Entries this day: Today computers zzzz

Today

9:55am CST Wednesday 13 March 2002

Just got back from the eye doctor. Rode my bike. I cannot see what I'm typing unless I get really close to the screen. Conference call in 5 minutes.

11:53am

Conference call with Minh and Jon Walker was fine. My eyes are plenty better now. During the conference call I fixed a problem with the ADS project (added variables to the change_user_info screen) and listened to Jon talk about his adventures in London and Paris.

Now I'm about to begin a nin din and work on the Branding! survey. That's the one I showed Bryn yesterday.

5:44pm

So I got all the changes done for the OS survey, all except getting the font to be arial in Netscape, but oh well. And now I'm going to purchase thermal underwear to stay warm overseas! I wonder if I can get thermal underoos!

Oh shit I just realized that I was asked to give another quote on a survey, but I didn't do it yet.

computers

December 27, 2001

STATE OF THE ART

Year of Living Geekily: Even the Dogs Evolved

By DAVID POGUE

OR observers of human nature, the end of the year presents a golden opportunity for spotting geeks in their native habitats. Normal people pull tags off gifts; geeks put batteries into them. Normal people spend the week watching movies and reading newly unwrapped books; geeks hook things up to the television. Normal people make up New Year's resolutions like "Clean the garage," "Learn French" or "Get more exercise." Geeks pledge to "Clean up the Web site," "Learn JavaScript" and "Get more RAM."

While waiting for the computer to reboot, we geeks may also pause to reflect on the industry itself. For stockholders, this was the year that the high-tech bubble burst with a definitive pop. And it will be some time before venture capitalists back any 20-year- old with a clever PowerPoint pitch.

Even so, some fundamental truths still apply. Prices continue to fall, as this season's owners of $100 DVD players are happy to point out. Computer power continues to climb (2-gigahertz processors), even if many consumers already have more megahertz than they know what to do with. And manufacturers continue to revise and improve their products with disconcerting speed.

As evidence that the innovation engine is still chugging along, you have but to consider this column's topics over the last 12 months. Here is a look at what has become of some of the year's most notable products, updates that you can clip and paste into your carefully archived originals.

NET APPLIANCES

Almost all the Internet appliances I reviewed a year ago have gone to that great Circuit City in the sky.

You didn't need a Ouija board to foretell the death of 3Com's Audrey ($500). Its tiny screen could show only part of a Web page; its punctuation keys were mere slivers; and it offered only a single e-mail account for each machine. As for its rival, the Gateway Connected Touch Pad ($600), you could have measured its Web-page download speed in ice ages.

Only Compaq's IA-1 seemed to be poised for success: it was relatively fast, inexpensive and well designed. (A few IA-1's are still available at Walmart.com for $200.)

But just $600 could buy a full PC, with a CD-ROM drive, a bigger monitor and so on. The limited, awkward Internet appliances simply couldn't compete.

Only one device survives: Honeywell's WebPad (now $1,970). It's a flat-panel touch screen that maintains a fast, cordless link to your cable or D.S.L. modem as you walk around the house or office. Both the price and the requirement for a high-speed connection should tip you off that this machine isn't aimed at non-techies. Funny, isn't it? The big companies had it wrong. It wasn't the everyday consumers who wanted Internet appliances. It was the geeks.

DIGITAL PETS

Aibo the robot dog by Sony (news/quote) was, and is, a remarkable machine. Useless, but remarkable. It can walk on its own — seeing with cameras, hearing with microphones, thinking with software. It can even learn new tricks.

But not everyone considered Aibo a steal at $1,500. Within nanoseconds, toy companies leaped into the fray with their own models: copycat dogs that did less but also cost less. Eventually Sony's engineers, no doubt sighing with resignation, set about the task of designing an Aibo knockoff of their own.

The result was the new Aibo LM series ($850): cuter, rounder, smaller dogs that still respond to vocal commands and can "learn" new behaviors. The cheaper dogs cannot send audio and video to your PC wirelessly, as the more expensive Aibo can when equipped with a $150 software kit. But for anyone who longs for companionship yet doesn't have the energy to care for an analog dog, the price for the ultimate laptop has dropped considerably.

MAC'S NEW CORE

With all the hoopla about Windows XP, it is easy to forget that there is another good-looking, super-stable operating system gaining popularity: Apple's Mac OS X.

The overhaul of OS X, version 10.1, released in September, was so sweeping that it made the original look like a dress rehearsal. The current version is much faster, includes a long list of useful features, and restores the DVD playback and CD burning that were missing from the original.

Even better news is that by now, most big-name programs have been revised to take advantage of Mac OS X's beauty and stability, including Microsoft (news/quote) Office, America Online, FileMaker, Illustrator, Freehand and Final Cut Pro. Mac fans should take note that it's finally safe to make the switch, as long as they're prepared to pay the upgrade fees for the programs they use.

THE MASTER'S VOICE

For all the attention given to computers that understand human speech in sci-fi movies, it's strange how little fanfare surrounds this category now that it's here.

In any case, both leading Windows speech-recognition programs are available in new versions. The chief virtue of I.B.M.'s ViaVoice Release 9, a minor upgrade, is its inclusion (in the deluxe version) of a U.S.B. headset microphone that improves accuracy. Naturally Speaking 6, meanwhile, is an ambitious merger of features from the onetime rival programs L&H VoiceXPress and Dragon Naturally Speaking.

The most impressive feature of NatSpeak 6, however, is its very existence: it was born during the public disintegration of its maker, Lernout & Hauspie. Only two weeks ago the company sold its speech software to Scansoft, so that NaturallySpeaking and its descendants may live on.

(There is also news for Mac fans: The last few months have seen the release of both ViaVoice for Mac OS X and iListen for Mac OS 9.2.1.)

DICK TRACY'S LENS

Casio's weird and wonderful Wrist Camera ($230) still shows only shades of gray on the watch face when you take pictures. But the recently upgraded watch (model WQV3-1BNDL) actually stores color photographs (80 at a time), which you can see when you later beam them, via infrared, to your PC.

These pictures aren't what you'd call gargantuan — in fact, they're 176 by 144 pixels, just over two inches square. But when you need to be surreptitious or spontaneous, there's no smaller digital camera outside the C.I.A.

TUNES TO GO

Apple's iPod is a spectacular music player. It holds 130 CD's worth of music in a white-acrylic-and-mirror-finish player not much bigger than a box of Tic Tacs. No MP3 player offers this capacity in anywhere near such a small size, especially not with 12 hours of battery life.

But Apple said that the iPod could synchronize its music library only with Macs. Fortunately for PC fans, xPlay, a $40 Windows program being readied for a January release, will let you load your iPod with music and use it as an external hard drive for your PC, just as on a Mac. An early version is available at www.mediafour.com.

PIXELS' PROGRESS

The PC industry is no longer the youngster it once was, exploding with monthly leaps in sales growth and features. Nowadays, it's the digital camera industry that behaves that way.

The cameras I reviewed in 2001 are already smaller, cheaper and better. As noted last week, 2.2-megapixel models now sell for under $300. Four-megapixel cameras cost less than half what they did a year ago. And Sony's CD1000, which burns its images directly onto mini-CD's, ready for archiving or inserting into your computer, no longer requires $1,500 and a wheelbarrow. Today, Sony's CD200 offers about half the bulk and price ($800).

The lesson from the camera business is the same one that we've learned over and over again from the PC business, the VCR business and the DVD business: The longer you wait, the better the deal you'll get.

Of course, you know what we geeks would say: Where's the fun in that?

zzzz

12:22am Thursday 14 March 2002

I'm at Dude's house doing last minute try-to-catch-up my website stuff. Optimizing the large amount (27 megs) of pics from Houston rally to about 1/2 that amount of space. But Dude's FTP client keeps locking up so I can't get them moved over. Maybe I'll archive them all, ftp that over, and then unzip the archive on my site.

But I just remembered that I'm on my bike tonight and I'm a bit tired for riding home. I may choose to stop by work and do a bit of investment club stuff to prepare for next month's meeting.

I just want to get that out of the way before I leave tomorrow!