A Look At CES 2006

The 2006 Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2006) brought forth the latest gadgets for this year. I was unable to make it to the show this year, however I did have my moments of drooling from a distance and picked out some favorites:

A Smart Phone
If you're a on-the-go business person, or just need to be in touch with everybody and know everything anytime, anywhere, the Palm Treo 700w smartphone is for you.

The smartphone is the first Treo phone available on the Windows Mobile platform, and comes built-in with Microsoft Outlook Mobile and the Microsoft Office Mobile Suite (Word, Excel and Powerpoint). All of your MS Office documents from your computer will function perfectly on the phone. Combining this with the Palm technology and all the bells and whistles of a do-it-all phone gives you total hand/pocket convergence. It is a phone first, but you can also check your e-mail, use it as an organizer, messaging device, web browser and camera.

I’m usually not a fan of camera phones, but the smartphone’s camera quality isn’t bad at 1.3-megapixels with a 2X zoom. The phone gives you 128MB of memory, with 60MB of that being dedicated user storage. The compact backlit QWERTY keyboard with square-shaped keys makes it easy to type, even in the dark. The five-way navigator located in the middle of the phone lets you do just about everything you need with one hand, including skimming documents and scrolling through webpages.

I think the best feature of it all is the fact that it is high-speed EvDO capable (as you may remember me previously writing about EvDO). It makes surfing the Internet sweeter than ever! It is the first Palm phone to support EvDO and you experience an average download speeds of 400-600 kbps.

The Palm Treo 700w smartphone is available for about $399. Log onto www.palm.com/us for more information.

Kodak’s Latest Compact Camera

Kodak had several products to show off at this CES, but my favorite by far was the Kodak EasyShare V570. It’s perfect for my purse at only an inch thick.
Using Kodak’s proprietary Kodak Retina Dual Lens technology it uses an ultra-wide angle lens (23 mm) and an optical zoom lens (23 – 117 mm).

In addition to its 5X optical zoom range, it has a 5-megapixel capability and the ability to take television-quality video using advanced MPEG-4 compression. If you don’t have steady hands, don’t worry because the built-in image stabilization reduces screen shaking from hand and camera movement. The optical zoom feature also works for your videos, plus you can save any frame in a video as a “freeze frame” still picture. A big bright 2.5-inch high-resolution LCD screen makes it easy on the eyes to take your pictures or videos.

If you enjoy taking panoramic shots, this camera is perfect for you too. The in-camera panorama stitching will combine three pictures into a panorama photograph. To do this, you would use the ultra-wide view in panorama scene mode then take in a 180-degree sight with this cool feature.

Other camera features include automatic red-eye reduction, on-camera cropping, picture blur alert, 22 scene modes, three color modes, Kodak Color Science image processing (to produce accurate skin tones and rich color), the Photo Frame Dock 2 (provides one-touch picture transfer to your computer while keeping your battery charged and ready to go) and 32MB of built-in internal memory (with an SD card slot for additional storage).

The Kodak Easyshare V570 is available for about $400 on www.amazon.com and will ship on February 15 (free shipping).

The Next TiVo - Series 3

As with probably most of you, I’ve come to love the convenience of recording my television shows that I’m never home for, and being able to watch them later while fast forwarding through the commercials. For this very purpose, TiVo has become a household name.

We’ve seen their Series 1 and Series 2, now it’s not exactly official, but a prototype of the next generation Series 3 HD Digital Media Recorder, with 300 hours of recording space, was revealed at CES. It will work with either analog or digital cable, but I say go with the digital to experience the most out of it. Additionally, an external SATA drive will be available to store extra video that won’t fit on your TiVo’s hard drive.

Stay tuned for more details about the official announcement of TiVo 3 Series later on this year. Visit www.tivo.com to see TiVo’s current availability.

Packing Google

I guess Google must have been reading my mind when they came out with their new functional software pack. At the recent Consumer Electronics Show 2006, Google announced Google Pack, which is a free collection of essential and useful software from Google and other companies. Previous to that I already had every piece of the Google Pack software installed on one of my computers.

The software in the Google Pack helps you browse the web quicker, remove spyware and viruses, organize your photos, to mention a few of its offerings. It takes the hassle out of downloading, installing and updating software. You can download and install the entire Google Pack with just a few clicks. The included Google updater helps you discover new programs and keep your current software up to date.

Google Pack includes the following:
Google Earth: Fly from space to your neighborhood with 3D satellite images. You can type in an address and zoom right in. Obtain driving directions, find maps, driving directions, hotels, restaurants, etc. Use the tilt and rotate function and you can view 3D terrain and buildings.

Picasa: Keep your photos always organized. Use this find, edit and share your photos easily. It also is capable of easily fixing red eye and cropping/fixing your favorite pictures. It automatically locates all pictures on your computer (even the ones you forgot about) and sorts them into visual albums.

Google Pack Screensaver: Use photos from your library to view as a screensaver (either full-screen or as a collage).

Google Desktop: A desktop companion search application that provides full text search over your e-mail, computer files, music, photos, chats and webpages that you’ve viewed. You can consolidate all your personalized information with its Sidebar feature.

Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer: You can keep the power of Google’s search engine close at hand since it puts a search box in your browser, making it easier to find what you’re looking for from whatever webpage you may be on. It does autofill and blocks annoying pop-ups.

Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar: Browse the web quickly and securely with this award-winning browser. It protects you from viruses, spyware and pop-ups. Switching between pages is simple with tabbed browsing.



Ad-Aware SE Personal: This gives you advanced protection from known data-mining, aggressive advertising, Trojans, dialers, malware, browser hijackers and tracking components. It will safely detect and remove spyware and protect your privacy with its capabilities.

Adobe Reader 7: Use this to view, print and search PDF files. Version 7 launches up to 50% faster than Reader 6.0.

Norton Antivirus 2005 Special Edition: This is probably the best one of them all! Normally you would have to purchase this, but protect your computer from viruses, worms and Trojan horses. It comes with six months worth of subscription updates.

If you already have some of these programs installed on your computer, the Google Updater will check to see if you have the latest version. If you do not, it will install the latest version. Additionally if you do not want everything the Google Pack has to offer, you can customize your install to the components you want.

Pack up Google Pack for yourself at pack.google.com. At this time it is only available for Windows XP (downloadable with Internet Explorer 6.0+ or Firefox 1.0+).

Snowboarding - Bluetooth Style

Last year I had my first experience of snowboarding down the slopes of Whistler, Canada. It was so refreshing to feel the rush of the crisp cold air rush past me as I flew down the mountain with powder flying in my face. Needless to say it was a blast! Before I went on my journey to the cold, I decided to purchase some snow gear, but back then, there was nothing worthy I could call techie snow wear.

Thanks to Motorola's and Burton's first in a new line of products, now there is such a thing. The Audex Jacket provides slope enthusiasts the ability to enjoy music and phone calls with little or no interruptions. When phone calls come in, the sleeve's control panel allows you to check caller ID and control your iPod (Generation 3 or newer, excluding the iPod shuffle) without taking either out of your pocket. For the phone functions, you can do one-touch voice dial, make a call, end a call and mute with the convenience of the control panel. As for the iPod functions, you can do one-touch volume up/down, play/pause and track forward/back.

Stereo speakers are built into the hood of the jacket and a microphone is embedded in the upper section near the collar, which are integrated to the controls. The control module, speakers and microphone can easily be removed before washing, however the washable connectors remain inside. Your phone and iPod zip up safely into specially designed pockets for a perfect fit, so even if you happen to take a spill on the way down, your toys won’t go flying out of your jacket.

The jacket’s battery lives in the chest pocket and is rechargeable with a Motorola adaptor. The Audex Jacket series includes three styles available in sizes S-XL: Burton Audex Cargo Jacket (Colors: True Black, Mocha, Blue Frost), Burton Audex Down Jacket (Colors: New Brick, Granite, True Black) and the Women’s Audex Duffel Jacket (Colors: True Black, Khaki, Mocha Plaid).

I know that Hawaii isn’t really known for snowboarding, but I know a lot of people who make the trek to the slopes to experience the thrill of fresh powder every year, my brother being at the top of my list. If you’re that crazy, and want to talk and your listen tunes wirelessly on the slopes, the Audex jackets sell for about $600 at www.burton.com. The Audex line will also include Bluetooth-equipped Audex Protective Gear, including the Padded Helmet and the Padded Hat.

Colorize Your Black & White Photos

I’ve had to painstakingly manually colorized photos before, and it’s really not fun to do unless you’re bored, have ample time to kill or are just extremely patient. Well, I discovered a program that will make my life easier and your life easier, especially if you have a lot of black and white photos you want to colorize.

Recolored is a software application that helps you with the normally difficult and
time consuming task of colorizing black and white photos. Based on the latest developments in computer assisted image colorization, Recolored makes it possible for anyone to achieve professional looking results with a few clicks.
To add color to a photo, all you have to do is add markings to the different regions of the image, indicating how it should be colorized. Then click the colorize button and let the software do the rest.

I’ve heard mixed comments on the difficulty level of the software’s use. Some say it was a little tough to use, other say it was easy to use. Personally I find it simple and easy to use. Recolored’s website takes you through an easy to follow tutorial on how to use the software if you get stuck or just want to review it before you make an attempt to colorize your picture. If you don’t feel you’re savvy enough, it is definitely a good idea to go through it, and as long as you pay close attention to this tutorial, you should be able to master Recolored just fine. The software comes with the standard tools you would see in any photo editing program (i.e. Photoshop) including the brush, eraser and eyedropper tool. Then the color replacer and colorize tool makes it complete. Once you click the colorize tool, like magic you see the final result to your efforts.

Recolored’s website also shows you some photos that were actually colorized using the program. If you wanted to be creative with the program, I suppose you could also use it to add new life to your existing color photos, and not only limit yourself to the black and white photos.

Recolored was developed by Bertheussen IT in Norway, and is still in the beta (testing) stage. It is available to download for free, non-commercial use only. For you professionals, a commercial version will be released shortly at the beginning of this year. Recolor your world at www.recolored.com.

Art Of Free War

When I buy a high quality video game, I typically pay around $50. I also usually have high expectations to get what I paid for. I never would have thought that there would be a free game with the superiority of something you would normally pay big bucks for. Well, I got news for you. There’s a new first person shooter (FPS) game that’s completely free!

War Rock is a downloadable game that features quality graphics and effects you would expect from a very good commercial game. The gameplay is similar to what you would see in Battlefield 2, and features spawning and frantic online fights including vehicles and aircraft. I did spend the money to purchase Battlefield 2, so I was thoroughly impressed with the quality of War Rock. It’s Korean-made, so I guess I would call it a Korean knock-off of Battlefield 2, sort of like the knock-off name brand purses you would find there too.

War Rock features a messenger system that provides support to the game’s community. It adds to the trading system between players. Various game modes are available to use, such as conquest or death match. You can choose from five character classes: engineer, medic, patrol, assault or anti-tank. Depending on your character’s level, you can buy your own weapon by battle point or game money. You start your ranking from the very bottom at Private Second Class, and work your way up to General.

Some of the personal weapons you can acquire include the knuckle (good ‘ol punches – bring an enemy down silently at close range), pistol, rifle, submachine gun, sniper rifle, anti-tank weaponry, anti-tank mines and grenades. I personally like anything with big explosions, so those TMA_1A anti-tank mines come in handy. Unlike the other weapons, you cannot recharge them and they lose ability once detonated by the enemy force. If I play a scout, my other favorite is the M24 sniper rifle to take out enemy targets from afar. It’s equipped with a two-stage zoom function, what you normally see in a FPS game.

As for any bugs in the game, there’s no support for it, so you’re stuck with what you have. The other thing to remember is when you download it, don’t use your Firefox browser. For whatever reason, it will not work. Just stick to the standard Internet Explorer.

Download your own free copy of War Rock at www.warrock.net. It is only available for the PC and the free period will not last forever, but they haven’t decided when to end it yet.

Cell Phone For Your Pet

Although I currently do not own a dog, there’s a new invention that I will definitely use when I adopt my next pooch. PetsMobility is manufacturing and will soon launch its PetsCell cellular telephone for pets. It sounds strange doesn’t it? Well, maybe not so much. It is a collar phone that straps right to Fido’s neck and will provide wireless communication between you and him.

PetsCell will be compatible with existing cellular and satellite GPS technology and allows you to talk to your pet. It uses Location Based Services (LBS) for you to communicate with your pet. You will have a piece of mind if your dog or cat gets lost. If someone finds him wandering the streets, with a push of a button, the auto dial feature will call to alert you to retrieve your pet. The GPS collar cell phone comes equipped with a durable waterproof case, LED battery and signal display, three programmable call buttons, call center button, ring indicator, interchangeable face plates, geo-fence capabilities and advanced mapping technology.

You can access your pet’s location either by contacting a customer service care center and speaking with a PetsMobility representative or through a voice activated response center. Over the phone, you enter in your personalized code and a computerized response is generated, informing you of your pet’s location.

With your special collar, you have the option to add a GPS tracking chip and a fiber optic camera for search and rescue operations. It can also deliver accurate location fixes, even with poor environmental conditions (i.e. indoor locations or dense urban surroundings). PetsCell can deliver you location fixes in real-time to your handset, pager or your computer (as long as it has an Internet connection). You have a choice on the mapping interface you use. It can either be imagery similar to Google Maps or standard map technology. You can also have it do automatic lost call alerts.

In addition to PetsCell, PetsMobility plans to execute other brand extended related products and services such as streaming media and various pet-related services (using their community website – www.petsmo.com - very cute homepage by the way) as the distribution platform for digital media.

The PetsCell will be available soon, within the first quarter of this year. PetsMobility will also shortly release the rate plan information and additional details about the device. Keep yourself posted at www.petsmobility.com.

Tuning In To Island Tones

Most cellular phone savvy people have moved beyond the standard ringer to personalizing rings to their favorite sound or song. I am one to change the ring on my cell phone from time to time, and as a Hawaiian music fan, I was happy to hear about Hawaiian Telcom’s offering of local music for ring tones.

Hawaiian Telcom Wireless entered into an exclusive partnership with The Mountain Apple Company to become the first wireless provider to offer cell phone ring tones by Mountain Apple’s Hawaii recording artists. You can find ring tones of songs by your favorite artists such as Sean Na‘auao, Brothers Cazimero, Israel Kamakawiwo‘ole (IZ), Amy Hanaiali‘i Gilliom more.

"Hawaiian Telcom is proud to be the only wireless provider that offers local Hawaiian music as ring tones for our customers, thanks to our partnership with Mountain Apple Company,” says Ann Nishida, Hawaiian Telcom’s Senior Corporate Communications Manager.

The top 10 downloads are:
1. Rap Reiplinger: Japanese Roll Call
2. Israel Kamawiwo‘ole: White Sandy Beach of Hawai’i
3. Sean Na‘auao: Fish & Poi
4. Hawaiian Style Band: Love & Honesty
5. Hawaiian Style Band: Happy 2 B With U
6. Rap Reiplinger: Room Service
7. The Brothers Cazimero: Ku‘uipo I Ka He‘e Pueone
8. IZ: Hawai‘i 78
9. The Brothers Cazimero: My Sweet Pikake Lei
10. Hawaiian Style Band: Live A Little

If you’re a Hawaiian Telcom Wireless customer, you can download your favorite Hawaiian ring tone for a cost of $2.49 each. Once you purchase it, the ring tone does not expire and there is no subscription fee. If you’re not a Hawaiian Telcom Wireless customer yet, for a limited time, a new customer incentive is that you receive two free ring tones with the purchase of a data services plan that includes wireless Internet access.

Unfortunately not all Hawaiian Telcom cell phones will work with the Hawaiian ring tones. Phones that support it are the Audiovox 8912, LG 225 and 5225, Nokia 6225 and Samsung A660. Ring tones are sent to your phone and should reach your phone within 24 hours of order placement.

For more information, to view a list, or to listen to available ring tones go to www.hawaiiantel.com, or visit one of the eight retail stores throughout the state.