Bit O' Tech

And you thought Paypal was bad...Amazon Payments reaches new low

2012-01-24T18:30:00.000-08:00

This is one of those blog posts I've thought long and hard about; on one hand, I want to give Amazon the benefit of the doubt, since their customer service has always been top notch. On the other hand, I wish someone at Amazon would get a clue.

So one of the companies I'm involved with, Braintrust Digital, recently signed up for Amazon Payments using a business account. The system asked for a number of verifications, completely fine, including bank account information. A days after all these verifications were completed, the trouble started.

After receiving a large payment, the company sent one last verification, asking for the last four digits of the SSN (social security number)—an odd request for a business account, since corporations, while recently ruled to be people, still have FEIN (Federal Employee Identification Number). I enter the last four of the EIN, get an automated response thanking me for my entry, and then...Nothing.

A day later, I get an email saying I'd entered it wrong, and that I need to re-enter the information. Ok, fine, so I re-enter the last four digits, again get the automated response thanking me for successfully entering the information, and...

The account is now locked. No worries, as the small warning at the top of the page tells me there are things that can be done with the account and things that can't be done with the account. Here's the warning:

Click on the "here" link (isn't that sort of 1990s linking, to use "here" for the link—but I digress) and here's what we see we're allowed to do:

So the corporation can't send money or receive money, but it can withdraw it, right? Yes, according to the list, the only thing we CAN do is withdraw the money. So we go through the process of performing a sweep into the corporate bank account, and...

No, it's not telling the truth. At all. The transfer fails, and fails fast.

So we try to launch an inquiry into the failure, using these two links ("Problem with this transaction?" and "click here to inquire about an error" to, well, inquire about the error.

We enter the transaction ID and asking, simply, why it failed. Very simply, as in: "It failed. Why?"

Apparently these are fighting words, because we're told that we're disputing the transaction. Really? Yep, says so here...

Ok, so now what? Can we find a live person to check in with to find out why it failed? Well, only between 7am - 4pm PST (did we mention this was Amazon, based in Seattle, WA, USA?) Says so right here, in a rather snarky way:

No number to call, just a call-back request, either now or five minutes from now, meaning we have to be online to make the call (a call back service, yes, but not so convenient for real business folks, but that's another story all together...)

Tomorrow's blog entry? The incessant requests by Amazon to send Social Security information, date of birth and full legal name by (drumroll, please) EMAIL.

Sony expands Google TV offerings while Google TV universe expands

2012-01-10T05:33:00.000-08:00

The Google TV universe is expanding.

The whole universe was in question just a few weeks ago, when Logitech rapped the Google TV mediaware as "beta" software and jettisoned its Revue set-top box unit as a "mistake" (although not enough of a mistake to cease sales throughout the US Christmas shopping season and in to 2012 as a highly sought after Amazon sale of refurbished unit at $79.99 with Prime shipping)

Now, out of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas comes news of not just one, or even two, but three new partners that will be launching products. LG, rival Samsung and upstart Vizio all will be launching internet-connected TVs that will contain at least the Android 3.1 (Google TV 2.0) operating system.

In addition, Sony tried to set the record straight about its ongoing decision to continue forward with Google TV based units. Sony announced that the NSZ-GT1 (a Wi-Fi-enabled 1080p Blu-ray disc player featuring Google TV) at almost twice the price of the Logitech Revue, had sold better than expected, and that the Sony Google TV-powered smart TVs (the 40" NSX-40GT1 and 46" NSX-46GT1) are the best selling TVs in Sony's stable of products.

“They’re among the best-selling TVs we have," Brian Siegel, Sony TV vice president told USA Today in a late 2011 interview. "Media has done a real good job of beating [Google TV] up."

The one major change in all this, including Sony's newer devices (the Blu-Ray player equipped NSZ-GP9, and its Logitech Revue mimicking NSZ-GS7 set-top box may both use an ARM chip from Marvell rather than the Intel Atom chip that Intel offers for the set-top box market but discontinued support for in the internet-connected or Smart TV market.

As reported in a recent StreamingMedia.com article on the Logitech Revue, the Intel Atom CE4100 chipset powers both the Sony NSZ-GT1 Google TV box and the Logitech Revue. Google's reference platform for all Google TV-powered set-top boxes was based on the Atom chipset, so that the original Google TV firmware—and subsequent updates—would run consistently across all consumer devices.

Sony used the CE4100 chipset to its maximum advantage—selling a significant number of NSZ-GT1 set-top boxes and smart TVs in the process—while Logitech opted to hold back on the CE4100's capabilities, as we reported in the Workflowed blog on Logitech's refusal to support the MPEG-2 codec and MPEG-2 transport streams.

The new chipsets provide some interesting opportunities, and we think Google TV-powered products, especially Smart TV products, will gain an advantage using these new ARM processors.

"You're in luck" -- Pinger TextFree and the fatal flaw

2011-06-27T21:21:00.001-07:00

Sometimes a company makes a product or service that is *almost* perfect, but has a fatal flaw.

Pinger.com's TextFree is just one such service: its apps for Android and iPhone are fairly decent; even with the buggy interface within the newer TextFree with Voice, the call quality is great and the texting is, well, something to text or tweet about.

Yet the web version lags considerably, especially in one key area: the web service is inaccessible from an iPhone's browser.

Typing in www.pinger.com/textfree yields the typical CSS redirect to http://m.pinger.com/content/tf_web.html with the "You're in luck" tagline displaying the iPhone app.

What if you can't download the app or are in a situation where the app doesn't work, as I found myself in today, where a restricted network only allowed access via http in the browser?

You're out of luck: choosing "full site" yields the full site page in the iPhone Safari browser, as it should, but choosing "login" from the main page's top right corner tosses the user back into the endless loop of http://m.pinger.com/content/tf_web.html

Great idea, poorly executed.

iPhoned

This is Your Father's iPhone

2011-01-11T13:25:00.001-08:00

[Editor's note: see additional analysis on the topic at StreamingMedia.com]

After years of desire and months of speculation, today Verizon Wireless announced that the iPhone would be available on their network in February. This is of course really good news for those who either can’t get or don’t want ATT service here in the US. Verizon said that they have been working on supporting the iPhone since 2008, so, they are anticipating a great success for them and their customers with this thoroughbred device in their stables. All current iPhone features will be available in the Verizon iPhone, with two notable exceptions.

First, there is the network technology this device will be using. During the almost constant tea leaf analysis that was occurring over the past several weeks in anticipation of this announcement, there was debate over which network technology would be built into the Verizon-flavored iPhone. That speculation has now been put to rest.

The Verizon iPhone will be CDMA and EVDO only, making this iPhone a device built for Verizon’s legacy 3G network. What this means is that you cannot use data while you are on a voice call, unless, perhaps your iPhone has a WiFi connection. Good for the home or office, but not while you are out and about, which is where most iPhones are used. For those of you keeping score at home, the iPhone on non-CDMA carriers such as ATT’s 3G GSM network in the US can use voice and data at the same time, which, I believe is a large part of the iPhone’s functionality appeal. You don’t have to hang up your voice call to check your email.

When Apple’s Tim Cook was asked why the phone was not taking advantage of nascent Verizon’s 4G network (aka LTE), he basically said that folks really want a Verizon iPhone, and will be willing to make the functionality trade-off. Mr. Cook also stated that incorporating LTE into the current iPhone design would not be possible without design trade offs they were not willing to make. Given the comments that Verizon’s Lowell Macadam made about being the hub of collaboration, there will likely be an LTE version of the iPhone in the future so that it can be a true collaboration hub. Until then, this phone will be a single tasking device, unable to truly multitask.

Second on the feature front, there is one interesting bright spot in today’s announcement. The Verizon iPhone provides WiFi hotspot functionality for up to five devices, which is a feature that is not available on other carriers. This will allow WiFi enabled devices, such as the iPad’s that Verizon has been selling since late 2010, to be able to use the iPhone’s Verizon 3G data connection to get on the Internet. So, expect there to be a much demanding by current non-Verizon iPhone owners to bring this connectivity feature to their phones.

During Q&A, Verizon and Apple indicated that this is a non-exclusive agreement with Verizon, so, one could expect that Sprint could get the phone after some period of time here in the US. And, there are a handful of carriers overseas that don’t use the GSM technology the iPhone has sported to date, so, they will likely get their own iPhone in the not too distant future.

All in all, it is certainly good news that the iPhone has come to Verizon, as many more people can experience the game changing benefits of this device. However, the lack of data connectivity when on a call almost makes the Verizon iPhone feel like “your father’s iPhone,” not “your son or daughter’s iPhone.” After all, what twenty something wants to hang up to tweet? Anyway, ATT should not be sweating the shift in the gravitational pull of the iPhone from another carrier. Yet.

Plantronics shows off personal speakerphone

2010-12-09T14:59:00.001-08:00

Renee Niemi, SVP, Communication Solutions with Plantronics presented a few new (or soon-to-be available) products.

To set the stage, she mentioned that there's a disconnect (no pun) between the message, tone of voice and body language between face-to-face meetings and voice-only calls.

Face-to-Face / Video, she says, breaks down this way: 7% message, 38% tone of voice and 55% body language, while voice-only / phone call communication is 13% message and 87% tone of voice.

Niemi then showed off Calysto 825, a new personal speakerphone that connects the mobile phone and PC phone (Skype) with a unified user interface.

"Because it works with both the PC phone and your mobile phone, it lets you focus on the conversation, not the tool," said Niemi. "It also has a wireless microphone, which allows you clip the microphone on and still remain part of the conference if you need to step away from the speakerphone."

The latter feature assumes you stay within distance of the speaker, of course, and will hopefully have a mute button for those times you need to stay connected but muted.

Another tool is a software app that Plantronics is launching called Instant Meeting, an Android and Blackberry app that allows one-touch connection to conference calls.

It searches through the Outlook calendar [and hopefully other CalDav calendars such as Google Calendar or iCal] and then prompts to join the meeting at the appropriate time.

When confirmed, it will dial the number, enter the passcode and directly put you in to the conference call with a single touch. Diemi didn't really describe what happens in those systems in which you have to say your name and push the # on the keypad before joining the conference, but perhaps there's magic happening there, too, which we'll find out when the app is released.

Finally, she showed off the Voyager Pro UC, a new headset that allows synchronized presence between the PC phone and the mobile phone. In addition, it has sensor capability, or the ability to know whether a headset is being worn or not.

This sensor capability eliminates the issue of having a phone call go to your Bluetooth connected headset that may have slipped down between the seat or is in your coat pocket. If you find it and then put it on, the call will switch over to the headset. Anot

Has Fujitsu Abandoned the Macintosh Platform? ScanSnap Snow Leopard Issues

2010-12-04T19:35:00.001-08:00

Fujitsu had a good thing going, with the ScanSnap for Mac offering one of the best scan-to-PDF options.

But like all good things, this one looks like it's coming to an end, as ScanSnap on the Snow Leopard platform is walking around gingerly on only two paws.

Consider this:

1. The S1500M is the only current Mac-based ScanSnap scanner; all the others (S300M, S500M, S510M) are on Fujitsu's discontinued list.

2. CardIris 3.6, which ships with the S1500M, is not compatible with Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6). CardIris 4.0 is compatible, but you don't receive that version when buying an S1500M

3. Adobe Acrobat is now at version 10 with Acrobat X. Which version ships with the S1500M? Acrobat 8. Yes, that's right, the only Fujitsu Mac ScanSnap has a version of Acrobat Pro that's TWO versions old.

When I asked Fujitsu about upgrading to Acrobat 9, six months after it launched, I was told that what you buy is what you get. Meaning that anyone buying an S1500M today will get Acrobat 8.

Fujistu is clearly choosing to abandon the Mac platform, as they've not made a ScanSnap unit that's Mac compatible since 2008.

How's that for progress?

PDF viewing in Apple's Preview looking fuzzy? Welcome to Acrobat X on Snow Leopard

2010-11-30T09:08:00.001-08:00

I'm working through a few workflow scenarios for workflowed.com with Acrobat X's scanning and optical character recognition (OCR). Along the way, though, I noticed two quick insights in to Acrobat X.

First, it does a great job of shrinking the file size automatically after the text recognition is run. In many cases, I don't even have to run the "reduce file size" feature to bring multi-page documents to a manageable file size.

Second, the issue that cropped up under Apple's Preview in Acrobat 9, after I'd applied the "reduced file size" to shrink the file size, remains. The image will look blocky and jagged, as if a great bit of information has been abandoned.

I initially chalked the issue up to an error in the file reduction algorithms, but the advent of Acrobat X—with its better-than-average standard compression—brings the issue back to the forefront. Even without running the "reduce file size" feature in Acrobat X, any file that's been OCRed will appear jagged and blocky within Apple's Preview application.

Researching the topic online didn't turn up any clues, probably because Acrobat X is so new; since I couldn't ignore this issue, as it affects all the scans I was applying OCR to, I turned to my contact at Adobe's PR agency to get insight in to the issue.

It turns out that Adobe X's new rendering engine may steal a few pages from Acrobat 9's file size reduction score. In doing so, this presents a potential rendering issue in Apple's Preview. According to my contact:

Acrobat X's new scan compression technology divides the image into 3 layers - Background (BG), Foreground (FG) & Mask. BG, FG images are highly down sampled while mask is kept at a higher resolution (to maintain text readability).

The layering makes sense, as Adobe has always had the ability to choose Image-Text (where the image overlays the underlying OCR text) or Text-Image (where the text attempts to lay out in a patter closely resembling the image, but the text is the top layer).

I've always opted for Image-Text, as it allows the human looking at the document to read what's actually on the page, should he or she find the OCR text they copied from the PDF a bit, well, lacking.

My contact went on to provide some reasoning behind the miss-match of Preview and Acrobat Reader X, the latter of which seems to display the images in a much higher quality output:

Here is our hypothesis on the reason of low quality rendering by Preview. In order to render a page, it down samples mask to the resolution of FG (or maybe BG), so it loses on text crispness or quality that a high resolution mask provides. Adobe Reader/Acrobat, on the other hand, up samples images to the highest of the resolution of BG, FG and mask to get the rendered bitmap.

Is this the reality? I guess we'll have to see whether Apple issues an update to Preview in the near term. If not, I'm stuck either suggesting that every client upgrade to Acrobat Reader X, or choosing to completely forego the workflow of using QuickLook to view text-heavy OCRed documents.

Does Adobe Elements 9 Plays Well With All?

2010-09-21T05:59:00.001-07:00

Adobe today announced its Elements 9 consumer image- and video-manipulation products (editing sounds so 1990s) in the form of Photoshop Elements 9 and Premiere Elements 9.

Over the past few releases, Elements has begun to move toward parity on both the Macintosh and Windows platform, but the Mac version had always lagged behind.

It appears the days of second-class citizenry for Mac users may be over, though, as Adobe lists an equal feature set between the Mac and Windows versions of both Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements.

Premiere Elements, in particular, now has the sharing and access to the Plus service, which gives up to 20 GB of storage for approximately $50.00 per year.

In addition, Premiere Elements 9 addresses the ability to use tapeless workflows—from Flip cameras to D-SLR consumer and pro cameras—a feature that's only recently been added to Adobe's flagship editing tools, Adobe Premiere Pro, as part of the much more expensive Creative Suite 5 software bundle.

Speaking of pricing, that has also dropped for Elements 9 bundles with Amazon reporting the combo pack—Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements—that's pictured below clocking in at $149.00 but with a rebate that drops the price to $119.00 (after waiting for several weeks to receive the mail-in rebate check, of course).

We look forward to testing the two products, on both platforms, to compare the feature sets, before the product's release date of November 1, 2010. [Update: Adobe's PR reps say that the product is available now, even though Amazon still lists the availability at November 1]

Trackpad Possession - Time for an Apple Exorcism?

2010-09-11T05:43:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, after updating to OS X 10.6.4, I noticed my cursor has begun to move around on its own.

Sliding slowly a bit to the right, then back a bit to the left, it will make its way across the screen. It appears as if an invisible hand (from Babylon to Dunstan to Smith) is controlling the cursor.

Trying to wrest control back will only result in pain, although it occasionally responds to a firm swipe and then behaves for a few seconds to a few minutes.

The problem sometimes manifests itself as an invisible finger on the trackpad, in which case attempting to move the cursor in the opposite direction only results in enlarging a browser window or all the icons on one's desktop (as if the user's one finger on the trackpad is working in unison with the un-helpful invisible finger).

Other times it begins to alt-tab through icons, switching between programs, or jumps to a previous page in the browser window. These last two are keyboard commands, not multi-finger swipes. Since they can happen without any hands being placed on the keyboard or trackpad, these multi-key commands are being issued consistently without user intervention.

During the course of writing this blog post, my Macbook Pro exhibited all three effects, eliminating an almost-complete draft of this blog post in the process and jumping between various programs. The only way to get out of the alt-tab is to hit the Return button, since clicking on the proper program is impossible.

Given the nature of this random, devilish behavior, I typed "possessed trackpad unibody" into Google and got back a large number of hits, many occurring within the last few weeks since 10.6.4 was dropped on the unsuspecting masses.

A little more digging and I found that Apple is well aware of this problem, with many discussions on their support forums, including one with over 1000 responses. Yet tech support can't seem to diagnose the problem, or gives the standard Apple line that they've never seen the issue before.

As some posters have noted, it's so randomly intermittent, it's hard to demonstrate. Imagine trying to take it into a Genius Bar and know that it's going to work (or not work) at the allotted reserved time.

For me, it's gotten significantly worse over the past week, occurring every 4-5 minutes and lasting for 10-20 minutes at a time. Then, as quickly as the possession overtakes my machine, it disappears, leaving me mentally exhausted from battling the Apple demons. Just when I get comfortable that I am in control again, the possession occurs.

Where's an exorcist when I need one?

Suggested fixes abound from a clean reinstall of the OS (doesn't work) to trashing the com.apple.bluetooth.plist preferences (doesn't work) to resetting the PRAM (doesn't work) to turning on/off Airport (works temporarily). In the "works temporarily" category, some users will post that the problem went away when they did one of the above, only to post later that the problem has re-occurred.

One poster also said it only affects machines with certain video cards, except many other users have reported it with other video cards (mine doesn't have the Radeon HD 4870 the poster mentioned) and the solution Apple gave him was to keep the laptop plugged into an external monitor. Hello?!

If Apple can't exorcise its invisible helping hand, it may be time to switch back to Windows. I've got to get some work done without fighting the invisible forces of the evil unhelpful hand.

Hulu - Plus or Minus?

2010-08-13T14:12:00.000-07:00

With the advent of the iPad / iPhone 4 came the excuse the Hulu has been waiting for to charge for content that it had claimed would be free.

You know, Hulu.com, the website with the banner at the top of the page that says "Watch your favorites. Anytime. For free." Here's an example from today, August 13, 2010, several weeks after Hulu Plus was launched:

Except, now that we have Hulu Plus, your favorites aren't available at anytime for free.

I was overseas while this happened (in other words, in the vast swathes of the world where no one, not even US citizens, can watch their favorites, anytime, for free) so it wasn't until this week that I had a chance to explore Hulu's approach to its three-part slogan.

The company put up a blog post that set off warning bells in the first few paragraphs with terms like:

Hulu Plus is a new, revolutionary ad-supported subscription product that is incremental and complementary to the existing Hulu service.

Follow that? Here's a breakdown of the wording

On first blush, it's ad-supported, just like Hulu is. So far so good. I might be able to tolerate an ad or two, but not the 10-15 that seem to be popping up in each episode (as Hulu execs keep experimenting with odd pre-roll vs interstitial ad models every few weeks).

What's revolutionary about it, though? Apparently the revolution is that Hulu Plus is a PAID subscription service that REQUIRES one to watch advertisements.

Wait, so I get to pay to watch ads?

Yes, apparently so. That must be the complementary part of Hulu Plus: both serve ads, possibly some of the exact same ads.

So what's the incremental way Hulu is enticing the average Hulu viewer to pay for the subscription? Show them a past episode, then yank it.

Seriously, a committee on bad marketing couldn't make this stuff up. On second thought maybe only a committee could.

Here's an example of what you see if you try to watch a video that's been yanked back into the dark recesses of Hulu Plus. This example is courtesy of Safari crashing a few days after I'd watched an episode that was free (just not anytime) and then restoring all the windows after the crash.

The Hulu Plus blog advocates the reasoning behind all of this ad-supported revolutionary approach to paying to watch advertisements is because of all the devices you'll get to watch those ads on: the iPhone 4, iPad, set-top boxes, Macs, PCs, etc.

Except, on July 29, 2010, a month after the blog post, the iPhone 4 upgraders were upset that they weren't able to view these ads on the iPhone 4. Says one commenter (unaltered):

I upgraded to a Iphone because of Hulu plus. I’m disappointed in hulu for not letting my use the service after it was announced. I’m probally now going to return the Iphone 4 and go back to my 3GS and purchase slingbox and watch for free each month off my dvr and direct tv. Better do something quick our your going to loose me for good $120 a year . . . .

On second thought, maybe this is a brilliant scheme, undercutting the SlingBox concept of free viewing of these same episodes from television or your DVR.

So, please, someone inform the committee that the chance to pay-per-view-advertisements is brilliant, but they're underselling it.

Systems Integration for the rest of us

2010-06-07T09:09:00.000-07:00

Preparing to attend a show for systems integrators in Las Vegas this week, I spent part of today covering Steve Jobs' WWDC keynote address for StreamingMedia.com.

Read the details on iPhone 4 and my take on Apple's attempt to outgoogle Google with iAd and HTML5 lip service on the streaminedia.com site, but pause first to reflect on these excerpted comments that Jobs made. . . .

"Apple is not just a technology company," said Jobs. "It's the marriage of technology and the humanities that distinguishes Apple."

Echoing sentiment I've heard from Sling's CTO Bhupen Shah, who reminded me years ago that the ease-of-use for compelling products is all about the hardware and software working seamlessly together, Jobs drove the point home using the example of the new iPhone's second camera.

"On iPhone 4, it's not just a front facing camera: it's a front facing camera and 18 months' worth of work to come up with software that you'll never even notice when you want to place a video call," Jobs said.

"It's a complete solution so all of us don't have to be system integrators."

iPhoned

And another thing . . . Adobe and Apple iPad HTML5 spat heats up

2010-04-10T12:01:00.000-07:00

So the Adobe / Apple spat is heating up, now that one of Adobe's tech evangelists has responded to Apple's inclusion of "anti-Flash" language in its iPhone software version 4.0 licensing agreement.

Lee Bigelow posted what is best described as a rant against the license restrictions, which say, in part:

"Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs. (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited)."

One paragraph sums up Bigelow's feelings, as he goes for the jugular in questioning why any programmer would support the iPad / iPhone ecosystem with its HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript-only implementations, requiring content to be coded only in C language derivations:

I am positive that there are a large number of Apple employees that strongly disagree with this latest move. Any real developer would not in good conscience be able to support this. The trouble is that we will never hear their discontent because Apple employees are forbidden from blogging, posting to social networks, or other things that we at companies with an open culture take for granted.

Except, after posting the blog, Brimelow was forced to redact a line. And not in the typical way that bloggers do it, with a strikethrough, but fully remove the line.

The original post read:

What is clear is that Apple has timed this purposely to hurt sales of CS5. . . .

The new post reads:

[Sentence regarding Apple's intentions redacted at request from Adobe]. This has nothing to do whatsoever with bringing the Flash player to Apple’s devices. That is a separate discussion entirely. What they are saying is that they won’t allow applications onto their marketplace solely because of what language was originally used to create them.

Later, Bigelow does use a strike-through to redact the line that says he's speaking in his official Adobe capacity.

Now let me put aside my role as an official representative of Adobe for a moment as Speaking purely for myself, I would look to make it clear what is going through my mind at the moment. Go screw yourself Apple.

Open culture proponents meet crisis management public relations and investor relations practitioners. Ugh.

Flash on a Mac: Memory Hog?

2010-03-15T10:01:00.000-07:00

Despite many entreaties to believe that the Emporer does, indeed, have on clothes, I can't help but noticing this type of occurrence happens more frequently these days:

Safari takes up 15.7% of the CPU core while Flash Player takes up 85.7% of the CPU core?

If it weren't for a 2-core processor, the warring coupling of Safari and Flash wouldn't be able to dwell in the same silicon home together.

OtterBox Commuter and Commuter TL comparison

2009-12-23T09:03:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, we reviewed the OtterBox Commuter TL for iPhone (3G or 3GS), comparing it favorably to the OtterBox Defender, which we also reviewed, back in mid 2009.

OtterBox has since come out with a set of colored shells for its original Commuter series, and a few people have asked about the difference in the Commuter TL vs original Commuter cases.

Here's a brief run-down of the differences:

Protection (outer case). The Commuter TL has an outer shell that spans the whole back of the iPhone, from top to bottom, but does not protect the sides with any rigid material, relying instead on the rubberized casing. The original Commuter has more of a slip-case design, protecting the back and the lower 2/3 of the iPhone's sides.

In addition, the Commuter TL uses a clear plastic outer shell, which protects the Apple logo on the back, while still allowing it to be viewed if one is looking straight on at the back of the iPhone. By contrast, the Commuter has an opening slightly larger than the apple, meaning the logo area is not protected.

Colors. The Commuter TL has a single-color neoprene soft shell, and the clear rigid shell on the back. The Commuter offers a two-tone option, as seen in the picture above. The base neoprene shell is black, while the rigid protective shell is colored.

Commuter colors are sold in "kits" that contain a standard black rigid shell, plus two interchangeable color options. Kits include the following options: Blue/Yellow, White/Green, Red/Grey.

We tested the Blue/Yellow color kit, with the blue options for both the Commuter and the Commuter TL shown in the picture above. We also tested the yellow, which stood out well in most situations, including being easily identifiable when dropped in a snow drift from the freak snowstorm that came through last week.

All in all, I think the color kit combinations are a great option for those who want to change up the color or style on any given day. I personally prefer the Commuter TL better, given the single-color / clear combination, as well as the fact that the rubberized sides have a better grip in my iPhone car dock.

The great news is that OtterBox offers choices in the Commuter line, regardless of your needs and color fashion sense. More information is available on both options at www.otterbox.com

Vevo launch countdown, another major label added to the mix

2009-12-07T09:59:00.000-08:00

In an article I wrote this morning for streamingmedia.com, I mentioned uncertainty as to whether Vevo (under its Universal Music Group / Vivendi ownership) will get to its goal of having all four major labels on board by the time it launches tomorrow, December 8, 2009.

Apparently, in an early morning tweet, Universal announced that EMI is now on board.

Also, Peter Kafka, of MediaMemo, stated that Lala.com went for about $80 million, rather than the $35 million he'd initially projected. He says appears Warner didn't get back any of the write-down that it had done a few months ago (writing down approximately $11 million of its initial $20 million investment).

Review: IntelliScanner Mini

2009-12-01T09:19:00.000-08:00

So, based on the potential and limitations of the SOHO small office scanner from IntelliScanner, we asked to review the Intelliscanner mini.

The mini can hold up to 150 scans before needing to be connected to a Macintosh computer (OS X 10.4, 10.5, 10.6) to have its scans downloaded.

"The mini includes media software for organizing books, CDs, DVDs and video games, wine software for organizing your wine bottles, comic software for comic books, kitchen software for organizing groceries and our home assets software for organizing or inventorying items in your home for insurance purposes like furniture and electronics," a company representative stated when asked about the features of the mini.

"The mini's software, noted above, includes the web app for sharing collections online or viewing them on an iPhone as part of the publish feature. Except for the kitchen software.

The lack of an iPhone publishing feature for the kitchen software is odd, as that particular software is able to make up grocery lists, one of the prima facie reasons for owning a PDA or pocket computer.

EPiX's Rensing: Bandwidth Not A Concern

2009-11-19T17:35:00.000-08:00

Emil Rensing, Chief Digital Officer of EPiX, keynoted at this week's Streaming Media West 2009 event.

While the full coverage of his keynote can be found here, one question asked in the Q&A session stood out:

"How is the bandwidth problem going to be solved," an audience member asked, "since there are threats of throttles and caps by the cable and telecom ISPs?"

"This inflection point we're in means alot of experimentation and change," said Rensing, who dubs EPiX as TV Everywhere, available today. "My baseline belief is that it's a short-term problem, because within the next decade we'll see all content available at all fidelities on all devices."

While this projection has been made by numerous players in the space, it's worth noting due to EPiX lineage (Paramount, Lionsgate, and MGM are joint owners of the company) and the fact that it serves Verizon's FiOS and may be doing the same with AT&T's U-Verse in the near term.

Hacking the Xbox

2009-11-18T11:01:00.000-08:00

When Mark Whitten, General Manager of Microsoft's Xbox LIVE, spoke at today's Streaming Media West 2009, he was asked about the ability to Xbox community to legally hack an Xbox.

"I am going to agree with you but in a slightly different way," Whitten said to the questioner who identified himself as a Linux user that wanted to get 'under the hood' and change things. "The community should be able to change the experience, but it may not be people writing lines of source code. The ability to share experiences and change things such as vehicles or levels is already in place on various gaming platforms."

"I believe that consistency and simplicity are very important," Whitten continued, "which doesn't mean heavy-handed dev control, but does mean we need to start with the 'mom' button instead of the 'hacker' button."

Perspective: Blame it on video

2009-11-18T06:38:00.001-08:00

"Internet traffic is growing at a compound annual growth rate of 46 percent. Video is the driver. Make no question about that."

Robert Pepper, Cisco
Internet Governance Forum conference

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.11b0df967c4c85298aa30205bd42846a.01&show_article=1

iPhoned

Adobe announces Flash Player 10.1, AIR 2.0 beta

2009-11-17T18:15:00.000-08:00

At Adobe MAX 2009, held in Los Angeles back in October, Adobe's CTO announced the features for an upcoming point upgrade to Flash Player 10.

"We've begun working with 19 of the 20 top handset manufacturers, "said Kevin Lynch, Adobe's CTO, "to bring Flash Player 10.1 support to these mobile platforms."

Lynch meant that all the top handset manufacturers (except Apple, of course, with its non-Flash iPhone) will be able to run full Flash content on their smartphones.

"This provides a consistent runtime across desktops and mobile devices," said Lynch, "and is supported by close to 50 participants in the Open Screen Project, including support Google Android, Blackberry, Symbian, Palm webOS and Windows Mobile."

Within the Open Screen Media Framework (OSMF), Flash Player 10.1 is the first fully-compliant player, and is available as of today as a beta on Adobe Labs.

Adobe is looking to introduce HTTP streaming, coupled with content protection from its forthcoming Flash Access 2.0.

Jen Taylor, who spoke to Bit O' Tech just prior to the IBC show in September, also spoke at MAX about the impending solution.

"To date, you can choose RTMP streaming or progressive download," said Taylor, Adobe's Director of Flash Content Creation and Distribution. "We're also rolling out HTTP streaming, starting in 2010, due to feedback from customers who wanted to leverage their existing HTTP infrastructure."

Taylor said it made sense for customers to consider the Open Screen implementations.

"It's more complicated than it looks to overlay text, images or even Flash (SWF) files over Flash video," said Taylor. "In the end, everyone was re-inventing the wheel, and we saw this as an opportunity to solve an issue for everyone."

The framework allows for parallel playback of content (two videos side by side), text overlays, image overlays and other options.

"We found that many also were spending too much time on analytics," said Taylor, shortly after Adobe's acquisition of Omniture was announced. "What they really wanted to do, instead, was to spend the time focusing on customer experience."

"We worked with the community to identify partners to integrate in to the OSMF," said Taylor. "One of those was Omniture, but there are 40 others we are working to integrate."

Adobe also announced the release of Adobe AIR 2.0 beta, which uses the Flash Player engine to drive video content for offline or desktop delivery.

Facebook on Xbox: what about the videos?

2009-11-13T10:34:00.000-08:00

At this week's NewTeeVee Live, Mark Whitten, General Manager of Microsoft's Xbox LIVE, was asked about the impending rollout of Facebook integration into Xbox LIVE.

The questioner said: "I understand about integrating Facebook images, but what about Facebook videos since they would be a natural fit with other on-demand content on the Xbox?"

"I have nothing to announce today in that area," said Whitten, "but I truly believe that photos in the living room is an under-served feature that many people would use to share their photos with others in the room."

"We're looking at ways to do in the living room what people had done before, crowding around the laptop,"added Whitten.

Netflix Plugs In to Consumer Devices

2009-11-12T12:36:00.000-08:00

Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix is addressing a topic at today's NewTeeVee Live 2009, we talked about a few weeks ago: integrating Netflix streaming into consumer devices.

"Hollywood likes us when we bring big checks," said Hastings, in a 'fireside chat' with Om Malik. "They take a high risk, calculating the payback of creativity, so they are always looking for effective new forms of distribution."

"From a studio perspective, they'd like to sell DVDs before they go to rental houses," said Hastings, noting this is possible already in Europe, "so our integration into consumer devices might create an earlier window for studios to capitalize on different sales models."

When Malik asked about streaming, Hastings said Netflix wants to continue to play both sides.

"We have to help keep the DVD ecosystem as big as possible, but we also want to grow our streaming business," said Hasting. "41% of subscribers - up from 22% a year ago - had streamed content in the last quarter, but DVD is still continuing to grow for several years."

"We also expect to start streaming internationally next year, although we've not announced where we'll begin streaming."

Hastings also said Netflix benefits the cable companies, despite protests to the contrary.

"When a customer talks about cutting the cord, in reality they're cutting the video cord but upping their internet connectivity," said Hastings, "so the cable companies benefit since they have markets in television, telephony and data."

This is part of the Third Wave discussion started over at workflowed.com.

. . . Or maybe not

2009-11-12T09:13:00.000-08:00

Remember yesterday's comment about Microsoft using Mac OS X Leopard as its inspiration for the new Windows 7 operating system?

Apparently Microsoft now denies any, any, any influence from Cupertino, as noted in today's retraction: How We Really Designed The Look and Feel of Windows 7.

An inaccurate quote has been floating around the Internet today about the design origins of Windows 7 and whether its look and feel was “borrowed” from Mac OS X. Unfortunately this came from a Microsoft employee who was not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7. I hate to say this about one of our own, but his comments were inaccurate and uninformed.

Sometimes, it's just impossible to make these things up, but Brandon LeBlanc, a Windows Communications Manager at Microsoft who runs the official The Windows Blog, is certainly trying.

Public flogging of Microsoft's partner group manager, Simon Aldous, at 11.

Making Windows Look More Mac-Like, Microsoft Style

2009-11-11T12:26:00.001-08:00

This just in from Microsoft's UK partner event: "One of the things that people say an awful lot about the Apple Mac is that the OS is fantastic, that it’s very graphical and easy to use. What we’ve tried to do with Windows 7 – whether it’s traditional format or in a touch format – is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics."

PCR has the quote from Simon Aldous, partner group manager with Microsoft in the UK.

iPhoned

Adobe: Second Annual Layoff Exercise?

2009-11-10T14:38:00.000-08:00

Last December, Adobe cut 8% of its workforce, or 600 jobs. The company has obviously grown since then since today's announcement that it is cutting 9% of its workforce, or 680 jobs.

Last year's were as a result of the recession, this year's are "to appropriately align our costs in connection with our 2010 operating plan." Expect approximately $70 million in restructuring charges, including about $19 million in leased facility consolidation and the remainder in severance packages (for approximately $74,000 per severed employee).

Parallels Launches Parallels 5, Wins Me Too! Award

2009-11-04T07:55:00.000-08:00

In the beginning, there was Parallels: the first virtual machine emulation software for Macintosh OS X.

It did some things well, enough so that I and others wrote about it in industry trade rags. Yet, over the years, it has turned into one of those pieces of software that puts out a new full numeral release for functions that other virtual machines (including the grandaddy of virtual, VMWare) released as point updates.

Consider, then, Parallels 5, which in its fifth reincarnation has now finally matched features that VMWare's Fusion has incorporated since its second version.

For instance, Parallels touts its "Crystal View" feature "which makes Windows completely disappear." If you think you've heard this before, you have: it's what VMWare Fusion calls the Unity mode.

In fact, of the top nine features noted on the website's main page, none of them are unique to Parallels. In other words, all of them have been part of shipping copies of Fusion for some time now.

Don't get me wrong: Parallels is not a bad program. I use both it and Fusion, and recommend each frequently to clients.

Parallels marketing has been suspect for quote some time, starting back in early 2007, when Ben Rudolph, Parallels' marketing director, revealed in an oddly worded email and his blog wasn't the startup he'd wanted us to believe, but actually part of a much larger organization.

The secretive approach wasn't lost on those out in the world of virtualization, as one poster to his blog noted, "I saw this announcement a few days ago both here and on various other Web sites and I thought it was presented strangely overall, as though some secret being revealed was the most compelling part of the story."

Perhaps that strangeness was the sound of thousands of users wondering what was up, especially when the CEO of sister company SWSoft, Serguei Beloussov, presented another person as the Parallels CEO immediately after a Fortune blog post said Beloussov called the shots.

That at least has been corrected in the recent press release, which now identifies Beloussov as the Parallels CEO, and Ben Rudolph went off to the really fun challenge of marketing Vista in mid-2008.

But there continue to be unsubstantiated marketing claims, such as speed benefits with no backing data (and no URLs in the online press release), as well as the odd decision to call out features that are not unique to the company.

Maybe they need Ben back, so that the company can work to get ahead of the curve, as it once was, rather than putting out press releases and charging significantly for updates that only bring the Parallels product to status quo.

The Dark Lord Streameth . . .

2009-10-29T11:11:00.000-07:00

Don't know if streameth is actually a word, but the creative minds behind the Streaming Media Sourcebook 2010 put together a clever video interview between our fearless editor and the dark lord himself, in which DV talks of plans to push forward his streaming initiatives to enhance both holographic communications and the Death Star construction schedule . . .

. . . of course, this DV sounds a bit more like the Terminator than James Earl Jones, but kudos to Blame Society for the voice over. The full media kit can be found here.

Where No Becomes One ... Nokeena Networks' Name Change

2009-10-28T11:36:00.000-07:00

I've been acquainted with Nokeena Networks, now Ankeena Networks, for some time, having done a podcast back in June with the CTO, Prabakar Sundarrajan, who is also a co-founder of the company.

Today, while speaking with Prabakar and the VP of Marketing, Anshu Agarwal, I asked the question that's been on my mind since the company announced the name change: why?

"It was too close to another company's name," Anshu said, although she did not elaborate on which company. "We wanted to differentiate ourselves but we also didn't want to go through a significant re-branding process since we'd emerged from stealth mode and had gained traction with potential customers."

The similarity to other names struck me, when I tried to use Google to find the best public transportation option for my visit to the company's office back in April. Google kept suggesting Nokia, which I found ironic, as Nokia could potentially become a customer of Ankeena's technology for optimizing guaranteed video delivery on an IP network [Ankeena is targeting MSOs, telcos and ISPs with its technology, as noted in today's article at StreamingMedia.com]

"No means 0, while An means 1," Prabakar quipped, adding that keena means eyes, "so we've at least stayed within the binary realm."

Review: OtterBox Commuter TL for iPhone

2009-10-27T14:46:00.000-07:00

[This review of OtterBox's newest iPhone case references the OtterBox Defender for iPhone review from September.]

While the Defender offered robust protection, the bulk made it unlikely to be used in all but the harshest conditions.

The OtterBox Commuter TL, however, strikes the right balance between protection and in-the-pocket everyday use.

At first glance, it looks like the Commuter TL only has the standard neoprene slipcase. The small clear plastic horizontal stabilizers at the top and bottom of the case, though, are part of a solid plastic back plate the protects the rear, top and bottom of an iPhone 3G or 3GS.

Unlike the previous Commuter series - both of which now come in a variety of colors - the Commuter TL allows the Apple logo to show through.

As an added benefit, the hard plastic across the back also forms a protective ring around the camera lens without covering the lens. While the Defender fully covered the camera lens with a thin piece of clear plastic, its recessed nature meant it could gather dust, dirt or rain drops.

The Commuter TL, on the other hand, will be more susceptible to the elements directly impacting the camera's lens, but the ability to wipe off the back surface of an iPhone 3G or 3GS is easier than trying to clean out the recessed surface of the Defender.

Given the overall protection of the Commuter TL - which has rubber covers for the volume, multi-pin connector, headphone jack and on-off switch - I felt comfortable taking the unit out in a light rain to take a few pictures, one of which can be seen below.

All in all, it's nice to see progression in design that takes into account some of the real-world issues. More importantly, it's nice to find, in the Commuter TL, a case that my wife and I can both agree on as practical, everyday protection.

iPhoned

Flash for the iPhone? Not Quite

2009-10-05T16:56:00.000-07:00

According to Adobe, Flash content is playing on the iPhone, via App Store (iTunes Store) applications. Is it true? Not quite. Is it a savvy move to force Apple's hand? Just might be. Read more here.

Telepresence's shrinking presence

2009-10-05T08:44:00.000-07:00

IBM adds Cisco Telepresence to its offering, while Cisco gobbles up Tandberg.

The world of telepresence offerings just got a little smaller, or at least more streamlined, as Cisco and Tandberg announced last week that the internetworking giant will buy the Oslo-based videoconferencing company.

Happening in the few weeks prior to the SUPERCOMM tradeshow, which re-emerges in Chicago in late October after several years in exile, the Cisco-Tandberg announcement gives Cisco CEO John Chambers yet another video-related acquisition to add to his presentation fodder. For those of you who may not follow the SUPERCOMM show, Chambers has done many keynotes over the years, with almost every one involving VoIP - voice or video over IP. Chambers has made to secret of the fact that video on IP networks is a growth area he would like to dominate.

The Tandberg announcement makes both strategic and financial sense, if seen in light of the recent IBM announcement that the tech giant will be offering the IBM Converged Communications Services-Managed Telepresence services for its consulting clients.

IBM says the offering will include "design, implementation, concierge and help desk, remote operations, and maintenance and support" and, in a nod to the best pun in recent press release history, IBM says it can provide customers with telepresence units that range from desktop"to life-size screens that sprawl the length of the room." No word yet whether LifeSize, itself a telepresence company that was founded by former Polycom / PictureTel executives, have used their sprawling telepresence units to complain about IBM's use of its name in a Cisco-IBM-Tandberg tie up.

Almost two years ago, an article in Streaming Media magazine talked about telepresence's place in the collaborative computing-streaming pantheon. In addition, a podcast recorded at the same time addressed some of the benefits of using a high-definition (HD) videoconferencing system as an inexpensive way to acquire content for HD streaming [this would be real HD streaming, not Akamai's "it starts as HD so it must be an HD stream to the iPhone" version]. We think that any opportunity to drive forward HD telepresence - or even plain old HD videoconferencing - will ultimately benefit HD streaming. A forthcoming article on enterprise streaming for Streaming Media magazine will showcase a few best practices in using videoconferencing as remote acquisition tools for live and on-demand streaming content.

Coming back around to the Tandberg deal, Cisco is paying approximately $3 billion for Tandberg. Tiernan Ray over at Barron's blog has a good overview of different analysts' assessments of the deal, but he also points out what all of us who have lived in the videoconferencing world at some point in the past or present are wondering: what does this mean for Polycom? Given Polycom's proximity to Cisco (Milpitas is just an hour down the road from Cisco's headquarters) and the on-again / off-again relationship Polycom and Cisco have had over the years, it's shaping up to be a life-size drama in the making.

Akamai claims 45 million iPhones capable of playing back HD content

2009-09-30T10:05:00.000-07:00

[Update, see the workflowed.com blog for a bit more detail on Akamai's "HD" delivery to the iPhone.]

For such a simple press conference, there certainly are a number of unanswered questions. I like reporting the news, but every so often a claim is made ("first ever, only, etc") that has to be challenged.

An article I wrote on Tuesday, September 29, for StreamingMedia.com includes a link to an on-demand version of an Akamai press conference that had been streamed live that day (the on-demand version had a much cleaner playback quality than the actual live playback, which can be seen in the screenshot posted here).

Akamai was announcing their Akamai HD Network, hosted by Paul Sagan, CEO, and Tom Leighton, Co-founder and Chief Scientist. I have nothing against Akamai in particular, but unfortunately some of the claims made can't be substantiated.

One in particular struck me as key to the whole press conference. Leighton claimed (from 10 minutes 35 seconds to 10 minutes 58 seconds in the on-demand version)

"Today there's [sic] 50 million homes that have connected gaming consoles - or other devices - that capable of displaying HD video, of getting it and displaying it into the home. Also, there's [sic] 45 million iPhones out there today capable of displaying HD video."

Let's take a look at the facts:

a). No one else has ever claimed that the 1st gen iPhone or even the iPhone 3G is capable of of HD playback, which is the only way to get to the 45 million iPhone number.

b) Even the claims that the iPhone 3GS is capable of displaying HD content are conjecture, as Apple does not allow HD playback on the iPhone 3GS (even 480p content can't be played back).

c) While everyone is doing "higher definition" for live streams to desktop Flash and Silverlight players, many are doing HTTP streams, and a few are doing true HD (480, 720, 1080i/p) to these same players, there are a limited number of companies doing true HD live streams via HTTP, which is where Akamai wants to tell its story. None are doing it to the iPhone, however.

The reason I say it is key to the whole press conference is this: if all Akamai is claiming is "higher definition" as its term for HD, there's no story here, since others are doing it. If they're claiming HD for the iPhone, there's a story here but not one they can support.

When I heard that claim about the 45 million HD-capable iPhones, I immediately posted a question on the webcast, which was not read during the live event; I've also written twice to the PR contact, who was helpful with a question about one of the speaker's names, but has also been silent on the misstatement by Leighton.

Oh, and I can't even get the on-demand version of the press conference to play on my iPhone 3GS.

Heads Up - Silverlight 3, Adobe AIR support Intel's Moblin OS

2009-09-23T11:47:00.000-07:00

Intel, during its developer's forum, announced Moblin 2.1, the company's Linux distribution that is both media-centric and scalable. Both Adobe and Microsoft announced support for Moblin, with their respective AIR and Silverlight platforms.

See the write-up at StreamingMedia.com but here are a few other quotes.

The first two are from Elemental Technologies, a company that uses Graphics Processor Units (GPUs) to accelerate encoding and transcoding.

Sam Blackman, Elemental's CEO, has spent time researching Larrabee, and sees it as a positive for programmers.

"Larrabee uses a modified x86 multi-core architecture rather than the streaming architecture traditionally associated with GPUs," said Blackman. "This means there is a broader instruction set available to the programmer than with streaming processors, and thus certain operations can be performed with fewer lines of code. This doesn’t necessarily mean the code will run faster or more efficiently, of course. While I don’t know the details of this specific example, my guess is that they are running the code entirely on Larrabee rather than 'pulling' any back to the CPU.

"It's definitely an interesting architecture and great for us," said Andy Beach, VP of Marketing at Elemental. "It adds yet more competition into the hardware space that, to date, was dominated by GPU-only cards. We can provide an even more appealing offer, I think, as we actually use both CPU and GPU in our transcoding."

Heads Up - Adobe Elements 8 announced

2009-09-23T04:43:00.000-07:00

Adobe today announced the mid-October availability of its Adobe Elements 8 packages, both Photoshop Elements 8 and Premiere Elements 8. Windows versions are available for both Elements, while Mac users will have to settle for the Photoshop Element only.

Adobe says the products fit in the "hobbyist" area of Adobe's mass-market push, the opposite end of a continuum that includes Photoshop CS4 on the high end and Elements at the low end. Still, with previous versions of Elements that we’ve reviewed, the hobbyist versions hold their own on basic tasks.

During a pre-release conference call, an Adobe spokesperson mentioned that Elements is, essentially, a balance of ease of use with power or "headroom.”

“We continuously hear from focus groups that they want software that's straightforward and easy to use,” he said, “but they don't want us to limit the software in case the user wants to do more complex edits.”

We’ll highlight a few key features in each program, demonstrated during the pre-release conference call, and then we’ll follow up with a hands-on review. There’s also an online component, which we won’t address here, other than to note that online albums support video now, as well as photos.

ORGANIZER

Adobe has spent quite a bit of time updating Elements Organizer, its "Ultimate Media Management Hub." Organizer has been part of Photoshop Elements since version 3, but the company is now shipping Organizer with Premiere Elements 8 for Windows, or as part of the bundle of both Elements.

Adobe’s rationale for expanding Organizer is that user capture devices are capturing both photos and videos. This blurring of the lines between photo and video capture devices means management of those two types in the same place is important.

Auto Analyzer

Organizer has an auto-analyzer tool that tags shots and videos for quality and interest, as well as other key tagging examples Adobe gleaned from user focus groups.

Smart Tags will filter down to particular types of content (one face, two faces, small group, etc) and auto-classify the content. Additionally, in terms of quality, the auto-analyze function can find images that are too dark or too bright or other quality characteristics. Scores based on high or low quality, such as blurriness, contrast, provide a subjective quality basis so that images can be rapidly filtered or eliminated.

This analysis also includes "people recognition" as a way to eliminate the need to manually add tags when a person appears within a video scene or a still image. This

people finder works on the principle of finding a face, then prompting for name of person. As the name is entered, Organizer begins to build up information about the person, offering an auto-complete function for names, then moving on to giving suggestions from a list of names.

In one example during the conference call, Adobe demonstrated that the manual cataloging of five shots apiece for two people was all it took before the auto-analyzer began to suggest one name from a list of possible names whenever that person appeared in a shot. The system then moves on to a more definitive suggestion, asking "is this . . . ?"

Keyword tagging for video is a bit more complex, and Adobe acknowledges that tagging isn’t always based on the first frame of video.

“Tagging is based on content,” the spokesperson said, “so keywords can be added at any time while watching the video. Tags are applied to on a scene-by-scene basis rather than the entire video.”

Organizer also contains a full-screen preview, much like iPhoto on the Mac. Users can use full-screen to expand images to a much larger size, making the choice of images or video playback much easier in full-screen mode. To quickly edit particular images a quick edit panel pops up to deal with one-click issues such as rotation or auto-color adjustments. Video tagging can also be performed in the full-screen mode.

PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS

Photoshop Elements 8 has three primary new features: Photomerge Exposure, Recompose and Quick fix previews.

Photomerge Exposure offers the user the ability to make extensive light and dark adjustments to specific areas of an image. For example, let’s say you have an image of your wife standing in front of the Eiffel Tower at night with the tower lit and fill flash on your wife. Chance are good that the either the tower is too dark, or your wife is too bright. Not that having an overly bright wife is a bad thing. The exposure tool will allow you to adjust brightness on either the tower or your wife to improve the image quality. Photomerge differs from Photoshop’s HDR capabilities by only fine-tuning exposure in a single image as opposed to merging multiple copies of the same image taken at different exposures.

Recompose borrows an algorithm from Photoshop CS4 called Content Aware Scaling. This tool allows you to scale an image without distorting the content. If you have two or more people in a scene that aren’t close enough together for your liking, this tool will allow you to “squeeze” them together without making them look squished. It also works vertically which can be useful for eliminating unwanted backgrounds. You can specify the areas that you want the algorithm to keep or discard by using a green or red brush and “painting” over parts of the image.

PREMIERE ELEMENTS

Premiere Elements 8 has a series of “smart” features, including Smart Fix, Smart Trim, and Smart Mix. It has also added motion tracking and newer “instant movie themes,” effects, and transitions.

Smart Tools

Smart Fix in Premiere Elements performs essentially the same image adjustments to video clips as it does to still images in Photoshop Elements. It performs a quick evaluation of the video content and adjusts characteristics such as brightness and contrast to improve troublesome clips or simply to make an already good clip look even better.

Smart Trim is a particularly innovative new tool in Premiere Elements 8. This tool analyzes a video clip and identifies suggested cut points inside of the clip. One of the ways the algorithm accomplishes this is by looking for motion. Let’s say you have a clip of Tiger Woods lining up a 25 foot putt. He may remain stationary for 30 seconds before he finally putts the ball. Smart Trim will look past all of the heightening drama before the putt and suggest an “in” point just before he swings his club. Accepting a Smart Trim suggestion results in a non-destructive trim (meaning it can always be undone later).

Smart Mix can also be called an auto-ducking feature for audio. It will find the points in a dialogue audio track that voices are heard. It can then automatically mix the other audio tracks, such as music or sound effects, down so the dialogue stands out loud and clear.

ECONOMICAL MOTION TRACKING

This new version of Premiere Elements ships with a feature usually only found in professional level post-production software, motion tracking. In the Adobe demo that we viewed, this feature performed very accurately and quickly. The tracker can be set to follow a point of interest in a clip; then an object can be assigned to “follow” the parent. Other video clips, titles, animated clip art, or images can all be assigned to follow an object on the screen.

BONUS FEATURES

Adobe now offers additional options for output of completed videos. The ability to directly upload to YouTube is a feature included under the “Share” tab. This export option will automatically format your finished masterpiece for optimal viewing on the popular video-sharing site. Also Podbean is a new partner of Adobe allowing users to directly upload vodcasts to their account.

Any purchase of Elements 8 includes 2GB of storage on Photoshop.com. Although the Mac version does not include the Organizer, it does include Adobe Bridge CS4 which can be used in place of another organizer such as iPhoto. Photoshop and Premiere Elements 8 are available immediately as a bundle for Windows computers for $149.99. Photoshop Elements for the Mac retails for $99.99. Both will ship on October 23, 2009.

Heads Up - iPhone 3G / 3GS Commuter TL case

2009-09-18T05:53:00.000-07:00

In our last review of an iPhone 3G / 3GS case, we looked at the ultra rugged OtterBox Defender. I also mentioned the somewhat sleeker Impact series and have since found a good review of Impact for the 3G (http://www.notebooks.com/2009/04/14/review-otterbox-impact-case-for-iphone-3g/).

Otterbox now offers a middle option: the just-launched Commuter TL series.

Awaiting a sample and will update this post with a comparison to the Defender once it arrives.

iPhoned

IBC Companies of Interest

2009-09-16T16:12:00.000-07:00

Finishing up IBC, the international broadcasting show held in Amsterdam each year. Found a few companies of interest that are related to the digital media and streaming spaces. There were several more, which I'll comment on in more detail in future posts:

Abit Hall 8, stand 8.A28a. Playout automation specialist, Abit Ltd, will show its new, cost effective, ‘compact’ automation system for the first time at IBC this year. The system takes 17 years development knowledge and delivers it in a small platform capable of providing workflow and playout automation for up to three transmission channels.

Accedo Broadband Hall 12 Stand IP621. Provider of interactive content and applications for IPTV and Connected TV. At IBC, Accedo will be launching a range of social media applications, as well as some History Channel-based applications. As well as this they will be presenting new game features, including the world's first Full HD gaming and 3D components using SVG technology.

Advanced Digital Broadcast Hall 5, Stand 5.B48 Advanced Digital Broadcast will show how it is helping its customers to meet the challenges of delivering an enhanced consumer TV experience with linear and on-demand entertainment services across hybrid networks. Operators are challenged to bring together more content from more places, making programs and services easy to find, and presenting multimedia in new and exciting ways. In its booth at IBC, ADB will show a number of demonstrations of how it is enabling television, Internet and personal content to converge and be accessible where consumers enjoy it most: on their flat screen TV. Approximately 70% of ADB’s workforce is dedicated to engineering; developing products across all the digital television technology platforms including cable, Internet Protocol (IP), satellite and terrestrial. The company is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland with its main Research and Development facility in Zielona Gora, Poland and Operations division in Taipei, Taiwan. ADB has local representation in Australia, Italy, Singapore, Spain, the Ukraine, the United States and the United Kingdom.

AmberFin iCR v5 now supports a few additional tools for ingest into Avid systems, including JPEG 2000 (for intermediate mastering format for high quality content such as movies, offering superior image quality with 10 bits of information for each pixel), closed captioning (applies closed captioning seamlessly for US and European broadcast delivery content and conversion), MXF AS02 (includes highly efficient new MXF application designed for streamlined New Media Factory operations and Avid interplay: AmberFin iCR (streamlining the process when working in an AVID editing environment, offering instant interoperability in delivery preparation, freeing up critical edit suites to deliver value for editing workflows).

Broadcast International CE-1000 is designed for IPTV, satellite and Telco service providers and delivers a very cost effective way to solve their bandwidth crisis. It’s a software-based encoder featuring Broadcast International’s highly efficient, fully compliant H.264 codec.

Envivio Hall 1, stand, 1.D72. Envivio's new iLiveTV solution for the Apple iPhone and SilverLiveTV for Microsoft Silverlight. We will also bring you up to date information about ongoing deployments around the world, such as the recent announcement of new Mobile TV service launched by Digita Oy, which is owned by France’s TDF. Finland’s leading distributor of radio and television services, Digita is using Envivio to deliver ten channels of high quality, DVB-H encoded, free-to-air and pay-tv mobile television to be offered by mobile operators in Finland’s top markets.

Ross Video XPression, an all-in-one real-time 3D Character Generator and Motion Graphics System. Fully Unicode compliant directly supporting a wide variety of languages. Developed by a team with a long background as on-air graphics operators, it plays well with industry leading graphics file formats like Photoshop™ and 3D Studio Max™ files to generate a compelling and sophisticated graphic look. XPression offers individual control of up to 7 templates of graphics on a single channel – eliminating the need for costly additional channels and systems. It can accommodate a variety of workflows from fully manual playback stand-alone setups to distributed configurations controlled by custom applications and newsroom systems. This makes XPression the perfect solution for news, production studio and outside broadcast productions.

SatStream – SatStream is Europe's largest bespoke broadcast-standards facility specifically designed for content acquisition from Satellite and broadcast by Streaming via the Internet. SatStream's facilities have been enjoyed by a wide mix of broadcasters, events management, production, and content companies, including Microsoft, Endemol, BBC, CNN, France 24, and Euronews. SatStream recently streamed three Manchester City matches. The matches were part of the Vodacom challenge, a pre-season football event now in its tenth year, hosted in South Africa.

Softron Hall 3 at 3.A48 Multi-channel H.264 recording compliance (MovieRecorder Express) and a new version of MovieRecorder (edit during ingest software tool): MovieRecorder 2.0 supports multiple SD and HD formats, either compressed or uncompressed. It allows video clips being captured to be stored to multiple locations simultaneously. Ingests can be scheduled over time or can be manually triggered. Pro option now allows the capture of proxy clips. These proxy clips are low bit rate versions of the actual material, significantly smaller in size and can be edited in Final Cut Pro. Editing on a proxy file is ideal for use on notebook computers or over local area networks. It also accelerates the rendering process and enables more real time editing. Edit-while-ingest also works with proxy files, which means that you can start editing in Final Cut Pro on your laptop on a Local Area Network, while it’s capturing.

TrustedOpinion social recommendation platform delivers recommendations for any variety of products, services, and content. The company drives consumer confidence by generating personalized recommendations based on the opinions of your network of friends. Since public launch in Feb’07, TrustedOpinion.com has attracted over a million members and is growing. TrustedOpinion is based in San Francisco, CA.

TXT Polymedia Polymedia Live acquires video content and encodes them into multiple output formats; Polymedia Show is the advanced video player combining standard PC player functionalities with those of Polymedia MAM to easily and quickly manage video content, its related advertising inputs together with e-commerce innovative functions. Also, a demonstration of the IBC 2009 Innovation Awards shortlisted project “Smart content repurposing system for Linear & VOD Tv Programmes services” developed for the customer Mediaset, is also available at stand. The project represents a multi-screen approach application that provides Mediaset with a complete workflow enabling efficient video content repurposing in new media.

V4x Hall 2 – Stand 2.B31 V4x Debuts Interactive "Social Radio" Player for the Web and iPhone (including Interactivity, Chat, Quizzes, Contests and Video improve monetization for Radio Streaming Channels). V4x is focused on providing high-quality interactive OnAir Widgets for web and mobile services. Offers webcasters new revenue opportunities through social networking, at the IBC Exhibition held in Amsterdam from September 11-15, 2009. The V4x interactive web player provides a customized interface that extends the user experience, allowing users to fully participate in the streamcast – beyond traditional programming – with interactive widgets like live, moderated chat; quizzes and polls; animated banners, even live in-studio videos or channel events.

Review: QuickTime Player X

2009-09-05T03:05:00.000-07:00

For those upgrading to Snow Leopard, Apple's most recent enhancement to its core operating system, the look-and-feel updates to applications such as the QuickTime Player X are a welcome addition.

As mentioned in an article I'd written for StreamingMedia.com, QuickTime Player X eliminates borders and windows around the actual video playback, and embeds the controls directly in to the lower quarter of the video playback window. Look familiar? It's based on the iPhone's video playback window.

Even more than just the updated look, though, QuickTime Player X uses the best bits of iPhone video protocol handling. As I'd mentioned in another article, HTTP streaming and the ability to trim and share videos was available on the iPhone before it ever launched on the desktop player application.

Here, though, the good news ends. While QuickTime Player X integrates a few of the Pro features from its predecessor, QuickTime Player 7, it drops cuts-only editing altogether and dumbs down export to "save as" and "save for web" options - both of which have significantly reduced export capabilities.

Here is an example of a small portion of the export options in QuickTime Player 7:

Now here is the only set of export options in QuickTime Player X:

Significant difference!

Note that QuickTime Player 7 contained all the export options of QuickTime Player X (AppleTV, iPod / iPhone and computer), so this is not about Apple adding functionality. It's as if making a "pretty" product got in the way of making a functional product, at least when the previous product did so much more than the "new and improved" one.

To be completely fair, there is one more screen on QuickTime Player X: the Save for Web option. As the picture below shows, however, there aren't very many options (about half of what was available on a similar screen in QuickTime Player 7):

Even more disturbing, what's been left out of the exporting options on QuickTime Player X is anything that doesn't fit in Apple's direct sphere of influence: if you don't want to export to iPod, iPhone, AppleTV or a Mac, you're out of luck with QuickTime Player X.

It's as if Apple is foregoing QuickTime's promise and premise to work across the board with a variety of formats and output options, instead closing ranks around its own products at the expense of extensibility.

Fortunately, for those who upgrade to Snow Leopard (10.6) from the Leopard (10.5) operating system, Apple leave QuickTime Player 7 on the upgrade machine. Whether this is an oversight, or a nod to the fact that QuickTime X was shipped too early, the fact that QuickTime Player 7 is still functional is welcome news.

In summary, we applaud Apple's attempt to simplify a part of the export process for the average user, but not at the expense of the power user who found the earlier versions of QuickTime to be quite powerful workflow enhancers. We would at least expect QuickTime Player X to have a simplified "Share" section and a more robust "Export" section, even if the latter were hidden a level down below the basic export options.

Instead, what we get is a very crippled version of an older system that worked quite nicely. So much for progress!

[Tested on 10.6.1 with QuickTime Player 7 version 7.6.3 (build 630) and QuickTime Player X version 10.0 (build 51)]

Review: Media software overview for IntelliScanner SOHO

2009-09-01T11:50:00.000-07:00

[Update 1 Nov 2009: all the review findings are also applicable to the IntelliScanner mini, which we hope to review within the next few weeks; also, since IntelliScanner updated its software to be compatible with OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard, we have also eliminated any review concerns that may have been caused by software incompatibilities with Snow Leopard. Everything in this version of the review, then, is applicable to OS X 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6]

This review is a long time coming. I'd first reviewed the basics of the IntelliScanner SOHO back in February, and had hoped to get to the software reviews in March, but that got sidetracked by a few months of travel and a few more months of being sick. Slowly getting back to normal, and this week's blog time will be spent reviewing the software solutions for the IntelliScanner SOHO scanner.

As the unit I received didn't come with the codes for the Business Integration Kit or Inventory software tools that make up the office side of the SOHO scanner, this review will focus on two of the Express software packages.

Those who read the overview blog post from early February will remember that the Express software packages consist of tools to organize everyday household items like books, DVDs, wine, groceries or electronics. We'll focus on two of these - the Kitchen (groceries) and Media (books, DVDs) since they each present different opportunities and challenges when working with a portable scanner.

Overall impressions. Since the software packages are all bundled together, my initial thought was that there would be a level of integration between them, so that one could go merrily on his way scanning anything in site and letting IntelliScanner worry about sorting out where they were to go.

Not so fast. The instructions give the first inkling that this isn't really feasible, when they suggest that one piece of software be open at a time, and that the software of choice for a particular tool be opened to the "Add Items" dialogue.

Hmm. So now, if I want to go scan my books and DVDs, I can't also scan groceries. It's not that groceries have an ISBN number, nor is it that the books would have a UPC bar code, so it seems odd to require all content scanned on a fairly powerful scanner (the SOHO holds up to 2500 bar code scans) fall only in to one software package's point of reference.

I'd much prefer that the IntelliScanner Dashboard do more than just be the launching point for all the other software packages. Ideally, it could verify which software packages have been activated (verified by their activation codes) and then sort through all the scanned bar codes. It could then provide a suggested list of scans (and their retrieved information) grouped according to program or content type.

Secondly, even within a single set of barcodes, there appears to be no post-scan correlation between the retrieved information and the barcode, nor is there even a listing of the barcode numbers - critical when the software spits out archane database entries such as "unknown KINGSTON MARKETING CO item" for an item it thinks it understands. If one is going to go to the trouble of scanning anywhere near the potential level of the SOHO scanner (2500 scans) or even the mini scanner (150 scans) there needs to be a way to easily retain those unassigned scans and be able to assign them via the barcode number. If only 2-3 scans are listed as unknown, it will take someone with Solomon's memory skills and Job's patience to figure out what was not added correctly to the scanned list.

Third, scans get lost very, very easily. Remember the first point, where the instructions recommend having a piece of software open to the "Add Items" dialogue box before plugging in the scanner? The reason for this is to keep from losing the scans, which are output from the scanner as a series of keyboard strokes. If the scanner is plugged into the serial-to-USB cable without the right piece of software being open, in the foreground or even on the "Add Items" dialogue box, there is a high probability that all the scans will be lost.

Even when the software is open to the appropriate spot, each program behaves differently for unknown scans. The Media software package places an unknown scan in a dialogue box that is somewhat difficult to understand; clicking to bypass the box dumps the scanned bar code information permanently. As you can see by the accompanying picture, the default is to close and bypass the unknown scans.

The Kitchen software package lists them out as unknown in the assets list IF they can be identified at least to the company level, but dumps the rest.

Finally, if multiple scans are created of the same barcode number, the two programs also handle this differently, with Kitchen defaulting to adding all quantities while Media puts up a nicely-done early warning about the number of scans.

In other words, while the hardware is incredibly handy and easy to use to scan bar codes, the software implementations can easily make the casual user confused, frustrated and bewildered as to what all their hard scanning work has wrought.

Media. The software kit for Media launches a very Mac- or Bento-like software package that contains collections for various types of media: books, movies, music, games.

To add items, after scanning, open the wand icon (labeled "Add Items") in the top left corner. Then plug in the SOHO scanner; for help on this, please read the overall impressions above, which spell out a few things to remember, as well as the initial hardware review which describes the settings for the serial-to-USB cable.

Added items will first appear as a series of numerals, and then the software will attempt to retrieve the information on books, DVDs, VHS tapes, CDs or games from a number of online databases.

Once the data is retrieved for all items - or as many items as the particular software program will allow, since it rejects barcodes that would make sense in other software packages - the Media software package populates that particular information in to the appropriate media catalog.

What if the computer you are using is not online? Good question. Our testing showed that the information will not be retrieved and will reflect as not being in the database, which is inaccurate. In other words, Media treats offline attempts to add scanned content no differently than items that aren't actually in the database. Even the same error message is displayed.

Lending is available, in a rudimentary form, in Media. The act of "checking out" a book, DVD or other media is a manual process, which is fully understood given two facts: the need to put in the name of the person who is borrowing the media (with clever integration of the Address Book application) as well as the inability for the software to differentiate between a scan representing a rise in quantity versus a lowering in quantity.

Still, given the fact that the software can prompt for redundant scans and offer at least two options (ignore or increase quantity), it would be nice to see the software offer a third option for items that are already in the library, such as a check-out option.

Even simpler to perform would be the ability to rapidly check-in books or other media, as the manual check-out process changes the status in the database (and the corresponding icon color) to a color and detailed information about when the book has been checked out.

In our testing, we could not find any way to force the status color to change to a different color (red, for instance, since green is used for available and yellow is used for lent out) when the book became past due. All this to say Media seems a good way to keep track of what's in your home collections, for insurance reasons, but not necessarily a stellar check-in / check-out private library sort of tool. For that, you'll need to pay the big bucks for IntelliScanner's Daneiza (Latin for to lend) software.

Wow, this post is pretty long, so I'll post my thoughts on Kitchen in a separate blog post.

Review: Otterbox Defender for iPhone 3GS (and 3G)

2009-08-10T15:13:00.000-07:00

The iPhone 3GS (and 3G, which has an identical form factor) has many options in terms of protective coverings. Not every neoprene skin or leather slip case provides optimum protection. For that, a full-body protective case is needed.

Otterbox, based in Fort Collins, Colorado, has a long history in building protective cases for equipment, the kind of heavy plastic suitcase you might see a band's road crew carrying expensive gear in.

A few years back, the company began making smaller boxes to hold phones and GPS units, but the downside was that - while protecting these small consumer devices - the device itself was not accessible to use. So the company branched in to the field of heavily protective shells, form-fitted to particular devices.

Besides a variety of Blackberry models, Otterbox also has one for the iPhone with the fitting name of Defender. While the unit adds both size and a slight amount of weight to the iPhone, for those who need heavy protection in the field, it's not really much larger than the first-generation iPhone or the early Palm Pilot digital assistants.

Defender covers every possible connection and opening on the iPhone, including the camera. It does so through a series of two protective layers: the outer is very similar to a neoprene skin found on many iPhones. The benefit of this skin is that adds a no-slip grip to the overall phone, it can be washed, and it has a softer feel than the inner shell.

In our tests, the outer skin did a good job of collecting most of the dirt, as it covers most of the phone, minus the iPhone's large screen. Flaps also cover the headphone and charging/docking jacks as well as the on-off switch.

The outer skin was easily cleaned with soap and water, and dried relatively quickly. Over time, and with frequent washings, though, this may be the one part of the Defender that requires consistent replacement.

The inner shell is a molded, rigid plastic, with clear sheets of thin plastic film integrated to cover user-accessible areas such as the screen and the camera.

We ran our iPhone 3GS units, one black 32GB and one white 16GB one, through a series of video field tests in early August, in preparation for iPhone 3.1

One such test was to use the camera on a construction site, which involved sawdust, concrete mixing and a variety of other small-particle dangers for delicate electronics. Given Apple's recent reports of iPhones and iPod touch players exploding after being dropped, we also wanted maximum protection against accidental drops or knocks by power tools, etc.

The protective case performed admirably in this harsh environment; after returning to the office and extracting the iPhone from the Defender shell, we found no scratches or other signs of damage to the phone, even though the Defender's outer shell was covered in saw and concrete dust.

The one weakness we found in the Defender is the crevice in which the camera sits. The camera lens, on the upper left of the iPhone's curved back, is covered by a thin film, surrounded by a small ring of rigid plastic that the Defender places around the lens.

To shoot properly, we weren't able to just wipe the dust away from the lens, as we would do with a naked iPhone, so we had to resort to using compressed air to blow the dust out. With dirt or fingerprints, however, this could become a show stopper since the Defender doesn't wipe away dirt and grime from the phone body as easily as it is wiped away from a naked iPhone. The thin plastic, too, is more prone to easy scratching than the iPhone's camera glass, which could cause degradation of image and video capture after just a few cleanings.

One accessory is bundled with the Defender: a belt clip with wings that snap in to the edges of the Defender case. For added protection, the iPhone faced inward, toward the body, to further protect the screen from impact while worn in the belt clip. The complete package, then, looks like a black rectangle when worn. Functional? Absolutely. Fashion Statement? Probably not.

This, then, is the quandary of the Defender: the bulkiness is to be expected with a unit that adequately protects the iPhone; while it's not really bulky, as it's smaller than many two-year old PDAs, when wrapped around the iPhone, it feels bulky enough to make one think twice about using the Defender as a permanent protection solution.

Otterbox will, I'm sure, be willing to sell you two solutions: the Defender for those must-protect dirty projects and the Impact series of cases, offering moderate protection with corresponding lesser bulk.

Review: IntelliScanner SOHO

2009-02-15T09:32:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, I mentioned an interest in reviewing a Macintosh-based portable scanning system. I've received an IntelliScanner SOHO from the IntelliScanner Corp. Despite the omninous sound of the corporation's name, there's no tie to Blade Runner or even the recent Keanu Reeves flick.

The SOHO comes in a plastic tin that houses the scanner, a thin booklet with a few key barcodes and a software card. The software card has activation codes for a variety of the software products that come as part of the Express package.

Essentially the Express package is all the home tracking software, "designed to organize everyday household items like books, DVDs, wine, groceries or electronics," as a company representative told me when I was trying to decide between the SOHO or smaller mini scanner.

Also included with the SOHO scanner is a small card that contains the numbers 0-9 in barcode form as well as an "undo" barcode.

The SOHO scanner unit itself is about the size of an early 2000's cell phone, as can be seen in the following picture. It operates on 3 AAA batteries.

Before plugging in the unit for initial set-up, IntelliScanner wants to be sure you're comfortable with the scanning mode, so there is a bar code in the small booklet that should be scanned before connecting the SOHO scanner to the computer.

To scan, hold down the button on the top of the SOHO scanner, which causes the red laser line to appear; the line stays visible for about 3 seconds, then shuts off to preserve battery life. If it disappears, press the button on top of the SOHO scanner again, and try placing the scanner about 3-4" from the bar code. The only indication that it is safe to move about the cabin in an audible beep sounds when the barcode has been scanned and stored, accompanied by an LED on the top of the IntelliScanner that glows green.

Once this scan is complete, launch the software wizard to walk through the steps to connect the scanner to the computer.

The scanner itself does not have a USB connector, so content on the scanner is output on an included serial-to-USB cable that uses a 3.5mm (1/8") stereo connector - the same type used for earbud headphones for an iPod - to connect to the base of the IntelliScanner SOHO. DO NOT lose this cable as it is somewhat difficult to cost effectively replace. It would be nice to see the SOHO use a MicroUSB connector, given the prevalence of this type of USB cable for still cameras, portable hard drives, and Blackberry and other mobile phones.

Back to the software wizard: the first step is to choose an image that matches the type of scanner you have (the SOHO) and then next step is to plug the USB cable in to the Macintosh computer, checking first to see if the toggle switch on the USB cable's small in-line convertor is set to KBD rather than VCOM. Don't worry if it is set wrong, as the setup wizard will prompt in a BIG font to switch the setting.

Once the setup wizard states that the USB cable is connected correctly to the computer, plug the 3.5mm jack in to the base of the IntelliScanner SOHO. An audible beep will sound, indicating that the SOHO scanner has begun downloading information to the computer (typing, effectively, the numbers from the bar code that had previously been scanned.

Finally, once the software setup confirms the presence of the scanner, a code will need to be entered from the booklet to verify the scanner's ID. Once all this is complete, it's finally time to start scanning. We'll take a look at a few of the software options from the Express package in our next review.

Scan everything, carry some of it around

2009-02-01T09:15:00.000-08:00

As much as I refer to myself as borderline OCD, the concept of scanning and tracking everything I own and work with is - at first glance - highly appealing. As such, a walk-by at a national trade show led to a conversation about reviewing an "intelligent scanner" for Mac-based

"The major differences between the mini and SOHO," said Odessa Hines, communication specialist for the IntelliScanner Corporation, when I asked about the two handheld scanner options, "are the type of scanner, the scanner's application (home or business) and the software included."

While the mini is appealing for the sheer size of it, and we'll perhaps review it later, it's geared more toward home and household items.

"The mini is specifically designed to organize everyday household items like books, DVDs, wine, groceries or electronics," said Hines. "All of the mini's included software (except for the kitchen software) includes the web app for sharing collections online or viewing them on an iPhone as part of the included publish feature."

Opting instead for the SOHO, which covers both home and office inventory, I asked IntelliScanner to provide a SOHO IntelliScanner for review.

The SOHO scanner can hold 2500 scans before having to download the contents versus 150 scans for the mini, and IntelliScanner says that it includes software to "help businesses organize and inventory their assets" with potential integration into Filemaker Pro, Intuit's QuickBooks and Microsoft's Excel.

"As for a web / iPhone app for the SOHO, it's included with the media software, but not the inventory software," said Hines, meaning that the ability to catalog wine bottles and comic books and access them on your iPhone is either a higher priority or an easier milestone than the ability to carry key business inventory around.

"You can however, save your inventory database as an html file and load it to your website or in a browser for viewing," offered Hines.

The lack on an iPhone app for small business inventory seems a bit odd to me, especially given the company's success with its Daneizo (Latin for "to lend") library system software, but we'll take a look at this all once the SOHO scanner arrives.

Assisting Tech Innovators

2008-03-10T18:48:00.000-07:00

I first met Charles (Chuck) Shoopman a few years ago when I was helping to launch the Kingsport Office of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (KOBSE). Chuck had an idea for a Tennessee SBIR Assistance Center. SBIR (Small Business Innovation and Research) grants, as well as STTRs, which tie into university or federal research institutions, are a way for the federal government to foster innovation for a variety of needs. Chuck turned his vision into a reality with a group of East Tennessee partners.

When Charles (Chuck) Shoopman wanted to launch the Tennessee SBIR Proposal Assistance Center, he talked to a variety of partners. I heard his pitch at the 52nd Annual Governor’s Conference for Economic Development in September 2005, after I was introduced by Alex Money, a former colleague at AEDC (Arnold Engineering Development Center at Arnold Air Force Base), and thought it was a wonderful way to put expertise to work helping entrepreneurs wade through the morass of key federal research grants.

Chuck got the SBIR Assistance Center off the ground in January 2006, in collaboration with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the NNSA Y-12 Facility, Technology 2020, the Knoxville-Oak Ridge Innovation Valley, the East Tennessee Economic Council, and Integrated Manufacturing Technology Initiative. Chuck is a Team Leader in Economic Development for The University of Tennnessee’s Institute for Public Service (IPS), which works alongside the UT Center for Industrial Services (an agency of IPS) that operats the Tennessee SBIR Proposal Assistance Center.

Confused yet? Don’t worry, I’m just giving context ;)

Throughout 2006, according to an IPS release, “these partnering organizations helped Tennessee small businesses secure almost $6 million of SBIR grants to fund research on new products and processes.” In 2007 they did even more, bringing our state’s woeful apply and win status up to an almost respectable level.

But there was more to do, as Tennessee lagged behind in SBIR / STTR submittals and, hence, awards. This is especially lame given Tennessee’s wealth of federal research facilities (DoE, DoD and many others are well represented in the State). From an entrepreneurial standpoint, I’m not a huge fan of STTRs, primarily because most higher education institutions appear to manipulate the percentage of the grant funding needed for things extraneous to the actual tech transfer heavily in their favor (ROI for an STTR is much better if an entrepreneur engages with a federal research facility, but that opinion may be skewed by having worked at one).

Anyway, in 2008, the Tennessee SBIR Proposal Assistance Center and Chuck’s economic development team are partnering with the Technology Development Corporation (TTDC) to help entrepreneurs and businesses across Tennessee interested in learning about SBIR / STTR grants to learn about new “Phase 0” assistance opportunities that TTDC is offering for Phase 1 grant applicants.

A series of meetings have been held in Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga, Knoxville and Johnson City; I attended the latter two, as Johnson City is close to my adopted hometown of Kingsport (we leased in Johnson City when we first picked northeast Tennessee as a place to call home) and the Knoxville event provided an opportunity to view the presentation with an audience in the area of the state that’s done the best job of applying for / winning SBIR grants.

All I can say is kudos to Chuck and Eric Cromwell, TTDC’s President and CEO, for putting these events together and to TTDC for funding the Phase 0 grants (if even for only $100,000 for the first round - let’s hope they run through that quickly).

For a few more details on TTDC, see this blog posting.

A podcast of a key portion of the Knoxville event is available here.

Doing Something About Tennessee's Technology Gap

2008-03-07T18:49:00.000-08:00

I admired Eric Cromwell’s style during my regional economic development work. We used public funds, though, and he worked for the State, so it felt too much like pandering to say so. Recently we both changed roles: my termination from the TCEDA WTC completed a promise and let me return to real entrepreneurial work that didn’t require politispeak (just because I can doesn’t mean I like to) and Eric is rejuvenating a mostly dead not-for-profit that may rapidly bring Tennessee’s technology effort into the 21st century. I’m once again a fan.

As the head of the Tennessee Technology Development Center, Eric Cromwell advocates for entrepreneurial and technology-based economic development with a refreshing approach (or at least a familiar one, as it’s the same that I’ve advocated): keep the big box recruiting, but don’t forget the entrepreneur who will keep his/her company here even when it’s one of Tennessee’s larger employers. Think that’s unlikely? Look at FedEx and several other major companies.

We differ slightly on the way to the generate numerous startups and corporate headquarters: besides homegrown entrepreneurs, I also advocate using incubators for international companies that want to enter the US market, since the place they launch their US presence is typically also where they’ll keep their corporate headquarters (yes, for those who remember, this is one of the two main essentials of the rejected marketing plan I’d put together for the Tri-Cities WTC launch).

We both advocate a model that’s so far beyond traditional “quick win” economic development, which parses economic miracles in two-year windows, so I’m more than willing to help champion Eric’s approach. Plus, he’s concise, direct, honest and technologically savvy, all those qualities that are essential to someone dealing with the entrepreneur who has to make payroll every week.

The TTDC, according to its website, is “responsible for the technology-based economic development agenda for the State of Tennessee, . . . focuses on building innovation capacity and a climate where a knowledge-driven economic base can thrive.”

TTDC’s focus includes:

•Intellectual Infrastructure
•Mechanisms for Transferring Knowledge
•Physical [technology] Infrastructure
•Talent – Highly Skilled Workforce
•Risk/Venture Capital

In 2005 and 2006, when Eric worked for the state as part of the Tennessee Department of Economic & Community Development, the TTDC jointly conducted a statewide inventory of science and technology assets called the Tennessee Innovation Road Map. The intent was to provide greater clarity to existing statewide resources and the opportunities for economic expansion and diversification around core these strengths.

One of the ways that TTDC is doing something about the lack of Tennessee’s innovation on an entrepreneurial level is a new SBIR Phase 0 grant, to help companies that are applying for SBIR Phase 1 grants be able to afford the initial cost of application. More on that in the next blog post.

In the meantime, listen to the brief podcast (here) that gives TTDC’s vision and mission and next steps. Like all economic developers, Eric wants his work to lead to higher skill / wage jobs, but through wealth creation and entrepreneurial growth, not only via old school tools like abatement.

A Maturing Tech Council's Legacy

2008-03-04T18:50:00.000-08:00

Long before I helped launch the MountainSouth World Trade Center, for northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia, and even before getting involved with the Kingsport Chamber’s economic development efforts (KOSBE and HBDC), I had the privilege to serve on the board of a regional organization that exemplifies a non-partisan way of engaging the region’s potential.

The Northeast Tennessee Technology Council (NETTC) offers regional leaders a chance to educate and advocate for technology advancements in Bristol, Greeneville, Kingsport and Johnson City.

In December 2003, l was asked to join the board. At 33 years of age, and as the youngest member of the NETTC Board of Directors, I felt a burden to bridge a gap between the two generations of technology leaders in the region: the older, more established leaders that don’t necessarily see technology as their primary focus - more a means to an end of parity and economic development - and the younger group of leaders - often directly involved with technology - that see technology as entrepreneurial, enabling and a modern version of the Great Equalizer.

When I was first elected to the board, there were no tools for the younger generation, such as GeekSouth, KNETIC and HYPE (the latter two being young professional groups that were established in Kingsport and Johnson City, respectively). In addition to work done with the NETTC Tech Council, then, I also provided feedback and encouragement to GeekSouth and KNETIC as they both got off the ground.

The maturing of the Tech Council from an ad-hoc group, the rise of these other groups and the level of emerging technologies gives both generations an opportunity to seize a stake in the broader technology discussion. After being re-elected in late December 2007 to another 3 year board position, I see potential that the older group can educate our public officials, advocating needs such as higher (meaningful) broadband penetration, while the younger can both show their generation how to use the tools that expanded broadband penetration enables and nudge the older generation toward use of tools that can most help drive advocacy (like podcasting, online surveys and social networking).

A symbiotic relationship? Absolutely.

Review: Sony Super Steadyshot DSC-W90 Still Camera

2007-11-26T15:02:00.000-08:00

In the ongoing quest for a decent point-and-shoot camera, to replace a Sony 5MP camera that offered great fill-flash and indoor flash tone and color balance, I’ve been all over the map.

I really wanted to get away from Sony’s proprietary MemoryStick flash memory (and MemoryStick Duo, the name for the pint-sized flash memory that’s used in Sony’s newer point-and-shoot still cameras). So I tried cameras from a variety of manufacturers, such as Casio’s Exilim and Canon’s SureShot SD900.

Neither of those cameras, which use the industry-standard Secure Digital (SD) chip, have done such a good job with indoor and fill-flash, either washing out a bit too much or not being powerful enough.

So, thinking through the idea of how to look at how to use a Sony without the proprietary chip, I did some research and found that I could use a TransFlash (also known as a MicroSD chip) in a MemoryStick Duo adapter. The MicroSD also works with my cell phone and can be used in a full-size SD chip for PDAs and integrated readers for desktop PCs.

So I picked up a Sony DSC-W90 to try out. While I still HATE the fact that Sony has limited its movie shooting capabilities to disallow zoom-while-recording, unlike so many other digital still camera manufacturers have had that capability for several years, Sony still does the best still image point-and-shoot that I’ve been able to find. To make sure it wasn’t a fluke, I also briefly tried a DSC-S700 - a $99 entry-level camera that uses AA batteries but shoots with a 7.2MP chip. Sure enough, that Sony also handled color, fill-flash and indoor flash like the newer (and previous) Sony still cameras.

Apparently, as Sony is trying to sell some of its point-and-shoots for the HDTV crowd, they've made two things possible on the DSC-W90 that I haven’t seen on earlier cameras:

First, the ability to shoot at HDTV (16:9 @ 1920x1080).

With the DSC-W90, the options are 8M, 5MP, 2MP, HDTV and VGA. VGA (4:3 @ 640x480) has, of course, been around for quite some time - at one point it was even considered high quality - but HDTV formatted images are a novelty, as few cameras shoot still images natively in the 16:9 aspect ratio.

HDTV level shooting is a good way file to keep file sizes low if they're just going to be used for HDTV viewing or in an HD-DVD or BluRay disk. Files are less than one-third the size of the 8MP setting on the DSC-W90 (900KB for HDTV versus 2.4MB JPEGs on the 8MP setting).

For those in digital media production, think of this HDTV setting as a way to do location scouting. Framing in 16:9 is always good for location scouts to see particular views.

Second, the ability to connect the camera to a dock and a component cable to hook up the camera to an HDTV. The cable will pump out 1920x1080 (or full HD resolution) to an HDTV monitor.

Downside is that it requires a special dock that runs another $80 or so. From that standpoint, I agree with my business partner at Braintrust Digital, Paul Schmutzler, who posits:

“Sony has the advantage of being component therefore greater definition than normal digicams (plus 16:9). But how many people will be using their camera to view their pictures on their TVs?

My 2 year old Sony DVD player will read CDs with photos burned to it and display them with slideshow options. Use that for hooking to the TV or a set of pics burned to disk.

So some sort of card reader device might be of some value [or a standalone player showing still images from a MemoryStick Duo slot in the base]. But there have been other options for that for quite a while. Some people will go for this Sony since it's all spelled out for them. The price of that would likely deter people from it also.”

Below are two images that show VGA 4:3 and HTDV 16:9, respectively.