken directions.

Other notable differences between the two packages relate to the fact that TomTom is an app-plus-maps package sold at a flat price, while Navigator is a service that downloads maps and other info as you need them. TomTom occupies a hefty 1.2GB of space on your iPhone, works even if you don’t have a data connection, and doesn’t offer live traffic info. (Maybe the company will offer traffic data as an optional service–it’s available for its hardware devices.)

Navigator, by contrast only uses 3.2MB of memory on your phone but requires a working data connection. And it does offer live traffic info–a feature which helps to justify the monthly fee.

Both Navigator and TomTom have done a good job of keeping pace with my wanderings via the iPhone’s built-in GPS so far, but I’m still intrigued by TomTom’s car kit, which builds more powerful external GPS into a mounting bracket. TomTom doesn’t seem to have announced the price for this optional accessory yet.

Bottom line for now? I’ll take Navigator over TomTom for now, but I’m still looking for my dream iPhone GPS solution, and want to check out other available options. Are you using an iPhone for GPS? Any recommendations?

After the jump, a couple of TomTom screens.

Continue reading this story…

5Words for Monday, August 17th 2009

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Tr.im to go open source.

Huffington Post adds social news.

Apple: headed for the cloud?

iPhone push notifications for Gmail.

i.TV adds universal remote support.

Interesting mystery Android device photo.

Next WebOS phone: next year?

Andreessen’s RockMelt: Facebook operating system?

No Android updates for G1?

Building an Android-Based iPhone Killer: Doable?

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber has a smart post up exhorting somebody–anybody–to build an Android phone that’s better than the iPhone. As far as I can tell, no manufacturer of Android-based phones has set out to do that–Android phones are getting better, as shown by the significant improvement that T-Mobile’s myTouch 3G represents over the first-generation G1. And some Android phones sport better specs in certain areas than the iPhone, or features that the iPhone doesn’t have. But nobody’s used Android to get to an overall phone experience that’s neck-and-neck with the iPhone yet. (And the overall iPhone experience remains so remarkable that folks are willing to forgive the phone for its many limitations.)

Android has gotten off to a slower start than I expected; even so, I still think it’s likely that it’ll provide the iPhone with its stiffest competition in terms of sheer market share in the years to come. I’m less optimistic about there being lots of Android phones which are just as good as the iPhone, for the same reason that there aren’t lots of Windows PCs that are just as good as Macs–the PC-like business model behind Android encourages manufacturers to build commodity products (albeit potentially good ones), not unique and ambitious ones of the sort Gruber is hoping for.

(Which doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to build something unique on Android; the best Windows laptops, such as Voodoo PC’s Envy 133, use the platform for products of Apple-like refinement and creativity. It’s just that the economics of building products on a common platform encourages those products to be…common.)

As of right now, the iPhone’s most formidable competitor in terms of overall experience is unquestionably Palm’s Pre. It’s anything but a coincidence that it’s also the smartphone that came out of the design process most similar to Apple’s approach, with one company designing the software and hardware from scratch. Very few companies will ever get that ambitious. But I hope that many companies do the next best thing: build Android phones that are so thoughtfully designed and customized that you forget they run an OS that’s available on scads of phones from scads of manufacturers.

Apple Says Psystar Destroyed Evidence

There are new allegations in the continuing court battle between Mac clone maker Psystar and Apple: the Cupertino company is now accusing its rival of destruction of evidence: I’m still in shock that the battle has gone this long, but I do digress.

Specifically, Apple says Psystar erased “infringing versions of the software code used on computers sold to its customers.” According to Apple lawyers, during the discovery phase of the case it was found that prior versions of the software had been deleted off of its customer’s computers.

Apparently, these deleted files contained modifications to the Mac OS, which is the central complaint in Apple’s case against the company. Psystar has argued that it had no obligation to save these modifications.

Both Apple and Psystar are set to meet in San Francisco federal court in January of next year.

In related news, after Apple was able to question Psystar executives last week, Psystar has announced a list of nine Apple executives that it plans to question this month. While of course the company’s lawyers will have plenty of questions for these folks, it is also opening up the process to the public.

“Given that there is a significant interest in this litigation aside from the business interest of Psystar, in particularly those of the OSX86 community and others; we want all your input,” the company said in a blog post.

Interested parties can e-mail their questions to Psystar, however answers would not be released until after the conclusion of the case.