60 posts tagged “cellphone”

The third iteration of the LG enV (version one in Episode 219), the enV 3 is available in the US at Verizon.  This time it has a 2.6" internal LCD screen (320 x 240 pixels), a 3 MP camera (stills and video), a qwerty keyboard, a microSD card slot, and supports bluetooth stereo.  Plays music and video.  The headphone jack remains a 2.5mm jack, though.  Comes in Slate Blue and Maroon.

Dick is booked for a visit to Petaluma for Episode 900, and for the Napa Valley Wine Train, which Leo hasn't been on yet.  Dick is looking forward to the train, while Leo is looking forward to the wine.

Chris Van Amburg writes in to tell Dick that while Leo was away in China, he was elected President of the Internet by Tech Republic.  The election featured as candidates Leo, Molly Wood, Marc Andreessen and Jason Calacanis.  A last-minute dash pushed Molly Wood to 31% of the votes, second to Leo's 41% (3773 votes).  Leo has named his cabinet, which makes hilarious reading.  Leo asks Dick to be Secretary of Fun, but forgot to include the post in the final line-up.  In celebration of his inauguration, Leo dons a crown for the occasion.

Leo promises to have the Daily Giz Wiz nominated for Podcast of the Year, in one of the categories at Blog World Expo.  Please remind Leo when the time comes for nomination.

Leo was tempted to buy the Palm Pre (Episode 862), but after Apple announced the features on the latest iteration of the iPhone, Leo got the iPhone 3GS instead.  It has a faster processor and hence the "S" suffix for speed.  In addition to the GPS which already existed in the iPhone 3G, the 3GS has a compass (as on the Android G1 in Episode 686) which in due course will enable more applications based on the magnetometer, e.g. like the Layar browser on Android.  The Find Me feature on the Mobile Me service will help you locate your phone based on its network connectivity.  The Kill Switch can remotely erase all your personal data on the phone via the internet in case you have lost the phone.

The auto-focus camera is now 3 megapixel, with the ability to change the focus after you tap a particular point on the LCD display, which also adjusts the white balance and exposure.  It's now capable of capturing video (640 x 480), with software to do simple editing or trimming on the phone itself.

Some of the other more commonly requested features, such as "copy and paste", MMS and tethering, have finally found their way into the iPhone 3GS.  Multitasking, however, is still restricted.

Video Trimming on the iPhone 3GS
Leo has tried the video trimming function oh his new iPhone 3GS, and it works for him.  Here's Apple's demo video:

Scott-E-Vest Wardrobe in a Tom Bihn Bag
For his China Tour and MacMania 9 Geek Cruise, Leo has packed an almost exclusively Scottevest wardrobe, in his new Tom Bihn Tri-Star (see Episode 865) which, it is hoped, Leo will cover on a TTTT.  Right now, Leo has finished the trip in China and should be in Japan on the Costa Classica.  Follow his AudioBoos, and view Leo's gallery on Smugmug.

Ed McMahon Dies
Ed McMahon, whose appearance in the Johnny Carson Show is often the subject of reminiscence on the Daily Giz Wiz, passed away on 23 June 2009, aged 86.

Another Cheesy Infomercial
Jayzee, better known as Toyota Boy, notes that cheesy infomercials have often been the subject of conversation on the show, and has recently seen a really cheesy one.  It's the Comfort Wipe, a toilet paper extension arm and holder.  The original infomercial can be seen on YouTube, but perhaps a more interesting version is a spoof of it shown on Jimmy Kimmel Live, featuring President Obama, also available on YouTube.

Bidets Rule Supreme
Alex Lindsay is much enamoured with the bidets in Japan which wash your behind (and some even blow-dry you), and offer choices of water-jet speeds and temperatures, and temperature-controlled seats.  They are available in the US and Alex has bought one for his family.  An extreme example is the Bio Bidet Supreme BB-1000 with Remote that leaves nothing to the imagination, but there are more reasonably-priced toilet add-ons on Amazon for your more basic comforts.



Listen to Episode 872
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Link: Palm

Leo comes up at the last minute with this gadget, a 7-day review unit of the Palm Pre.  The latest smartphone from Palm, revealed at CES 2009, is a touchscreen phone using what Palm calls the WebOS.  It has rounded edges and feels good in the hand.  The Pre is smaller than the iPhone (shorter in height but thicker), and the screen is slightly smaller than the iPhone's, with the same resolution.  The keyboard is a qwerty keyboard, rather like the one on the Centro, but the auto-correction is, for Leo, not as good as the predictive typing on the iPhone.  The Pre has a decent media player, and syncs with your iTunes library.  It can also sync with your Windows or Mac contacts, Google contacts (including contact pictures) and calendar, and even your Facebook contacts.

Applications take a little while to load, but what distinguishes the Palm Pre from the iPhone is multi-tasking.  Open applications are treated as "cards", which you can slide along and swoop out; and you get instant notifications from open applications for new emails and IM messages.  The new iPhone 3GS and iPhone software 3.0 have caught up with some of features of the Pre (and many other phones), such as MMS, 3.2MP camera, and cut and paste.  The iPhone will also have video capabilities including simple editing, which the Pre does not yet have.  Leo was originally going to get a Palm Pre himself, but has decided to get the iPhone 3GS instead, which by the time the show is aired, should have arrived, on Friday 19 June.  But if you're on Sprint, Leo can recommend the Pre as it has a future, and Leo is glad that the Palm Pre is around to keep Apple and Blackberry honest.

There are optional accessories for the Pre, including the Touchstone Charging Kit (pictured in the centre in the photo above), which attaches the Pre to itself magnetically, without cables.

After the Palm Pre review unit arrived, Leo did an unboxing session on TWiTlive, during which Leo tried out the Palm Pre and gave his first impressions.  The video is available at odtv, which is quite a long session.  I've taken extracts from the video, edited into 2 parts, which you can watch here.

Leo got the size of Palm's staff wrong, double-checks it on Wolfram-Alpha, and is amazed to learn that the revenue generated per employee of Palm and Apple is so much higher than TWiT.  Someone at TWiT is not pulling his weight, and that's Leo.

Leo is leaving for his China tour in a couple of days, and has some travel tips for foreign tourists.  The Chinese apparently don't speak Chinese at all.  Just say everything in English and put an "a" at the end.  If they appear not to understand it, just turn up the volume.  "I WANT-A SOME FOOD-A.  NO NOODLE-A.  GIVE ME A BIG-A MAC-A," Leo demonstrates.

Dave Kodama, a Caltech alumnus, is a DGW fan.  He and his wife have been subscribing to MAD since 1980 and he even had a shot of himself reading MAD with a friend, in a 1969 issue.  Dave notes that Leo is coming back home from China a few days too early, and will miss the longest solar eclipse in this century.  Dave himself will be near Shanghai for the event.  He and his wife have been early testers of electric cars, since 1996, including the GM EV1; and they will be trying out the Mini-E in (Episode 811) soon.  You can see Dave's astrophotography and his EV1 experience on his personal website.

Between the China land tour and the solar eclipse, Leo has chosen the tour.  Leo has seen an eclipse before and this time, he'll just draw the blinds and close his eyes.

 

After Dick introduced to Leo the Plantronics Voyager Pro (Episode 829), BlueAnt decided to send their own in-ear bluetooth headset to Leo for him to review.  Leo was much enamoured with BlueAnt's previous products Supertooth Light (Episode 362) and Supertooth 3 (Episode 662), and the new BlueAnt Q1 has much to recommend as well.  It's about the size of the original Voyager, smaller than the Voyager Pro, and is very lightweight, although you can use the ear loop as well.  The Q1 talks you through the pairing with your cellphone, and offers an array of voice commands.  Just ask "What can I say?" and it will tell you the list of commands, which include checking battery life, speed dialling, noise cancellation control, and "teach me".  It can pair with up to 8 devices, and connect to 2 phones simultaneously.  It has good noise cancellation (with an internal wind shield), and dual microphones for voice isolation.

Comparison
For a direct comparison of recent bluetooth headsets including the Q1 and Plantronics Voyager Pro, see a review by Phil Baker (whose book was referred to in Episode 795), and his follow-up review of the new Jawbone Prime.

Ask And Ye Shall Receive
On the last TTTT (Episode 847), which was the first show recorded on the same session, Leo was stumped as to why the Daily Giz Wiz podcasts have made their way into a listener's Music Folder on iTunes and got played in Shuffle mode along with the rest of his music.  Matt Pokky (for his previous letter to Leo, see Episode 652) happened to be listening to the live stream and managed to send in an answer before the end of the recording session, and Leo was astute enough to have taken notice of it.  Matt had the same thing happened to him about 18 months ago, when Apple decided (in iTunes 6 or 7) to include podcasts into Music, which maxed out his iPod's capacity.  Matt's workaround was to make a smart playlist called iPod Music, defined as "Genre is not podcast" and "Podcast is false".


Listen to Episode 852
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The Voyager Pro from Plantronics is a bluetooth headset designed for heavy business users, with a bigger size but better performance and battery time.  It has 2 noise cancelling boom microphones, one of which is used to collect sound for ambient noise analysis.  Great for blocking out wind noises.  When you mute the mic, a message only you can hear will tell you that the mic is muted.  Leo is loving the Calisto Pro from Plantronics, and this Voyager Pro sounds promising to him.

DGW in Surround Sound
Leo's new mixer from Telos, the Axia, will be capable of outputting surround sound called Dolby Headphone, and he wonders if listeners would prefer that.  How about good old Quadraphonic sound?

A TerraTrike for Leo
Leo has been sent a Terratrike (after Dick and Leo talked about it in Episode 815).  Leo took delivery of it during Maxwell's House last week.  Leo is going to review it in about 2 weeks' time.  It might end up as Abby's new transport, or TWiT's special limousine service.  Take a sneak preview of it here.

Better Laundry Rooms than Home Theatres
Kevin Sweeney from Grand Junction, Colorado has written to defend Dick about the Earth Day series, the Wonder Wash and the Countertop Spin Dryer (Episodes 818, 819).  He cannot believe how stoically Dick put up the abuse Leo dished out about them.  A lot more people have laundry rooms than have home theatres, and not everyone can afford the Mini E (Episode 811).  Kevin for one is going to give the laundry gadgets to his wife for their 20th wedding anniversary - and their final, add Dick and Leo.

Great Dinner Options
Dick went as a special guest to a convention called Boys And Their Toys.  On his way to the hotel, the young limo driver assured Dick that he had chosen the right hotel, because his dinner options would include Burger King, Taco Bell and White Castle, and the subway is just around the corner.


Listen to Episode 829
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From CES 2009, this All-In-One Charger from Hottips is designed for charging your cellphone, with a car charger, an AC wall charger, a removable USB cord, and even an emergency charger for connecting to a 9V battery.  You can order the hot tip for your own model of cellphone, available for the major brands such as Blackberry, Motorola, Nokia, LG and Sony Ericsson.  There is even a charger for iPods and iPhones.

Surviving CES and MacWorld
Dick survived a less crowded but still very busy CES, and Leo fooled them again with his keynote at MacWorld Expo.

Lose It!
Kathleen sends her best wishes to Dick for his downsizing of the Gadget Warehouse, and for Leo's downsizing, she recommends an iPhone app called Lose It.  It uses the same database for creating nutrition labels for food packaging.  Dick doesn't need it, as he exercises for 20 minutes a day, walks a lot and goes to the gym.


Listen to Episode 743
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From 3M, the Micro Professional Projector (model MPro110) is a pocket projector for people on the road who need a handy projector to display pictures, slideshows and presentations.  With dimensions of 4.5" x 2" x 0.9" and weighing 5.6 ounces, the palm-size MPro110 can easily fit into your pocket, handbag or briefcase.  It supports resolutions from VGA up to WXGA (1280 x 768), image size from 6" to 50" (diagonal), VGA and RCA Video inputs.  VGA and RCA video cables and an RCA adapter are included.


The projector supports video only.  Presumably if your presentation includes sound, that can be played and heard directly from your source device, such as your laptop, PDA, or cellphone.


On the body of the projector is an on/off switch and a focus wheel.  It uses a rechargeable Lithium ion battery with a battery life of 40 to 60 minutes.  An AC adapter is included which, when connected, automatically recharges the battery.
 

12 Days of GizWiz
Dick reminds Leo about Paul Minshall's "12 Days of GizWiz" video, which will be played in the next recording session.  You can watch the video now in the Episode 722 blog post, or go directly to Paul's blog.

CartStoppers for the Troops
Dennis Wright from Manchester, England (who last wrote in Episode 606) warns against the perils of listening to DGW by commuting drivers.  Dennis was listening to Episode 704 while driving and the ridiculous picture painted by Leo of Dick and Leo entertaining the troops by showing them the CartStopper (Episode 701) intended for mums cracked him up, giving him an uncomfortably close brush with the hereafter.  He thinks that Dane, while editing the shows (although it should be Tony Wang doing it now), should include appropriate warnings against uproarious funny moments.

Skipping Christmas?
Dick and Leo should have enough pre-recorded shows to cover most of the holiday season before Leo comes back from France, and are considering skipping the Christmas and Christmas Eve shows.  Dane reminds them that this would break the neat round episode numbering.  Dick and Leo think they might just put in short episodes for those days with Christmas messages.


Listen to Episode 724
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As hinted at in Episode 673 and last week, Dick and Leo finally talk about T-Mobile's G1.  Made by HTC, the G1 is the first phone featuring Google's open-source smartphone operating system Android.

It has bluetooth, wifi, GPS (though not turn-by-turn), 512 MB built-in memory, although it has an microSD card slot and comes with a 1GB card; a back-lit qwerty keyboard (which is revealed by sliding out the screen) and a replaceable battery; a 3.2MP camera, but like the iPhone, it does not shoot video, and like the iPhone it does not support Flash on the internet.  Unlike the iPhone, it supports voice dialling and "cut and paste".

Physically, it weighs just under 6 ounces.  At the bottom is a panel of buttons: a big Menu button, underneath which at the centre is a trackball (for navigation and as a select button).  To the left of the trackball are the "Call/Send" button and the "Home" button; to the right of the trackball are the "Back" and "Hangup/Power" buttons.

On the left hand side of the phone is a Volume toggle, and on the right hand side the camera button.  For the earphones, unfortunately it's a microUSB connection and you'll need an adapter for your 3.5mm jack earphones.

The display is 3.2 inches at 480 x 320 resolution, with a capacitive touch-screen.  It does not support multi-touch, but does support long presses (through which you get a context menu including "cut and paste").  It has an accelerometer and is supposed to adjust itself to Portrait/Landscape mode, at least when the qwerty keyboard is open.

Since Android is open-source, many applications are expected to come out supporting the platform, and will not be filtered as in the case of the iPhone.  You can access the apps from the Android "Market", and Google will tell you in relation to each app what types of access the app may have on the phone - such as communications, your location and your personal information.

The phone comes with the standard Google apps, such as Gmail, Contacts, Calendar, and like the iPhone, offers a mobile version of YouTube.  If you don't use Gmail, there is another mail application.  Unfortunately, this other mail app cannot open attachments (which Gmail can by HTML conversion), nor save them.  The IM app supports major instant messengers such as AIM, Windows Live, Yahoo and of course Google Talk.  Like Google's desktop browser the Chrome, the Android browser is WebKit-based.  Another app that comes with the phone is AmazonMP3, with access to Amazon's DRM-free mp3 downloads - which only works with Wifi, and not 3G or Edge.  The phone also has its own music player software.

At the moment, the phone is available in T-Mobile stores only in cities which has T-Mobile's 3G coverage.

Favourite Episodes
In Episode 679, Dick and Leo were asked if they had a list of their 20 favourite/funniest episodes.  Ludwik Trammer of gizwizsearch can answer for them.  Search queries on his site show which episodes are most frequently accessed - 182 Titanium Spork, 465 Electron Echo Piano, 462 MP4 Watch, and of course 282 Toothpick Bird.

Ludwik also tells us that the accumulative length of all the DGW shows now exceeds 7 days.

One More Thing
Ludwik is going to introduce a new feature on his site.  In fact it is already operational.  Just go to his site and see if you can spot the difference.  Otherwise, just wait for an announcement through Dick and Leo in tomorrow's recording session, or in next week's episodes.

Video Podcasts To Wait
The last time Leo talked about video podcasts (with hopes of getting DGW on video) was Episode 671.  Unfortunately, with the economic downturn, Leo has decided to be a little more prudent, and maybe putting that on hold, although he may still put out a weekly "best of" video podcast.

Second Longest Episode
At 31:03, today's show is the second longest episode, just 12 seconds short of Episode 634, the Lexmark X9575 Professional.


Listen to Episode 686
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Available in the US only at A T & T stores, the Southwing SH241 is another bluetooth headset in a crowded market.  Special features include automatic call pick-up, "Whisper Mode", in which the headset will whisper the incoming telephone number to you to see if you want to take it (the BlueAnt Supertooth Light from Episode 362 has a similar feature).  You can also listen in while a caller is leaving a voice mail.  It's also hooked up to A T & T's Voice Info for the weather, stock reports etc.

Rock That Ball !
As Dick observes, there's nothing Leo does that doesn't end up as a podcast.  Leo's trainer Al Scardino does a show called TWiT Fit every Thursday at 1 p.m. Pacifc time on TWiTLive.  Meanwhile, Leo continues to rock his Gophersport Ultrafit No-Burst Stability Ball (Episode 322), which goes ... "Round and round, and round it goes; Where it stops, nobody knows."  Like magic.

"I Am Incensed !!"
More on the DGW commercials.  Bruce Horn, Media Computing Systems Analyst/Administrator at University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), is incensed.  "Here you've been giving us the best, the funniest, the most informative pocast anywhere for the past few years," Bruce writes, " ... but the nerve of you wanting to get paid at least a little something for what you do!  Just to provide me with free entertainment? ..."  It turns out that Leo, whose father used to teach at UCSC, knows Bruce Horn.


Listen to Episode 659
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Cobra's MR F300 is a bluetooth handset designed for use on boats where there is a lot of ambient noise.  It pairs with your cellphone and produces loud and clear audio through its powerful speakers, with a noise-cancelling microphone which is enabled by pressing the PTT button (push to talk).  It's also waterproof for 30 minutes under 1 meter deep water.

A Sleeping-in Sunday Theme Coming Soon
Dick and Leo will be playing the new Sleeping-In Sunday Theme this Friday.

A Little Weekend Accident
Dick's boat was damaged by a giant wake caused by a big Staten Island Ferry as it zoomed by the marina.

Old Movies
Listen to Dick and Leo talk about Highway Patrol starring Broderick Crawford, and Plan 9 From Outer Space directed by Ed Wood (which they referred to back in Episode 176, when talking about The Amazing Criswell).

Make Your Own Ringtones
Dick was about to read again Shane Gibson's letter about making ringtones from DGW jingles (Episode 629), when he realised he had read the letter.  Leo suggests audiko.net for helping you make your own ringtones.

Pure White Noise
Regular correspondent Jim Levine thought he and his wife were the only people who couldn't sleep without the noise of the air-conditioner on, until he heard Dick (see especially Episode 559, the Marsona Sound Machine, although Dick has mentioned this habit of his in Episode 445 and most recently in Episode 612).  Jim found a CD which plays air-conditioning white noise, from Pure White Noise.

Eye Fi Explore
Leo has bought the Eye Fi Explore (Episode 608), just in time for his summer break at the Gray Eagle Lodge.


Listen to Episode 631
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