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Tag Garmin Nuviphone

Steverino Giveth And Steverino Taketh Away

By Brian Filed in Tech Tagged with , , , , , December 15th, 2008 @ 1:04 pm

No sooner was the rumor last week about a $99 4Gb iPhone at Wal-Mart posted around the web (including here), than it was swatted down by several other tech news sites. Ars Technica says that Bloomberg News got the straight poop: WallyWorld will be selling the same 8Gb iPhone as everybody else, but at their own price point a couple of bucks cheaper than Apple’s MSRP.

But don’t stop believin’ in Steven, because this morning Engadget found this story from a generally-reliable Mac rumor mill that shows a prototype of a smaller iPhone that could be one of the new product announcements from Steve Jobs’ keynote at the January MacWorld Expo. The smaller device is being touted as being branded the “iPhone Nano”, and the only difference between it and the existing 3G iPhone is size. THIS could actually turn out to be the $99 Wal-Mart iPhone…stay tuned for more rumor control…

(Oh, and speaking of oft-rumored-but-still-unseen products, Engadget also reports that the FCC has issued its technical approval for the Garmin Nuviphone I lust after, but that’s a whole different story.)

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Linkapalooza – Tech

By Brian Filed in Tech Tagged with , , , , , , , August 22nd, 2008 @ 2:35 pm

Via Slashdot, this tech website got a sneak peek at the proposed connectors and cable for the upcoming USB 3.0 spec. The spec was first previewed back in January, and won’t be finalized until later this year, but Intel released what they’ve already come up with so far, which is about 90% of the final spec. As I posted before (see that second link above) USB 3.0 will be ten times faster than the current USB 2.0, in part because it will allow two-way data transfer. That’s a big improvement over the earlier versions. The linked article gives this example: a 27-gig file will transfer from your hard drive to your USB 3.0-compatible device in 1 minute and 10 seconds. Moving the same-sized file over USB 2.0 takes at least 15 minutes. Ain’t nobody going to complain about that. Plus, USB 3.0 will be downwardly compatible with USB 2.0, so your present-day devices won’t be doomed to the scrap heap any earlier than they would be otherwise. But, as I cautioned a few months ago, it will be at least 2010 before you see this in any shipping hardware of any kind.

Haven’t heard much about Vonage lately, which, if you’re Vonage, is a good thing. This recent post at DSL Reports says that Vonage had finally managed to stem the hemorrage of users that had been going on even before the patent lawsuits but had gotten to a critical level when it looked like Vonage was going to have to close its doors. Prior to the lawsuits, Vonage’s astronomical churn rate was almost 100% due to customer service issues, so that speaks well for their ability to fix their own internal problems. We actually switched from Vonage to Comcast when things looked bleakest for Vonage, but the actual phone service from Comcast was terrible, and you KNOW how bad Comcast’s customer support is, so after three months or so we went back to Vonage. Quite honestly, we have never had any significant problems with Vonage technically or support-wise, but I guess we’re in the minority…or we were.

The XM-Sirius merger finally went through several weeks ago, and earlier this month CEO Mel Karmazin promised that new hardware that would be cross-compatible with both services would be available in the first quarter of 2009. So much for getting that new satellite radio for your car for Christmas, I guess, but that’s ahead of the 12-month deadline set by the FCC, so good for them.

Garmin’s highly-anticipated (well, by me, anyway) Nuviphone has been pushed back to sometime in the first half of 2009 due to difficulties meeting the requirements of some of the carriers. Lately, I am so enamored of my iPod Touch that the temptation to buy a 3G iPhone has been getting pretty strong, but my blog buddy Jack and others are finding that the new iPhone isn’t quite “twice as fast for half the price”, so I will continue to bide my time to see if the Nuviphone pans out.

And this isn’t really a tech link, but it’s related: TechDirt.com points to this British IT news website’s report that 30% of Internet users admit to buying products via links in spam e-mail. The report cites a study by web security vendor Marshal, showing a marked increase from earlier studies by analysts like Forrester Research; in 2004, Forrester calculated that 20% of Internet users bought items via spam. Considering that in the traditional mail-order business, a response rate of 4% was considered huge, the success of spam is simply unheard of. That’s a lot of enlarged penises and Paris Hilton videos, kiddies.

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Linkapalooza: Sci/Tech

By Brian Filed in Science Tagged with , , , , , , , , June 18th, 2008 @ 2:05 pm

Good evening Mr. and Mrs. North and South America and All The Ships At Sea…FLASH!

  • At NewTeeVee.com, Chris Albrecht offers a catch-all summary of the various Video-On-Demand set-top boxes on the market. The transition from DVRs to VOD is already moving very rapidly; there are 11 different products on this list. Given the consistent resistance to DVRs from the broadcast television networks and their continued efforts to thwart people from skipping commercials, subscription-based VOD should see very easy acceptance from both the consumers AND the content providers. However, the lure of subscription-based VOD really threatens the continued existence of local television stations, who could find themselves without network affiliations down the road and have nothing to put on the air.
  • One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three Tequila, Floor — this blogger at PhysicsWorld.com has found a recent paper that outlines a method for forming diamonds by growing crystals in tequila . (via) Apparently the process, which is called chemical vapor deposition, is well-established, but the scientists who wrote the paper say that tequila is an excellent choice of ethanol because of its wide commercial production and low cost. And, yes, the two men who wrote the paper ARE from Mexico. So, fellas, when your GF starts hinting around for that rock, just buy her a bottle of Jose Cuervo and tell her to hit the laboratory
  • Engadget links to this article at Laptop Magazine which offers the first hands-on review of the Garmin Nuviphone I have been ga-ga over since I first read about it six months ago. It’s only a tantalizing taste, though, because most of the device’s functionality wasn’t available in the prototype the blogger got to play with. That doesn’t bode well for the original plan to launch the Nuviphone in the U.S. in Q3, but maybe they can still get it out the door in time for Christmas sales. If this materializes with all the features they promise, I would gladly forget all about the new iPhones.
  • Remember VeriChip? I wrote about them last September when they announced a plan to implant RFID tags into Alzheimer’s patients in Florida. Well, CASPIAN, the anti-RFID consumer watchdog group, has released a scorching report that takes the company to task for covering up research that showed a link between implanted RFID chips and cancer, lying and deceiving investors about their products and profitability. The company is going down in flames and trying to save what it can by selling off the implant chip business, but this new publicity from the report sure won’t make that any easier. A link to the full report from CASPIAN is in the Wired article in the first link, or at CASPIAN’s own website.
  • Are you ready for indestructible paper? This ScienceNOW article describes a new process for making paper that breaks up the cellulose fibers from wood pulp into substantially smaller lengths that present papermaking processes do, creating nanofibers that, when combined with a substance called carboxymethanol, have a tensile strength eight times greater than that of ordinary paper and more than double the strength of cast iron. Let’s see Dick Cheney shove THAT in his Vice Presidential Paper Shredder.

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Tech, Tech And More Tech

By Brian Filed in Links, Tech Tagged with , , , , , February 21st, 2008 @ 3:25 pm

1. Last week, Engadget posted about a British company which is demonstrating an improved GPS system that incorporates cellular signal triangulation right into the chip itself and will seamlessly switch between GPS and cellular signals.  If you have been following along, you know that I have been particularly interested in seeing this develop into the default technology for the iPhone and its imitators.  (As it stands today, the iPhone uses cellular and WiFi triangulation, but not GPS; the upcoming Nuviphone will use GPS and cellular, but through a software solution, not hardware).  This should take care of that nicely.

2. Meanwhile, this article at The First Post wonders if dedicated GPS devices are succumbing to “feature bloat” by adding lots of worthless innovations to maintain the “value” of those devices.  It’s a fair cop, because the stand-alone GPS gizmo probably only has 3-5 years left in its lifespan.  Built-in GPS systems are bubbling down into non-luxury cars as optional upgrades and will probably wind up as standard in most cars sooner rather than later.  And the obvious synergy of the GPS-enabled smartphone that we’ve been talking about is only one or two product cycles away.

3. One more handheld gizmo thing: this company has developed a web app for the iPhone that will let you remotely order your coffee beverage at Starbucks.  Here’s a pair of screenshots:

Once you arrive at the counter to pick up your double-shot no-foam soy-milk latte, you even use the iPhone to pay for the drink using a bar-code-like system that scans a “Semacode” image.

4. The NYT tech blog “Bits” reported on a recent change in banking laws that will now allow you to deposit checks to your checking account electronically from your home computer using a scanner to image the checks.  The law went into effect in 2003 so that banks could speed up check processing by sending images electronically to one another, but it also applies to the consumer. So far only USAA, the bank that services the military, has made this available to their customers, but you should expect to see it being offered by lots of banks soon now that Fiserv, the company that handles most of these transactions, has developed home-user software.  No word on how high the inevitable usurious fees will be to use this, but you can bet that the banks are thinking about that right now.

5. Lastly, do go and read this little rant about Bluetooth phone headsets from my friend and former cow-orker Dave Belfer-Shevett.  It made me smile.

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Ask And Ye Shall Receive (With Purchase Of Unlimited Minutes)

By Brian Filed in Tech Tagged with , , , , January 31st, 2008 @ 2:39 pm

Garmin Nuviphone

Was it not just the other day that I was wishing and hoping for a handheld gadget that used GPS and cellphone-tower triangulation to tell you where you were?

I had not heard about this particular gadget until I ran across a post about it on Gadget Crunch this morning, but then, when I got to Engadget, not only did they have the announcement news, they even had first-hand photos of the thing as it was displayed at a trade show booth this week.

Side-by-side Nuviphone and iPhone

This picture from Engadget shows the Nuviphone (right) next to the iPhone.  Everybody and his brother has made some iPhone-like device in the last few months, but I have hopes that this will be a good one because it comes from one of the two Big Dogs in the GPS device space.

Lately, I’ve been giving some thought to getting the iTouch (or iPod Touch, as it’s officially known) as a pocket device for online connectivity in lieu of buying something like the Asus Eee sub-notebook.  Steverino’s MacWorld keynote last week really pushed me from idle consideration to serious thought, since the smaller iTouch is only a couple hundred bucks.  I’m not interested in being trapped as a Cingular…excuse me, AT&T phone customer, so I thought the iTouch would be preferrable to the iPhone itself.  But since the primary needs I think I have for such a device are Internet connectivity and street-level map-positioning, and not MP3 or movie watching, I would be more than willing to give the Nuviphone a more serious look once pricing and service plans are announced.

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