Assisted Computing for Senior Citizens

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: VitalLink

Price: $4.99 a month

For many older adults, increasing frailty, limited mobility and the trend for younger families to relocate towards employment opportunities (and away from their aging parents) contribute to social isolation. And isolation has been found to have an effect on overall health.

VitalLink provides an innovative and intuitive Internet-based solution to help overcome these challenges. By creating a friendly shell that runs on a touch-screen Windows PC, company has made it simple for an elderly person to use a PC, including making video calls, cycling through family photos, watching video, reading news (in any size type), playing games, and even watching Netflix movies. In fact, for many users, VitalLink could be an all-in-one communication and entertainment center.

A Boost for T-Mobile Phones

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Wilson Electronics 4G AWS

Price: Approximately $599

T-Mobile may have decided that its HSPA+ network qualifies as 4G, but there’s no such thing as wireless data that’s fast enough, or one that never drops a call. So Wilson Electronics, which specializes in products for improving cell-phone reception, is releasing the 4G AWS, a in-building signal booster which it claims can improve the strength of T-Mobile HSPA+ phones by up to twenty times. The company says it’ll release it in the first quarter of 2011; the pricetag–about $599–presumably leaves it appealing mostly to businesses and to consumers who really want improved reception.

A Christmas Without Angry Birds

Demand for smartphone game developer Rovio’s Angry Birds plush toys has been so great that order fulfillment is flying past the holiday season, and customer service is in the pigpen.

Angry Birds has taken smartphone gaming by storm, so much so that it is even drawing comparisons to the venerable Pac-Man franchise. Rovio has been a savvy marketeer of its feathered protagonists with holiday themed editions of the game, and, most recently, plush toys.

Enter Murphy’s Law: Rovio has dramatically underestimated demand. Customers are reporting having paid with the expectation of shipment during the holiday season only to be told that their expectations have flown the coop. Orders will not be fulfilled until January.

Customers that contacted Rovio received this e-mail, “Due to unforeseen demand for Angry Birds plush toys, our logistics and customer service have been overwhelmed and we have not been able to respond promptly to all queries. If you have already contacted us regarding your order, our staff is working on the case to resolve any problems and you will receive a reply at the earliest opportunity.”

Let’s hope that its customers don’t own any human-sized slingshots.

AT&T Butters Up the FCC

When tech politics and cupcakes collide.

Never Leave Your Phone Home

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Bringrr

Price: $29.95

I hate forgetting my phone. I hate it so much that for a couple of years, I wore it on a lanyard around my neck–until I got sick of people comparing me to Flavor Flav.

So I get the idea behind Bringrr–and a simple idea it is. It’s a little device you plug into your car’s cigarette lighter and pair with your Bluetooth-enabled phone. From then on, if you get in your car and turn on the engine and have neglected to bring your phone with you, Bringrr sounds an alarm and flashes a light, so you can go back in and grab the handset rather than discovering it’s MIA once it’s too late to turn back.

A $39.95 model of Bringrr has a built-in USB charger–an important option given that Bringrr only makes sense if you leave it plugged in at all times. Wouldn’t it be cool if the technology was built into hands-free kits too?

Flipboard: A Great iPad App Gets Even Better

Apple recently named the “social magazine” Flipboard as the iPad app of the year. That seems about right–it’s got an ingenious and addictive interface that makes reading stuff from Facebook, Twitter, and sites of all sorts relaxing in a way that the Web rarely is. Perhaps more than any single iPad magazine app from a traditional magazine publisher, it feel like a magazine of the future rather than a dead-tree product repurposed into digital form. (I also had fun nominating it for TIME’s 50 Best Inventions of 2010 and then writing it up.)

Tonight, Flipboard is getting even neater–the company is releasing a meaty new version of the app. For me at least, the big news is support for Google Reader. For the first time, it’s possible to read RSS feeds within the slick, browsable Flipboard interface. (Until now, the closest you could get was to find a site’s Twitter feed and plug that in.)

Continue reading this story…

World of Warcraft Cheating Isn’t Illegal, Still Banned

The old question of whether you own or merely license software got another answer in a U.S. appeals court, which ruled partly in favor of World of Warcraft maker Blizzard.

The court was ruling on a two year-old lawsuit by Blizzard and Vivendi Games (now Activision-Blizzard) against MDY, whose Glider software automatically plays the game on behalf of users. The point is to get through the grind of leveling up in World of Warcraft without paying attention or exerting effort.

Blizzard argued that Glider violated the game’s terms of service and should be banned, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed, upholding the decision of a lower court. But Blizzard also wanted MDY — and by extension, its users — to be liable for copyright infringement. The Ninth Circuit wouldn’t go that far, and overturned the lower court’s decision. While the Ninth Circuit agreed that MDY violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by circumventing Blizzard’s anti-bot detection program, “WoW players do not commit copyright infringement by using Glider in violation of the [terms of use].”

What does this mean for WoW’s unscrupulous players? Exactly what it should: If you cheat at World of Warcraft, you run no risk of getting sued, however unlikely that was in the first place. But you are playing in Blizzard’s house, so if you get caught breaking the rules, you might get kicked out. As with any online gaming service, membership is a privilege, not a right.

Of course, with the court upholding an injunction against MDY, World of Warcraft cheaters will have to find another way to coast through the game.

Rock On With a Play Guitar–or a Real MIDI Instrument

Last Gadget Standing Nominees: Mad Catz Rock Band 3 Fender Mustang PRO-Guitar Controller, Rock Band 3 MIDI Pro Controller, and Cyborg R.A.T.9 Wireless ProGaming Mouse

Prices: $149.99, $399.99, and $149.99, respectively

When it comes to Rock Band 3, gaming accessory kingpin Mad Catz is having it both ways: It offers both a fancy fake guitar and an adapter that lets musicians play with real MIDI instruments.

The Fender Mustang PRO (seen above) is a replica of a legendary real guitar. It works with Rock Band on the PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360 and includes 17 frets, a six-string strumming area, and a touch-sensitive string box for muting and cutting off notes. It’s also got MIDI output for use with sequencers and MIDI hardware. Meanwhile, Mad Catz’ MIDI Pro Controller lets music fans connect standard MIDI keyboard and drum sets to Rock Band via a USB connection. It sports a D-pad and gaming controller buttons, and lets you adjust velocity to reduce drum crosstalk during play; it can rest on a table or be worn on a belt during play.

On another note entirely, the Cyborg R.A.T.9 is a wireless mouse aimed at serious gamers. The macho-looking black mouse uses a 2.4-GHz wireless connection, and the company estimates its latency at less than a second. It comes with two hot-swappable battery packs and 42 grams of adjustable weights, letting gamers tweak the mouse’s heaviness; And there are five programmable buttons and a mode that lets you temporarily slow down the cursor for precise control.

Google TV Gets an Update

Google is rolling out the first major update to its ambitious, interesting, flawed Google TV platform. Among the improvements: the ability to search in Netflix, the power to move the Dual View picture-in-picture window around so it doesn’t block things, and an Android app that serves as a Google TV remote control.

An iPad for the Toddler Set

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Rullingnet Vinci

Price: $479

Parents love to toss their kids their iPads for a little fun and games, but the iPad isn’t really a toddler device.  Vinci, on the hand, was designed for toddler hands and tough use. It’s a infant-proof tablet–designed for children up to age three–with apps that include games, storybooks, and music videos.  Rather than focusing on academic teaching, they aim to show babies the world and let them be in control. And it sets out to address four key areas of early childhood development: cognitive, educational, emotional and social.

Vinci is a bit pricey at $479, but it’s built for babies with their own unique needs.

mSpot for iPhone: A Cool App I Won’t Be Using

Smartphones aren’t always big enough to hold an entire music library, so mSpot hopes to ease the burden by storing your tunes in the cloud.

The mSpot service, previously available for Android phones, now has an iPhone app as well. You can store up to 2 GB of music for free to mSpot’s servers, and get another 40 GB of storage for $4 per month.

I have no major complaints with the mSpot app or service. Installation was painless, and you can filter uploads by artist or existing playlists, so it’s easy to create a 2 GB playlist in iTunes specifically for mSpot. The app is simple to navigate, and I like how you can swipe your finger to switch tracks (iTunes really needs something driver-friendly like this). There’s also a web app for playing your library from any PC.

Yet, I think the idea behind mSpot has limited appeal.

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Apple-Approved iPhone Unlocking?

AT&T has cheerfully helped me unlock several phones in the past. I never understood why the iPhone should should be any different. Maybe it won’t be eventually.

I Still Can’t Use Both My Gmail Accounts at Once

I have two Gmail accounts: a personal one and a Google Apps one (at Technologizer.com) which I use for work. The fact that I can’t be logged into both at one time in the same browser is a hassle. I’d hoped today’s introduction of a Gmail feature that lets you grant access to another user (including yourself, at another Gmail account) would fix this. But it turns out you can only let in e-mail accounts at the same domain, so the new feature doesn’t help me. (When I’m on a Mac, I use a program called Mailplane to hop back and forth between the two accounts with one click.)

Blocks With Brains of Their Own

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Sifteo Cubes

Price: $149

Sifteo Cubits provide kids with a new way to play.  Cubes are wireless 1.5″ blocks with full-color screens that interact with each other and respond to motion to unleash a whole new world of games.  The cubes are outfitted with  motion sensing, neighbor detection, graphical displays, and wireless communication features. Pile them, group them, sort them –and you have many variations of game play.  While traditional game consoles often lead to “screen stare” and tired thumbs, say the product’s creators, Sifteo Cubes start interacting with you and each other as soon as you pick them up and move them around.  Sifteo’s initial collection of titles will include games for adults, fun learning puzzles for kids, and games people can play together.

Cubes are scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2011.

A Plea for Sensible Video Game Vibration

It’s a slow news day in video games, so humor me.

Lately, I’ve been playing Vanquish, an over-the-top shooter from Konami. It’s full of cyborg soldiers, gigantic weapons, shiny robots and loud explosions. No complaints there.

My problem with Vanquish is one that has periodically popped up ever since Nintendo 64 introduced the Rumble Pak in 1997: Excessive use of controller vibration during the cutscenes between levels.

In Vanquish, it’s pretty much a constant rumble every time the action stops, as robots explode and and space ships cruise overhead. It’s so bad that I have to put the controller down — why subject my hands to constant discomfort? — but even then, I can’t put it on the coffee table out of fear that it’ll rumble off the edge. If I place the controller next to me on the couch, I can feel the entire cushion quaking.

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Drives With a Difference

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Hitachi LifeStudio Mobile Plus

Price: Starts at $109.99

A hard disk is a hard disk is a hard disk–or so it can seem, anyhow. It’s certainly tough to make one stand out from the crowd. But Hitachi took several steps to make its LifeStudio Mobile Plus line of external drives feel like something beyond the same ol’ same ol. For one thing, it worked with the folks at Cooliris to give LifeStudio drives a 3D browser that lets you explore a drive’s contents visually and share photos and videos on Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. It also provided the drives with backup software that can save data to Hitachi’s online service as well as to the disk. And it gave the disks their own satellites–in the form of dockable thumb drives that let you put a subset of the hard disk’s contents in your pocket.