This week, I’ve done the dirty work for you: I’ve amassed a collection of vital details about the three most popular systems—Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360, Sony’s (SNE) PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii—so that you can get a handle on what each offers and what it will cost you.

Nintendo Wii

Nintendo recently dropped the Wii’s price, for the first time, to $200 from $250. The Wii Console comes with a controller, an additional controller called a Nunchuk, and the Wii Sports game, which includes baseball, tennis, golf, bowling and boxing. It holds 512 megabytes of flash memory, but you can increase this by inserting SecureDigital memory cards. It also accepts high-capacity SD cards, or SDHCs, of up to 32 gigabytes.

The couch-potato world of videogamers was shaken up when the Wii, with its motion-sensitive remote control, was introduced about three years ago. Users can play Wii Golf, for instance, by swinging the remote like a golf club. In September, Nintendo added to its lineup a $20 remote-control accessory called Wii MotionPlus that was designed to add more precision to game motions. I tested this snap-on piece and found that it did make the Wii’s motions feel more realistic. But it works only with Wii MotionPlus games—and there are only six of them; 10 more are planned for 2010.

Wii encourages users to move around in more ways than just waving a remote: Its Wii Balance Board, which comes with the Wii Fit Plus game in a $100 bundle, works like a digital exercise step. It records the body’s weight shifts and movements for activities from yoga to wake-boarding.

The Wii accesses the Internet and lets users compete online against others. About 655 packaged games are available for between $30 and $50. Also, you can use pre-purchased Nintendo Points to buy and download about 150 WiiWare games and over 325 titles from the older Virtual Console library. Each game costs between 300 and 1,500 points, or between about $3 and $15.

WiiConnect24 can send messages from one Wii to another over the Internet, as long the two users exchange “Wii numbers.” Users can also surf the Web with Wii’s Opera browser. But beyond this, no other Web features—like downloadable movies, social-networking applications or streaming music—will work on this system.

Parental controls can be set on the Wii to restrict kids from using the Web browser, playing games that have a certain rating or communicating online.

Microsoft Xbox 360

Microsoft recently stepped up its game by adding features to its $200 Xbox 360 that make it well-rounded rather than strictly geared toward serious gamers. People who buy the Xbox LIVE Gold membership, for $50 a year, get applications for Facebook, Twitter, the Last.fm music-streaming service, online multiplayer game play, video chat, Netflix (Netflix subscription required), photo sharing via the Xbox, and movie or photo “parties” that allow users to watch a movie simultaneously with seven other friends.

Xbox LIVE Silver membership is free and includes basic features like voice and text chat, as well as access to the Zune video library’s 20,000 TV shows and movies to buy or rent. The Xbox also allows media-streaming over a home network. To wirelessly connect to the Internet on your Xbox, you’ll need to buy a $100 Wi-Fi adapter. By contrast, the Wii and PlayStation 3 have built-in Wi-Fi.

Anyone who owns a Microsoft Zune media player can buy a TV show or movie and download it to an Xbox or PC as well as the Zune. Zunes can be plugged into the Xbox to play music, as can Apple (AAPL) iPods.

The base Xbox comes with a wireless controller and 512 megabytes of memory. For $100 more, the Elite Holiday Bundle includes a 120-gigabyte hard drive, headset, wireless controller, and two games: “LEGO Batman: The Videogame” and “Pure.” More than 1,200 games are available for the Xbox, mostly costing between $29 and $60. About 350 of the games can be downloaded from the Xbox LIVE Arcade (costing 400 to 1,600 points, or $5 to $20) or the Games on Demand library.

Microsoft confirmed plans to introduce Project Natal, a system that lets people operate games with gestures and body movements rather than remote controls. Natal will work with all Xbox 360 consoles. Microsoft won’t confirm a date.

Family settings let parents control whether their kids play games online and with whom they play, as well as the ratings of the games. A Family Timer regulates how long kids play.

Sony PlayStation 3

Sony’s PlayStation, like the Xbox 360, is designed with serious gamers in mind. Its base version costs $300 and includes a 120-gigabyte hard drive and a DualShock 3 wireless controller; $50 more buys a version with a 250-gigabyte hard drive. Both systems can be upgraded with any standard 2.5-inch hard drive. The PlayStation is also a Blu-ray disc player.

Like the Xbox, the PlayStation 3, or PS3, now offers extra features, but these features are all included in the PlayStation Network, which is free (not $50 yearly like Xbox LIVE Gold). These PlayStation Network extras include Netflix (NFLX) instant streaming, a Web browser, photo slide shows, the ability to stream media over a home network to the PS3, a Facebook application that shares game information with friends and the PlayStation Network video-delivery service, where users can purchase 2,400 high- and standard-definition movies and 15,000 TV episodes.

The PS3 and the PlayStation Portable, Sony’s portable gaming device, are married in many ways. A new feature called Blu-ray Portable Copy lets users make a free standard-definition copy of some Blu-ray movies for transfer to a PlayStation Portable. Remote Play lets people stream media files from the PS3 to the PlayStation Portable in Wi-Fi hot spots or remotely turn the PS3 on or off using the PlayStation Portable. Movies and TV shows from the PlayStation Network can be transferred to either system, so you can start a movie on a big-screen TV and finish it on the PlayStation Portable; the same can be done for games.

About 400 games are available on Blu-ray for the PS3; these cost between $30 and $60. More than 150 titles, costing between $3 and $40, can be downloaded directly to the PS3. Sony confirmed that it will release a motion-sensing controller, but it hasn’t set a date.

Parental restrictions for the PS3 include the ability to restrict games, DVDs and Blu-ray discs with certain ratings. Parents can also limit monthly spending or Web browsing.

Games: A Cheat Sheet

Here are some of the key differences among three popular videogame systems.

Email: mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

Xbox LIVE Gold costs $50 a year. A previous version of this story incorrectly stated in the second reference to the price that it costs $50 monthly. Also, the Xbox 360 can be connected to the Internet via an ethernet cable for free, as well as via Wi-Fi. A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that connecting your Xbox to the Internet would require the purchase of a Wi-Fi adapter.

While several U.S. states have enacted hands-free cellphone laws for drivers, New York’s Taxi and Limousine Commission is going a step further by proposing harsher rules for cab drivers who violate the commission’s decade-old rule against all cellphone use. The current regulations include cabbies who talk while wearing a hands-free headset, but the TLC says it’s tired of the ban being violated.

“The time has come to put an end to cellphone abuse once and for all,” said TLC commissioner and chairman Matthew Daus in a statement. “New technology–including stealthy hands-free devices–has made it difficult to enforce our current laws, and the use of cellphones by drivers has become all too prevalent.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The week that took us from August to September was one for the books over at BoomTown, especially if you’re 12.

Kara spent Monday morning at Activision Blizzard (ATVI), where they are pushing forward with the entire Guitar Hero line, even as the game industry faces a nearly 50 percent decline in U.S. sales this year. Kara got to play hero to several of the forthcoming releases, including previewing the much anticipated DJ Hero console.

The youth movement continued with the fancy bar graph from Forrester Research’s annual “State of Consumers and Technology,” which drove home an important fact of life for media outlets. All the money being spent on new media expansion is a fight for the young; older consumers are sticking to more reliable fare.

BoomTown wasn’t just about the kids though, as 23andMe co-founder Linda Avey announced her exit from the gene-juicing business to focus on a foundation related to Alzheimer’s research. Avey co-founded 23andMe with Anne Wojcicki in 2006 with early money from Genentech (DNA), Google (GOOG) and New Enterprise Associates, as well as Wojcicki’s husband, Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

While BoomTown was keepin’ it real with the kids, Digital Daily was abuzz with a spate of iPhone news. John started Monday off on the topic of the Sept. 9 iPod event with confirmation that music, indeed, will be center stage. In the Apple world, that means iPods and iTunes, though Beatles fans are keeping their fingers crossed.

Readers got a compare-and-contrast of Apple’s (AAPL) foreign and domestic policy when John covered a potential two-carrier system in China and the long-awaited stateside activation of MMS features in the iPhone OS3. Meaning that while China may get the iPhone carrier flexibility so far absent in the U.S. market, American consumers are just about to get a new feature that’s been standard on every smartphone for a year or more.

MediaMemo covered a fluid week in the world of media giants and Top Chefs. Disney (DIS) went off to the mines and instead of seven dwarfs, found Marvel and the rights to its 5,000-character portfolio. Disney CEO Bob Iger didn’t think $4 billion was too much to pay to bring Iron Man and friends to the happiest media empire on earth and is sure the company will benefit from such “rich intellectual property.”

If the Disney vault got 5,000 new friends this week, eBay said goodbye to one long-time partner. Peter reported that the long, difficult breakup between eBay and Skype was finalized when eBay sold a 65 percent stake in the VOIP juggernaut to the internationally mixed bag of Silver Lake, Index ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and a Canadian pension fund.

Peter rounded out the week of motion with lots of changes in Google’s ranks. The search giant shuffled the chairs with David Fischer moving out of the self-serve ad business with no sign yet of a replacement. Google China saw the big chair turn upside-down when Kai-Fu Lee announced that he’d leave the company this month to begin his own venture. Lee will be replaced by the tag team of Boon-Lock Yeo and John Liu, who will oversee engineering and business, respectively.

Not all Google’s shifts were outbound though. “Charlie’s Café” at the main campus got its Top Chef back after Preeti Mistry failed to make the cut on the Las Vegas iteration of the popular TV show. Regular fans of the show weren’t surprised by her dismissal, but at least Google can put one in the plus column this week.

Over at The Mossberg Solution, Katie took aim at a possible answer to a question plaguing all image-conscious technophiles: Yea or nay to the omnipresent Bluetooth earpiece. Plantronics (PLT) and Aliph, maker of the Jawbone, both say yea and are upping the ante on the recently reviled symbol of cellphone userdom. Katie reviewed the fashion-forward Discovery 975 and Jawbone Prime, each designed to separate its users from $130. In exchange, they’ll get redesigned outsides and some new features that might even put one back in Brad Pitt’s ear.

Fashionable or not, more people are wearing these wireless headsets for making phone calls in the car and in everyday life. This week, I reviewed two that look stylish enough that you won’t mind being seen wearing them: Plantronics Inc.’s Discovery 975 (Plantronics.com) and Aliph’s Jawbone Prime (Jawbone.com).

These Bluetooth headsets cost $130 each and use the best technology from their respective companies, including impressive-sounding features like AudioIQ 2, WindSmart, NoiseAssassin 2.0 and an Acoustic Voice Activity Detector. Each headset aims to deliver clearer incoming and outgoing sound.

After using these two headsets in an office, while walking through noisy city streets and as I drove a car with its windows open, I found that I liked the Plantronics Discovery 975 more than the Jawbone Prime. It felt more comfortable and stable in my ear, and its longer boom fit my face better than the Jawbone Prime’s stubby build. I was able to hear people more clearly while using the Plantronics (PLT) earpiece. But on the other end of the call, friends said the Jawbone Prime did a better job of muffling noise.

The Plantronics Discovery 975 also has something that the Jawbone Prime doesn’t have: a carrying case that holds the earpiece and charges it on the go. This charging case can triple the device’s talk time from five to 15 hours, and it holds its charge for a week on standby. A display on the case shows how much battery remains both in the charged case and on the earpiece itself when it’s held in the case.

Aliph’s Jawbone Prime

I liked using this case because it meant I didn’t have to think so often about charging my headset. It also gave me a place to keep the small Discovery 975 earpiece, making it harder to lose in the bottom of a purse or large work bag. Though people who don’t carry briefcases or purses wouldn’t likely use this case, it’s convenient to have the option.

None of the Jawbone models come with carrying cases, though stores like Best Buy sell some cases that will hold Jawbone headsets. In the future, Aliph says it plans to make its own cases that will hold and charge its Jawbone headsets.

Aliph’s Jawbone has always been one of the most stylish Bluetooth headsets, thanks to its compact form factor and disguised buttons. The Jawbone Prime follows suit with a design that makes it appear slightly smaller than its predecessor. It comes in seven colors, including four especially bright “EarCandy” hues: Drop Me a Lime, Lilac You Mean It, ‘Yello! and Frankly Scarlet. The Prime maintains the original Jawbone’s namesake design feature: If worn properly, it touches your face near your jawbone and removes background noise. But a new feature also uses sound to detect the speaker’s voice and eliminate extraneous noise, so the headset doesn’t always need to touch the face.

The design of the Plantronics Discovery 975 ups the company’s chic factor by replacing its former model’s triangular boom with an elegant boom made of a single thin metallic sliver. It reminded me more of jewelry than a tech gadget. Like the Jawbone models, it looks less geeky because buttons are disguised, and it doesn’t emit a blinking blue light while in use—an improvement for Plantronics. The Discovery 975 comes only in graphite, though AT&T (T) stores will carry it in silver.

I started testing the Plantronics Discovery 975 and Jawbone Prime from my quiet office, without any distracting background noise. There, the Plantronics headset sounded better than the Jawbone, making my voice sound crisper, according to the person on the other end of line; likewise, his voice sounded louder to me. He also said he couldn’t tell I was using a headset while I was on the Discovery 975, but definitely knew I was on a headset while I used the Jawbone Prime.

The Plantronics Discovery 975

Next, I walked along the streets of busy downtown Washington, D.C., chatting on each headset while standing steps away from the squeaky sound of car brakes and taxis honking. Here, the Jawbone did a better job of fading that street noise into the background, compared to the Plantronics headset.

I also took turns using the Jawbone Prime and Plantronics Discovery 975 while driving through the city with all four car windows open to test the antiwind capabilities of each. Here again, the Jawbone Prime sounded better to the person on the other end, though the Plantronics didn’t sound bad. My friend said it would have been impossible to guess where I was while making the phone call using the Jawbone Prime. But from my end of the call, I was able to hear slightly better while using the Plantronics Discover 975.

While using the Jawbone, I accidentally hung up on friends in midconversation a few different times because the place where I pressed to secure the earpiece in my ear was also the Talk button. I tried each of the Jawbone Prime’s three fit earbuds, three round earbuds and its included earloop, but none of these felt as comfortable as the Plantronics headset.

Both headsets are capable of using Multipoint technology, allowing them to connect to two Bluetooth devices at once. They’re each lightweight at .28 ounce and .35 ounce for the Plantronics and Jawbone, respectively; the Plantronics case weighs 1.27 ounces. According to each company, the Plantronics headset takes one-and-a-half hours to fully charge and lasts for five hours of talk time; the Jawbone takes 50 minutes to fully charge and lasts four and a half hours of talk time.

When both headsets were in front of me and I wanted to make a hands-free call, I reached for the Plantronics Discovery 975 because of its overall fit and feel in my ear. It stayed in place using a soft, gel insert that wasn’t uncomfortable, even after long conversations. Its sound quality was good enough for me.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090901/bluetooth-headsets-that-up-the-chic-factor/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090818/lost-in-immersion-speaking-french-on-the-web/ http://allthingsd.com/20090818/lost-in-immersion-speaking-french-on-the-web/#comments Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:00:52 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/20090818/lost-in-immersion-speaking-french-on-the-web/

The home page of Totale shows your learning progress and options for playing language games by yourself or with other students.

If you’ve ever learned a foreign language, you know the vast difference between completing workbook activities and speaking with others. The latter experience can involve sounding out unfamiliar accents or guttural pronunciations and, though intimidating, is ultimately more rewarding. By immersing yourself in a language and navigating through situations, you learn how to speak and eventually think in that language.

Rosetta Stone (RST) has long used visual learning without translations by pairing words with images—one of the ways a baby learns to speak. For the past week, I’ve been testing its newest offering: Rosetta Stone Totale (pronounced toe-tall-A), which is the company’s first fully Web-based language-learning program. It aims to immerse you in a language using three parts: online coursework that can take up to 150 hours; live sessions in which you can converse over the Web with a native-speaking coach and other students; and access to Rosetta World, a Web-based community where you can play language games by yourself or with other students to improve your skills.

Totale costs a whopping $999, so if you aren’t serious about learning a language it’s a tough sell. Rosetta Stone says this program is comparable to an in-country language-immersion school. The company’s most expensive offering before Totale was a set of CDs (lessons one, two and three) that cost $549, included about 120 hours of course work and had no online components.

The Totale Package

Since Totale is Web-based it doesn’t come loaded onto several disks in a yellow box like the company’s previous products. But despite this digital transition, buyers of Totale will still receive Rosetta’s familiar yellow box, now filled with a USB headset and supplemental audio discs for practicing away from the PC—mostly while in the car.

I’ve spent over eight hours learning French in Totale throughout the past week, and I have to say that I’m surprised by how much I feel I’ve already learned. I realized this when I spent a 30-minute car ride listening to one of the supplemental audio CDs. I mentally identified and translated practically every vocabulary word and phrase, and I repeated the words aloud with what I thought sounded like a pretty decent French accent. This was after just four hours of work online.

Totale users can speak with a coach and three others in studio sessions.

Intensive Coursework

The core of Totale is the time-intensive online coursework. But even though this takes a lot of effort, its layout is attractive and each screen has only a few things on it so it doesn’t feel overwhelming. Lessons include identifying photos of objects or situations as they are described aloud, writing phrases (my least favorite part), and using deductive reasoning to construct and dictate your own sentences about a photo. Totale’s headset comes in handy during exercises that require you to repeat words or sounds out loud into the microphone.

Activities in Rosetta World—including solo, two-person and group games—were addictively fun. One game plays like Bingo: I listened to someone speaking French and marked words on the board as I heard them, racing to get five words horizontally, vertically or diagonally before my opponent beat me to it. I waded into these games cautiously at first, playing alone before I got familiar enough to challenge another Totale user.

Helpful indicators show how many people are available at any given time for each type of game in Rosetta World—meaning that person is logged into Totale and studying the same language as you. I never saw more than five people in the community, and it gets a little old playing (or worse, losing) to the same person after a while. Since Totale was only recently released, this community should grow over time.

A chat window at the bottom left of the browser window reminded me of Facebook’s built-in instant-messaging program, listing users against whom I competed in online games. But unlike when I’m on Facebook, I didn’t feel comfortable instant messaging with these people.

No Flashcards

Rosetta Stone’s methods, while natural and easy to pick up, aren’t what my brain expects when learning a different language. I minored in Spanish in college, learning in traditional classroom style by studying verb conjugations on flashcards and vocabulary definitions in English. So at certain times throughout Totale’s French-only lessons, a part of me wanted to know the exact definition of a phrase or the reasoning behind why something was the way it was.

The moment of truth came when I attended a real-time, 50-minute studio session online with one of the live coaches—all of whom are native speakers—and two other students (four students is the maximum allowed per class).

Rosetta Stone recommends that students complete an entire unit before joining one of these studio sessions, and the only language you are permitted to speak during the studio is the one being studied. I proudly remembered all of my new vocabulary words as our coach pointed the cursor to animals, colors and clothing, asking us questions and prompting us to ask one another questions. The coach kindly corrected us when we made mistakes, made jokes about words and used an on-screen tool to type out a few of the harder phrases.

But I fumbled around trying to remember the correct phrases and grammar to go along with my vocabulary.

I frustratingly realized that I didn’t even know how to ask my coach in French, “Why is that blanc and not blanche?” Our coach eventually answered that question and some others without anyone’s prompting because it was obvious that none of us knew what forms of some words were right or why; Totale’s coursework doesn’t include explanations. A few of the phrases our coach explained still puzzled me and I was starting to miss my flashcards from Spanish class.

Team Effort

Rosetta Stone is determined to make sure you don’t feel like you’re alone as you work through the Totale program. A “Customer Success Team” representative calls you within a day of your product purchase to answer any questions or concerns about how everything works. And this team keeps calling or emailing (you tell them which contact method you prefer) whenever you have passed a milestone in the program—or to encourage you to pick it up again if you haven’t logged on in a while.

Even for $999, you can go back in and re-use every feature in Totale, but only for one year. You can reset your scores and completely start over, attending online studios again and playing games in Rosetta World as many times as you like. But once a year is up, you’re finished with the program.

Rosetta Stone Totale works on all major Mac and Windows PC browsers, though participating in a studio session while using some browsers requires you turn off their pop-up blockers.

I still have work to do in Totale, but I’m looking forward to it—even though I find some aspects to be a bit vague. This program does a terrific job of immersing you in a language and may be the next best thing to living in a country, surrounded by native speakers. Best of all, unlike my semester abroad in Spain where college friends gave me my daily fix of the English language, Totale never lets you slip out of using the language you’re studying.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg. Email Katherine Boehret at
mossbergsolution@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090818/lost-in-immersion-speaking-french-on-the-web/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090527/d7-tech-demo-fullpower/ http://allthingsd.com/20090527/d7-tech-demo-fullpower/#comments Wed, 27 May 2009 16:05:51 +0000 John Paczkowski http://d7.allthingsd.com/?p=242

Philippe Kahn’s history of entrepreneurship is nearly as old as the PC itself. He developed software for the Micral N, one of the earliest commercial personal computers, back in 1973. As CEO of Borland Software (BORL), he touted himself the “barbarian” of the software industry and embraced that identity by holding one of the first press conferences for his company in a McDonald’s (MCD) in Las Vegas during Comdex. Ousted from Borland in 1995, Kahn went on to found wireless synchronization outfit Starfish Software, which he sold to Motorola (MOT). He followed that up with LightSurf Technologies, a picture-messaging company acquired by Verisign (VRSN) in 2005. Today Philippe Kahn is at D7 as CEO of Fullpower, a company developing accelerometer-based hardware and software.

Session Highlights

Live Blog

• Walt and Kara welcome Kahn to the stage.
• Fullpower, says Kahn, has developed the MotionX Recognition Engine, a technology intended to do for motion and gesture what speech recognition did for speech. “We’ve created a system that studies how you move, as opposed to reacting to it.”
• The first demo involves a headset with onboard motion sensing, the MotionX-Headset. “Basically what we’ve done is build a motion-sensing headset,” says Kahn. The headset will differentiate between the sources of motion of its user–if the user is walking or running for example.
• Kahn calls a colleague wearing the headset onstage. The colleague demonstrates how calls can be answered by tapping the headset, without using any buttons. Then the colleague begins walking and running around the stage — the technology is able to differentiate between actual user taps and all the other motion.
• The device also notices whether its user is walking or running, using the MotionX Recognition Engine and accelerometer to obtain an accurate measurement of distance and speed traveled. The headset tracks the user’s speed and distance, and the user can tap it for spoken updates about his or her progress. The headset automatically turns off when set down, thus saving power, and turns back on when the user picks it up again. Kahn: The same technology used in the headset can be embedded in phones and other devices.
• Moving on to the next demo, MotionX-Imaging, the technology demonstrated was full image stabilization using the MotionX Recognition engine and an accelerometer. These were built in to the smartphone. In order to demonstrate this for presentations, every time a picture is taken, the MotionX image stabilization is either applied (“stabilized”) or not applied (“unstabilized”) at random. The pictures are then sorted so you can compare all the regular pictures with the stabilized ones and see the benefit of the technology.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090527/d7-tech-demo-fullpower/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081007/phone-headset-curbs-sounds-of-the-city/ http://allthingsd.com/20081007/phone-headset-curbs-sounds-of-the-city/#comments Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:30:02 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/20081007/phone-headset-curbs-sounds-of-the-city/ Wireless headsets can be a real boon to mobile-phone users, especially for chatty folks who often have their hands full. In recent years, these headsets have bolstered their noise-canceling technology, making it easier to conduct conversations even while walking on noisy city streets.

Today, Motorola (MOT) is unveiling its $100 Motopure H15 Universal Bluetooth Headset. It’s available from Verizon’s (VZ) stores and Web site, and I’ve been testing it.

While focusing on the new Motopure H15, I also took another look at two noise-canceling headsets we reviewed in May — the $130 Jawbone from Aliph Inc. and the $120 Plantronics (PLT) Discovery 925. I made calls on the three headsets while standing beside a construction crew’s loud generator in busy downtown Washington, D.C., and, in a separate test, running my hairdryer on high in the background.

In both of these loud scenarios, the results favored the Motopure over the Jawbone and Plantronics Discovery. Of the three, the Plantronics headset allowed the most background noise through and made it difficult for people to hear my voice. The Jawbone was much better than the Plantronics headset, but not as good as the Motopure, which dimmed loud background noise to a faint hum and seemed to amp up the volume of my own voice. I called various people and even left myself voicemails so I could hear the differences.

More Microphones

The Motopure H15 uses two microphones, while the Jawbone uses two microphones and one modified microphone that works as a voice-activity sensor. The Plantronics headset uses one microphone. Motorola says one of its microphones hears the user’s voice, the other picks up background noise and a technology called CrystalTalk works to filter that noise out.

In my Motopure testing, I saw at work technology that Motorola says is meant to automatically adjust the headset volume as noises increase or decrease in the background. And at no point during my tests with the headset did friends on the other end of the line notice any odd echoing or fading volume in my voice, as with some headsets.

Snug Fit

Unlike the Jawbone, which — as its name reflects — works by touching bones in the face to eliminate excess noise, the Motopure H15 never touches one’s face. In fact, Motorola cites this as an advantage over the Jawbone because it doesn’t need to touch a user’s face to work. Motorola’s headset fits using a loop of clear plastic that wraps snuggly around the ear, along with an in-ear piece, though it took me a little while to figure out which of its five earbuds fit best.

And unlike the Plantronics headset, which has a larger, triangular-shaped boom, the Motopure has a tiny boom that folds away when not in use. Users receive calls by simply folding the boom down, which instantly turns the headset on and connects to calls. When the boom is closed, the headset turns off to save battery. I liked the finality of closing the boom and knowing my headset was definitely off whenever I put it in my purse. And in its tucked-in position, the Motopure H15 is petite and portable.

But if you’re wearing this headset on your ear, opening and closing the boom is almost impossible. Motorola recommends using the boom as you would a clamshell cellphone: Answer calls by opening the boom before donning the earpiece and end calls by removing the earpiece and closing the boom.

Of course, many users will want to keep the device in their ear for an extended period, rather than fishing for it when a call comes in. For them, the awkwardness of the boom switch may be a problem. They can still keep the Motopure on with the boom opened, receiving and ending calls at any time by simply pressing the large Call button. In this state, the handset is in standby mode rather than off — the same as most Bluetooth headsets waiting for calls.

One Headset, Two Phones

A plus of the Motopure is its ability to simultaneously pair with two phones, such as a personal cellphone and a work smartphone. Incoming calls to both lines are represented by different colored lights on the headset. But as soon as a call with one phone begins, the Bluetooth link to the second phone is disconnected.

The Plantronics headset also has dual-phone pairing capability, but the Jawbone doesn’t.

According to Motorola, the Motopure’s battery lasts for about 4.5 hours of talk time. The Jawbone’s battery lasts four hours; the Plantronics headset, five hours. In standby, Motopure and the Plantronics Discovery last for about seven days; Jawbone lasts for eight. Pressing and holding the Motopure’s up and down volume buttons spurs an indicator light to glow red, yellow or green to represent battery strength.

I liked the Motopure’s sturdy charging stand, which doubles as a holder for the headset. Though this desktop charger isn’t available today from Verizon, it will be available later this month from other carriers and retailers in a $130 bundle with the headset.

More Colors Later

Today, the Motopure is available in a slate color, but it will be available in black later this month and other colors are tentatively planned for November. The Jawbone and the Plantronics headset are each available in three colors, and Jawbone will release blue and pink headsets later this month.

Overall, the Motopure H15′s noise cancellation worked the best out of these three headsets, and its tiny build and fold-up boom make it a helpful tool for consumers who want quiet conversations no matter where they are.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081007/phone-headset-curbs-sounds-of-the-city/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080625/motorola-rokr-e8-hip-and-user-friendly/ http://allthingsd.com/20080625/motorola-rokr-e8-hip-and-user-friendly/#comments Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:01:00 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/20080625/motorola-rokr-e8-hip-and-user-friendly/ Basic cellphones, unlike larger BlackBerrys or iPhones, are still favored by plenty of users who would rather carry a small device that feels more comfortable to hold to the ear. But the phones’ size involves a trade-off: cramped keypads and clumsy software that can make these phones a pain to use for anything other than calls.

As technology continues to shrink, more features are being packed into these small mobile devices, making navigation and ease-of-use more important. This week, I tested the Motorola ROKR E8, which costs $199 with a two-year T-Mobile service agreement and makes a real attempt to be more user-friendly. The device, which comes out on July 7, isn’t much bigger than a typical cellphone but its standout feature is its keyboard, which dynamically changes to accommodate whatever you’re doing at the time, revealing only buttons that would be of use to that particular function.

The secret sauce on the ROKR E8 is its keyboard, which changes when it’s used as a phone, music device and camera.

The surface of the ROKR E8 has no physical keys at all. In its off or resting state, in fact, it’s just a black surface with rows of tiny, unlabeled bumps. But this surface is actually divided into two: The top half works like a typical cellphone display while the bottom half projects virtual keys onto its surface and uses the rows of bumps to give these keys a physical presence.

When making a call or sending a text message, the ROKR’s surface displays a regular phone keypad. But as soon as a music shortcut button is pressed, the surface morphs into five buttons for music navigation: play/pause, seek forward, seek backward, shuffle and repeat. Pressing another shortcut button to start the ROKR’s camera mode shows four buttons for zooming in or out, switching to playback mode or changing to video. Motorola (MOT) calls this its ModeShift technology. Though the lower half of the ROKR can be considered a touch device, objects can’t be manipulated with gestures like pinching or dragging as with the Apple (AAPL) iPhone’s multitouch screen.

Overall, I found that the ROKR E8′s dynamic keyboard gave me a real advantage in figuring out how to use the multi-functionality of the phone. Its changing keyboard eliminated a lot of guesswork and time that I may have spent hunting through menus for a command. And true to its name, the ROKR (pronounced “rocker”) is focused on its music phone functionality with an FM radio, a neatly organized music menu and a speaker that has convincingly simulated surround-sound effects.

But this ROKR didn’t always jam out in perfect pitch. A touch-sensitive semicircle in the center is meant to make scrolling through long lists easier — much like Apple Inc.’s iPod wheel. But because this tool on the ROKR isn’t a full circle, scrolling felt unsatisfying. You also can’t buy songs with the ROKR, or even mark songs for purchasing later on a PC.

And while the morphing buttons look futuristic and hip, I experienced a few instances when the phone was slow to react after I touched a button, as when I touched the seek forward button while listening to music or when I chose to open an MMS message I sent to a friend.

Twenty-two tiny bumps dot half of the ROKR’s surface, and the surface below each bump vibrates when it’s touched to provide sensory feedback. Nothing is ever physically pressed down, though the vibration response leads you to think otherwise.

A smart switch on the side can be held down to turn it on or off, or switched into the upward position to lock the device, preventing accidental calls or battery drain.

The ROKR E8 runs on T-Mobile’s (DT) GPRS/EDGE connection, which felt sluggish at times. And not even the dynamic keyboard on this device could help make email or instant messaging easier.

It has a two-megapixel still camera with an 8x digital zoom that can change into video-camera mode in one step. Two gigabytes of memory are built into the ROKR, and more memory can be added via a microSD card slot, which is hidden beneath a back panel. A one-gigabyte microSD card comes with the ROKR. Without this card, the internal memory will hold about 1,500 songs.

With help from a USB cord and Windows (MSFT) Media Player 11, I transferred over 200 MP3s onto my ROKR. Album art that transferred with my songs appeared on-screen as songs played, and the speaker gave off a powerful sound. Built-in stereo Bluetooth can send tunes to Bluetooth-enabled stereo speakers, and it took me just a few seconds to pair my ROKR with Motorola’s EQ5 speakers.

A preloaded program by Shazam lets users hold the ROKR up to any speaker playing a song, and in 30 seconds, identifies the track title, artist, and album art. I held the ROKR up to my alarm clock radio and it worked perfectly. But once these songs are recognized, the track data can’t be used to buy the song or even to transfer a request to buy that song to a PC for buying online at another time.

The ROKR’s FM radio will work only if its included stereo headset is plugged in because the headset has the radio antenna. But once the headset is plugged in, the radio will play via the ROKR’s speaker.

The ROKR E8 has an audio technology called Crystal Talk, which Motorola says allows your phone to perform better in loud environments. Even if the person on the other end of your phone is in a noisy place, the company says Crystal Talk will raise the volume to improve the call. I tested this by speaking to someone on the ROKR while turning a hairdryer on beside the phone. I then used a regular Razr cellphone. The person on the other end said that the ROKR sounded slightly, but noticeably, better.

Motorola’s ROKR E8 is a head-turning phone with many built-in advances that give it a smarter interface. One might wonder what other ModeShift functions the company will integrate into its devices in the future, such as a full QWERTY keyboard. The overall idea of a dynamic keyboard is a step ahead for small devices. It forces the phone to work more intuitively and improves navigation while looking stylishly sleek at the same time.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

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