Nvidia Tegra in Next Nintendo DS? So?

As with any hot gaming rumor, I’m compelled to write about the reports of an Nvidia Tegra chip in Nintendo’s next DS handheld. But deep down inside, I don’t really care.

Unless Nintendo is changing the way it approaches gaming consoles, the underlying technology doesn’t matter as much as the big picture. The Wii staked its reputation on motion controls, not current-generation graphics or processing power. Same goes for the Nintendo DS, which is all about combining a touch screen and traditional button-based gaming on a handheld device.

Besides, the current-generation DS already packs in respectable graphics, and some of the console’s greatest games wouldn’t have benefited from a boost. For instance, the Phoenix Wright series uses 2D animation, never getting in the way of your touch-based sleuthing. New Super Mario Bros. has 3D flourishes, but what really draws people in is the game’s old-school roots. And then there’s Brain Age, which is so simple that I fail to see how a beefer processor and better graphics would improve the experience.

My point is that it’s about the games, not the hardware, and from my experience the Nintendo DS hasn’t suffered from technological constraints.

In any case, I don’t expect Nintendo to move on from its current-generation DS and DSi anytime soon. They continue to sell phenomenally well, with 552,900 units moved in North America alone in August. That’s actually a 6 percent increase from same the period in 2008, and four times more sales than Sony’s PSP.

Continued sales mean that people are going to stay interested in the current-generation Nintendo DS, and all the games it supports, for years to come. If Nintendo does upgrade the DS to a better chip, I won’t be the only one who could care less.

Thirty-Three Web Tools for People Searches

Last week I told you my story about how I found someone on the Internet (see Use the Web to Find Anyone in the World). This week I’ll show you the tools I used, the ones I recommend, and a few of the arrows aimed my way by subscribers. (As it turns out, many of you turned up search engines I hadn’t heard about, so make sure you read “What You Had to Say” below.)

If you attempt a search, don’t feel discouraged when many of the search engines dump you on a fee-based service. You’ll also find yourself heading deep into wild goose territory, with false leads and not-valuable-information. Stay focused on the clues, confirmations, and matches.

Another clue I haven’t talked about — and it’s a biggie — is using an e-mail address to find someone. That’s how I recently found the phone number of a YahooGroup moderator who’d abandoned his post. His e-mail address was on the Net about four times, but one forum showed his name, and the city and state he might have lived in. That was all I needed.

Continue reading this story…

Worst PC in America: The Deadline Approacheth

A little over fifty-five hours remain until we close our contest to find the Worst PC in America and declare a winner–who will receive HP’s slick Envy 13 laptop.We’ve received some great entries–and by “great,” I mean that some of them are gut-wrenching–but I’m positive there are technohorrors hidden at the back of closets out there yet to be discovered. You’ve got until 5pm PDT on Friday to reveal all.

You can check out the entries so far (plus some discussion of ‘em) here. And here’s information on how to enter your own machine. Please do–and tell your friends. This may be the first and last time in recorded history that owning a mind-bendingly crummy computer has its advantages…

5Words: Apple vs. the Jailbreakers

An iPhone you can’t jailbreak?

Is the BlackBerry 2 imminent?

Technorati gets an upgrade.

Dell: ix-nay on the etbooks-nay.

New subscription music services ahead.

New Nikon has night vision.

Aardvark launches answer Web site.

Trillian for iPhone: still waiting…

A bike for your Wii.

California big-screen TV ban?
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It’s Wi-Fi, Only Direct

This sounds neat: The Wi-Fi Alliance is announcing Wi-Fi Direct, a new standard that will let Wi-Fi-enabled gizmos talk directly to each other, without a home network serving as middleman. Applications would include jobs like letting a camera send photos directly to a TV set, no cables required. And the capability could be added to gadgets that already have Wi-Fi, such as phones, cameras, and printers, via a firmware upgrade.

We’ll see if it actually takes off. Wireless USB sounded neat, too, but so far has failed to go much of anywhere…

Is Broadband a Basic Human Right?

IntoMobile is reporting that our friends in Finland will soon get access to broadband Internet access as a basic legal right. Starting next July, a 1-Mbps connection will be mandated; by the end of 2015, a 100-Mbps one will be required. The story doesn’t say whether these connections are guaranteed to be free, or who’s providing them.

Of course, I live in America, a country that can’t figure out how to provide healthcare to everyone, so I’m guessing that universal broadband isn’t coming anytime soon. (And me, I’d vote for putting that particular “right” off until the health thing is resolved, okay?)

What’s your take?

The Barnes & Noble E-Reader Revealed?

Gizmodo has posted what it says are photos and details of the e-book reader that Barnes & Noble is reportedly getting ready to release. The most interesting tidbit: It supposedly has a 6-inch monochrome e-ink screen that’s very much like the one on Amazon’s Kindle–but also a smaller color multi-touch LCD beneath that one, which is home to features like the keyboard and much of the book-shopping interface. It’s an interesting idea which would sidestep some of e-ink’s limitations (besides lacking color, it refreshes slowly).

The device is also said to be cheaper than the Kindle; to offer books published by Barnes & Noble itself at low prices; and to provide access to Google Books’ wealth of out-of-print tomes.

I’m still waiting for someone to release an e-book device that simply gives up on e-ink’s principal virtue–amazing, weeks-long battery life–in favor of all the benefits of color. If such a device were able to eke out ten hours on a charge, I might prefer it to an e-ink-equipped gizmo, even if it forced me to do far more babysitting of the battery.

Of course, a color device without enough battery life to read an entire book might really be a tablet computer, not an e-reader. One way or another, I suspect we’ll get the opportunity to watch “traditional” e-readers and tablets duke it out during 2010…

Twitter Gets “Report As Spam,” At Last

Care to rid the Twitterverse of porn spammers, sleazy “social media marketers” and auto-follow bots? A new tool, long overdue, should help.

Today, Twitter added a “Report as Spam” option to user pages. You can also access this option from the drop down box on your followers list, making the all-too-familiar spammer purge more than just a selfless act.

The Twitter Blog says reporting a user won’t trigger any automated actions (so, if you hate us, doing as illustrated in the picture above should be fruitless), but it does flag the user so Twitter’s “Trust and Action” team can take a look. I’m guessing that the Twitter team will prioritize based on who’s getting flagged the most.

If I could ask for one more thing, it’d be a “Report as Spam” link accessible directly from the initial “HotGirlXXX is now following you on Twitter!” e-mail.  I can see why Twitter would exclude this, as you’d ideally look at a person’s tweets to know if they’re legit, but there are plenty of times when you can smell out spammers simply from their user names and follower/following ratios. And there are definitely pages I’d rather not see before reporting them as spam.

But I’m happy to see this feature anyway. This may be totally coincidental, but the trending topics I’m looking at now are free of spammers. Could real people be taking back Twitter?

Nokia’s Netbook Gamble

I don’t quite understand Nokia’s thinking, but the company has made it official that its Booklet 3G, its first true netbook PC (or any type of full PC for that matter) will come to the states through AT&T and Best Buy on October 22. Entering into the increasingly crowded netbook space could be risky for Nokia.

First off, the device will run a pricey $599 unsubsidized. To me thats pretty astronomical for a netbook. Let’s take a look at those specs, and for fairness let’s for now forget about the 3G data capability.

It runs a Intel Atom 1.6GHz chip — the same used in the market leading Acer Aspire Ones — and includes Wi-Fi, a 120GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, and a 10.1″ display. My Acer has all of that, and was $259 without any subsidy.

The only thing I could find that my netbook doesn’t have is Bluetooth, and an accelerometer (oh and Windows 7 out the box: mine runs XP). So essentially, are we paying here $300 for 3G, which we’ll also be required to sign up for a $60 per month data plan for two years? That’s pretty steep.

While no doubt this entrant has a lot to do with Nokia’s recent cozying up to Microsoft, however I’m a little confused as to “why now.” With Acer and others able to give us netbooks under $300, how many people are going to be able to justify paying that plus an extra $2,000 or so over the life of the contract just for data?

Right now I just don’t think there’s a market for it.

5Words: Dell Continues Adamo Tease

Dell, enough Adamo teasing already.

Disney Stores mimic Apple Stores.

Apple: Snow Leopard loses data.

How should iPhones handle multitasking?

Blockbuster lands on TiVo boxes.

Tim Berners-Lee: // superfluous.

iPhone: it’s a car key!

Plastic Logic: no color e-reader.

Nokia’s Booklet: $299 with subsidy.

Best Buy sells PCs aplenty.

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Vudu on LG Blu-Ray, Rotten Tomatoes on Vudu

Over the past few months, Internet movie company Vudu has been in the process of morphing from a company that makes a box into a company that (also) licenses its platform to much larger consumer-electronics companies for incorporation into other devices. Yesterday, owners of LG’s BD390 Blu-Ray players got a software update that put the ability to rent and buy movies from Vudu capability on their players. To celebrate, Vudu held a press event at a screening room at Dolby Labs in San Francisco, where it streamed video in its HDX extra-high-quality HD onto a theater screen. It played without hiccups, held up well, and generally helped confirm that Vudu is a neat option for folks who want movies delivered via the Internet without any compromise in visuals or sound.

Also on display at the Dolby event was Mitsubishi’s 52-inch LT-52249 LCD TV with built-in Vudu–a drool-worthy $3099 1080p display that showed off Vudu’s razor-sharp video to impressive advantage. (The Bolt trailer has never looked so good.)

Vudu’s biggest limitation is that unlike humongous archrival iTunes, it’s only available in the living room–not on computers and portable devices. A Vudu representative at the event said that the company said that figuring out how to bring Vudu to more devices is on its to-do list.

The company also announced that Vudu has now integrated Rotten Tomatoes movie reviews into its service’s slick user interface, providing access to a much richer database of critiques as you browse for stuff to watch.

Iomega’s StorCenter IX2-200: A Lot of NAS in a Little Space

Storage stalwart Iomega is carving out a niche for itself by releasing networked storage products with unexpectedly generous amounts of high-end features. Back in August, it announced the StorCenter IX4-200, a four-bay device. And now it’s been joined by the two-bay StorCenter ix2-200, available in 1TB ($269.99), 2TB ($369.99), and 4TB ($699.99) versions.

The ix2 packs Gigabit Ethernet and 3 USB ports; a feature called QuikTransfer lets you copy files from the device to an external drive by pressing a button–no PC required. It provides remote access to its contents from any Internet-connected computer, and can talk directly to up to five Axis surveillance cameras. It provides support for RAID 1 data redundancy, supports the iSCSI storage network standard, and is certified by VMware for virtualization applications.

As the above specs suggest, the device is primarily aimed at small and medium-sized business users. But it also has a bunch of features aimed at home users: It supports DLNA and iTunes for streaming of media around a home, can be used with Apple’s Time Machine feature for networked Mac backups, and can download torrents directly from the Internet. Oh, and it also has an optional Bluetooth feature that lets you wirelessly back up photos, contacts, and other information from your phone.

Iomega is also pitching the ix2-200 as an eco-friendly storage product: It’s got an Energy Star-certified power supply and automatically spins down its drives when not in use.

Unlike its predecessor, the plain old StorCenter ix2, the ix2-200 has user-replaceable hard drives, but there’s no empty bay, and the drives aren’t hot-swappable. Iomega says that the 1TB and 2TB versions are available now, and the 4TB one will show up later this month.

HP: Touch, Touch, and More Touch

A month ago, HP unveiled a bunch of new Windows 7 PCs, but ones with touchscreens were conspicuous by their absence–and given that HP has been selling TouchSmart models for close to three years now, it would have been startling if it didn’t continue to do so once the touch-enabled Windows 7 debuted.

Tonight, the company announced a second round of Windows 7 machines, including multiple multi-touch TouchSmarts. The new all-in-one touch PCs include the 20″ TouchSmart 300, starting at $899, and the 23″ TouchSmart 600, starting at $1049; the company is also introducing a refreshed version of the TouchSmart tx2, a $799 laptop with a flip-around 12.1″ screen. Those systems are all aimed at consumers, but HP is also going after businesses with the TouchSmart 9100, an all-in-one that starts at $1299 and is meant for applications such as kiosks in public places. It’s even launching the HP LD4200tm, a $2799 touch-screen LCD TV meant for use as digital signage.

I reviewed a nicely loaded $1600 configuration of the TouchSmart 600 for PC World– it runs Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit and has a Core 2 Duo CPU, Blu-Ray, a TV tuner with remote control, a 750GB hard drive, and a lot of other features–basically, it would be a very nice all-in-one PC whether or not it had a touch interface.

Continue reading this story…

Sidekick Users: All is Not Yet Lost

Good news, sort of, maybe: T-Mobile is now saying that the Sidekick data disaster may be less disastrous than it had thought. An update at the T-Mobile Sidekick forums states that the company is “hopeful” that most customers can get some of their data back. That’s a more optimistic spin on things than Saturday’s update, which said the data was likely gone forever.

The company also says that “certain” customers who suffered “significant” data loss will receive a $100 credit. It doesn’t specify what a “significant” data loss is, but if said data loss involves things like the customer’s address book and photos vanishing, a hundred bucks seems on the low side. (T-Mobile had earlier said it would a free month of service to customers who’d suffered from the service outage–which began on October 2nd and now seems to be mostly but not entirely over.) Most of the Sidekick owners chiming in at the forum don’t seem to be pacified.

I predict one or more additional shoes dropping involving further reparations for Sidekick owners–and, inevitably, a class-action lawsuit or two. And I hope that T-Mobile and Microsoft provide excruciating detail on:

1) What caused the outage
2) Why it proved so hard to fix
3) Why it wasn’t a given that a backup was available
4) What they’re doing to prevent this from happening again

A Lovely Lady Inexplicably Does Tech Support

Watch out, Geek Squad: Florence Henderson, who I still associate with an era before personal computers existed–and with Wessonality–is gunning for you. The woman better known as Brady Bunch matriarch Carol Brady is launching the FloH Club, a new tech support service aimed at senior citizens. For $250 a year, $25 a month, or $50 per incident, the FloH Club team promises to help members use services such as IM, Facebook, and e-mail; set up iPods and home networks; troubleshoot PC problems; go shopping online, and more.

Florence is blogging and will formally announce the service on tomorrow’s Today Show, but says she’s only recently discovered Facebook, and the FloH Club reports that she plans to tackle Twitter next. I assume the support is being provided by young folks. (Actually, it seems to be provided by venerable third-party support firm Support.com.)

As far as I know, Henderson is the second Brady to play high-tech entrepreneur: Christopher Knight, who played middle son Peter, has founded several computer-related companies and seems to have done quite well with them.

I’m not yet a senior citizen, but this news sort of makes me feel like one, given that I’m distinctly of the generation that grew up watching The Brady Bunch and therefore presumably part of the service’s target market.

Obligatory joke: The first rule of FloH Club is, you don’t talk about FloH Club…

It’s On! Nintendo Prez Knocks iPod Touch

As the iPhone and iPod Touch look more like portable gaming platforms, I haven’t tired of watching Sony and Nintendo flail. They’re like two incumbent political parties having identity crises in the face of a new competitor who’s hogging the spotlight.

The latest round of this partisan bickering comes from Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime, who in an interview with the Washington Post argued that the Nintendo DS does things the iPod Touch does not. As proof, he pointed to the DS’s two screens, Nintendo’s franchise titles such as Mario Kart DS and New Super Mario Bros and innovative games like the recent Scribblenauts, which lets players type out virtually any PG-13 noun and have the object literally appear on the screen.

“All of these experiences are very unique and very different and what you cannot find on their App Store,” Fils-Aime said.

It’s a weak argument. Half the games Fils-Aime mentions use the DS’s second screen to provide superfluous information, and there’s nothing in Apple’s technology that precludes a title like Scribblenauts. But the major problem here is Fils-Aime’s “our console is different” mentality.

Guess what? Every console is unique in some way. Check out Dan Terdiman’s CNet article today on a new breed of iPhone games that integrate your phone and contacts. That’s unique. Or just visit the App Store and pick up a free chess app, a free tower defense game and the entirety of Wolfenstein 3D for $2. That user experience is unique.

The real question is whether one console’s unique experience is better than the competition’s. I’ll concede that Nintendo has powerful franchises in Mario and Zelda, et al, but that doesn’t make up for how Apple is capturing the casual gaming market that Nintendo covets. Nintendo needs to find a solution to that problem, and Fils-Aime needs better talking points.