Tech Tools and Toys

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Mini Media; Major Cool

By Larry Wood

Tools

High-Ranking Phones
RIM BlackBerry Pearl: Nobody ever accused the BlackBerry of being hip. In fact, it was the very retroness of the email devices that were part of the appeal. The phones were never very good, but who cared? They delivered email as soon as it arrived, and that was enough, especially when you were stuck in a boring meeting.
    Well, forget all of that. Research In Motion, out of Toronto, Canada, has finally started to get hip. The new Pearl is smaller than its previous brothers and sisters and has a very cool trackball for navigation. Add Bluetooth and a cell phone cam—all this in addition to the best and most sophisticated email retrieval system on the planet—and this is the Blackberry for the rest of us.
blackberry.com

    Nokia N80: Nokia’s N80 cell phone (about $600) is a Symbian-based smart phone with a nice pulldown keypad. For people who want strong mobile photo features and a small footprint, this is a winner.
This phone has not one, but two cameras: a sharp-image, 3-megapixel camera, and a low-res, quick-shoot VGA camera, plus image-editing apps. This quad-band unit supports email and allows you to view Microsoft Office documents. It’s also a camcorder, digital music player and game player.
nokia.com/nseries.com


Making Movies
Episode and Episode Pro: Local company Telestream in Nevada City recently acquired Popwire, a Macintosh-based media-compression software company in Sweden. They just unveiled Episode ($395) and Episode Pro ($895), a scalable suite of Macintosh media-encoding applications, plus server-based workgroup solutions.
    Aimed at compression specialists, Episode claims the highest quality, fastest media-encoding tools around. With Episode, you can encode your media for podcasts, iPod, Sony PSP, Web, DVD, IPTV and mobile devices (in addition to traditional SD and HD formats). Comes with a wide range of filters and streaming and file-based codecs, tools that both pro-consumer and professional Macintosh media specialists will value.
www.flip4mac.com
    Pinnacle Studio Moviebox Plus: Lest you think that you are elbowed out of the podcast/videocast/mediacast world just because you have a PC, think again. The company that created the Avid professional video editing system (for the Macintosh, go figure!) has now released a low-cost ($150) device that combines hardware and software to allow every PC user to get into the video revolution. Now, don’t expect Macintosh ease of use — you’ll have to actually read the manual on this one — but the Studio Moviebox does pack an impressive number of video encoding and special effects tricks into its package. For instance, you can superimpose one video clip over another or add surround sound effects to your home videos.
www.pinnaclesys.com

Cars as Computers
Itronix Hummer Laptop IX600: Want to maximize your off-road computing power? Check out the Itronix Hummer ($3386 direct). Like the rig, this laptop is decked out with a magnesium alloy (red, pewter-tin, or bright yellow) SUV-style chassis and the Hummer logo.
    The laptop weighs in at 7.6 pounds. It’s powered by a 1.86 GHz Pentium M 750, with a 80G HD, DVD/CD-RW, 12.1-inch screen and full keyboard, plus multiple wireless antennas, Bluetooth, LAN, WiFi (802.11g) and GPS. You can add a built-in, high-speed cellular card.
Field workers who need a rugged notebook (architects, contractors, engineers) and want a stylish laptop should take a look.
www.hummerlaptops.com
    Acer Ferrari Laptop 3000: Innovative and sleek define Acer’s Ferrari laptop  ($2,200 direct). A good start for this mobile PC is the patented red, thin-line chassis and the prancing horse logo and Ferrari-design USB mouse.
    This thin-line laptop weighs about 6 pounds, with a wide, full keyboard and a sharp, 15-inch TFT LCD screen. Driven by an AMD Athlon XP-M 2500+ processor with a 60GB hard drive; DVD burner, WiFi, four USB 2.0 ports, Firewire, PC slot, LAN and Windows XP Pro included.
global.acer.com

Toys

Apple’s New Playback Box: Due out, according to Apple’s Steve Jobs, in the first three months of 2007, the iTV ($299) set-top box completes the package of Apple’s multimedia offerings.
    Users can currently download music, movies and TV programs from the iTunes Store and enjoy them on their Macintosh, PC or iPod. But there’s no easy way to watch or listen to media on their TVs.
    Thus the iTV (Apple’s code name). It looks like a squished Mac Mini, one that has been sliced in half horizontally. It uses wireless networking to stream your downloaded movies and TV shows right from your computer to a TV near you. It has USB 2 ports, a LAN connection, an HDMI plug (High Def Multimedia Interface), component video and optical and analog video plugs. Plus, the power supply is built inside.
You control iTV with software that features a fluid 3D graphic interface: big beautiful images on the left, menus on the right. You can scroll through all your TV shows, photo collections, movies, and podcasts using a remote control.
apple.com
    Slim Devices Squeezebox: So by now you’ve got a lot of songs and video clips on the hard drive of your PC or laptop. But if you’re like the rest of us, how do you get all that material to your living room? The best affordable solution we’ve seen is the Squeezebox, a $249 wireless device that monitors a music stream from your PC and outputs it to your home stereo. Want different music in different rooms? No problem. Just buy another Squeezebox and adjust the software on your PC and you can have an internet radio station running in the bedroom, with music from your vast collection of operas in the living room.
    The company was recently acquired by Logitech. If it is truly high-performance audio you’re after, take a look at their $2,000 Transponder. This audiophile device not only ups the sound quality but includes interactivity in the device, so you can navigate through your entire music collection from the living room, choose from a number of internet radio streams even if the PC is turned off, and (in keeping with a company associated with the world’s best universal remote seller) comes with a powerful remote as well.
slimdevices.com
    Artec T14A HD Antenna: Think rabbit ears went out with Howdy Doody? In an era when everything old is new again, the digital age has reinvented the TV antenna. The Artec T14A  is a USB plug-in antenna, an inexpensive ($60) add-on that lets the rest of us dabble in the world of super-high-resolution broadcasting. If you live in an urban or major metro area, you can explore the world of high definition TV from the comfort of your PC by plucking the signals from the air. Most high definition broadcasts by law have to be transmitted over the airwaves. (It has to do with the arcane “must carry” requirements the FCC has decreed in order for broadcasters to get digital bandwidth in the future. Don’t ask.) Use Artec’s bundled software, and voila! High def TV broadcasts appear on your PC or laptop. Of course, it won’t quite rival that 60-inch plasma screen that your brother-in-law just bought, but then it won’t require a new room for housing the system, either.
artectv.com

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