LIVEdigitally

When the movie Ghostbusters came out, I needed one of those proton packs that Peter Venkman looked so cool in. Although “we ain’t afraid of no ghosts”, I do work an 8-hour day, sometimes via laptop. My laptop battery gets more care and pampering than a billionaire’s poodle, but still can’t perform for one full work day. I suppose I could flash back to 1984 and strap a big battery on my back, impersonating the Ghostbusters, in order to attain an unplugged work day from my notebook. But the Ghostbusters isn’t hip anymore, and neither is staying plugged in. my vote was to shorten the work day in order to accommodate the 4-hour notebook battery life, that idea was shot down by Intel and Matsushita. These two are working on the remedy: a laptop battery that can last as long as you can.

Dr. Peter Venkman: “Why worry? Each one of us is carrying an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back.”

Sirius just announced its first portable satellite radio player, the S50, available in October. With a color display and the ability to store satellite radio programming and MP3/WMA files, the 1.9 x 3.9-inch player also includes voice-assisted navigation of content, organized by channel.

With a suggested retail price of $359.99, Sirius says the S50 will come with a 6-hour rechargeable battery, earbuds, a belt clip, USB cable and AC adapter. The unit will also come with a car dock to enable listening while at the wheel.

Frankly, it seems rather surprising that it took Sirius this long to get their portable player out – XM’s MiFi’s been out for nearly a year. Given that these portable devices will ultimately differ little in their core functionality (unless the companies start packing a ton of value-added features into them), the content war is really where it’s at. XM snags ex-NPR newsman Bob Edwards, Sirius signs Howard Stern in a cool five-year, $500 million deal…and on and on.

Even pc users will snicker at the name Bill Gates. Why is this man, who’s opened up many of the closed ‘windows’ we PC users rely on, deemed evil? Microsoft is more similar to the king evil tyrant of computers than the president of computers, and this king rules with a silicon fist. Microsoft this, Microsoft that, well wait… someone else is coming in from the horizon.

Google, who launched a chat/IM client today, is being accused of taking the spot that Microsoft has stood in for so many years. Is Google the next Microsoft? What about this Intel & Apple marriage? Where is the computer world that we know, love, and hate going?

So Google did launch Google Talk this morning, making yesterday’s LA Times piece spot on. Supporting free voice calls and traditional text-based chat, the app’s in beta (come on, it’s Google!) and currently for Windows only. Sporting compatibility with Jabber/XMPP-based IM clients like Trillian, GAIM, iChat, Adium and Psi, it requires a Gmail account and automatically imports your contacts, giving you the ability to e-mail them as well as give ‘em a call.

[Thanks for the e-mail, Tai!]

Introduction

In order to get the most productivity on the road, it’s important to bring along your notebook and its accessories. There are miles of aisles of accessories in every electronics store and mass merchandiser, and gigabytes of gadgets at online retailers. However, even the most Herculean among us can carry only so much weight, and even the largest notebook bag has just so much space.

Of course, I always get behind the guy at the airport with the largest notebook bag at the airport. The laptop bag is larger than my checked Samsonite pilot case, and is busting at the seams. It takes him forever to clear security as they have to run it through the scanner three times and open everything up to ID everything Believe me, if there was a bomb in there, this guy would never even be able to get to it among all the other stuff. And also, he puts it above me filling up the entire overhead compartment over our heads on the Boeing 767. To him, please read this article, and figure out what you can leave home! Both myself, and his spine, will be grateful.

With the back to school season upon us, it is even more relevant to look at notebook accessories. Most college students have a notebook rather than a desktop. They tote their computers from class to dorm to library to back home- you get the idea. While these accessories would also apply to any mobile professional, it was written with maximizing productivity for college students.

This article is a mix (more…)

Building on a Los Angeles Times article published today, the net’s heating up with rumors of Google announcing an instant messaging client, dubbed Google Talk, as early as tomorrow. This comes on the heels of the company’s Monday release of version 2.0 of Google Desktop, which is getting some good reviews. The Times cites several sources apparently familiar with the service, claiming it has been in a testing phase for at least a month.

With IM veterans AOL, Yahoo! and Microsoft entrenched, it’s not unlikely that Google will incorporate some type of voice service into their client as an added incentive for people contemplating switching. Given the constant stream of news about VOIP these days, I wouldn’t be too surprised. Then again, whatever Google touches seems to turn to gold. We’ll all just have to wait and see.

So the guys at Axion just announced a TV tuner and Sega gaming controller for their proprietary Axi-port enabled portable DVD players. I’ve personally never heard of the company, which is an immediate indication that this type of thing could be a good way to get them some press. The “ergonomically designed controller” is likely to provide “hours of entertainment” with help from the seven Sega games stored in its memory:

•Super Shinobi III
•Altered Beast
•Columns III
•Shadow Dance
•Flicky
•Gain Ground
•Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle

I remember Altered Beast and Gain Ground (a personal favorite) from the arcades. Old school. Damn. We here at LD might just have to make an effort to get our mitts on one of these babies (in addition to a device with one of these so-called “Axi ports”) to see just how engrossing the experiene can be. Cheers to the idea of a portable TV tuner – portable DVD players have been hot for a while now as parents find new ways to keep AV-deprived children happy. Kidding. Snagging free cable signals from the ether for their viewing pleasure could bring much-needed relief when the kids want to watch Lilo & Stitch AGAIN. Make them watch the Food Network or something – that way they could get a few ideas about what they’d like for dinner while watching chefs compete to design the best carp dishes.

Ewww.

A bit more “trend” news tonight, interesting not because it’s overly surprising but because it confirms what many of us do every day: use our wireless phones. Use them a lot, in fact.

PC Magazine ran this article last week on the increase in cell phones replacing traditional landlines in homes. Here are some of the key facts from a Forrester Research report cited in the article:

•Five percent of U.S. homes have no landline service (I’ve been on that list for years).
•Nearly 1/3 of American households with cell phones make around 1/2 their long-distance calls from home with their cellies.

Besides using their phones to make a lot of calls (read: obvious), the majority of wireless users apparently prefer using the web sites of their service providers instead of visiting brick-and-mortar stores (again, me)…some 80 percent, in fact. According to RCRNews, a wireless news service, this info came from a survey of some 2,000 online consumers as they navigated cell-phone service provider (or related) sites. I know that when it comes to paying bills or looking at plans, phones, accessories, etc., I definitely hit up my carrier’s site long before I even think about visiting a store. When it comes to the latest news on new phones, I’m also a fan of Phone Scoop.

Since early June my roommate and I have been pounding the pavement four or five days each week in our quest to train for Boston’s half marathon on October 9. Before long the sight of long stretches of asphalt, gravel and the same scenery became tiresome, and I needed something to help keep my mind off the drudgery of putting one sneakered foot in front of one another. People with walkmans (and gigantic portable stereos before them) long ago discovered portable music’s ability to make a multitude of tasks seem easier. Now that I’m a proud iPod owner, I’ve found that the secret to exercise success is partially linked to the right case.

After a snafu in which Apple mailed me the wrong case to go with my new ‘pod, I stopped by my neighborhood Apple store one night just as they were closing and quickly grabbed what looked like a good case – XtremeMac’s SportWrap for iPod.
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I celebrated Math awareness month (I’m an April baby), Breast Cancer Awareness month, AIDS awareness month, and Black awareness month… Maxtor has created an awareness month that really hits home however: Backup Awareness month. With 5 easy steps, and ”A photographer’s dream: pushing one button to protect his images”, how can we not all jump in and save our data?

They’re giving away a free hard drive each day just for those redundant copy impaired folks who just may lose all their precious data at any time. There’s only one problem with this, Backup Awareness month was June. I suppose I’m not such an avid fan of awareness months. Next year, things will be different.

Something of a home-grown story tonight (it’s tired and I wanted to get at least one post in today before bed). This has been around the net a bit, but I thought I’d mention it: San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom is getting some press about his plans to give WiFi to the masses.

Given that I may be moving to San Fran very soon, I’m personally quite pleased to read about this. WiFi hotspots continue to proliferate as companies realize an important thing: people want internet access in places other than their homes and offices. The linked article (San Jose Mercury News) gives some nice specifics about the plan, which will supposedly cost $10 to $18 million, according to Newsom’s figures. Citing the hurdles overcome by Philadelphia, a city currently reviewing final bids for installation of its citywide WiFi network, it will be interesting to see if these plans incite complaints from commercial internet providers hoping to prevent additional competition. Both cities are hoping to increase the prevalence of internet access in lower income areas, as well as provide additional resources for city employees, notably police and fire departments.

This is another one of those projects whose struggles have only begun. Capitalism has many advantages, innovation and choice being two of the best, but nowadays we see more and more proliferation followed by consolidation and ultimately the risk of inflation at the hands of a single service provider (let’s think…cable, phone and internet from a single provider…). I hope municipal control over a service like this one results in what they aim to provide: greater access AND affordability.

The guys over at Trusted Reviews just posted this nice review of Maxtor’s new FireWire 800 edition of the OneTouch II. A 300 GB (279 when NTFS formatted), 7,200 RPM drive, they give it three solid scores:

Features: 8/10
Performance: 9/10
Value: 9/10
Overall: 9/10

Not bad. With three different ports in the back (one FireWire 400, one USB 2.0 and two FireWire 800), a nicely-designed case, one-touch backup and data lock features and good data transfer speeds, it’s a solid buy.
Price? Froogle says…from the low $200s to over $300.