Interact With the TSA

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) decided to open a blog to "facilitate an ongoing dialogue on innovations in security, technology and the checkpoint screening process". Their blog is called Evolution of Security and they welcome travelers to comment on their posts. They got hundreds of comments on their first post!

BlackBerry Remote Stereo Gateway

Pictures and the manual of the BlackBerry Remote Stereo Gateway surfaced on the FCC site. This little device from RIM connects to a music source on one end while on the other end transmits the stereo quality music to the multimedia capable BlackBerries over Bluetooth.

Is That a Phone in Your GPS?

I have been enjoying the GPS functionality that was added to the BlackBerry 8800 since the day it was released. Every day it is more and more common  to see  cellular phones and smartphones with a true GPS chip or some kind of cellular tower triangulation or  WiFi triangulation. Garmin watched all the hardware companies adding this to their phones and decided to go the other way and add a phone to their GPS .

This week they introduced the nüvifone. This little unit features a 3.5 inch touch screen, cell phone, Internet browser, HSDPA support and preloaded maps of North America and/or Eastern and Western Europe. The device includes millions of points-of-interest. turn-by-turn voice directions and Google's local search. No price is set yet, but this is expected to be released Q3/2008.

Free Luggage Tags

Looking for some new tags for your suitcase? TripAdvisor is offering 2 completely free luggage  tags that will help you quickly identify your suitcase. You don't even need to pay for shipping! I just got mine today in the mail

Go to this page to enjoy this offer.

GreenPrint for a Better World

GreenPrint Technologies has a free application that helps protect the environment by increasing the efficiency and saving money when printing. How does this work? Instead of printing to your printer, you would print to the "GreenPrint" printer, this will open a dialog that will give you a preview of what is about to be printed and allow you to remove unwanted things that you don't need to print and save ink and pages. For example you can remove unwanted pages (like that extra page that is always printed when you print a page from a web site with 1 line of text..), remove graphics (like banners from a page) etc. You can also create a PDF from their application instead of printing the page.

Not only that the "World" edition  is free, it will keep a counter and show you over time how much money and how many pages you saved! Go ahead and give it a try.

More Free BlackBerry Themes

Michael Small has a great site with  dozens of free themes for the different BlackBerry models. The only downside is that there is not OTA download, so you'll need to download to your computer and then install through the desktop manager.

Enjoy: http://www.blackberrythemes.co.uk

No More Blackout Dates!

Hilton announced that effective this Friday, Feb 1st 2008, it will eliminate blackout dates from its Hilton Honors reward program. Currently gold and diamond members are exempt from blackout dates, however now the blue and silver members will be able to enjoy their points any day. As a diamond I don't know if this is good or bad for me

MacBook Air Take 2

I have to say that when I saw the MacBook Air I thought to myself that this will be my first Mac. I read all the reviews of the disappointed people as to "it doesn't have enough USB ports" or "it doesn't have a CD ROM". I guess they are all missing the point. People got used to the fact that today laptops got so strong that they simply replaced the desktops. MacBook Air takes a step forward (or backwards) and says this is not your main and only machine - This is your machine on the move. And as such I think it is a great one. In any case, like it or not, you will  probably enjoy this parody on the MacBook Air by Rob Beschizza:

Another Day, Another Drive

I was working on some Excel sheets last week on my flight back from Denver, when all of a sudden the computer  starts to work REALLY slow. After 10-20 seconds the screen freezes and I got a blue screen. When I tried to reboot the BIOS simply said that there is no hard drive in the laptop . I ran the BIOS diagnostics and got the following error:

Start DST Short Test
Test Results: Fail
Error Code: 1000-0141
Message: No Drive Detected

I researched a little online and I saw that it is pretty common and it means pretty much that you are fu@k3d. After a short online support session with Dell, they sent me a new hard disk to replace the current one. The good news is that they sent me a 120GB drive (the one I had was 100GB), the bad news it that this is a refurbished drive which probably died before on someone else and it's only time before it dies again...

This is the 3rd or 4th hard disk to die on me in the last 3 years. It is really annoying and it always comes in the worse time after I didn't backup in a while. This time I lost a month and a half of documents and emails . Since I travel all the time and the hard disk is very sensitive to all the movements, all I can do is make sure I backup daily or at least weekly until the next time the hard disk dies or until the solid state drives go down in price. Right now the 128GB drives are about $3,220 while the 64GB are about $1,500. I read good reviews on SyncBack which is a  free application that allows you to  schedule incremental backups to make the process a little faster.

MarketFilters v2.0

A few months ago I wrote about MarketFilters which is a great free application to access stock information. This company released a new version with many new features and it is still free for all!

What's new?

• Symbols are added to a list and quotes are pulled for all at once
• Detailed information and charts can be viewed for any symbol in the list
• Indexes can be shown or hidden through the options
• The application can stay open (in the background) so the most recent quotes are shown on next view
• Advanced connection parameters can be added for carriers that require special settings
• Market Scans now use the same powerful scanning technology available on the web site
• A counter of data transmitted is shown on the options screen
• The most recent scan remains on the scan page after getting a quote for a symbol
• Improved user interface

To download point your BlackBerry browser to: http://www.marketfilters.com/widgets/v1/MarketFilters.jad

Free Airport Wi-Fi

I have been using my Verizon Wireless V740 Express Card for a  while to access the Internet from pretty much everywhere. It's a  great productivity tool that allows the frequent traveler to do  pretty much anything that he needs on the road as if he was in the office. The most common place you would have to connect to the Internet to catchup on some work is the airport. With  the amount of hours that you typically spend  waiting for your flight or delayed flight there's a  lot of time that can  be used to do online work instead of waiting to get home, the hotel or your office.

Most of the airports charge to use their  Wi-Fi network but it's great to see that the network of free Wi-Fi access is expanding, even I have my own card, using the local free Wi-Fi will typically be faster. Today I'm flying back from Denver to Raleigh and I used their  free Wi-Fi network for a couple of hours before boarding my flight. So how does this work? The free connectivity is simply sponsored by a commercial company, so before you actually access the Internet you watch a 30 second ad:

After this  you have complete access to anything including connecting your VPN. The only thing to be aware of is that they add a top frame with a banner to your browser when you browse sites. This kind of free Wi-Fi access is getting very common not just in airports but also in restaurants, hotels and other business. The Wi-Fi Free Spot Directory is a great web site that will let you keep up with all the places that offer free Wi-Fi access. Another great directory is iLoveFreeWiFi which is also using Google Maps to show you the spots on a map.

Some companies are even trying to offer citywide free Wi-Fi. Google tried that in San Francisco and failed and now Meraki is picking up the pieces and trying to offer this service there. I guess we'll just have to wait and see  if this service  expands to other cities.

Technorati Tags: Free Wi-Fi

Xobni for Outlook

Xobni (that's inbox spelled backwards) is a startup based in San Francisco. They created a free Outlook sidebar with some great features such as Email analytics, threaded email (like Gmail) and quick search. I have been testing this for the last few days and I must say it works great and is very useful. When you select a specific mail the Xobni sidebar is updated and is showing you everything relevant to this email: the contact of the sender, how many emails you exchanged with the sender, conversations (threaded) with the sender and more. This is a quick and great way to find other relevant interactions with the sender so you don't need to look them up in your Outlook folders.

You can watch here the video of what this looks like before you test it out and then head to their download page to install.

The Last Vegas CES?

I am not sure if it is because I am getting old or because this year it was impossible to see anything with the 140,000 attendees or simply because there were no exciting new technologies, but maybe it is time to stop going to CES? Here's a short summary of what CES 2008 looked like:

• Everybody is manufacturing LCDs and Plasmas
• Everybody is manufacturing GPS devices
• Everybody is manufacturing MP3 and MP4 devices

But if you look around there were no new innovations. There was nothing that really differentiates one from the other and when you walk from booth to booth it started to feel like you see more of the same over and over again. There were dozens of manufactures of iPod accessories (I heard in one of the sessions that this is a 1 billion dollar business). Apple wasn't here (as usual) but I was amazed to see in the International exhibitions all the iPods and iPhones imitations. I'm not talking about devices that "look like" the real thing, but these are devices that look exactly the same down to the packaging and everything. This means that retailers will probably (or already) sell these online for buyers looking for a bargain device so beware of what you buy online. Better buy it from a respected retailer then trying to save 50 bucks.

If all this is not enough there are rumors that CEA will move the show out of Las Vegas It seems that they think they could get a better deal somewhere else, but I'm not sure which other city is capable of handling so many visitors at the same time in addition to the regular tourists. In my opinion this is just a move to negotiate a better price for exhibition space.

I'm writing my final CES 2008 post from the Las Vegas airport which means that I'm about to start my back-to-back "Red-Eye". I'm flying tonight LAS-CLE-RDU landing there tomorrow morning and leaving the same evening to Israel (RDU-EWR-TLV) for another on-board bad sleep night. I don't know why I do this to myself...

CES 2008 Booth Babes

I blogged before about the giveaways of CES 2008. Another very important aspect of the show (that is not related to the technology) is the Booth Babes. You see them in every show and they are very common in CES especially in the north hall where you have all the car entertainment exhibitors. Here's a glimpse of what you've missed:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CES 2008 Freebies

What is a trade show without freebies? CES is a great opportunity to fill your T-shirt supply for the gym. Besides the regular T-shirts and squeeze toys that exhibitors typically give away, one of the more popular giveaways that are available these days are USB flash drives. These drives got so cheap that NBC Universal was giving away a nice small flash drive with 2GB that you could use in the kiosks of their booth to download different NBC TV shows. Another popular booth freebie in this show was coffee! I have to say it is a great giveaway. With the full busy day this convention provides and the night out on the strip you need a lot of coffee. Exhibitors like Yahoo, Logitech and Qualcomm had coffee stands that provided great cappuccinos to everyone. Beck's was a sponsor of the show and they provided free beer every day from 3pm so you could balance the caffeine in your body with that.

But after all the stuff that was thrown in this show I have to give the best giveaway of the show to Jabra. They were a sponsor of CES and they were simply giving away their award winning Jawbone headset for free! All you had to do is to handover your current Bluetooth headset for "recycling" and they gave a you a completely new Jawbone and even helped you pair it with your phone. Too bad I only had with me my Plantronics HS-655 and it is perfect for my BlackBerry so I wouldn't trade itIf I only knew I would have brought the other 2 crappy Bluetooth headsets I have at home. Ho well...there's always another show

CES Day 4 Roundup

I am not sure if everybody left town yesterday or they simply went to the AVN Expo at the Sands, but today you could notice that there are less people in the convention and you can actually walk through the floor and see things. Here is what caught my attention today:

Iqua is a wireless company based out of Finland that was created by a group of Nokia directors. They created a nice looking Bluetooth headset that can be charged using solar power. The BHS-602 has enough juice for 9 talking hours and 200 hours of standby when charged using the regular USB charger, and if you are using it outside it keep on charging itself using the sun. This little headset weighs only 14 grams. It will be released by the end of this month and will retail for $99.

 

The LG booth was huge and show many new things in well designed living areas. They showed the M4210D which is a 42" 1080p LCD monitor and the nice thing about this monitor is that it is capable of displaying 3D video (VGA quality) without the need to wear those stupid glasses. I have to say that it looks pretty good!

In their cellular section I liked the Watch Phone that they showed. It has a pretty slick all black design. Watch this movie that shows how it works and it mind remind you of Dick Tracy

iRobot Looj

iRobot, the creator of the Roomba cleaning robots, demonstrated their gutter cleaning robot. This robot allows you to automatically clean the gutters by simply positioning the robot in the gutter and let it do all the work instead of cleaning manually and keep on moving the leader to clean the next section. It has a detachable handle that can also be used as a wireless remote control and it cleans 60 feet of gutter in about 10 minutes. The Looj comes in three different models:

• Looj 120 - Attaches to your belt with included belt clip for $99.
• Looj 130 - Includes belt and holster for hands free transport and convenient storage for $129.
• Looj 150 - The same package as the 130 plus extra batter pack with an additional 3-stage auger for $169.

Alienware DLP RPTV

Alienware unveiled at the CES Dell booth a prototype 42" wraparound monitor. This screen has a resolution of 2880x900 and is designed to mimic the full peripheral vision that the human is capable of viewing. It is designed to make multiple display obsolete by providing a wide arc display. No word if or when this will be available.

Free EA Mobile Games

EA Mobile will give away 3 different games for your BlackBerry for free after CES. Check their Mobile Site after this Friday. They will be giving away: Skate, Medal of Honor and SimCity

NewsGator Now For Free!

NewsGator has one of the bests RSS readers for different platforms and now it is offering its readers for free including the reader for BlackBerry and the reader that integrated with Outlook!

CES 2008 Day 2 Roundup

I posted yesterday about all the huge LCD and Plasma TVs that all the manufactures are displaying here. Today I went to the Panasonic rolling display in the parking lot and spoke with one of the exhibitors about their 103" Plasma HDTV that is already out in the market. He told me that the only way to currently buy this TV is directly from Panasonic and it will cost you $70,000 including delivery and installation (not sure if it includes tax...). He said that they already sold over 3,000 of these worldwide.

 

Monster Cable and Dr. Dre teamed to release a the "Beats". This is a $399 headphone which features a unique design and a newly developed sonic technology. These expensive headphones come in a nice looking case that includes an anti-microbial cleaning cloth, quarter-inch adapter, iPhone mic adapter (the Monster iSonitalk) and Monster cables.

 

BlackBerry's CES site is up and running and offers free applications, games and some trials. Go to: http://www.blackberry.com/select/ces/. I went to their booth and they didn't too much to innovate, but they gave me a nice T-shirt and a cleaning cloth for the BlackBerry

Blu-ray and HD-DVD have big booths one next to each other and they both display the capabilities of the technologies to try and shift the advantage to their side. Right before CES, Warner Brothers announced that it will stop creating HD-DVD content and will release Blu-ray DVDs exclusively. This are huge news as this means that 70% of the studios that create high definition content will release it on Blu-ray. I have to say that after seeing one next to each other I can see why Blu-ray is winning this "war" so far.

Hillcrest Labs demonstrated its system that enables users to control TVs and other media devices using a motion control remote with just 2 buttons and a scroll wheel.

D-Link unveiled the DSM-750 Medialounge Media Center Extender. This device uses a dual-band 802.11n wireless networking, which allows for the streaming of HD content. The Medialounge has no moving parts allowing a quiet operation. This extender works with Windows Media Center and already provides 21 content providers. Suggested retail price: $349.

Yahoo! Go 3.0 Beta

Yahoo! CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang unveiled the beta version of Yahoo! Mobile 3.0. The major announcement of this version is that it will be open to developers to create widgets. Go ahead and point your BlackBerry browser to http://mobile.yahoo.com/go and download the 962kb Beta to test it out.

CES 2008 Day 1 Roundup

The Consumer Electronic Show 2008 is open! More than 140,000 attendees from 140 countries are expected to attend this year. Over 2,700 exhibitors will show their latest technologies over more than 1.7 million net square feet of exhibit space.

Here's a roundup of the things that got my attention on Day 1:

iriver

I have to say that iriver surprised me with their whole new lineup of products. They presented very slick products with different functionality.

UNIT 2 - This is an all-in-one multimedia home networking device with a 7" touch screen. It has a great sleek and minimalist design. The device includes: audio, video, FM tuner, DVD player, Divx player, CD player, VOIP phone, VOIP video phone, SMS/MMS, Web browsing and Web mail. It has a 30GB HDD and 2GB NANDFLASH drive and also SD card reader and USB to expand storage. Built-in WiFi to stream media from your computer and more. No information as to when they will release this device.

 

MPLAYER SEASON II - This is a Disney branded MP3 player. It is very unique as it looks like a Mickey Mouse silhouette. It is very easy to operate and I'm sure will sell very well for kids especially in the Disney parks. 2 models available with either 1 GB or 2 GB of NAND Flash memory.

 

 

APLAYER - This is slick ultra high-end MP3 player with FM tuner. It looks like a USB dongle so you just plug it to the PC to synchronize and thin as a credit card. It has a sophisticated metal finish and comes in either 1, 2, 4 or 8 GB of NAND Flash memory.

They presented many more devices like MP4 players, E-dictionaries, PMPs and navigation devices.

 

Neonode

The Swedish Neonode cellular phone is finally coming to the USA. You can think of this cellular phone as a "Nano iPhone". It is an extremely small phone with a touch screen (Neno user interface) that allows you to drag your finger over the screen to control the different functions. It is a GSM Quadband phone with a 2" LCD screen, 3.2 Megapixel fixed focus camera and Bluetooth. It is not official yet, but the presenter in the booth told me that they'll probably start selling the phone through T-Mobile and also unlocked through different retailers. You can watch the full Neonode demo video.

 

Plasma / LCDs

All major manufactures presented large high definitions plasma and LCD screens going all the way to 150" (Panasonic). The quality of  display is getting more and more real and in some booths where they are showing a real video input of a vase with flowers it is amazing to see that the picture on TV is better than the real thing . All the future displays focus on the quality of picture but more importantly the thickness of the TV. Companies  like Sharp and Pioneer presented displays that are only 23 millimeters thick!! They look amazing with a contrast of 100,000:1!

Samsung

Samsung had a big display area with everything they make, but what caught my eye was the second Bang & Olufsen cellular phone they developed. This cellular phone is a very slick design and a track wheel that feels similar to an iPod. It comes with a paired slick headset and will cost you "only" $1,600.