End User

How Windows Can Save Itself: Three Things We Want to See in Windows 7

With everyone calling out Windows' imminent doom from the rooftops, it's easy (though incorrect) to believe that the OS doesn't have much longer to live as a platform.  While it's premature to say that we're looking at the twilight of Microsoft, it is fair to say that the trend of Microsoft's slowly-but-steadily declining market share will continue unless they make a radical change in their software design.

Since Microsoft makes a point of attempting to support legacy software and hardware, seeing them undergo the kind of sea-change that Apple underwent in releasing OS X is unlikely.  But the case for it is there: Apple took a huge risk in releasing OS X, since doing so meant that it required nearly their entire user base to re-buy software and hardware or face immediate obsolescence.  But Apple went through because they had no choice; with their stock tanked and the company losing money, it was either rethink their design philosophy or file bankruptcy. 

Microsoft, with its dominant 90%+ of market share, doesn't feel the need to make such a leap.  And despite what a lot of pundits are saying, they really can't afford to.  Apple was able to introduce OS X in an environment where they had no significant market share, and then grow the user base comfortably over time.  It's one thing to take the risk of asking 3% of the market to repurchase all of their software and peripherals-- quite a different thing to ask 91% of the market to do the same.

Windows Vista was Microsoft's attempt at bridging that gap between presenting a new kernel design philosophy and still offering legacy support.  It didn't really work.  Apple's kernel redesigning gamble paid off because it offered a suite of new features, functionality, and stability over previous versions.  Vista's half-hearted attempt orphaned too many programs and peripherals to offset its few improvements.

The new "I'm a PC" ad campaign is a step in the right direction for realigning Windows' perception in the marketplace, but PR isn't really the main issue Microsoft needs to address--it's their sprawling, unaligned design philosophy that causes them to rush half-finished products to market.

Microsoft needs to innovate in order to remain competitive, and hopefully Windows 7 will show the innovation that Microsoft is capable of when it doesn't get in its own way.  Not much information has been leaked about Windows 7 yet except that it may hit the market as early as next year and that it will support multitouch.  Multitouch support is a good start because it argues for a stronger embedded device presence.  In that vein, here are three more things I want to see in Windows 7 that I think would strengthen the platform and even bring me back from the Ubuntu fold.

1) Boot into multiple environments, and virtualize between them.  Let's face it, Microsoft has been trying to have it both ways with legacy support vs. kernel design and it hasn't really been working.  So split the difference: at logon, give the user the option to boot into either the latest version of Windows, or a legacy kernel that supports pre-Vista software and hardware.  (My admittedly shabby "artist's rendition" of this is below.)  This gives all the latitude needed for more innovative design in the new kernel, because it wouldn't be hobbled by attempts at legacy support, and eliminates the need for the disastrous "upgrading to a older version" that crippled Vista adoption.  You could even get more specific with microkernels: for example, give the user options between environments optimized for certain tasks like gaming, or functioning as a media center or a server.  Also, allow the environments to virtualize each other, so that you can run an older program under Windows 7 for example without having to log out and log back in under a different environment.  One thing Mac and Linux have all over Windows is the ability for casual users to virtualize other environments--technically speaking it's nothing Windows can't do, and it should.

Easiest Hack Ever: Revive Your MP3 Player with Rockbox

Still saving up to upgrade your aging MP3 player?  Or want the functionality of a higher-end player but can't yet justify the expense?  The recently-released Rockbox 3.0 is here to give new life to your player, and it supports more models than ever before--including many iPods.

What is Rockbox?  It's an open-source firmware/software package that completely replaces your current player's software.  It's not just a GUI replacement--it adds drag-and-drop file functionality to players, it adds playback support for most audio codecs including OGG and FLAC as well as MPEG video, and even adds support for games (Doom!) and small applications.  Most users report extended battery life as well.

Installation is easy with any supported, USB-connected player.  Simply download the Rockbox installer, run it, and follow the on-screen instructions.  A few clicks and your dusty old player will have a brand new pair of shoes in no time.  Here's a list of the currently supported players:

• Apple: 1st through 5.5th generation iPod, iPod Mini and 1st generation iPod Nano
  (not the Shuffle, 2nd/3rd gen Nano, Classic or Touch)
• Archos: Jukebox 5000, 6000, Studio, Recorder, FM Recorder, Recorder V2 and Ondio
• Cowon: iAudio X5, X5V, X5L, M5, M5L, M3 and M3L
• iriver: H100, H300 and H10 series
• Olympus: M:Robe 100
• SanDisk: Sansa c200, e200 and e200R series (not the v2 models)
• Toshiba: Gigabeat X and F series (not the S series)

Rockbox will build a database of your music with ID3 tag support, or you can browse by filetree.  It adds video capability (with support for multiple file types) on players that don't normally do video such as a 1st gen iPod nano, provided your player's CPU is fast enough.  You can read text files and browse photos.  Features like file renaming and deleting on the device, on-the-fly playlists, a 5-band equalizer, and user-created themes mean you can fully customize the sound and the look of your music. 

Note that while none of these features are groundbreaking in and of themselves, the point is that it adds this functionality to players that normally don't have it.  That means you can watch video on a "pre-fatty" nano, or play Asteroids on your Sansa E series.  Besides entertainment, there are small productivity plugins like currency converters, calculators, and a dictionary to give your player a more PDA-like quality.

In short, if you balk at the expense of products like the iPhone but wish your current player could carry its weight a little better, check out Rockbox.

--Aric A.

[Ed. Note: The site has been seeing a ton of traffic since the release of 3.0, so if the Rockbox site doesn't load for you at first, refresh or try again in a few minutes.]

How App Launchers Are Bringing the Command Line Back

If you're like most computer users these days, the command line is something like a bidet--you know it serves a useful function for some people but beyond that you'd prefer to know as little about it as possible.  The traditional command line seems counter-intuitive to the new or casual computer user, with its alphabet soup of commands ("pwd"?  "ls"? "grep"?), which, when entered, don't always clearly show its result--for example, when you're backgrounding a process.

Many superusers lament that more of us should be using the command line, because despite its unwelcoming appearance it's sometimes the fastest and most efficient way to get things done.  And it's true--if you're handy with a command prompt, you can find, compare, and organize files and folders or launch programs much faster than it would take to do the same thing through a typical GUI like Windows Explorer.  But who wants to spend the time learning all that?

Well, it turns out that many computer users are--to paraphrase the old dish-soap commercial, "you're soaking in it".  If you use an application launcher like Quicksilver, Launchy, or GNOME-Do, you probably know how incredibly easy it is to call up the application and type in a few words, and you can launch any file in any application.  The funny thing is that it's almost identical in concept to the command line--it's a syntax that's basically verb+noun, and in most cases you only need the first few letters of each to get things done.  Of course the command line can be much more complex, but then again these launcher applications are adding more and more functionality all the time, as we'll see below.

Mac--Quicksilver

Quicksilver was one of the first and still arguably the best application launcher out there.  One of its most useful features is adaptive search, meaning that the more you use it, the more intuitive it becomes in anticipating the apps or files you're looking for with fewer typed letters.  Quicksilver can also read data inside of files (similar to the "grep" command in a Unix/Linux command line) which lets you work with data by type as well as filename. Since the code was made available in 2007, there've been a number of plug-ins that add both new items and new actions, such as running scripts, send instant messages, dial phone numbers, look up words in a dictionary, queue songs in iTunes, and so on.

Windows--Launchy

Launchy is quickly becoming the most widely-used app launcher out there, thanks to its clean look and replication of many of Quicksilver's features.  Quick indexing of file types, integrated search with popular sites like Google and Amazon, and the ability to define custom commands make it powerful in its own right, and new functionality is being added all the time with plugins and scripts.

For example, with scripts defined in .bat files, you can add text to a text file without even opening it, set reminders in Outlook or web-based GTD apps like Remember the Milk, and send info to SMS services like Twitter.  The out-of-the-box functionality of Launchy is already great, but if you're willing to spend a little time writing scripts (or finding user-created scripts on the Web), there's almost no limit to what Launchy can do.

Linux--GNOME-Do

GNOME-Do is relatively new, and already offers much of the feature set of other launchers.  Its small footprint and fast performance make up for its comparatively reduced functionality, and in no time it'll have as much power as its older brothers.

(Note: Launchy is now also available for Linux, but I like the Quicksilver-like appearance of GNOME-Do a little better.)

Firefox--Ubiquity

Browsers are now getting into the ersatz-command-line game.  Ubiquity, which is still in alpha but is already seeing wide use, allows regular English expressions like "Schedule dinner at Peso's for tomorrow at 6pm and email an invitation to Eliza", and Ubiquity will add a note to your Google Calendar, pull up a map of the restaurant, and send a copy of the map and calendar reservation to a contact in your address book.  But of course it will also accept suggested and user-defined abbreviations like the above command launchers, such as "schd Peso's 6 invt Eliza".  You can also type a few letters to translate a web page, look up a word, or syntax highlight code. 

It's an alpha, so not everything is smooth enough to recommend it 100% for daily use, but if you want an exciting glimpse into how "dusty" old concepts like the command line are being reinvented as the future of the Web, it's worth a look.  For an idea of how powerful this concept is, just check out how easy it is to, say, book a flight to Chicago:

--Aric A.

Wherefore Art Thou, KVM?: Hands-on with IoGear and Belkin's Entry-Level KVM Switches

I've recently been looking for a used Mac to play around developing iPhone apps on. In preparation of finding one and integrating it into my current home setup, I recently went out looking for a basic, inexpensive KVM switch. Little did I know what a headache I was in for.

If you're not familiar with KVM switches, they're devices that allow you to connect a single monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers to several different desktop or laptop computers. By using a manual switch on the device, or a remote, or a hotkey on the keyboard, you can switch back and forth between two or more computers that are powered on.

At the moment there are only two major players in the sub-$70 KVM switch game, in the sense that most big-box retailers only carry one or both of these two: the IoGear Miniview and the Belkin Flip. Each comes in various flavors, such as PS/2 ports vs. USB, but they're essentially the same device in each case. In this case, I tested an example of each using my home PC and several different laptops in various configurations. The operating systems involved were Windows XP Pro, XP Home Media Center Edition, and Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04.

I first went with the IoGear MiniView Micro USB PLUS KVM Switch with Audio. The IoGear switches computers by use of tapping the Scroll Lock key twice. I hooked it up and for about five minutes it worked wonderfully. Then, after the second switch back and forth, one computer locked up and required a hard reboot. After that, every time I tried to switch back and forth, the IoGear would arbitrarily change my monitor's refresh rate, usually to something outside of its range--meaning I effectively couldn't switch to the other computer.

Checking the sparse support section of IoGear's web site yielded no helpful information. After about two hours of checking websites and switching cables around to try to find a magically working configuration, I gave up and returned it.

My second attempt was the Belkin Flip USB KVM Switch with RF Remote. I liked the idea of having a little wireless remote that I can just tap to switch between machines. Hooking it up was a cinch, but once I powered everything on I was faced with a key problem: the remote didn't work. Tapping the remote produced a light signalling the switch, but my screen stayed where it was.

Checking Belkin's support site yielded no fix for the remote, chalking it up to interference from a nearby device. Okay, fair enough--except that my RF Harmony 1000 remote works just fine (and turning it off and removing it from the room didn't help). a separate software download that allowed you to make the switch via either a selection of hotkeys or an icon in the systray that would allow you to flip the audio, video, or both. (Though the fact that this software wasn't bundled with the device makes me feel like it was a "patch" created when multiple people complained about the wired and wireless remotes both not working.) This works so far, though it needs to be installed separately on each machine connected to the switch.

In both cases, the products' support forums and reviews are filled with unhappy customers with switches that work erratically or not at all. I'm not sure why an inexpensive, working KVM switch seems to be so difficult to come by. My Flip is working fine so far using the additional software, but the remote is a lost cause. The true test will be when I replace one of these Windows machines with a Mac--I can't say I'm optimistic about the prospect.

(NOTE: In both cases, Linux support was spotty at best, which was fine as the devices didn't explicitly claim to support Linux...but using two XP machines yielded identical results for both switches.)

It's true that there isn't a huge percentage of the home computer userbase that needs a KVM switch, but that doesn't mean that those who do shouldn't be able to find a simple, inexpensive switch that works out of the box, and these two entry-level switches just don't cut it. There are a number of people who have used each of these switches who claim no problems whatsoever, but if you're in the market for a sub-$70 KVM, all I can say is be sure to keep your receipt handy.

--Aric A.

Thanks to All Who Entered the End User Custom PC Giveaway

Thanks to everyone who entered our End User Custom Gaming PC giveaway.  We've selected a winner and have sent notification, and we'll announce the winner here in a few days.

In the meantime, if you're raring for more custom PC goodness, check out Amazon.com's PC Components store, or if you just want to watch the fun, check out Maximum PC's Dream Machine 2008.

Thanks again to all who entered, and keep watching this space for more cool gadgets contests, giveaways, and prizes.

--Aric A.

Easiest Hack Ever: Stream Music from your PC to Your iPhone/iPod Anywhere with Simplify Media

One of the coolest things I've been able to do with my iPhone this past year is stream music from my home PC to my iPhone anywhere I had WiFi access using a small software app from Simplify Media.  The storage on the iPhone is pretty small, but with a Simplify Media server running on my home machine, my storage space was virtually limitless since I could stream music from my own PC, my wife's computer, etc., from absolutely anywhere (well, anywhere with a WiFi point).

Before, you needed to jailbreak your iPhone to use Simplify Media, which lots of people are understandably gun-shy to do.  But no more--they've released a download to the iPhone App Store that will let you take advantage of this, all on the up-and-up.  And it's completely free.

It's incredibly easy to use: you just create a free account at SimplifyMedia.com, and download a version of the software for each computer/media player you want to share in the love.  Once you've installed it on each machine, select the directories on your home PC you want to share and click "Start server".  Then, whenever you're out and about, use the Simplify app on your iPhone or iPod touch to access your music anywhere there's a WiFi access point.  (Note that this does require leaving your home computer on.)  Of course, you can also access your Simplify server with your laptop--great for when your onboard tunes are getting stale.

Best of all, Simplify works on all versions of Windows, Mac, and even Linux, and can integrate with iTunes, WinAmp, and Rhythmbox.  Watch it in action below:

--Aric A.

Final Day to Enter End User's Custom PC Giveaway

Today's the final day to enter for a chance to win a custom gaming PC built by Amazon.com's Computer Components store team.  Valued at approximately $1,500, this rig featured in the most recent issue of Maximum PC Magazine is a high-value, high-performance conglomeration of hardware that’s ready for PC gaming, video editing, home office duties and much, much more.

Enter before midnight Pacific time tonight (August 15) for a chance to win this custom PC--simply check out End User and click on the entry form here or at the top right of the home page to enter for your chance to win.  (You can also check out the contest's official rules there, too.)  We'll announce the winner here on End User on or around August 20.

If you want to see what's in it, or simply can't wait and want to build your own, check out our Listmania of everything that comes in this custom gaming PC.  And if you're interested in an even higher-end computer, don't forget to check out Maximum PC’s Dream Machine 2008.

--Aric A.

Demystifying Multiroom Media Systems

"Multiroom media systems" like the Sonos BU150, the Philips Streamium series, and the Logitech Squeezebox are becoming a popular trend--much like iPod docks over the past couple of years, manufacturers are racing to bring their own versions of networkable audio/video products to market.  The most common refrain on the product packaging--"send digital media wirelessly throughout your home"--sounds pretty great, but what does it actually mean?  Just MP3s, or my CD/tape/vinyl collection as well?  Does the product send music to unlimited rooms or do I have to buy additional units or accessories for each room?  Does it just transmit data or can it record and store music as well?  What about video?  And how does it work?

The Three Basic Truths About Multiroom Media Systems

Of course the answers to the above questions are going to differ from product to product, but there are a few things you should understand about all multiroom media systems:

1) Most existing systems only do audio streaming.  Audio and video streaming is much more expensive than streaming only audio, and while the functionality is sure to be more common in the next few years, right now the best way to send movies and TV shows through the home is either through very high-end AV receivers such as the Yamaha RX-Z11 or through a home theater PC (HTPC) connected to your current setup.

2) Some systems need your home wireless connection, some don't. Some multiroom systems can talk to each other on their own frequencies, but others send data through your existing home wireless connection--meaning that if you don't already have a wireless network in your home, you may need to buy additional equipment such as a router and wireless cards for your PC/laptop.

3) Even though most are designed to work with 802.11b/g/n, they usually only talk to their own brand of products.  Most multiroom systems are designed to only talk to their own brand of products, so mixing and matching pieces to try to save dollars usually won't work.  You CAN save some coin mixing and matching parts if you're building your own networked HTPC, but it's a lot of upfront work and can still be very expensive.

"Do Multiroom Systems Just Do MP3s?  What About My CDs?"

These days multiroom systems can take nearly any digital format you can dish out: MP3, AAC, WMV, even WAV and FLAC, and several systems are compatible with popular music services like Pandora, Rhapsody, and others.  But always make sure that the formats listed as supported on the product packaging matches your actual library--if you primarily buy music from iTunes for example, and the product doesn't support AAC files, you'll end up spending many hours converting the files if you want to use them (and that's assuming you know how to convert audio formats).

 

Some systems, such as the Philips Streamium system, come with onboard storage that allows you to rip and store CDs in various formats, as well as allowing you to use separate plug-and-play media such as USB flash drives.  Others such as the Sonos system have no storage and must pull music from a source like your PC. 

If you want to stream music from your CD player, cassette deck, turntable, etc., the system you're using will need a client device that you can plug into the player's output jack in order to transmit the output.  Not all systems have this, especially at the low end of the cost spectrum.  If that's what you need, make sure the multiroom system you're buying has (or supports via an accessory) the ability to transmit from multiple sources as well as receive.  If the product info doesn't explicitly say that it transmits from sources other than your PC, assume it doesn't.

 

What Kind of Multiroom System Do I Need?

Dedicated multiroom systems are the most popular method, but there are many ways to start a multiroom system and some ways have advantages over others such as hi-def video streaming.  The factoring decisions will be how many rooms you want to stream to and what kind, and whether you want to stream video as well.

• Network-enabled AV receivers have the benefit of integrating directly into your existing home theater system and high-bandwidth home network.  They can receive incoming data such as music from your PC or Internet radio, and for a little more cash the can also re-stream the data out to other rooms (called "multi-zone") with proprietary accessories.  The beauty of these is that in most cases you only need one piece (the receiver itself) if all you want to do is listen to music and watch movies from your regular PC on your souped-up home theater system.  There are a few disadvantages: they take longer to initially set up, they're expensive (even moreso if you want a multi-zone) and most current products' GUIs still have a long way to go in terms of visual appeal and ease of use.  Also, they tend to not be compatible with music from subscription services such as Napster or Rhapsody.  Still, if you already have a home network and a decent home theater setup, a network-enabled AV receiver such as the Onkyo TX-NR905 or the Denon AVR-5308 can be a "one-box" solution for starting a multiroom system.
• Home theater PCs (HTPCs) are the most stable and powerful solution if you only have a few rooms you want your PC media in, but you want the highest quality.  An HTPC is literally a separate PC connected to your home theater system exclusively for playing movies and music.  For raw power and versatility in delivering high-definition content across a network, HTPCs can't be beat, but the tradeoff is huge--you'll need a separate HTPC in each room you want to stream to (which means essentially buying a desktop PC for every room in your home), and managing a wireless network between them all can be cumbersome.  This is the option for power-users only; if all you want in a multiroom system is to listen to music from your PC in your kitchen or bedroom, this isn't the solution for you.
• Dedicated multiroom digital music systems usually come with several pieces and have the distinct advantage of not requiring an existing home network--in most cases, you simply plug one piece into your computer and another into the room where you want music.  Products like the popular Sonos system and the Logitech Squeezebox Duet can connect to your wireless network but don't have to--the pieces communicate between each other using their own wireless protocols and just use your wireless network to pull content from your PC or the Internet.  They update themselves automatically and often work out of the box with the only required configuration being setting up the initial network connection, and usually have a wide range of support for music purchased via digital music stores.  And while systems can easily cost into the low thousands if you want to add pieces to every room in your home, they still tend to be cheaper overall than a quality network AV receiver or HTPC.  The downside is that almost none of them do video, and while firmware updates are easily obtained, hardware upgrades occasionally require buying the entire system over again.  Also, note that although these systems often don't need a wireless broadband Internet connection to work, they really need one if you want to get the most use out of them.

--Aric A.

PS: Only 2 days left to enter our End User Custom Gaming PC Giveaway--go to EndUserBlog.com and click on the entry form to enter for a chance to win a gaming PC built by the Amazon.com PC Components team, featured in the latest issue of Maximum PC Magazine. Check out End User to read more about the contest, see the official rules, and enter for your chance to win.

Homebrew Touchscreen on the Playstation Portable

A gent going by the handle "jube808" is on a mission to update the aging Playstation Portable platform with recent features from mobile phones: increased battery life, a better button layout, and in particular a touchscreen with an on-screen keyboard.  Dubbed the "PSPzproject", this professional electronics engineer is looking to build a better gaming mousetrap, combining the power of the PSP with the accessibility and ease of use of the DS Lite or iPhone

He's recently posted two videos of the touchscreen proof of concept in action:

Read more about the project here.

--Aric A.

PS: Only 5 days left to enter our End User Custom Gaming PC Giveaway--go to EndUserBlog.com and click on the entry form to enter for a chance to win a gaming PC built by the Amazon.com PC Components team, featured in the latest issue of Maximum PC Magazine. Check out End User to read more about the contest, see the official rules, and enter for your chance to win.

Mozilla Labs Demonstrates "Aurora" Concept Browser

Mozilla Labs and Adaptive Path have unveiled a set of concept videos demonstrating "Aurora", a type of web browser that integrates websites, contacts, and information as objects that can be swapped with one another interchangeably.  It's only a concept, and while ideas from Aurora are being integrated into some of Mozilla's own work, don't expect to see it on your desktop PC any time soon.  Still, it's beautiful and exciting, with some great visual touches and some interesting ideas about how a web browser should work.

Only two of the planned four videos are available now--one showing a desktop experience and one showing a mobile device experience.  You can watch the rest when they become available at www.adaptivepath.com/aurora.

Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Aurora (Part 2) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

--Aric A.

"Cuil" Search Engine Launches, Kind of Doesn't Work

A new search engine dubbed Cuil (pronounced "cool") launched recently. There've been many pretenders to Google's throne in the past decade, but this one comes with a serious pedigree: it was designed by a husband and wife team Tom Costello and Anna Patterson, with Russell Power. Patterson and Power are former Google heavyweights, and Costello was the founder of Xift.

Cuil claims to be the world's largest search engine, indexing 121,617,892,992 web pages at the time of this writing. Patterson claims that Cuil's new algorithms can index faster and at a lower cost, with more relevant results than Google's current algorithm.

So far, it's got a lot of catching up to do. Shortly after the site went live on Monday it crashed and stayed down for much of the day due to the demand. (A curse of marketing hype, sure, but a search engine of all things needs to support the server load.) Early reports say that search results are often irrelevant or even downright confusing. I myself am having quite a difficult time getting useful results from Cuil--the "magazine layout" format often returns results with images that are completely unrelated to the searched content--pictures that aren't even hosted by or linked to by sites in the search results, making me wonder how the heck they ended up there.

Are any of you having any luck with Cuil? Or conversely, what's your funniest (and safe for work, now) irrelevant search result?

--Aric A.

Announcing End User's Amazon.com Custom Gaming PC Giveaway

Which components go into the ultimate $1,500 computer? We wanted answers, so we challenged the hardcore computer geeks at Maximum PC magazine (www.maximumpc.com) to search through the Amazon.com Computer Components store and spec out the best computer one could build from approximately $1,500 worth of parts. The result takes the form of Maximum PC’s “Amazon Special Edition” Machine 2008, a high-value, high-performance conglomeration of hardware that’s ready for PC gaming, video editing, home office duties and much, much more.

And we're giving it away--between now and August 15, you can enter for a chance to win this custom PC featured in the September issue of Maximum PC.  Simply check out End User and click on the entry form here or at the top right of the home page to enter for your chance to win.  (You can also check out the contest's official rules there, too.)  We'll announce the winner here on End User on August 20.

If you want to see what's in it, or simply can't wait and want to build your own, check out our Listmania of everything that comes in this custom gaming PC.  And if you're interested in an even higher-end computer, don't forget to check out Maximum PC’s Dream Machine 2008.

--Aric A.

Pwnage Tool for 3G iPhone Released

A short, but big announcement:  the iPhone Dev Team has officially released their Pwnage tool to unlock and jailbreak 3G iPhones.  It is backwards compatible, meaning it will also unlock/jailbreak all older versions of the iPhone firmware, but going forward only the 2.0 firmware will be supported for questions and tech help.

If you're not happy with the cost or availability of apps in the iTunes App Store, or if you want to have your cake and eat it to, you can find the Pwnage tool here.

--Aric A.

Well, That Was Fast: iPhone 2.0 Firmware Is Unlocked

The 3G iPhone isn't even out until tomorrow, but the iPhone Dev Team is on the ball:  they've already unlocked the 2.0 firmware.

The updated Pwnage tool hasn't been released quite yet, but according to Gizmodo, the iPhone they've been running in all the videos you've seen of them test-driving the new App Store is jailbroken.  And it seems to run just fine alongside the new App Store.

This is very encouraging--while I support the idea of commercially-developed, easily-installable software via the App Store, the official SDK passed to these developers came with some hefty restrictions that limit the kind of functionality on offer from App-Store-distributed software.  Now consumers can have a much wider choice of free third-party apps with extra functionality.  Look for the Pwnage tool (and, hopefully, a new Ziphone update as well) to be out very soon.

--Aric A.

OpenMoko Launches Neo Freerunner While You Weren't Looking

The development hype around open-source cellphone OSes such as Google's Android and Nokia's Symbian has had me wondering for a while now whatever happened to the Linux-based, open-source OpenMoko.  After blogging about it last year I was interested in seeing what became of it--but around the time of their projected October '07 release date, development appeared to just...stop.  The site was still live but pre-order and release information for the Neo 1973 consumer handset had been taken down (though the semi-functional developer kit was still offered for sale).  I worried that it had just been another good Linux idea that died in development hell, like the Kerbango Internet radio, and it fell off my radar.

Fortunately I was wrong:  OpenMoko just launched their first consumer smartphone, renamed the Neo Freerunner, on July 4th.  It's a tri-band GSM phone that supports Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and runs OpenMoko's version of open-source Linux software.  It has a 2.8" VGA touchscreen (you can use your fingers or the included stylus), two 3-axis motion sensors, a 2.5mm headphone jack, and supports microSD cards.

Ars Technica takes an interesting first look at the open software platform, and it looks great.  With AGPS, games, multimedia and full webbrowsing support (using Apple's lean and powerful WebKit), it's already a strong contender, but the killer app here is the addition of a package installer in a retail phone--similar to Installer.app on the jailbroken iPhone, it offers users immediate access to a constantly updated database of free applications that can be cleanly installed with one click.

All that free software actually comes with a hefty pricetag, however--$399.  There's no camera and very little onboard storage, so as a direct competitor to the 3G iPhone its value proposition will have to be in the quality of available software; but this early in the lifecycle, there's not much available beyond the basics, so the initial stock will most likely find its way into the hands of diehard hackers and Linux geeks before seeing wider adoption.  But I'm excited to see where it goes, and have every intention of getting my hands on a test unit to see how it stacks up.

--Aric A.

Hands On with the ESPN Ultimate Remote

Falling squarely into the "gadgets you didn't know you needed until they existed" category, the ESPN Ultimate Remote is a universal remote that offers Wi-Fi connectivity. Connecting to the Internet through your home wireless connection allows the remote to not only give you game stats and scores from ESPN.com, but offers online shopping, text messaging, and social networking capabilities.  It's billed as the "ultimate sports fan remote" but I'm actually tempted to call it the "first social media remote".  There are a couple of Wi-Fi-enabled remotes on the market, but the ESPN remote is the first to offer actual Internet functionality.  You can shop online at Amazon.com (ahem), text-message friends and family, and even update Facebook.  Oh, and you can do sports-related stuff too, of course.

The remote uses click365 as its content portal, which connects to certain partner sites; so there's not a true web browser, and its 2.2" QVGA screen means mobile-phone-style browsing on the sites that are provided.  But it's speedy and effective, there are a lot of available options, and more content is claimed to be coming for the remote via downloadable firmware upgrades.

Our Test Home Theater Setups

So how well does it work?  I took it for a test spin on two different home theater setups, one high-end and one low-end.  The high-end system consisted of a 52" Samsung LNT5365 LCD, an imported special-edition Onkyo TX-NA1000 receiver, a Toshiba HD-DVD player, and MartinLogan Purity speakers.  The low-end system consisted of a 27" TruTech tube television, an early-1990's Sharp receiver, an RCA DRC247N DVD player, and Altec Lansing bookshelf speakers.

The ESPN remote is a completely PC-free setup--you simply choose to add a device type, choose the brand, and point the remote at the device while it cycles through its code library.  It's as easy as it gets, but in the cases of popular brand names it can be time-consuming waiting for the remote to find the right code. 

In the case of the low-end system, only the DVD player was recognized. This gave me the chance to test the remote's learning capability, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.  My last learning remote was a URC RF20, and while it was a good remote in most respects, teaching it commands could be a hassle.  The ESPN remote has a large IR port on the bottom, meaning you can hold both remotes facing the same direction, with the learned remote pointing at the back of the ESPN remote.  It's a small difference that made a big difference in practice--I taught the ESPN remote the entire command sets from my TV and receiver in about five minutes.

For the high-end system, the remote recognized everything except the Onkyo import piece, but again it was easy to teach it commands.  Activity macros were easy to set up for things like "Watch TV", "Watch DVD", and "Listen to Music".  In general setup was painless but definitely took longer as I waited for the remote to cycle through its several hundred Samsung, Toshiba, and Onkyo codes.  At one point I wondered whether it would have actually been faster just to teach it the remotes individually.

What the Wi-Fi Brings to the Table

My home network uses WPA2 encryption, but logging on with the remote was no problem.  Text entry is done via the alphanumeric keypad, like text-messaging on a mobile phone.  After automatically updating its firmware (which you can't stop or pause once it first logs onto your network), I downloaded program guides without issue, and it's nice to be able to browse channel guides on the remote's screen without needing to interrupt what's on TV.  My weather region was selected automatically and I added a couple more regions for my family back East.  Headlines are done quite nicely:  it feeds and cycles through popular news sources such as AP/Reuters, ABC, and the Wall Street Journal, displaying a color photo and a quick summation of each story.

You can also get information about movies, actors, place, etc. via Yahoo! Search.  The search window is predictive, meaning you don't have to know perfectly how to spell your subject--type the first few letters and it will show you available subjects.  You can shop Amazon.com directly from the remote as well once you tie it to your customer account.  Browsing Amazon.com looks like it does on mobile phones, or the optimized iPhone site.  I even updated my Facebook directly from the remote, and while I'm not a texting champ it didn't take any longer to do than it does from my iPhone.  I'm glad the buttons on the remote aren't flat--the convex tactile alphanumeric keys made it easier to "feel" my way through texting.

And oh yeah--sports.  Not surprisingly ESPN.com is the portal for sports content.  You can get realtime game stats and scores for any game, not just the one you're watching, or read sports articles, or even manage your ESPN.com fantasy league (which I don't have, so unfortunately I can't report on).  Everything worked great, but the one feature I would have liked to have seen is an option to "jump" to the stats of the game you're currently watching.

The Final Breakdown

All in all, it's a bit funny that the ESPN moniker might be the biggest thing working against this remote.  It's billed as a product built especially for sports fans but there's equal time given to multiple functions like shopping, headlines, and entertainment news.  Heck, this thing has Minesweeper on it.  It's definitely a multipurpose web-centric entertainment gadget and deserves a reputation as such (even if that's kind of a mouthful).

Pros: Browse popular Internet sites during commercials, get custom program guides, news, and weather, and get game stats and scores and articles while you watch.  Searchable database of entertainment articles on movies, shows, actors, etc.  Large, easily-readable screen that auto-adjusts brightness according to room lighting.  No PC needed to set up.  Raised buttons and close arrangement make texting easy.  User manual can be downloaded directly to the remote itself.  Updates itself automatically.  Can charge via USB or AC power.  Supports every type of wireless encryption, so no need to unlock your network to integrate the remote.

Cons: Setup is easy but can be time consuming if you have a popular brand with a lot of codes.  Expensive.  Some ghosting during scrolling on websites.  Plastic body not very drop-resistant.  Presence of multiple navigation methods adds a learning curve.

--Aric A.

Three Essential Space-Saving Gadgets for Business Travel

If you travel a lot for business like I do you're probably familiar with many of the most common hassles--lack of space in your carry-on, running out of batteries, too few power outlets in airports and coffeeshops, etc.  Here are what I consider to be the three most essential gadgets to stick in a laptop bag that help address some of these issues.

1. eneloop Travel USB Charger--Like many people, I have more and more gadgets on hand that use rechargeable Li-Ion batteries, but I still have a few things that take batteries such as my Flip camcorder.  The eneloop USB charger and its two AA batteries are sufficient for me, and in addition to easily using my laptop to recharge my batteries, the charger and AAs fold up smartly into a little package smaller than a deck of cards.

2. Powermonkey eXplorer with Solar Charger--On those occasions where you just can't get to an outlet, the Powermonkey provides a quick charge for cellphones, PDAs, portable gaming devices, etc.  Its solar charger means you can just leave it on the table next to your coffee for a bit and have ready-to-go power for the next day or so.  Plus, it comes with a ton of cord tips that fit almost every popular gadget on the market.

3. Monster Outlets-To-Go--If you've ever stood in an airport staring forlornly as the one outlet in the terminal is occupied, or if you found yourself in a less-than-4-star hotel wondering whether to unplug the TV or the alarm clock so you can plug in your laptop, you'll appreciate this.  It fits easily into a carryon and provides an extra four outlets so you can plug in all your devices or share an outlet with a coworker (and thus avoid his/her disapproving look because, hey, you got there first).

--Aric A.

Tom's Hardware: Solid-State Drives Reduce, Not Increase, Battery Life

For a long time now it looked like solid-state hard drives (SSDs) were the future of laptop storage media.  There's no question that they outperform disk-based hard drives in access and response time, but Tom's Hardware is challenging the wide assumption that they also save power--and they're bringing data:

We still believe that flash-based drives will be the future for the performance segment, but they must not become a key component for energy-efficient notebooks and ultra-portables — where performance is secondary — as long as their average power consumption is higher than that of conventional 2.5” notebook hard drives. In fact, even a high-performance 7,200 RPM 2.5” drive provided better overall battery runtime than most of the flash SSDs we put through the Mobilemark test.

What does that mean for you?  Not too much for the casual laptop user, but if you're a business road-warrior who lives out of your laptop, the impact on battery life--as much as a one-hour reduction in one test--could prove significant.  Tom's Hardware doesn't mince words:

The results of our testing are a shock for anyone who cares about battery runtime, as our results prove unmistakably that battery runtimes do not increase when using flash based SSDs. As a matter of fact, most flash SSD products actually contribute to emptying your battery even faster! Mainstream flash SSDs — if they can even be called “mainstream” at prices of $500 and up — do not even provide convincing performance while they help to suck your battery empty quicker than before.

Read the full breakdown of the test results here.

--Aric A.

New iPhone/AT&T Info, and It's a Mixed Bag

By way of an informative video on the Apple site, Apple and AT&T have revealed a little more info about the rollout on July 11 of the new 3G iPhone--including details on pricing and hardware changes, and there's some good news and some bad news on that front.

The good part are details on many of the features you probably already know about:  GPS, metal buttons, slimmer profile, standard headphone jack (finally), upgraded speakers and mic, Microsoft Exchange support, and more.  Though already spoken to during the 3G iPhone's announcement at the Apple WWDC keynote, these are all welcome features that the video gives a little more meat to if you're hungry for particulars.

The bad parts mostly involve money.  First, the originally-announced price of $199 and $299 for the 8GB and 16GB versions requires eligibility.  Many will qualify:  previous purchasers of the iPhone, brand-new AT&T customers, and current AT&T customers whose contracts are close to completion are all eligible for that pricing.  But if you're an AT&T customer under contract who was holding out to upgrade to the 3G iPhone as many did since last year, expect to shell out $399 and $499 clams respectively, along with the standard contract re-up.

Secondly, the cheapest plan is an extra $10 a month--$70, up from $60 for the EDGE iPhone--and text messages up to 200 now cost $5 as opposed to being free as previously.  That plan will still get you 450 weekday minutes, 5,000 night/weekend minutes, and unlimited data.

Lastly, the 3G iPhone will not be available through Apple's online store, meaning you'll need to fight the crowds and stand in line with everyone else if you want your iPhone. 

None of these niggling issues are dealbreakers, and rest assured I'll be in line with everyone else come July 11.  3G data and Exchange support is just too good to pass up.

--Aric A.

Windows XP Sales Halt Monday

Microsoft is officially pulling the plug on XP Monday and no longer selling it on the shelves.  XP will continue to be available to small-scale OEM system builders and for certain products such as the Asus Eee PC. Microsoft has also agreed to continue supporting XP in some capacity through 2014.  You can also buy Vista Ultimate or Business and legally downgrade to XP. but that's a solution only recommended for the hardcore.

A group of vocal XP proponents tried to save the OS with their "Save XP" petition, but without success.  So those unwilling to cope with Vista don't have long to pick up a copy of XP--otherwise they may just have to wait until Windows 7 is released sometime next year.

--Aric A.

Enable Richer Color Profiles in Firefox 3

If you think the color in your web photographs has been looking a little dull, Firefox 3 has an answer.  Whereas previous versions of Firefox did not support color profiles, now you can manually enable color profile support right in the browser.  According to Deb Richardson of Dria.org:

There are two ways to turn on color profile support in Firefox 3.  The easiest is to install the Color Management add-on (which will work with Firefox 3 Beta 5). After you install the add-on and restart Firefox 3, color profile support is enabled, and you can specify a custom color profile by going to the Tools menu, selecting “Add-ons”, and clicking the Color Management add-on “Preferences” button. If you do not specify a color profile, the system default profile will be used, which should be OK for most people.

The second way to turn on color profile support is through the about:config page, which is a special page where a huge number of different (and usually hidden) Firefox options can be tweaked. This is not a recommended method for most people — about:config options should only be edited if you are very aware of what you’re doing. That said, if you do want to edit the options there, they are gfx.color_management.enabled and gfx.color_management.display_profile. 

--Aric A.

[image via Dria.org]

[EDIT: Reader "tony" has correctly pointed out that enabling color profile support may cause a 10-15% performance decrease in Firefox.  If you don't have a fast computer, be aware that your mileage may vary.]

New Nokia Phones Announced, Including "Thinnest" QWERTY Smartphone

Nokia today announced their newest phones:  the E66 slider phone and the E71, which claims to currently be the "world's thinnest" QWERTY smartphone at only about a centimeter thick.

In addition to Microsoft Exchange server support, easy email setup and messaging clients, and a claimed two-day battery life under "heavy, heavy use," the HSDPA phones support Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and microSD cards (up to 8 GB).  They also both have Assisted GPS (AGPS) functionality using Nokia Maps, as well as a 3-megapixel camera with autofocus and video capability.

Both phones have the added ability to switch between home screens--one for business, and one for personal applications.

The phones will be released in Europe in July at a price of 350 Euros.  Expect to see a US late summer release for both of these phones, with an expected retail of about $500.

--Aric A.

Denon Releases $499 Cable

Is it the ultimate in digital audio/video technology?  Or just a viral marketing ploy?  Either way Denon is making waves with their AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable, a Cat-5 cable designed for select Denon receivers, which costs $499--and no, that's not a typo.  According to Denon, for roughly the same price as their AVR788 receiver, you get:

A tin-bearing copper alloy is used for the cable's shield while the insulation is made of a fluoropolymer material with superior heat resistance, weather resistance, and anti-aging properties. The connector features a rounded plug lever to prevent bending or breaking and direction marks to indicate correct direction for connecting cable.

Needless to say, it's generated a lot of debate not unlike the long-standing debate around Monster Cable.  And some humor; check the comments on the AKDL1 product page.

--Aric A.

Opera 9.5 Web Browser Released

The Opera team released the 9.5 edition of their multiplatform web browser today.  Opera, which debuted in 1996 as a pay browser that virtually disappeared from public perception when FireFox (then called Phoenix/Firebird) hit the scene only to find new life on portable devices, is back to make another serious play for the desktop.  Better malware protection, a suite of new features, and robust customizability are on offer, as well as a new look.

There's a lot of features you'd probably expect, such as speed improvments, mouse gestures, tabbed browsing, and popup blocking, plus some neat additions such as page zoom, Bittorrent support, and a much-needed visual refresh that blends in well with Windows.  Opera is available for most desktop OSes, including all versions of Windows, MacOS, and many flavors of Linux.

However, you may be (justifiably) asking yourself, "does it really matter, since the release of FireFox 3 is just around the corner?"  While FireFox probably won't face a serious threat to its throne from Opera 9.5, there are some features worth taking a look at here--particularly if you have a portable device such as a mobile phone that also uses Opera.  Here's a few reasons you should consider giving it a look:

• Opera Link--Opera 9.5 lets you sync your bookmarks and your Speed Dial (see below) to your Opera-enabled mobile devices.  Bookmark a site on your PC and pull it up on your phone later.

• Speed Dial--Most browsers these days offer tabbed browsing, but Opera offers the option to have each new blank tab show a "speed dial" list of visual bookmarks to your favorite sites.  To add a site you simply click on an empty slot and type the address in, and it will show a thumbnail with a preview of that site.  You can even set it to reload the thumbnails for live previewing. 

• Download manager with Bittorrent support--The download manager includes pause and resume support similar to the new FireFox, but unlike FireFox Opera supports Bittorrent files natively, saving you the need to open a separate application. 

• Widgets--Widgets and extensions are a cinch to install on Opera and look great.  This is something Opera demonstrably handles better than FireFox in my opinion.  While FireFox has a ton of really great extensions, I wouldn't call installation painless, especially since you frequently have to restart your browser.  Opera's extensions are one-click installs with "live previews" that load the widget, letting you see what it does, then asks if you want to keep it.  If you don't, it immediately disappears--no muss, no fuss.  And while Opera's widget library isn't as extensive as FireFox's, it's surprisingly robust.

--Aric A.

Headphone Shootout: Three iPhone Headsets Reviewed

With the imminent release of the 3G iPhone coming up, lots of people will be lining up to take advantage of the 3G goodness, both people newly enticed over to Apple's dark (okay, white) side and buyers of the old iPhone looking to upgrade.  New iPhone owners will quickly learn what we current iPhone owners already know: those stock white earbuds just aren't going to cut it.  They're barely adequate for giving and receiving calls--and for music?  Fuhgeddaboudit.

With that in mind, here are three recent iPhone headsets I've put through their paces over the past two weeks, ranging from $79 to $179.  Each set of headphones here comes with its own pros and cons.  For each item we'll talk about the style and ruggedness, the sound quality of the earphone, and the quality of the mic.

1) Skullcandy FMJ (Full Metal Jacket) Earbuds -- $79

Style: Skullcandy has long been known for their visual flash, and with their flashy colors and little skulls on the earphone casings I can't lie that wearing these around made me feel a little bit like the "too old to be here guy".  The consciously "extreme" styling of these headphones is either going to be the biggest pro or the biggest con, depending on who's looking.   The FMJs come in black, silver, and chrome, with the silver being the least flashy of the three, since the skull decals and logo blend into the earphone making them invisible from a distance.

Despite the flashiness the FMJs are sufficiently rugged, with a coiled metal cable and reinforced grommets at the post and mic.  I'm not worried that the cord will fray at the post or pop out of the casing, which has happened to me plenty of times with cheaper headphones.

Sound: Alas, the FMJs sound better than the stock iPhone earbuds, but not by much.  Bass, which FMJs are designed to emphasize, is fairly strong but also muddy and indistinct.  The midranges are extremely tinny and the treble sounds hollow to nonexistent, making music sound a little sucked-out overall.  Playing with the EQ on my iPhone did little to help the situation.  Using presets that emphasized treble helped balance things out a bit, but clarity was definitely lacking. 

Isolation is better than average, meaning that with the right-sized eartip you can block out most ambient noise but some will still leak through.  This is a point in the FMJ's favor: note that I don't think perfect isolation is ideal in an iPhone headset, as you'll see in my notes on the HF2 below.  Also, the FMJs had the least microphonics or "cable noise".

Mic: Surprisingly, this is where the FMJ really shines.  Out of the three headphones in this review, this mic had the best sensitivity and clarity for normal conversation without so much sensitivity that it picked up everything around me, meaning I would only have to talk half as loud to be heard even in areas with a lot of ambient noise such as a city street.  Talking on the headset was actually a pleasure, as I never had a problem hearing or being understood, even when talking in a low conversational tone in a crowded coffeeshop.

Conclusion: If you like the styling and if you can see the FMJs more as a really good hands-free set that plays better-sounding music than the stock iPhone earbuds, then you'll feel happy about taking advantage of the lower price point.  Otherwise you may want to pass.

2) V-MODA Vibe Duo (Version 2) Earphones -- $99

Style: Easily the best-looking of the three, the Vibe Duo is stylish without pomp, like a set of classy but understated earrings.  The Duos come in either black or chrome, with a braided cable sheathed in plastic.  The textured metal casings are extremely light, making the headphones weigh less than 12 grams.  The post is easy to grip but sits a little high, meaning it occasionally snagged in my jacket pocket, but it wasn't a major issue.  Simply put, these headphones look great.

Unfortunately what they aren't is rugged.  A shirt clip is absolutely necessary with the Duos much of the time, especially when jogging--the casings are so light that the weight of the cord can yank on the grommets when running or even walking, which can eventually lead to the cord fraying or breaking at the casing.

Sound: I have to admit, I love the way these things sound.  They are unapologetically bass-heavy, but treble isn't sacrificed entirely as with the FMJs and there's just enough midrange to add warmth and richness to the boom.  The Duos, like V-MODA's Vibes and Bass Freqs, are tuned to sound a certain way so it's actually best to use a flat EQ setting with these.  These are not "flat-response" headphones, which was a conscious design choice: they're tuned for electronic house music, which V-MODA has a confessed preference for, plus the particular tuning actually helps hide sound artifacts in digital music files compressed at lower bitrates.  So using different EQ presets might unbalance the sound and muddy things up a bit, but on a flat setting the sound is superb.

Also, unlike with most so-named "canalphones", you can get great sound without actually having to place the earphone in your ear canal.  The design of the casing has the earphone sitting shallowly in the ear, and doesn't require a perfect seal for good bass (though the better seated in the ear the earphone is, the better the sound).  I was really happy about the fit, allowing me to pop the earphones in and out easily as needed without having to fight to get them back in with a proper seal.   They were extremely comfortable to wear for long periods. I did however have a problem with cable noise, and when walking quickly or jogging you can actually hear the driver moving around in the casing when your iPhone is off, which isn't encouraging.

Isolation is the weakest of the three; the ease of the fit means that more sound leaks in.  It's definitely better than an earbud-style headphone, and as a "street" headphone I found it useful to actually be able to hear oncoming traffic and fellow pedestrians.  But since my last plane flight I can vouch for the fact that if you want to block out the crying baby in the next row, you're going to need to turn your volume up.

Mic: The mic on the Duos was the weakest of the three.  People on the other end of the line often asked me to speak up, and ambient noise often made it difficult to be understood.  It served adequately most of the time, but it was definitely not stellar.

Conclusion:  They look and sound fantastic, and are extremely comfortable--but expect to have to take extra care against breakage.   Structural reliability is the Duo's "Achilles' heel".  Also, they're tuned for a certain sound so they don't play well with EQ presets.

3) Etymotic Research HF2 Earphones -- $179

Style:  Designed by audiologists, not marketers or graphic designers, there's a very utilitarian look to the HF2s that make one expect to see them on FBI agents or air traffic controllers.  They only come in black, and there's no styling to them whatsoever, being simply black on black with a white "L" on the left casing and an "R" on the right.  The headphones are coated in a soft rubberized treatment that gives it a matte look and is pleasantly "grippy" and soft to the touch.  They don't look bad at all, but they won't start any conversations either.

The cord is just in a thin rubber sheath, but feels sturdy.  The grommets are part of the casings and are nearly half the size of the casings themselves, so I imagine it would be very difficult to break these during normal daily use.

Sound:  Here's the best-kept secret about the HF2: the HF2 is just Etymotic's ER-4P with a mic added.  ER-4s have (rightly) long been considered a gold standard for reference earphones and can cost upwards of $300.  In those terms, getting an ER-4 plus a mic for $179 starts looking like a steal.

Not surprisingly, the sound is amazing.  These are flat-response earphones in the truest sense, meaning that absolutely nothing gets in the way of your source.  Unfortunately that also means that the HF2 functions on a "garbage in, garbage out" principle, which means you might hear compression artifacts and mild distortion if you're listening to digital music compressed at anything but the highest bitrates.  But with good-quality music files, the sound is crystal clear, emphasizing nothing but also holding nothing back.  This gives a lot more flexibility with your EQ settings, meaning you can set them to any preset and still get perfection, so it's just down to your preferences.

Isolation is not only the best of these three headphones, but maybe the best of any headphone, and I had no problem with cable noise.  It's difficult to get a good seal with the flanged silicone earpieces without practice, but once you do, the world disappears.  Note that this may not actually be something you want in an iPhone headset, as perfect isolation has two disadvantages:  first, perfect isolation during physical movement can be disorienting and in some cases, such as jogging in an urban area, even dangerous--though it's definitely a godsend on planes, trains, and buses where you just want to tune out everyone around you.  Second, perfect isolation makes it difficult to gauge your own voice during phone conversations.  During calls I was often told I was talking too loud by both the caller and by people around me, because I couldn't tell what my own volume was.  To avoid this I ended up always taking one earphone out during calls, which worked well during the call itself but the difficulty of getting the earphone back in with a good seal makes it cumbersome to do this in an environment where you expect to receive a lot of calls.

Mic: The mic is solid, with strong sensitivity.  No one I called had trouble understanding me, but the increased sensitivity meant that the mic did tend to pick up ambient noise more easily, meaning that crowded rooms might be problematic.

Conclusion: Expensive, but you get true audiophile, reference-level sound quality with supreme isolation.  Perfect for plane flights, buses, etc., not so much for walking or jogging.  Be careful about your speaking volume when answering calls.

--Aric A.   

Flip mino Camcorder Released Today

If you were wondering about J.B.'s cryptic post from a few days ago, here's your answer:  the Flip mino handheld camcorder was released today.  It improves on the former Flip design by being a full 40% smaller than its cousin, the Flip Video Ultra.  It also comes with its own video management software built into the device, so when you plug it in to your USB slot you get a software menu right away to let you manage your clips or upload them directly to YouTube, AOLVideo, MySpaceTV, and other websites.

It holds a full hour of video on its flash memory hard drive and comes with a Li-Ion battery that recharges from your USB drive or a sold-separately power cable.  As of today's launch it retails for $179.99 and comes in black or white.

-Aric A.

MartinLogan Speakers Now Available on Amazon.com

Amazon.com has just announced that we will be carrying select MartinLogan speakers in our Electronics store.  Needless to say we're pretty excited, as this is something we've been working on for a while.  MartinLogan makes some of the best-looking and best-sounding speakers around, thanks to their electrostatic and thin-film drivers.  From our press-release:

Whether customers are looking for a stereo or multi-channel system solution, every model of the MartinLogan Design Series will be available for shipping from Amazon. In addition, customers can click on sponsored links to find installation services - assuring customers total satisfaction with their new audio experience. Many of the Design Series loudspeakers also qualify for Amazon.com's free Super Saver Shipping or free two-day shipping for Amazon Prime members.

"Amazon.com represents a new and exciting distribution opportunity. Amazon is truly unique in their ability to offer consumers critical product information and assist each customer through the selection process," says Mike Lyons, MartinLogan president and CEO.

If you're not familiar with electrostats, here's the breakdown:  an electrostatic speaker has three basic components "sandwiched" together - stators, diaphragm, and spars or spacers. The diaphragm is a super -light, electrically conductive plastic film sandwiched between two perforated steel sheets, called stators.  Then the whole thing is coated with an insulator.  When it's on, the diaphragm is charged by a high-voltage power supply (meaning you need a power cord), creating a strong electrostatic field around it.  The stators alternate positive and negative charges to pull the diaphragm back and forth, producing sound waves.

What's the benefit?  Conventional cone-style speakers have an eternal paradox in their design that states that the diaphragm needs to be as rigid as possible to prevent distorting the sound it produces when it moves, but needs to be light enough to allow efficiency and to replay high frequencies.  So most  conventional speakers' success is measured in how close they can bridge the gaps between clarity and efficiency and range.  Electrostats sidestep the problem altogether, because the diaphragm moves all at once without flexing, and therefore can be as light as it needs to be to produce maximum efficiency and range.  And because the diaphragm can be a large sheet of material, you get a broader soundstage, instead of a cone that fires from a pinpoint location meaning you need multiple speakers placed around the room if you want to create the illusion of space.

Check out our selection of MartinLogan Design series speakers today to learn more about electrostats and how they can benefit your home theater.  We've made them easy to find--you can browse our entire selection at http://www.amazon.com/martinlogan.

--Aric A.

5 Free HTML Editors You Should Know About

I spend a lot of time blogging--besides End User I have my personal blog for friends and family as well as an interest blog I keep for my hobbies--so you can guess that I spend a lot of time not just making posts but editing site code.  A lot of it is CSS but quite a bit of it is actually just plain ol' HTML. 

Well, Matthew Griffin from Bits O' New Media has provided a very useful rundown of 5 free HTML editors that's worth reading.  I for one have always liked Kompozer for its balance of light footprint, ease of use, and support for CSS, XML, and Javascript, but after his breakdown I may give First Page a shot.

--Aric A.

Google's I/O Conference Shows Off Android Mobile OS

Google took Android, their mobile phone OS due for release later this year, out for a stroll yesterday at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco.  Vic Gundotra (Android's VP of Engineering) led a keynote bringing various developers on the project onstage to discuss the status of the mobile OS.

Highlights of the keynote include Android's HTML5 offline integration, AJAX calls for rich media, and Java 5 support.  If that sounds like Greek, what it means is that the mobile phone web browsing experience will start looking much, much more like your desktop browsing experience, with particular focus on social media sites (like MySpace and YouTube) and blogs.

Check out the Android OS in action in this YouTube clip taken from the keynote, and read more about the conference here.

[via TechCrunch]

--Aric A.

Sneak Peek at Windows 7 Multitouch Features

Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates showed a glimpse of Windows 7's new multitouch features at the All Things Digital conference yesterday evening.  Check out the video below from the Vista Blog that shows elements like pinch zoom, flicking, and more.  It looks like the integration will feel like an intersection between Microsoft's Surface table and Apple's iPhone OS, but it's still too early to say anything final about the design decisions.

One thing I definitely like that was carried over from Surface is the radial menu that you can open on a touch.  I tend to use custom shells like BlackBox or LiteStep on my Windows installations because I like being able to right-click and open a program/context menu wherever my mouse is, and it seems like a natural add to a touchscreen interface rather than dragging your finger between the taskbar/program menu and an active application.

It definitely seems like Microsoft is playing their cards closer to their chest with this glimpse, since the transparency they showed during Vista's development cause frustration with customers who saw one promised feature after another disappear in order to make the launch window.  Windows 7 is going to be teased out a little more between now and its launch date next year, which might be wiser this time than inflating expectations. 

In the meantime, check out the cool multitouch map functions and Surface-like photo management in the video filmed last night at the ATD conference:

 

Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7

--Aric A.

Discovery Channel Slideshow of a Young Gates, Jobs, Woz

The Discovery Channel website posted a slideshow of the giants of US computing in their much younger days--Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Steve Wozniak (or "The Woz")--as well as a basic bio of each.  Pretty cool if you just want a quick overview of these guys through the years or, more likely, if you want to know the story behind this mug shot:

--Aric A.

Use Twitter to Control Your Home Lighting

Check out this hack from a guy named Justin Wickett (found via Hacked Gadgets), where using iLink software and an INSTEON automated lightswitch you can control lights in your home via instant messages to the Twitter microblogging service:

Control Lights with Twitter from Justin Wickett on Vimeo.

This is a pretty easy project but might not be for first-time do-it-yourselfers--get the full skinny on what you need and how to do this hack yourself here.

--Aric A.

Home Audio: What $1.1 Million Will Get You

Are you serious about your home theater?  Maybe not as much as this guy:  Ivan Messer, a financial planner, has spent 25 years and $1.1 million dollars building his dream home theater, which includes almost exclusively Richard Gray and McIntosh products.

According to Electronic House, Messer's system isn't just for show--it gets daily use with his collection of over 6,000 Blu-Ray movies, and Messer gives private demos about once a week.  He gives the demos because he's become such a huge fan of Richard Gray and McIntosh over the years that he became a dealer for them, née Legend Home Video, which he runs out of his summer home in Cape Cod. 

From the article:

The family uses this room every day, with Ivan logging in private demos at least once a week. If you’re one of the privileged few, you might be one of the partygoers at his end-of-May gala, which invites about 150 potential clients and close friends to experience the room and all of its glory. “Once again, we’re going to get a whole routine of just how varied and how widespread this system can handle anything from just subtleties to bone-crunching rock ‘n roll,” he says. “It really is better than front-row-center. It really is just an experience. You have to be there.”

Read more about Messer's $1.1 million home theater system here.

[image via Electronic House]

--Aric A.

 

Samsung Shows Off 82" 2160p HDTV

Samsung showed up at this year’s Society for Information Display (SID) International Symposium in Los Angeles with a mind-blowing 82” 2160p Quad HDTV.  That's four times the resolution of a regular 1080p HDTV.

The prototype features a resolution of 3820x2160 pixels with a refresh rate of 120Hz.  Compare that to the kind of HDTV that's currently on the market:  1080p TVs that run at 1920x1080 pixels.
  Or to put it another way, that's an 8.3-megapixel screen compared to today's 2.1-megapixel TVs.

Yet Samsung is apparently doing themselves one better at the SID show, as there are plans to also debut an 82" multitouch e-board (or e-whiteboard) which is pretty exciting, though one wonders how long your arms would need to be to reach the top of one mounted on an office wall.  Maybe it'll come with an included stepladder?

--Aric A.

Firefox 3 Release Candidate Now Available

The release candidate of Firefox 3 is finally here, and it brings a lot of new features and usability enhancements.  There are some security improvements along with some pretty handy new functionality, such as:

• The default icons and graphics for Firefox are now tailored to match your specific OS (Windows, Mac, Linux)
• The Download Manager now provides site location info and "resume download" functionality
• The auto-complete in the location bar serves results based on frequency and recency, so you won't get a laundry list of possible matches--you'll get the most relevant suggestions based on your recent activity
• Add-ons and extensions are now handled as a package manager.  Open Tools-->Add-ons and you can select and install add-ons from a dynamically populated list of available plugins

There are lots of other new features on offer, so grab your copy and take it for a spin.  Note that this is the RC and not the official release, so there are a couple of minor known bugs, but it should be quite stable for most users.

--Aric A.

Killer SOLo: the Solar-Powered Work Table

With the recent consumer-oriented rush towards producing greener everyday tech products, it seems like it was only a matter of time before a product like this came along, but it makes great sense:  the SOLo Lounge Table, made by iF, Inc.,  whose surface is covered in photoreceptors which power several different kinds of outlets built into the table itself.

There are three conventional outlets along with a USB outlet and even a car-lighter outlet, so the table's got you covered for all your gadgets.  There's also a pull-out system monitor that will let you know whether the table's stored up enough energy to use yet or not.  It produces about 73 kilowatt hours of electricity per year under normal use, so as a coffee table you can work from it seem like a solid solution.  I can't help but wonder if the table's surface gets extremely hot when charging in ambient or direct sunlight, but surely someone thought of that already?

[via Inhabitat]

--Aric A.

Top 10 Free Apps for Your Jailbroken iPhone

If you've recently jailbroken your iPhone (and if you haven't, here's a hassle-free method), you might be bewildered by the choice of available third-party applications--particularly because the app's individual info screens while browsing aren't often very informative.  Some application names such as "iSolitaire" make it pretty easy to guess at their function, but what about names like "VT100" or "Simplify"?

If you're wondering where to get started on making your jailbroken iPhone more productive and entertaining, here are some of my top favorite apps in no particular order:

1) Summerboard--Summerboard is a themer for your iPhone.  While it's not a productivity app, the ability to change the look and feel of your iPhone's interface (example pictured right) can't be underestimated.  You'll need to install the Summerboard package itself first--found in Installer under "System"--which will add an icon to your phone called "SMBPref".  Now you're ready to install new themes in Installer's "Themes (Summerboard)" menu.  Simply install it and use SMBPref to select your theme as the active theme.  If you want to use your own wallpaper, remember to turn the theme's wallpaper off in SMBPref.

2) MobileFinder--This is a simple app that will let you view files and filetrees on your iPhone.  It doesn't sound like much, but it provides a crucial link between external applications like iPhoneList, that let you drag and drop files to your phone, and third-party phone apps like TextEdit or WildEyes that can use the transferred files.  It will let you browse, modify, and create folders as well as copy, move, or delete files.  For powerusers, it will also provide extensive metadata on individual files and let you set their access permissions and the default programs to open them.

3) Simplify--Stream your music and video from your home PC to anywhere you're near WiFi access.  You'll need to have the Simplify software installed on your home computer (it's free--learn more and download here), but once that's set up you can sign in from the Simplify icon on your iPhone to listen to all of your digital music wherever you are.  Not only that, but you can invite and be invited to friend's accounts, giving you streaming access to their media as well.  Which means that as long as you have a WiFi connection, you're not limited to 8 GB of media storage--now it's virtually infinite.

Brief aside: Hopefully, the 3G iPhone dropping in June will be able to pull the kind of data rates that won't require you to have WiFi access to stream your shared media, meaning you'll be able to have practically unlimited media everywhere you go.  (Of course, someone will have to figure out how to jailbreak it first.)  Imagine connecting your iPhone to the auxiliary jack on your car stereo and streaming your home playlist to your car with no configuration needed!  Pretty cool if iPhone hackers can get that working.

4) Books--an eBook reader that reads simple HTML and text files, and will automatically parse chapters into subdirectories for easy browsing.  Simple, fast, and with a growing repository of downloadable books you can get via Installer--or add your own using an external program such as iPhoneList.

5) WildEyes--WildEyes for Safari is pretty much your one-stop shop for viewing virtually any kind of document:  Adobe .pdfs, Excel spreadsheets, Microsoft Word documents and more (that you've transferred to your iPhone using a program such as iPhoneList) are easily browsable via a simple menu and will launch for viewing in a Safari browser window.  Files can't be edited, though--for that you may want to use the iPhone-optimized interface for GoogleDocs--but its speed and multiformat compatibility make it a must if you use your iPhone for any business-related purposes.

(Read about 5 more great iPhone apps after the cut.)

Lenovo Rips on MacBook Air with Parody Commercial

Heh, I gotta admit--when you put it that way, those blocky-looking Thinkpads start looking much more appealing.  Nobody seems to know if it's an official Lenovo-produced commercial, but it's pretty funny nonetheless.

--Aric A.

Easiest Hack Ever: Jailbreak Your iPhone with ZiPhone

If you're impatient for new applications for your iPhone and don't want to wait on the SDK, or want to test-drive some interesting community apps but have been worried about the dangers and technical mumbo-jumbo involved with jailbreaking, then ZiPhone is for you.  It's a free downloadable application for your desktop or laptop that can jailbreak and/or unlock your iPhone in less than a minute, all with just a few mouse clicks--no technical knowledge required.

For the record, I'm only recommending ZiPhone in terms of jailbreaking your iPhone  (allowing installation of third-party apps) instead of unlocking it (allowing it to be used with other wireless carriers), as jailbreaking is much easier to undo if you decide to restore your phone's original settings.  Just connect it to iTunes and click "Restore" and all your changes will be undone, and your iPhone will be as it originally came.  Though ZiPhone can unlock your phone just as easily, unlocking using any method is more dangerous and shouldn't be done unless you know exactly what you're doing.

After installing ZiPhone on your PC or laptop and connecting your iPhone, simply choose from a couple of options in a basic menu (shown below), and wait about 45 seconds.  Your iPhone's screen will briefly go black and show a gobbledygook of code--don't worry, this means it's working.  When it's all finished, you'll see a new icon on your jailbroken phone's home screen called "Installer".

 

Opening Installer will take you to a menu of available community-developed software, organized by type such as "Productivity", "Media", and "Games".  Tap any program you'd like to install and Installer will query the server where the files live, called a repository, and download the application adding that program's icon to your home screen.  Note that sometimes you'll need to reboot your phone after certain programs are installed; just turn it off and turn it back on.

There are two drawbacks you should be aware of before using ZiPhone.  First, jailbreaking voids your warranty.  (Though for the record, I've restored my iPhone and successfully taken it in for service for a completely unrelated issue, then jailbroke it again with ZiPhone when I got home.  Your mileage may vary.)  Secondly, although your iPhone will continue to work with iTunes as normal, you should always restore the original settings before upgrading the firmware.  Apple's firmware updates usually include new protections against hacks like ZiPhone, so it's dangerous to try to upgrade the firmware on a hacked phone.

Once you've jailbroken your iPhone, you can experiment with a lot of really great community-made software such as eBook readers, games, themes for your home screen, and more.  Take it for a spin and see how it can improve the functionality of your iPhone; if you don't like a particular program, you can simply use Installer to uninstall it with a couple of taps.

Don't have an iPhone?  You can use ZiPhone to jailbreak an iPod Touch just as easily; the steps are exactly the same.  The only difference is that the Unlock option in ZiPhone obviously won't be available because it's not on a wireless carrier.

--Aric A.

* NOTE: While ZiPhone is generally safe when you follow its instructions correctly, there is always a risk involved when you make unauthorized changes to your electronic devices.  Ee aware that the author makes no guarantee that implementing these tips won't cause damage or stability issues.

Rogers Wireless to Bring Canada the iPhone By End of Year

After much speculation on the subject trailing back to January of 2007, it's officially been announced that the Canadian wireless carrier Rogers Wireless has signed a deal with Apple that will allow the iPhone to start appearing on Canadian shelves by the end of the year.

Rogers has been circling the oasis since the iPhone was initially announced, but it seems an agreement has finally been reached, though the details of the deal aren't yet public.  According to the very brief statement released by Rogers:

We're thrilled to announce that we have a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada later this year.  We can't tell you any more about it right now, but stay tuned.

--Aric A.

Five Quick Thoughts About Ubuntu's 'Hardy Heron'

So I've had a few days to play around with the new Ubuntu release, dubbed "Hardy Heron", since it dropped on Thursday.  If you're not familiar with Ubuntu, it's a distribution of Linux that's growing in popularity due to its focus on user-friendliness and intuitive functionality.  I've been more interested in it the more mature it gets, as it may well be the version of Linux that changes people's minds about what Linux can do for the average person.  Many think Hardy Heron is that version, as it adds even more out-of-the-box compatibility and support for hardware, and more free software that's actually useful.

I drank the Kool-Aid, as they say, and installed it on my Vista machine to compare the two.  These were some off-the-cuff first impressions:

1. The install was completely painless.  The install CD gives you the option to install Ubuntu within an existing Windows setup, install it alongside Windows in a self-creating partition, or replace it entirely.  If you're like me and know just enough about disk partitioning to be dangerous, you'll probably appreciate doing it in a couple of mouse clicks.
2. Ubuntu autodetected my new monitor's resolution flawlessly, starting up for the first time straight into 1680x1050, and the new Screen Resolution menu is easy to use.  However, the open-source driver Xorg doesn't like my ATI Radeon x1950 Pro very much, so I can't enable desktop effects out of the box.  Not good.
3. Except for that, so far all of my hardware has been supported with no configuration needed.  My Wacom tablet works as well as my iPhone (connected as a camera, as in Windows), and I was able to log on to my home network immediately. 
4. I'd hoped the included software selection would be a little more robust, but what's there is strong.  Media like movies and music were turnkey--I didn't have an MP3 codec installed when I tried to play an Alexi Murdoch song, so Totem asked me if I wanted to install one, then did within a few seconds, then started playing the song with visualization effects.  I still think any release that's meant to compete with OSes like Windows and OSX should support all common media types out of the box, but it was as simple as a single mouse-click to fix.
5. Overall I think this is a strong release.  I think it only lacks two things to be truly ready for prime time:  First, it desperately needs better ATI support, as there's no excuse for a competitive OS to not support virtually half the graphics card market.  Second, while the Synaptic Package Manager is a great way to grab and manage new software, there's some really dynamite feature-driven software out there such as Elisa Media Center and Amarok that, if included on install, could do more to sell potential users on both Ubuntu's functionality and 'Wow' factor.

--Aric A.

Our Gadget Blog Undocks from Daily: 'Amazon Current' Becomes 'End User'

Well, we've made the leap.  Just like Omnivoracious, al Dente, Car Lust, and other great Amazon blogs, we're taking our ball and going offsite with a new name and new digs.  Check us out at EndUserBlog.com.

End User is our place to discuss all things electronic.  We'll continue to focus mainly on gadgets--that is, portable electronics you can hold in your hand such as iPods, GPS, cell phones, etc.--but we're also branching out to cover new things like home audio, computers and software, and more.  Basically anything with a current in it is fair game.  We'll talk about the latest news, provide reviews and how-tos (from Easiest Hacks Ever to more in-depth tutorials), and try to introduce you to some of the faces behind the screens of your favorite gadgets.

Posts will still appear in Amazon Daily, if you didn't opt-out of our Electronics posts, but why not come over and say hello?

--Aric A.

Easiest Hack Ever: Use Your Harmony Remote on Your PS3

Universal remotes are a great way to consolidate your home theater, sure.  But Playstation 3 owners have been grumbling awhile that the PS3 only uses Bluetooth remotes--there's no IR sensor on the machine.  There have been some stopgap PS3 IR remotes like the Nyko Blu Wave, but while the product works fine, it's not really a solution for universal remote owners because...well, it's another remote.

But wait--the Nyko Blu Wave has a USB adapter for IR signals, right?  Lots of universal remotes have "learning" functions, right?  (A "learning" remote is one that you can program commands from another remote into.)  So if you've dropped the moolah on, say, a Logitech Harmony remote, you can spend less than $20 on a Nyko, teach the Harmony the Nyko's commands, and then use the Nyko's USB adapter to transmit the Harmony's commands to the PS3.  And voila--you're using your Harmony (or whatever universal remote you have) to watch Blu-Ray discs and even browse the web.

It's not a 100% perfect solution only because you can't power the PS3 on and off with the remote, since the Nyko IR remote doesn't have a power on/off command.  The Sony Bluetooth remote does of course, but it's Bluetooth so you can't teach it to your remote.  Still, as far as compromises go it's a great solution if you've got a PS3 and a universal remote and desperately wished they could play together.  No pun intended.