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Swivl, the Swiveling Smartphone Dock, Slashes Price

Lauren Goode — Thu, 03 May 2012 13:04:41 +0000

Swivl, the crowdfunded swiveling smartphone dock that uses sensors to follow your movement like a miniature cameraman, is getting a price cut.

A new version of Swivl, called Swivl-it, will cost $129 — down from $179 — and will come with fewer bells and whistles. Swivl-it will still automatically move from side to side, as the original device does, but it will require manual vertical tilting. Also, the little remote that comes with the new Swivl won’t act as a microphone, though the accessory is upgradeable for $49 if you’d prefer that it work as a mic.

I first reviewed Swivl for AllThingsD back in March, and while I thought it was a cool device that video bloggers and non-techies alike would appreciate, I wrote at the time that $179 was a lot to pay for a moving iPhone stand.

The dock physically supports other devices, such as an Android smartphone, a slim digital camera and even the ol’ Flip camera, but the compatible Swivl mobile app only works with iPhone, which means other smartphone users couldn’t use the microphone-equipped Swivl remote to record their voices directly to the app.

The microphone is a nifty accessory, but Swivl maker Satarii is hoping a more basic version will turn the heads of non-iPhone users.

It’s a good time for a price cut, too, since other products like this Kickstarter project perform many of the same functions as the Swivl, and for a few dollars less, too.

Apple's TV Remote of the Future? It's Already Here, In Your Hands.

Peter Kafka — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 17:12:37 +0000

It’s possible that, one day, Tim Cook will stand up onstage and show off a “real” Apple TV set — an integrated box/screen/entertainment device – that will replace whatever’s sitting in your living room now.

Another possibility: Over time, Apple simply builds an Apple TV set right in front of us, in bits and pieces — so slowly that we don’t really notice it.

Take the remote, for instance. PatentlyApple has its hands on an Apple application for an “advanced TV remote” that would offer some cool features. Like the ability to automatically scan your other devices and figure out the right code to control them, instead of requiring users to use a combination of manuals and trial and error.

At least as important is that, while Apple’s patent, filed back in 2010, could be a standalone device, the application makes it seem much more likely that users will use their iPhones, iPods or iPads to control their TVs.

Which makes sense, because Apple is already offering a “Remote” iOS app that handles some basic functions for its existing Apple TV. That is: There’s a good chance you’re just a download away from owning a bona-fide Apple TV remote already.

This kind of incremental building may be even more important on the content side, which is the real key to an Apple TV: If it’s simply a very nice screen that offers the same content choices that TV viewers already have, then it’s just a very nice screen. And for years, Apple has been making attempts to wrangle different TV choices, at different price points, without much success.

But instead of one grand, sweeping video package, Apple may end up just cobbling together an array of offerings, piece by piece.

To wit: The latest refresh of Apple TV didn’t offer any new content, but it did make it easier for Apple users to buy the content that’s already there. Anyone with an iTunes account can subscribe to Netflix, and soon, Major League Baseball’s MLB.TV service, directly from Apple, without having to pull out a credit card again.

Netflix + iTunes + baseball games won’t make up a full suite of programming choices for most people. But now that Reed Hastings and Bob Bowman have agreed to let Tim Cook handle their billing for them, more media moguls will likely follow in their footsteps. Get enough of them in there, and you could end up with something really compelling.

A Swiveling Dock for Shooting Hands-Free Smartphone Videos

Lauren Goode — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 13:00:40 +0000

Whether you’re a video blogger or just like to use your smartphone to make home movies and video chat, you’ve probably struggled with angling your phone or using your hands to demonstrate items while you’re chatting.

A new device called Swivl, made by a California-based company called Satarii, holds up your phone or digital camera and allows you to swivel it around with a small wireless remote. The product has been in the works for two years now, and will begin shipping this week. It is currently only available through the Swivl Web site.

[ See post to watch video ]

In my five-day test of Swivl, I found it to be fun and easy to use, especially when I was using it with my iPhone, since Swivl has an app specifically for the iPhone and iPod touch. The Swivl base followed my movements around the room when I directed it with the remote, although its vertical movement wasn’t as smooth as its side-to-side movement. And I really liked that the Swivl remote doubles as a microphone.

While Swivl is a nifty tool for both serious video makers and average consumers who make home movies or just want a hands-free video chat experience, its price point is its biggest drawback: $179 is a lot to pay for a moving iPhone stand — especially one with limited functionality with non-Apple devices. If you just want something to mount your iPhone on while shooting video, there are cheaper options, such as the $30 Oona smartphone stand; the $20 Glif, which attaches to a tripod and allows for tilting the iPhone at different angles; and a bunch of tabletop- and mini-tripods priced at around $10.

But let’s say you believe Swivl’s 360-degree swiveling capability a must-have. Considering that Swivl does pack a bit more technology than a regular iPhone mount, it’s pretty compact. The Swivl’s black plastic base is about the size of a large bagel, and weighs in at just over three-quarters of a pound. It’s lighter than a device like the aluminum Owle, a sturdy mount that comes with a lens for enhancing iPhone videos. It’s light enough that when I was transporting the Swivl around town in a large shoulder bag, I forgot I was carrying it.

The Swivl base has two bright green buttons on it: The Record button, which also acts as the Power button, and the Action button, which directs the Swivl up and down. The base has a folding grip that props up your iPhone or camera. A wire with a connector wraps around the base of the Swivl for connecting your iPod touch or iPhone.

The Swivl remote is a flat, plastic, egg-shaped device that fit in the palm of my hand. It also has two buttons that mirror the functionality of the buttons on the base, and a clip for attaching to clothing.

The grip on the Swivl base has a serrated wheel for adjusting the width of the section that holds your device. I was able to fit my iPhone 4 to it without a problem; it also squeezed in an older HTC Droid phone model. Since Swivl also comes with an accessory that has a standard tripod screw, I was able prop up a Flip camera and a Samsung SH100 digital camera (those devices didn’t fit within the Swivl grip). Technically, it could also prop up a DSLR, but it’s not recommended by the manufacturer, and when I tried to attach a Canon 60D camera, it felt very unstable.

The Swivl remote uses two AAA batteries, and the Swivl base uses two AA batteries. The company estimated that Swivl’s battery should last four hours at a minimum. In my test, I used the remote to move the Swivl around intermittently for about six hours before the base died. It’s important to note that your iPhone or iPod touch won’t charge when connected to the Swivl base, even though it uses a standard Apple connector.

I tested the Swivl using an iPhone 4. Activating the Swivl was easy: I turned on the base, holding down the Power button, then turned on the remote. The light on each device briefly flashed red before turning green, signaling that the two components were now wirelessly connected.

Then I opened up Swivl’s free mobile application, which only works with the iPod touch, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. Satarii says it is planning to release an Android version around this time next year.

After I had the app ready to go, I connected my iPhone to the wire that comes with the Swivl base, and lastly, slid my iPhone into Swivl’s grip. I prefer to shoot videos with the phone positioned horizontally, but it was supported just as well when I propped the phone up vertically.

The app uses the built-in camera capabilities of the phone, so at first glance it looks like you’re just using the phone’s camera. But by using the remote, I was able to start and stop recording video on my phone without having to reach over and hit the Record button. I shot a few test videos, and my clips were stored and could be played back within the Swivl app. The app also includes the option to save the video clips to the iPhone’s camera roll, email them and share them directly to YouTube.

The settings section of the Swivl app includes a battery gauge for the device and offers a choice between iPhone audio capture and Swivl audio capture.

The app is only available for the iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and iPod touch; so with other devices, such as my Flip camera, I had to reach over and manually press the record button. But the swiveling function still worked.

Now for the “swiveling” part of Swivl.

I spent several hours recording videos and staging interviews with a friend while using the Swivl. When we passed the remote back and forth, the Swivl moved to follow whoever was holding the remote, though the movement wasn’t as immediate as having an actual cameraperson follow with a camera.

The side-to-side movement of Swivl was a lot smoother than its vertical movement, however, which I activated by holding down the Action button on the remote. Satarii co-founder Brian Lamb said this was by design, and that the vertical movement is really just meant for initial set-up of the shot, while the horizontal movement is meant to be used during the video-recording experience.

Swivl does turn a full 360 degrees, but I found that when I remained in one place it took some pretty emphatic arm movements with the remote in hand. It worked better when I stood up and slowly walked around the Swivl while aiming the remote at it.

One of the bonus features of the Swivl is that the remote acts as a wireless microphone when your iPhone is attached to the base and you’re using the app. To capture ideal audio levels, the company recommends that the remote be located about a foot away from the user’s mouth. I found this to be accurate: When I brought the remote closer, my voice sounded irritatingly loud and scratchy in the recorded video.

I inadvertently discovered another function of the Swivl, too: I could control the movement of the device with other objects, such as my phone, a foil-wrapped sandwich, even my knee, as long as I had the remote turned on and in the vicinity of the base. This is because the signal that’s sent from the remote can be reflected off some surfaces, allowing for some interesting experimentation with the Swivl.

The Swivl is a fun device. For an iPhone or iPod touch owner who is really itching for a hands-free, mobile video tool that will follow your movements around the room, the Swivl does what it promises to do. But it’s expensive. Consumers less concerned with having the swiveling option have plenty of cheaper smartphone and camera mounting choices.

Still Waiting on Office for iPad? OnLive's New Subscription Service Has Office, Flash and More.

Lauren Goode — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:55:48 +0000

For those of you still holding your breath while you wait for an official Microsoft Office app to come to iPad, here’s something that might help in the interim: OnLive Desktop Plus, a premium, $4.99-a-month version of the OnLive Desktop app for iPad and other tablet devices. The newest version of the app offers a cloud-based Internet Explorer 9, Adobe Flash, and PDF capabilities, in addition to the full Office suite and the “accelerated browsing experience” that OnLive created for fast pushing and pulling of data on a remote-access desktop.

How Touchscreens Are Forcing the Reinvention of Keyboards

Lauren Goode — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 23:16:08 +0000

Last week at the Consumer Electronics Show, an Israel-based company called Snapkeys invited showgoers into a booth to test its new keyboard technology. Within a few minutes of using it, the company said, people were already getting the hang of Snapkeys, which consolidates the letters of the alphabet into just four keys.

The idea behind Snapkeys isn’t new; the company says it has been working on it for more than 10 years.

A snapshot of Snapkeys' redesigned keyboard.

But the more recent emergence of touchscreen devices — and the complaints from even avid users about typing on them — means that Snapkeys’ research and development has been serendipitously well-timed.

“We think the end user is finally ready for an upgrade to the old Qwerty keyboard, after almost 150 years,” said Ryan Ghassabian, a Snapkeys business development manager. “Today, there are just too many new devices — phones, tablets — that are changing everything.”

“And Qwerty is just not meant to be on touchscreen devices,” he added.

Snapkeys is just one of a growing number of devices and applications that aim to change the way users interact with the traditional keyboard.

That doesn’t necessarily mean altering the layout of the Qwerty keyboard. The popular keyboard add-on Swype, recently acquired by Nuance, uses a standard layout, but lets users trace a word with their fingers.

While many companies work on technology for onscreen keyboards, still others are trying to create smart, ultra-portable or “invisible” keyboards.

Celluon's Magic Cube laser-projected keyboard.

Korea-based Celluon, which works on portable input applications, has introduced a “Magic Cube” device that connects wirelessly to an iPad or iPhone and projects a laser keyboard image onto an opaque surface for users to “type” on. The idea is that the user would only have to tote the palm-sized, battery-operated cube around, instead of a full keyboard.

Mozilla Labs’s Seabird project uses two Pico projectors to spit out keyboard imagery on either side of a smartphone to establish a full keyboard for typing.

Others believe the answer to typing on touchscreens lies in somehow adding a tactile set of keys — ones that people can actually feel, as they’re accustomed to — to those sleek glass displays.

Part of this stems from the simple fact that many consumers find typing on raised keys easier than typing on touchscreens. A study conducted last year at the University of Washington’s Information School in conjunction with Microsoft Research found that when users typed on a flat surface lacking tactile feedback, they were subject to inadvertent touches, and typing speed was 31 percent slower than it was with a physical keyboard.

Five years ago, manufacturers like Nokia and Samsung were trying everything from vibrating screens to sensor pads underneath keys to create the sensation of keys you could feel on touchscreens.

And consumers seem to want options beyond just attaching a full keyboard to a mobile phone or tablet. Last fall, two Seattle-based designers received $201,400 dollars in pledges on crowdfunding site Kickstarter, after having set an initial goal of just $10,000. Their product: A thin, light keyboard overlay called the TouchFire that goes over the iPad’s touchscreen and creates a sense of keys.

But tactile touchscreen tech still hasn’t made its way into the mainstream.

While physical buttons certainly have their advantages, software keyboards, in the meantime, are showing a tremendous amount of potential. For example, keyboards can simply be reconfigured based on context. When in a browser, dedicated keys can be presented for “www” and “.com”. If the entry is for a ZIP code, a screen with only numbers can be offered.

Also, soft keyboards can do interesting things using prediction. Based on what the next character is likely to be, the software can actually assume which letter is likely to be pressed next, making those keys bigger, either physically or just by favoring those keys.

Above all, software keyboards, unlike physical ones, disappear entirely when they are not needed. The trend away from physical keyboards, which began with the iPhone, has continued unabated, with full touchscreen smartphones making up a steadily increasing portion of the market.

Chris Harrison, a Ph.D. candidate in Carnegie Mellon’s Human Computer Interaction Institute, says that while tactile feedback is “kind of the holy grail of input,” we’re still years away from tech that offers true tactility on touchscreens. “Right now, there are ways you can take really inaccurate input and make it usable — look at something like BlindType — so that’s what you’ll see getting pushed out in the next two or three years. Maybe in five years or more, we’ll see the technological breakthrough of ‘shape-shifting’ the keys on touch surfaces, so people can feel them.”

OmniTouch: A new kind of "Palm" phone?

Harrison has spent the past two and a half years working with Microsoft on skin-sensory computing technology, called Skinput. The technology includes specialized sensors that gauge vibrations happening inside of the human body and enable graphical multitouch. The idea, basically, is that by tapping a projected image on your forearm, you can tell your computer — or another electronic device, like your TV — what to do.

More recently, Harrison and Microsoft have retailored the tech, which is now called OmniTouch, to use it on variety of surfaces — not just the epidermis, but also walls, tables, and notepads.

And while Harrison is laser-focused on changing the way we input information, he expressed a different sentiment than Snapkeys does it when it comes to the keyboard.

“The physical keyboard is an amazing thing, and the fact that it hasn’t changed much in almost 150 years is a good thing,” he said. “If you brought back an old keyboard, people will still be able to type just as well, and there aren’t many technologies as durable as that.”

Readers, which do you prefer for typing: Touchscreens or tactile keys?

(Magic Cube photo courtesy of Flickr/AsiaClassified)

AllThingsD’s Ina Fried contributed to this report.

Iridium Makes Satellite Connections as Easy as Wi-Fi

Arik Hesseldahl — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 18:15:57 +0000

When you work on an oil platform in the middle of the ocean or in some remote desert somewhere and you need to make a phone call, chances are your iPhone or BlackBerry just isn’t going to do you much good. Wireless phone networks tend to work where people live and work, and not where they don’t. The same thing is essentially true for Wi-Fi networks.

It’s for reasons like this — and in no small part thanks to the fact that the U.S. has been engaged in two or three wars — that the Iridium satellite phone system that once seemed to perfectly symbolize the overreaching ambitions of the late 1990s telecom boom exists. Following the 1999 bankruptcy of the original Motorola-backed venture, it has undergone a fascinating reorganization and rebirth over the last decade. Iridium has not only survived but thrived as a data and voice platform that companies in specialized segments turn to when they want to build products and services designed to make voice and data connections possible in places where no other means are available. I talked with CEO Matthew Desch about all this in June.

So today, Iridium made a handful of announcements that give some interesting indications of future directions. One is a Wi-Fi-enabled device called the AxcessPoint. Think of it as a satellite-enabled Mi-Fi that will get an iPhone or notebook PC or Wi-Fi-ready BlackBerry connected to the Iridium data network from whatever ridiculously remote spot in the world you find yourself.

The AxcessPoint requires a physical connection to an Iridium phone, and it just so happens that the company launched one of those today, too, called the Iridium Extreme. You might think this would have been an obvious need before, but this phone has been ruggedized so it can survive the rough and tumble that its users might put it through. The company says it’s built to Military Standard 810F, which is a fancy way of saying something like it takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

There’s not much need for making, say, a satellite-ready standalone smartphone, Desch told me when we talked last week. (That’s him holding the new phone and Wi-Fi gadget in the picture.) There is value in making your existing phones work in some way with the Iridium network. “We think it should be easy for other personal devices to have a satellite connection,” he said.

The connections aren’t exactly speedy. But they’re good enough to handle email and basic Web-browsing. Don’t bother trying to stream “Glee” via Hulu over an Iridium connection, though if you’re using it, you probably have other things on your mind.

Probably more important than the access point or the phone is what Iridium calls the brains of the hardware. If you have your own idea for a product that would connect to the Iridium system, you can license the technology and build it around its Core device, which is a credit-card-size voice and data module that some 200 or more Iridium partners use to build devices to track things and monitor equipment in remote places.

Those partners are making Iridium’s data business bigger. While voice is still its main business, accounting for about 60 percent of sales as of Iridium’s most recent quarter, data services, also known as machine-to-machine or M2M, are growing at a nice clip. The number of M2M subscribers surged year over year to 146,000 from 89,000 at an average revenue per user of about $22.

On the news, Iridium shares — the company went public in 2009 after being acquired by an investment company — rose by 25 cents, or more than 3 percent, to $7.50 a share, though they’re still down from where they were at the start of the year.

Apple TV: Streaming and Renting From Devices

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 02:02:15 +0000

Of all the set-top boxes designed to bring online and computer content to your TV, perhaps the best known is Apple TV. But, unlike its maker’s other products, Apple TV hasn’t caught on in a big way. In fact, Apple CEO Steve Jobs calls it a “hobby.”

[ See post to watch video ]

Still, the company isn’t giving up. This fall it brought out a radically revamped Apple TV at a much lower price—$99, down from $229—and with a different philosophy. While earlier versions contained a hard disk and allowed you to purchase and store movies, music and TV shows, the new Apple TV is all about streaming and renting. It can’t store content, although, like its predecessors, it can transmit to your TV screen content stored on your networked home computers.

Perhaps the coolest feature of the new Apple TV is that it allows you to wirelessly beam video and audio from an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to the TV screen. A new feature called AirPlay in the latest software on these portable devices makes this possible. So, if you have a video or photos on, say, an iPad, you can just tap an icon on its screen to view them on a TV via Apple TV instead of on the device’s smaller screen. (AirPlay also works wirelessly from the free iTunes software on PCs and Macs.)

Apple’s Steve Jobs announcing the new release of Apple TV earlier this fall.

I’ve been testing the new Apple TV, including trying out AirPlay using various devices, and found that it performs as advertised. It has a clean, easy interface, does a great job of streaming content from your own computers, and it allows you to rent TV shows at just 99 cents an episode. It’s even almost invisible next to your TV—a 4-inch-square black box less than an inch tall. And setup is easy.

But it has some significant downsides. The most important of these is a very limited selection of Internet video sources. If you want a set-top box that allows you to watch a wide range of video from the Web, Apple TV isn’t it.

Apple TV is now essentially a modestly priced adapter that streams video, audio and photos to your HDTV from three main sources: your own computers, Apple’s iTunes service plus a few other online sources, and content on your portable Apple devices using AirPlay.

It’s the polar opposite of the new Google TV, which tries to encompass the entire Internet but is too complicated for mainstream users and costs hundreds of dollars. Apple is offering much less variety in content sources, but with a much simpler interface and a tiny remote with just seven buttons, versus the keyboard or minikeyboard used with Google TV.

Apple TV is still tied heavily to the company’s own iTunes service. The new model now also offers Netflix, which is nicely integrated into Apple’s user interface, but is very common on other set-top boxes, including the less expensive Roku models. YouTube is accessible from the new device, though it was present on the older model as well. The device can’t deliver other video services, nor is it designed to bring up Web pages on your TV.

And, even within Apple’s own iTunes service, which is Apple TV’s source for a la carte rental of TV shows and movies, the content is limited. For its 99-cent TV show rentals, the device mainly offers programs from ABC, Disney, Fox, PBS and the BBC. If your favorite show is on NBC, CBS or many other networks, you can’t rent it on Apple TV, nor can you get to the Web to view it. Alas, even within those networks, some of the programs are old and I couldn’t find some popular shows, like “Modern Family” on ABC or “American Idol” on Fox. (Fox, like The Wall Street Journal, is owned by News Corp.)

You can still buy TV shows from the excluded networks, or shows unavailable for rental, on your computers and stream them to the TV via Apple TV, but that is a more complicated process.

The Apple TV set-top box with TV showing 99-cent TV show rentals from iTunes.

Apple claims the largest selection of high-definition movies online, and says many are available the same day they appear on DVD. Movie rentals start at $2.99 for standard-definition versions and $3.99 for high definition, though many are $4.99. Both movies and TV shows can be kept for 30 days, but, once you start playing them, the clock starts on a short window before they expire. In the case of movies, the window is 24 hours; for TV shows, it’s 48 hours. You can pause and resume, or watch them repeatedly, within those windows.

In my tests, video and audio quality were excellent. Programs started rapidly, and I never saw any stuttering or buffering delays. Like the older Apple TV models, the new one did a very good job of streaming to the TV content from both PCs and Macs running iTunes on my home network. In fact, the process of setting this up has been made simpler. Watching slideshows of family photos was simple and rewarding.

Searching for a TV show or movie was tedious, because it requires you to peck out letters from an onscreen keyboard with the little remote. (This is why Google uses a keyboard, but that isn’t a welcome device in many living rooms.) However, there’s an alternative. Apple offers a free iPhone and iPad app that can control the Apple TV, and it has a built in virtual keyboard for much faster searching.

AirPlay worked well in my tests. I tried it on both an iPad and an iPhone, and was easily able to switch a video or song from the device itself to the Apple TV, and thus, to the TV screen and speakers. This requires merely clicking on an icon that looks like a wide-screen TV with an arrow beneath it, and then selecting “Apple TV” as a destination.

I also tried AirPlay on both a Mac and Windows laptop using the latest version of iTunes, and it worked fine. On all the AirPlay-equipped devices, you can also multitask. Once you’ve started beaming a video to the Apple TV, you can do other things on the originating device without interrupting the video. For instance, as I write this paragraph in Microsoft Word, I am watching a video beamed to my TV via AirPlay from iTunes on my laptop.

But AirPlay has some limitations. On the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch it will only beam video to the Apple TV from Apple’s own Video, iPod and Photos apps, plus the YouTube app. On computers, it only works with iTunes. Some third-party apps on the hand-held devices can use it with audio, though not video.

Also, switching the video stream to the Apple TV can take a few seconds, during which the video keeps playing, so you often have to rewind.

Overall, Apple TV is a reasonably priced, well-designed device. It is especially attractive for viewing videos and photos from your computers, and Apple devices, on your TV. But it doesn’t deliver most Internet video sources, or even all online network programs.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Google TV: No Need to Tune In Just Yet

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 02:07:11 +0000

The quest to bring the full range of Internet video to your TV in a simple way continues, but it isn’t going well. The latest team to try—Google, Logitech and Sony—has made an admirably bold effort, but, like others before, it has missed the mark, at least in its first effort.

[ See post to watch video ]

Google TV—software built into hardware made by Logitech and Sony—is very different from competing products, such as Apple TV and Roku. Unlike the others, it aims to merge Web video and regular TV in one simple interface, via one box, with one easily usable controller. Also, unlike the others, it isn’t limited to just customized channels that bring specific Web-video services to the screen. It lets you browse to almost any website with video, and play it on the TV.

But, for now, I’d relegate Google TV to the category of a geek product, not a mainstream, easy solution ready for average users. It’s too complicated, in my view, and some of its functions fall short.

You can get Google TV in three ways. One is through a small, black $300 set-top box called the Logitech Revue. The second is through a special Sony Blu-ray player that costs $400. The third is through a Sony TV with built-in Internet that starts at $600. All are much costlier than the $99 Apple TV or the $60 Roku, but they offer more of the Internet’s video and make the effort to integrate it with cable or satellite programming.

Logitech Revue for Google TV

Google TV cleverly piggybacks onto your existing cable or satellite box and can control it, at least to some extent. So there is no switching of inputs or remotes required, at least theoretically, to go between Internet video and regular TV—something that has plagued competing systems. But if you try to watch an Internet version of a show from a big network site or from Hulu on your Google TV device, it’s blocked, because the studios want to channel those shows through your cable or satellite box.

I tested Google TV using the Logitech Revue product, though I also met with Sony and had a briefing on their version, which looks and works pretty much the same. Setup took 12 steps and about 40 minutes and went pretty smoothly. It might have been worse if, as Logitech warns, your cable or satellite box requires you to install special cables to allow the Revue’s controller to operate it, or if you use a separate audio system. You need an HDTV with HDMI jacks on your TV and cable or satellite box to use the Logitech Revue.

The controller on the Revue is a wireless keyboard. Yes, that’s right, a keyboard, something you might find unattractive in the living room and no better than what you might use if you just plugged a PC into the TV.

Logitech does offer an optional “mini” controller for $130, but it is essentially a tinier keyboard with minuscule buttons and track pad crammed into a smaller space. It is more complex to operate than the big keyboard and much more complicated than a typical TV remote. Sony’s box comes with a similar, complex-looking mini-controller.

The key to Google TV, however, is the software, not the hardware. There is a home screen with a list of core functions, but, Google being Google, the principle activity is meant to be search. You just start typing what you want to see and Google TV brings up a list of hits from both regular TV and the Internet.

Unfortunately, in my tests, this search-and-viewing process was frustrating. For one thing, you only get a few results, and in my experience, they usually weren’t the right ones. When I was looking for the telecast of the Mark Twain Award ceremony for Tina Fey, all Google pointed me to were short clips on YouTube. I had to do a full Web search (a standard option in the brief list Google gives you) and then navigate through a standard Google results screen, which was unreadable at 10 feet without zooming in, to find the full show on the PBS website.

When I finally got to the PBS page, we watched the show, but it was noticeably pixelated on our large TV screen, even though my Internet connection is very fast.

In another case, I wanted to see the new Beatles-themed ads from Apple, but Google’s first results didn’t include them. The closest they came was an old fictional ad on the topic produced by a fan years ago. I manually navigated to Apple’s website, where the ads were prominent, but found that Google TV doesn’t support QuickTime, Apple’s video format. (The company says it plans to do so in a future release.) I knew the ads were also on YouTube, so I went there and eventually found them, with some effort, but they stuttered on playback.

To use the Logitech Revue for Google TV, you need an HDTV with HDMI jacks on your TV and cable or satellite box.

I was similarly frustrated by finding and using regular TV shows from my cable box. Unless you have a box from Dish network, Google TV can’t search in your recorded shows, or allow you, when it finds a show coming up, to set it to record. You’ll likely switch to your regular remote to do those things, which defeats Google’s aim of integration.

Also confusing is Google TV’s home screen, which has overlapping categories. For instance, there is a Queue, for some of your favorite podcasts and sites, and a Bookmarks for others. There is an Applications menu that takes you to specially designed apps that spare you from navigating the regular Web, such as the Netflix video service or Pandora Radio. But there is also a Spotlight category that has customized, simplified websites that, to an average user, amount to the same thing. And, so far, you can only search for the names of most applications, not any content they contain.

Google plans to add the Android Market of third-party apps to Google TV. That could be good, adding more functionality. But it also risks adding more complexity, unless Google redesigns the interface.

Google TV has its strong points. The integration of Web video and regular TV, while flawed, is a smart move. There is even a picture-in-picture feature that lets you keep watching TV while, say, using Twitter or any other Web function. And the Logitech box has an optional $150 camera that allows you to make free video calls. It worked well in my one test. Logitech also allows you to control the Revue from an iPhone or Android app.

But this is a 1.0 product. For now, I’d suggest average users dying to watch Internet video on a TV, either plug in a PC or use one of the wireless systems, like Intel’s Wi-Di, that wirelessly beam video from a PC to a TV. Or, you could wait for Google TV to improve.

Find all his columns and videos at walt.allthingsd.com Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Android Apps Transmitting Private Data

Beth Callaghan — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 17:55:02 +0000

A new study shows that many popular Android apps transmit private user data to advertising networks without the user’s consent or knowledge. Researchers from Duke, Penn State and Intel Labs developed an application called TaintDroid, which detects such transmissions, and tested 30 apps from the Android Market–half of which were found to be sending GPS coordinates to remote servers. The developers of the TaintDroid application plan to make it available to the public to enable user awareness of data collection.

Sony Enhances PlayStation to Take On Nintendo's Wii

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 01:25:44 +0000

Bocce, part of the Sports Champions game, which comes with Move.

If you’re still just pressing buttons to play video games, now you have another reason to get up off the couch and really get into the action of a video game.

This week, Sony’s PlayStation 3 continues the motion sensor video-gaming trend with its PlayStation Move (us.playstation.com). Move comes in a $100 bundle for people who already own the PlayStation 3, or $400 for the system and the bundle.

[ See post to watch video ]

Nintendo helped spark this trend in 2006 with its Wii, a video-game console, which is played using remotes with built-in motion sensors. The Wii inspired all sorts of people to play video games—including some who never played one before—because its remotes weren’t intimidating and worked with gestures familiar to people, like swinging a tennis racket or rolling a bowling ball.

Sony’s PlayStation move takes this concept a step further. Its Move motion controller remote has three built-in sensors and a sphere on one end, making it look a bit like a microphone. The sphere’s position can be tracked in 3-D space by a camera called the PlayStation Eye, which plugs into the PlayStation 3 and sits atop your TV. This camera lets the PlayStation know how you’re moving the controller and where you’re holding it. Instead of a camera, the Wii uses a sensor bar that emits infrared signals detected by the Wii remote.

The Sony PlayStation Move bundle comes with a motion controller remote that has three built-in sensors and a sphere on one end, making it look a bit like a microphone.

Sony (SNE) claims these enhancements give PlayStation Move precision and accuracy, and for the most part, I found this to be true. I especially liked when virtual images of the equipment I was “using” appeared on the TV screen, which made it seem like I was actually holding a bat, sword or tennis racket. I was so engaged with the on-screen images, I almost forgot I had a controller in my hand.

My experiences with the Nintendo Wii, which costs $200 less than the PlayStation Move and PlayStation 3 combined, have always been enjoyable. I’ve found many of the Wii’s games to be approachable for almost anyone. Nintendo helped its cause a year ago when it brought out the Wii MotionPlus—a small accessory that plugs into the Wii remote to give its gestures added sensitivity; in my tests, it worked well. The Wii’s action will be enough for some not-so-serious video-game players not willing to pay more for another console.

The PlayStation Move will get some competition in November when Microsoft releases Kinect for the Xbox 360. This video-game console tracks body movements but doesn’t require a remote control. Instead, gestures like hand waves work to control games, making one’s entire body a sort of remote control.

I’m not a serious gamer. As always, this column is written for mainstream consumers and I tested PlayStation Move with those people in mind. I played games like table tennis and disc golf from the Sports Champions game that comes with the PlayStation Move bundle, as well as downloadable titles like a precision block-building game called Tumble.

I also played EyePet, a game that involves taking care of a creature by washing it, dressing it in stylish costumes and playing with it.

In games like Tumble, I found that the PlayStation Move motion-control remote generated precise movements such as the ability to tilt a cube exactly the way I wanted to get it to stand on a stack of five blocks—or in one case, accidentally cause the stack to crash to the ground. Likewise, while I played table tennis, I quickly figured out how a slight flick of my wrist could generate more spin on the ball in a way that felt more realistic than with the Nintendo Wii.

Archery, part of the Sports Champions game, which comes with Move.

I was impressed by the detailed animation and scenes in the PlayStation Move games that I played. In disc golf, for example, I played against three opponents who each had their own set of unique celebration flips or dances. And the golf courses in the game showed trees and water hazards that looked pretty realistic. A special bird’s eye view followed my disc’s trajectory from the second I flicked the wrist holding my motion controller until it landed.

EyePet is especially fun—and not just for kids. I named my EyePet “Domino” and taught it to jump through a hoop that virtually appeared on-screen at the end of my remote. I gave Domino a “checkup” by turning the motion controller into an X-ray-like device. This told me his brain needed a boost of creativity but his heart was happy.

There are currently 15 games that will work with PlayStation Move and a spokesman for Sony says 15 additional games will be available by the holiday season. The average price for these games is $40, though downloadable games cost less, including the $10 Tumble.

The $100 PlayStation Move bundle has the motion controller, PlayStation Eye camera and a game called Sports Champions, which includes disc golf, gladiator dual, archery, beach volleyball, bocce and table tennis.

The PlayStation Eye camera can track four controllers at once, though some games—like Start the Party—are designed to let people pass their controllers from one person to the next. Other webcams can’t be substituted for the PlayStation Eye to use with the PlayStation 3.

A $20 shooting attachment fits over the controller and makes it look and act like a handgun. This can be used in first-person shooter games like Killzone 3, due out in February, as well as in arcade shooter types of games like The Shoot, available in October. (I didn’t get these games in time to test them.)

If you already own a PlayStation 3, you’ll enjoy the added precision and fun that the $100 PlayStation Move bundle offers. But for casual gamers who don’t want to spend so much, the less expensive Nintendo’s Wii will probably suffice.

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com.

New TiVo Remote Tackles Clunky Text-Entry

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 23:49:09 +0000

TiVo owners are a proud bunch. Give them a few minutes to tell you why they adore their digital video recorder, and they might get googly-eyed talking about their favorite WishList that auto-records every George Clooney appearance on TV. Or they’ll wax on about a time when TiVo made the perfect suggestion of a new show to record, or the way its trademark bubble popping sound effects make them smile after a long day at work.

[ See post to watch video ]

What they won’t tell you are the things that drive them crazy about TiVo. Chief among them is the arcane text-entry system, which requires hitting directional arrows to move a cursor around a screen of letters and numbers, selecting one and then repeating again and again to spell out an entire word. Letter by letter, this hunt-and-peck process is enough to leave users yearning for a real keyboard.

This week, TiVo Inc. (TIVO) solved that problem with the $90 Slide, which the company says is the first remote control with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The Slide is shorter than normal TiVo remotes and is a bit chunkier for housing the slide-out keyboard. But it’s a pleasure to use and takes away the particularly painful process of typing text on a TiVo screen.

It’s currently available at TiVo.com and will be in Best Buy Co. (BBY) stores starting this weekend.

The Slide works with TiVo Premiere and Premiere XL, TiVo Series 3, TiVo HD and TiVo HD XL models, but it doesn’t come with any of these devices in place of the regular TiVo remote; rather, it’s a stand-alone accessory.

Until now, the next most expensive TiVo remote was the $50 TiVo Glo, so named because of its backlit buttons. The Slide remote also has buttons that glow in the dark, but its real selling point is its slide-out keyboard.

I tested the Slide with a TiVo Series 3 and found that its keyboard greatly eased the process of entering text in TiVo apps, as well as services like YouTube, Amazon Video on Demand, Netflix, TiVo search, WishList and Season Pass Manager. It even comes in handy when programming the remote: Rather than scrolling through hundreds of alphabetized TV models, I typed P-I-O and instantly jumped to Pioneer.

Unfortunately, this same trick doesn’t apply to other spots in TiVo. For example, I opened my Now Playing list and wanted to jump right to “Mad Men” by typing “M-A-D M-E-N.” Nothing happened. This list of recorded shows stays put and isn’t searchable by using the Slide remote’s full keyboard. A representative from TiVo said that the company is aware of the other opportunities to use the Slide QWERTY, such as for shortcuts like the one I tried, and that it is working on upgrades.

Instead of using infrared, the Slide communicates with a TiVo using Bluetooth technology. I was told by a TiVo representative that infrared isn’t reliable enough for sending text entries to the TiVo box, and that Bluetooth is a stronger, more reliable technology for this QWERTY remote. Another reason the Slide uses Bluetooth is that infrared needs a direct line of sight, and using the Slide’s QWERTY keyboard requires turning the remote sideways before sliding the keyboard out, meaning that the infrared blaster doesn’t face the TiVo when used.

TiVo’s new $90 Slide remote control has a keyboard that slides out from under the device when it’s rotated horizontally.

I plugged the remote’s included Bluetooth receiver into one of the TiVo’s USB ports, and my Slide remote instantly paired with the TiVo. Though many buttons worked automatically, including the TiVo, playback and channel buttons, other functions had to be programmed, including power, input, volume and mute. So I followed simple instructions to enter the correct four-digit code for the Pioneer Elite I was using, and seconds later, my Slide remote was fully functional with the TV and TiVo.

A symbol button on the Slide’s QWERTY keyboard can be held down to type the second function of each key, like hitting Alt on a BlackBerry. Other helpful keys include a back arrow that deletes letters and a clear button that erases text in the entry box. Without the Slide, users would have to slowly navigate to a delete icon on the screen and select it for each letter you wanted to erase.

Along with its full keyboard, the Slide also has a number panel on its far right side. Its left side offers a set of four directional arrows built around a select button, and I used these to navigate through TiVo screens.

If you tire of the Slide’s glow-in-the-dark buttons, hold the TiVo and thumbs down buttons together for five seconds to turn this feature off; holding TiVo and thumbs up turns it on again.

If you dread using your TiVo for text-entry searches and you’d like a better way of doing so, the Slide remote—while pricey—will save you from struggling with the old text-entry style. But it’s a shame that TiVo Inc. hasn’t yet created more smart shortcuts for this slide-out keyboard.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Comcast Shows Off an iPad Remote, Promises to Show Off iPad Shows, Too

Peter Kafka — Wed, 12 May 2010 22:38:38 +0000

The heads of the big TV companies are in Los Angeles this week, and all of them are making an effort to publicly embrace the brave new world of video. Not freaked out by it at all, okay?

Here’s Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, for instance, showing off a forthcoming iPad app that allows you to program and control your TV remotely.

Looks cool. And while I think there’s actually a limited-use case for programming your TV while you’re out of your house, the ability to search for shows on the app should be better than the crappy experience you get from your remote and set-top box.

So you’ll likely get more use out of this thing when you’re actually sitting on your couch in front of your TV.

Note that the app won’t allow you to actually watch shows on your iPad, but Roberts says that’s coming, too. Comcast (CMCSA) officials say the company has plans to allow cable subscribers to pull down whatever’s available via the company’s Fancast video portal to the Apple (AAPL) gadget.

Haven’t heard yet about timing and other details (3G versus Wi-Fi-only, etc.), and there will probably be some roadblocks. It’s unlikely, for instance, that you’ll get the Hulu feed that Fancast has, since Hulu plans to charge for access on the iPad. But people seem very happy with the ABC iPad app, so if Comcast can deliver something similar, it should expect some pats on the back.

Meanwhile, Time Warner (TWX) used the cable industry’s annual convention to announce that it has expanded its “TV Everywhere” program–people who pay for TV get access to the same shows on the Web–to include subscribers to Verizon’s (VZ) Fios TV service.

That makes sense inasmuch as Time Warner’s HBO picked Verizon as the first carrier partner for its HBO Go service a few months back.

The thread here is consistent: Cable providers and cable programmers want the world to know they’re happy to give you all the Web you want–as long subscribers keep paying their monthly bills and getting a bundle of TV channels in return.

If we ever get to the world where you can start buying individual channels–doesn’t matter if they’re on TV or the Web–then all bets are off and TV economics get radically reshuffled. But we’re not getting there anytime soon, and I’m not convinced we ever will.

New TiVo Mixes TV and Internet, but Falls Short

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:06:48 +0000

TiVo is the most famous third-party set-top box for your TV. The company popularized the idea of digital video recording and, in recent years, also has added to its devices the ability to deliver some Internet video content to the TV screen.

But TiVo is being squeezed. Cable and satellite companies now offer boxes with DVR capabilities. And other tech companies are rolling out competing set-top boxes to get Internet video to televisions.

[ See post to watch video ]

TiVo (TIVO) is responding with a new model, the TiVo Premiere, that aims to seamlessly blend programming from conventional TV and the Internet. It is slimmer, has a slicker user interface and holds more recorded programming than earlier models—45 hours of high-definition programs, up from 20 hours in the prior model, the TiVo HD. A more expensive version of the Premiere, the XL, has the same new software and holds 150 hours of HD shows.

I have been testing the new Premiere, and it worked as advertised, with conventional cable programming and with the available Internet sources TiVo (TIVO) supports. But, in my tests, it showed some flaws and, in my view, it doesn’t go nearly far enough in tapping the Internet.

Like prior TiVos, I’d rate the Premiere as better than the standard cable-company-supplied boxes I’ve seen. But, if you already own a recent-model TiVo, I don’t believe the Premiere justifies an upgrade, unless you need the greater built-in storage.

The TiVo Premiere goes on sale Sunday at Best Buy (BBY) stores for $300, plus a monthly fee of $13, or an annual or lifetime payment plan ranging from $129 for a year of service to $399 for the life of the device. The Premiere XL costs $500, plus the same fees. Both will be available Monday at tivo.com.

TiVo calls the Premiere “the One Box,” because it better integrates regular TV and Internet content. However, it actually has no additional Internet services compared with recent TiVo models. It allows you to get movies, TV shows and videos from YouTube, Amazon (AMZN), Netflix (NFLX) and Blockbuster (BBI), which are available on competing set-top boxes. It also includes a number of online music and photo services.

The company says a couple of added Internet services will be available later this year. These include the Pandora streaming music service and a widget system displaying things like news, stock prices and Twitter updates. However, the widgets won’t allow you to interact with Twitter and won’t be viewable while you’re watching TV or Internet video.

The biggest changes in the new Premiere involve the user interface. The TiVo Central screens, where you find and manage recorded shows and other content, are now presented in high definition and wide screen. This allows more menus on a single screen. The screen containing your recorded shows is now called My Shows instead of Now Playing.

You also can now watch TV in a small window while you’re on the menu screens, and there is a 30-second skip button on the remote.

The new TiVo Premiere

Also, a new Browse function lets you look for programming without typing search terms, by scrolling through colorful icons that include “collections” of related content, such as Oscar or Emmy winners.

Both Search and Browse now integrate regular TV shows with Internet content. If you start typing letters into the search box, TiVo will respond not only with TV shows that match, but with movies and TV shows that you can download from Web sources. You can also easily find YouTube clips related to a favorite show.

A new Discovery Bar of icons appears across the top of the Tivo Central screens. It’s filled with icons of TV shows and available Web content TiVo thinks you might like.

But there are some big downsides to the Premiere. You can’t watch videos on popular sites like Hulu (owed in part by News Corp., which owns The Wall Street Journal and its Web sites), CBS.com, blogs or news Web sites. This may be partly due to media-company restrictions, not TiVo’s shortcomings, but it means the Premiere omits vast sources of Internet video.

The new HD interface was slower than the old standard one in my tests, with frequent delays, even in scrolling through a list of recorded shows. TiVo says this is a bug being fixed.

In addition, I found the Discovery Bar a distraction, cluttering the menu screens, with no way to turn it off unless you revert to the old interface (a buried option.) This is partly because TiVo hopes to sell ads on the bar.

Finally, the new HD interface isn’t available when watching live TV. You have to constantly bounce between the new and old software designs.

All in all, TiVo Premiere looks incomplete. It seems more like a platform for a future set of offerings TiVo hopes one day to have, rather than a way to deliver new content right now.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free of charge, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Get Your Storage Out of the Cloud

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:35:34 +0000

Ask anyone in the technology industry to talk about trends and “the cloud” is sure to come up in conversation. The cloud is a hip way of describing Web-accessible storage, and whether people know it or not, they’re using this more each day. Social networks save account information in the cloud. Photo-sharing sites store images in the cloud. Web-based email programs keep messages in the cloud. People also are starting to back up the contents of their computers to the cloud, which makes files accessible from almost anywhere using an Internet connection.

[ See post to watch video ]

Not everyone is gung-ho about storing personal data somewhere other than on their own PC. They might wonder who else can access the cloud’s contents and if the cloud is a truly reliable option for storage.

This week I tested Pogoplug (pogoplug.com), a $129 solution that lets people back up their digital files and access them via a Web browser, or mobile devices. It streams content through the cloud (Pogoplug servers), but never actually stores anything in the cloud. People keep their content on their own hard drive—the Pogoplug lets them access it elsewhere via the cloud.

For the most part, Pogoplug works like a charm. One downside is that files can be a bit slower to open from remote computers or mobile devices than on computers within the same network as the Pogoplug. But its single best attribute is its ability to do the job without trying to tell you every smart thing it’s doing in the background.

Unique Model

Pogoplug comes from San Francisco-based Cloud Engines Inc. and its business model is unlike other cloud-storage solutions. Pogoplug users pay upfront for the device and a hard drive of their choice, which is the storage device, and they never pay again. Other services store content in the cloud, making for faster remote access to files. But these services charge users monthly or annually for storage. ZumoDrive offers 2 gigabytes of storage free but charges annual fees ranging from $30 for 10 gigabytes to $800 for 500 gigabytes. SugarSync, a cloud-based synching program, also offers a free 2-gigabyte program, but charges from $50 to $250 a year for 30 to 250 gigabytes.

Pogoplug uses in-home storage with through-the-cloud access.

Cloud Engines sent me a hard drive for my testing: Seagate’s (STX) FreeAgent Go with 250 gigabytes of storage. This little rectangle costs $90 on Seagate.com or $69 on Amazon.com (AMZN), bringing my Pogoplug set-up total to $200. This is $180 less than just one year of ZumoDrive’s 200-gigabyte plan, or $50 less than SugarSync’s one-year, 250-gigabyte plan.

The Pogoplug is a white box with an electric pink strip running down one side and its underbelly. Three cables attach to it and run out to the wall socket, a router and whatever storage you choose (a hard drive or a small thumb drive). Each Pogoplug has four USB ports, allowing four hard drives or several USB hubs with additional USB ports to connect to the gadget at once.

A Mini Computer

The Pogoplug runs as a mini computer with its own processor that sends files out to the cloud for streaming whenever you want to see them. It creates thumbnails of photos and organizes media, making it easier to find on the my.pogoplug.com Web site. And Pogoplug also uses advanced networking to create a secure connection so people with firewalls and extra secure network settings can leave them just as they are.

Setting up Pogoplug is as simple as plugging in its three cords and pairing it with a computer. I shared with the Pogoplug at least 100 files from a Windows 7 PC and a MacBook Pro. I also set sharing to synchronize with Pogoplug whenever new files were added to designated files on my computers. All of this content was stored on the Seagate hard drive and neatly displayed on my.pogoplug.com.

Hunting for Files

This Web site looks sort of like a bare-bones version of iTunes. Three sections on the left—My Media; Show My Files (sorted into today, last week, last month, those I shared and those shared with me); and My Library—opened content in a large panel. Options at the bottom of the screen changed the way this content was displayed, and a search box enabled hunting through all types of files for specific words. I tried “snow” and found many results, thanks to photos taken of the recent storms in Washington, D.C.

Each file saved to Pogoplug is represented by a thumbnail image on the Web site and can be downloaded, shared or previewed by you or others with whom you share. Videos are, by default, shortened to 10-second previews, but an option in settings allows videos to always show in their full formats. An Upload button at the bottom lets people share content from whatever computer they are using to Pogoplug, and a Sharing button sends files to friends via email or social-networking sites including Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. Options let people set sharing so Pogoplug constantly updates friends whenever new data is added, like new photos added to an album.

Both Macs and PCs worked for me while I tested accessing Pogoplug on the three main browsers that run on both machines: Mozilla’s Firefox, Google’s (GOOG) Chrome and Apple’s (AAPL) Safari. Internet Explorer worked on Windows. I simply opened my.pogoplug.com, entered my username and password, and I could see all the files on the Seagate hard drive. A desktop app for the Mac or PC treats Pogoplug as a local drive, making it easy to drag and drop media to it.

Most common files types can be stored, accessed and shared through the Pogoplug. I tested sharing movies, music, photos, Microsoft Word documents, PDFs and others. These digital files can reside solely on the hard drives plugged into the Pogoplug. Computers in the same network opened files faster than computers or smart phones working in other places, but the wait wasn’t unbearable.

I also used a free Pogoplug app on the iPhone and Palm (PALM) Pre, and the interface was just as simple as the my.pogoplug.com site. A Pogoplug app also exists in the Android Market app store for Android phones, but the app for BlackBerry isn’t yet in RIM’s (RIMM) App Catalog and must be installed via the Desktop Manager. Even without an app, I used the iPhone browser to open shared files sent to me in emails, and had no trouble viewing images or listening to songs.

Pogoplug is a terrifically simple way to back up files and make them accessible from afar or on the go. Starting in March, Pogoplug will be capable of synchronizing and backing up content through the cloud service with other Pogoplugs located elsewhere. For instance, you can keep Pogoplug at home and one at the office and have a backup to your backup device.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Reaching for the Height of Radio

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:21:11 +0000

Despite the popularity of music downloads or streamed music through online services like Pandora, the good old radio is still a source of entertainment for many people. It turns on as soon as the car starts and inspires shower singers every morning. Plus, it works pretty much the same as it has for decades.

The trusty radio has finally received an upgrade—to the world of high definition. HD Radio, which has been gathering steam for a few years, sounds better and offers more channels than traditional radio. It also sends properly equipped devices text data like a song’s title and artist name as well as traffic, weather and stock information. One HD Radio even lets you pause programming in mid-stream, so you don’t have to miss a song or NPR story just because you’re drying your hair. And future HD Radio devices will record programming like television DVRs do now.

The Sony (above) and Coby Electronics (below) devices use HD Radio technology to play more stations at better sound quality.

This week, I tested three HD Radio devices to see what all the hype was about: Best Buy’s Insignia $50 HD Radio Portable Player (http://bit.ly/75FcIc); Coby Electronics Corp.’s $100 Portable HD Radio System (http://bit.ly/6G6g4Q); and Sony’s $160 HD Radio with Dock for iPod + iPhone (http://bit.ly/8c0Bqf). I also talked with iBiquity Digital Corp., the company that developed HD Radio technology and licenses it to broadcasters and radio manufacturers, about how this works.

I found some worthwhile offerings in HD Radio, like commercial-free, sub-channels within existing stations and better sound quality. IBiquity claims that HD Radio makes FM stations sound like CD quality and AM stations sound like FM; to my ear, this seemed to be true.

Overall, I didn’t hear enough incredibly great content or sound quality to want to run out and replace my old radios. Washington, D.C., where I live, supposedly offers 41 HD Radio channels, but I couldn’t find as many as that. Over 2,000 primary HD Radio stations and some 1,100 sub-channels can be heard in all 50 states and Puerto Rico, but some areas won’t offer as many stations, according to iBiquity.

Tuning in each HD station takes longer, like the way changing channels on a digital TV takes an extra second. But in my tests, this process took five seconds or more per change of channel. This kind of delay is enough to try anyone’s patience.

It might help to explain the technology behind HD Radio. HD Radio makes it possible for local broadcasters to transmit content via digital signals on existing AM and FM frequencies. The digital signals are encrypted and eliminate static heard in analog broadcasts, resulting in better sound quality. But they take longer to be decoded by HD Radio receivers.

Many people mistakenly think that in order to listen to HD Radio, they must pay an extra monthly fee like with satellite radio. If you buy an HD Radio device, you’ll only pay for it because the service itself is free; its price is built into the cost of the hardware.

Besides boosting the signal, HD Radio offers extra channels of programming you wouldn’t hear on a regular set. It allows existing FM channels to play additional content on “multicast” channels. Most multicast channels are commercial-free, and they appear on the radio’s display as HD2 and HD3.

Don’t confuse HD Radio with the text data that scrolls across the screens of many current radios, like my car radio. This is a non-audio service called Radio Broadcast Data System that has been around for a while.

Each of the radios I tested offered an HD Seek feature—a way of skimming through all stations to find and play those that could be heard in HD. But HD Seek didn’t stop on multicast channels; to get to those on each radio, I had to press buttons to tune up or down while listeningwhile already listening to to a main HD radio channel. Some HD Radio models have HD Seek tuning functions that find HD1 stations as well as HD2 and HD3 channels. I saved these HD2 and HD3 multicast channels in my radio presets so they were easier to find again.

While a radio was tuning in, or linking into, a channel (the process that took several seconds), an “HD” logo flashed on each radio’s display. This logo turned solid when the station was found and finally started playing. I listened to multicast channels like a bluegrass/country station from my local NPR channel. Another station’s two multicast channels played “South Asian” music and the Mormon Channel.

As its name suggests, Sony’s HD Radio with Dock for iPod + iPhone has a built-in dock for iPods, iPhones and iPod Touches. If, while using this radio, you hear a song on an HD channel that you like, you can hit a “Tag” button to save information about that song. The next time you dock an iPod, iPhone or iPod Touch into the Sony radio, these tags are transferred onto the portable player. When you plug that device into a computer and open the iTunes Store, a list of the tagged songs appears, making it easier to recall songs you liked and may want to buy. This radio is a tabletop model and has the largest display screen of the three radios I tested. It also comes with a remote. It saves up to 20 FM and 20 AM presets.

The Insignia HD Radio Portable Player is a much smaller unit that comes with earbuds and an armband for exercising. If this radio tuned in an HD channel that offered multicast sub-channels, these were indicated on the display with a “+” sign, like “HD1+.” The Insignia radio stores 10 preset stations.

The Coby Electronics Portable HD Radio System resembled a single, lightweight speaker with a wheel, six buttons and a digital display on it. IBiquity Digital said this model uses an older HD Radio technology that doesn’t offer as much reception sensitivity as the Sony and Insignia. Still, it was simple to use, and its wheel made it a cinch to tune in HD2 and HD3 channels. It stores up to 10 presets.

In September, when Microsoft’s Zune HD was released, I tested its built-in HD Radio, the only such device capable of pausing live radio content. I paused music and talk radio on the Zune’s HD Radio when my phone rang, then un-paused the station to resume. This doesn’t work if the device is turned off and on again before resuming play.

Along with stand-alone radios, HD Radio receivers also are becoming more common in home audio systems and in cars. But while HD Radio’s sound quality and extra channels are definite pluses, the number of available stations needs to improve to make the wait for the HD channels to start playing more tolerable.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Big Apple

John Paczkowski — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:00:46 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Apple Updates Mac Lineup, Announces Multitouch "Magic Mouse"

John Paczkowski — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:10:28 +0000

The Apple store went offline Tuesday morning and when it returned, it did so with a groaning board of new hardware, including a range of aluminum and edge-to-edge glass iMacs, Mac minis, a 13-inch unibody polycarbonate MacBook and a wireless, multitouch “Magic Mouse.”

The new iMacs boast LED-backlit 21.5- and 27-inch widescreen displays in an edge-to-edge glass design and all aluminum enclosure. They’re available with Intel (INTC) Core 2 Duo processors starting at 3.06 GHz, and Core i5 and i7 quad-core processors for even better performance. The low-end model is priced at $1,199, the same as the past generation, but its high-end sibling is now $200 cheaper, at $1,999.

The new MacBook features an 13.3-inch LED backlit display, a multitouch trackpad, and a $999 price tag. Though still housed in white polycarbonate plastic, it features an updated unibody design borrowed from the MacBook Pro.

The successor to the Mighty Mouse, Magic Mouse, eliminates mechanical buttons, instead, employing the same multitouch surface found on the iPhone, iPod touch, and Mac notebook trackpads, allowing users to navigate their desktops with simple gesture commands.

Accompanying the Magic Mouse is a a new Apple Remote. It’s got a new design and is, predictably, housed in aluminum.

Finally, Apple (AAPL) also updated the Mac mini. While its design is largely identical to that of its predecessor, it offers far more storage. Starting at $599, the entry-level Mac mini features a faster 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB of DDR3 1066 MHz memory, a 160GB hard drive, five USB 2.0 ports, FireWire 800, Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics and a SuperDrive.

There’s also a new $999 Mac mini that’s specially configured with a Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server. It’s outfitted with two 500GB hard drives for a total of 1TB of server storage.

Quite a refresh and one analysts are already crowing about. In a bulletin released after the announcement, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster said Apple’s new machines will undoubtedly improve the company’s prospects for the December quarter.

“We expect the new iMacs, and to a lesser degree the new Mac minis, to help the desktop category rebound in the Dec. quarter,” Munster wrote. “In other words, the headwind that existed in the Sept. quarter due to aging Mac desktops has now turned into a tailwind for Mac units in the Dec. quarter….Bottom Line: Street Mac numbers may also be conservative if positive trends continue coupled with new Macs in the quarter.”

Apple Updates Mac Lineup, Announces Multitouch "Magic Mouse"

John Paczkowski — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:10:28 +0000

Accompanying the Magic Mouse is a a new Apple Remote. It’s got a new design and is, predictably, housed in aluminum.

There’s also a new $999 Mac mini that’s specially configured with a Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server. It’s outfitted with two 500GB hard drives for a total of 1TB of server storage.

Playing With a More Sensitive Wii

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:18:02 +0000

Nintendo’s Wii gaming system motivates first-graders, senior citizens and everyone in between to get off their couches and play video games by swinging a motion-sensing remote control. These motions are similar enough to those used in real-life games that people find the Wii less intimidating than other video games with confusing controls.

After almost three years of Wii success, Nintendo recently reported it sold in its first quarter less than half the Wii consoles it sold a year earlier. The Wii needs a shot in the arm, and Nintendo thinks it has just the solution: the Wii MotionPlus remote accessory.

[ See post to watch video ]

This small piece plugs into the bottom of Wii remotes and costs $20 by itself or $50 when bundled with the Wii Sports Resort game, which includes 12 sports that take advantage of Wii MotionPlus. The Wii console costs $250 and comes with a remote and a Nunchuk. The Wii MotionPlus has a gyroscope that helps the remote detect slight twists or rotations made by one’s wrist and/or arm and reflects these movements on the screen. It adds more precision to games like bowling and golf, so you don’t feel like you accidentally made a good—or bad—shot. And it lets you add spin to a ball while swinging a golf club or ping-pong racket or while bowling.

I’ve been playing games with the Wii MotionPlus, and this small accessory adds a much more satisfying, realistic element to Wii games. In some cases, this meant that I played a game with less success than with the original Wii remote because the MotionPlus add-on is more responsive and sensitive. But I eventually got used to it and liked it more than the plain remote.

However enjoyable, the Wii MotionPlus is more of an evolutionary change than a revolutionary change. If you’ve never played video games on a Wii before, you wouldn’t know what you were missing if you used the remote without MotionPlus.

The real excitement in video gaming and general broadcast TV controlling will come when we don’t need any remote controls at all and cameras will sense our movements, reflecting them on-screen. In June, Microsoft (MSFT) announced its Project Natal, which would potentially work with all Xbox 360 consoles to directly sense movements and sounds, and to recognize faces. This would encourage users to swing, throw, run and jump in a completely natural way without the need to learn anything about how to hold a remote control or operate its buttons.

On a similar note, Sunnyvale-Calif.-based Canesta Inc. wants you to use your hands as remote controls for your TV. The idea with Canesta is that users could, for example, walk into a family room and wave at the TV to turn it on, move a hand in a rightward circle to turn up the volume and flip through channels using motions like those used to page through a large book. I tried Canesta in a demonstration and can testify that doing things like turning the channel with your hands is a powerful and somewhat magical experience. But of these, Nintendo currently has the only product on the market to use technology that echoes natural movements, albeit with a remote control. Project Natal is still just a research project that isn’t used in any products, and it won’t be coming out any time this year.

[ See post to watch video ]

Canesta has a partnership with Hitachi (HIT) so that it will be used in the company’s TV sets, though Hitachi says these TVs won’t be available until 2010 at the earliest and would likely show up in Japan first. Canesta is also building other partnerships, or it could work as a standalone product for TVs, computers, set-top boxes or other devices.

Wii MotionPlus makes the remote smart enough not to require as much button pressing. For example, shooting basketballs in a three-point shootout only required holding the remote in my right hand so it followed my shooting motion. Bowling no longer requires letting go of a button just in time to release the ball, a former menace to Wii’s beginner bowlers. And I threw a Frisbee by moving the remote with the same motion as if I were tossing one in real life. At first, my friend and I found ourselves trying to make stiff motions that seemed more video-game-like, but when the on-screen instructions encouraged us to move naturally, we did so and had much more success.

Wii Sports Resort includes 12 different sports but omits some of the old favorites from the original Wii Sports. Tennis has been replaced with table tennis, boxing has been replaced by sword fighting, and though bowling and golf remain, baseball is gone. New sports include wakeboarding, Frisbee, archery, basketball, power cruising (jet skis), canoeing, cycling and air sports like parachuting.

I bowled and put a little extra spin on the ball by twisting my wrist just before letting go. The ball was surprisingly reactive, so much so that I had to tone down my spin before I got the hang of it. Wakeboarding works by holding the remote horizontally like it’s the cross bar you hold onto and use for steering in the water. The Wii MotionPlus works with the Nunchuk attachment, and my friend and I attached this piece to the remote to compete against one another in several rounds of archery (he won by seven points). With the Nunchuk attached to the remote, we held the remote like it was the bow and slowly pulled the Nunchuk attachment back as if it were the arrow—stretching sound-effects and all.

The MotionPlus can stay attached to the remote while playing games that aren’t made specifically for its use; those games won’t be affected. However, a regular remote can’t be used with games made for the MotionPlus. Along with Wii Sports Resort, three other games are made to use the Wii MotionPlus: Sega’s Virtua Tennis 2009, EA Sports’ (ERTS) Grand Slam Tennis and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10.

If you’re hoping to give your tired Wii a boost, you’ll like what the relatively inexpensive Wii MotionPlus accessory brings to your game—though you’ll also need to buy new games that work with it. Generally speaking, it’s exciting to know that technology is almost advanced enough that we could very soon stop letting our remotes have all the control and take some of it back with just the wave of a hand.

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

What We Really Need Is a "Stopping Congress From Exploiting For-the-Children Politics" Bill

John Paczkowski — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:02:01 +0000

Funny isn’t it? Congress spent most of last year calling for Internet companies to limit user data retention and here it is pushing legislation that would require Internet service providers and the operators of Wi-Fi access points to retain Internet user data for up to two years. Why? To protect children from predators, of course.

Introduced by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, the “Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth Act,” or Internet Safety Act, states that “a provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user.”

Sounds a bit broad, doesn’t? And indeed, privacy advocates say that it applies not just to the Wi-Fi access points of Internet service providers, but to those of libraries, schools, businesses and individuals as well.

To mine. And to yours.

An unsettling thought. Said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology: “[This is] invasive, risky, unnecessary, and likely to be ineffective.”

Perhaps. But it’s for the children. “While the Internet has generated many positive changes in the way we communicate and do business, its limitless nature offers anonymity that has opened the door to criminals looking to harm innocent children,” Sen. Cornyn said Thursday. “Keeping our children safe requires cooperation on the local, state, federal, and family level.”

Palm Pre's New Operating System

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:44:02 +0000

Here are a few questions I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability.

Does the new Palm Pre smart phone use the traditional Palm operating system and the many programs that have been written for it?

Palm’s Pre, which is due out later this year to compete with the iPhone and the BlackBerry, doesn’t use this older software, which was once the best smart-phone operating system, but has grown stale. It uses an entirely new operating system called the Palm webOS, which will have to attract developers willing to write new programs for it. It is a clean break from Palm’s previous hardware and software.

How does the Clickfree computer backup system you covered last week compare with Apple’s Time Machine or online backup services like Mozy or Carbonite?

Clickfree simplifies the chore of backing up files to an external hard disk. However, as I noted in the review, it doesn’t back up your whole hard disk, it doesn’t work automatically in the background, and it doesn’t create a backup physically distant from your computer.

Time Machine, which is built into the Macintosh operating system, automatically backs up your entire computer in the background and includes a very easy method for recovering files. It works with external hard disks. But it doesn’t work on Windows PCs, and it doesn’t create a remote backup over the Internet.

Mozy and Carbonite are online backup solutions. Their advantages are that they work unattended and create offsite backups. But they aren’t intended to back up an entire computer, they don’t create a local backup, and they carry service fees.

Does my 13-inch MacBook come with the capability to view PowerPoint files?

No. While Macs come out of the box with the ability to view and create files in the Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF formats, they don’t come with a PowerPoint viewer. In order to view (and create) PowerPoint files on a Mac, your best bet is to buy the Macintosh version of Microsoft Office, which includes PowerPoint itself. There are other methods as well. For instance, Apple’s own lower-priced iWork suite can also open PowerPoint files and create files in the PowerPoint format. And some Web-based office programs, like Google Docs, allow you to view PowerPoint files on Macs.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online free of charge at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Playing Do, Re, Mi With Wii

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 01:30:02 +0000

This holiday season, instead of gathering around the piano for traditional sing-alongs, some families will gather around their television sets and game consoles to make music — by playing games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

Now, there’s a new option for these digital performers: Wii Music from Nintendo. This $50 game was designed for Nintendo’s hugely popular $250 Wii gaming system, of which there were more than two million sold in November alone, according to the company.

Wii uses motion-sensitive controllers to move characters in games. A game of tennis in Wii Sports, for example, works when you swing the Wii remote like you would a tennis racket. The Wii’s simple graphics and adorable Miis (on-screen cartoons designed to look like you) appeal to the non-gaming set, inciting parents to challenge their kids to games of Wii Golf and spurring senior centers to start Wii Bowling leagues.

People playing Wii Music use the remote as a musical instrument.

Nintendo carries this cutesy, user-friendly style of video gaming over to Wii Music, where the remote works as a musical instrument, cheerful songs abound and a white-wigged character named Sebastian Tute gives instructions. Along with Sebastian, the Tutes — a musically gifted group of Miis that would give the Von Trapps a run for their money — appear and demonstrate how to play various types of music and instruments.

Though it’s comparably priced, Wii Music differs from games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band in many ways, and there are understandable reasons why a frequent user of those games would shun Sebastian and the Tutes. For starters, teenage fans of Guitar Hero and Rock Band who like the games’ variety of popular songs may gripe about Wii Music’s selection, which includes the likes of “My Grandfather’s Clock” and Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”; none of Wii Music’s songs are more recent than the late 1980s.

Perhaps the biggest difference is that, in Wii Music, you aren’t using a few fake instruments like a guitar or drum set. You are instead manipulating the Wii controller to simulate one of many instruments depicted on screen. There’s even one “instrument” called Dog Suit — a dog suit that, when worn by a Mii, uses canine barks in place of notes. Another key difference is that, aside from one game, Wii never penalizes you for playing an incorrect note in a song, because you can’t play a bad note — every press of an imaginary key or strum of an invisible string plays the correct note.

A musically gifted group of Miis — on-screen personas representing players — demonstrate how to play various types of music and instruments.

This “no mistakes” environment is a little bit like a sports league in which every kid gets a trophy. Wii Music got a bit too saccharine at times, like when I scored a lousy 43 out of 100 points in a game and Sebastian Tute assured me that points didn’t much matter so long as I played the way I wanted to play. But for people who are learning about music and don’t want to worry so much about playing the right note, OK: Wii Music fosters a freedom to experiment with style by allowing users to improvise and explore variations of songs.

Outside of the Games section, you are the judge of your own performance, rating it however you see fit, or not at all. Wii Music is divided into Jam, Lessons, Videos and Games. My favorite section was Games, which included conducting a song in Mii Maestro, hitting the right note at just the right moment in Handbell Harmony and arranging Miis from lowest to highest note in Pitch Perfect.

The more activities I completed, the more instruments and songs were unlocked and available for me to use; off the shelf, each copy of Wii Music starts out with 27 instruments, but over 60 can be unlocked in the game. In Lessons, Sebastian Tute explained the importance of each instrument in a song and the role that it played. Before I played drums in a reggae song, he explained that reggae drums lay down an eight-beat rhythm. In the Japanese style of music, I learned how to play and recorded myself playing all four parts of a song: taiko drum, bells, shamisen, a three-string guitar-like instrument that puts bass in the song, and flute.

If you’d like, you can opt to save your performances as music videos when you’re finished. These include your mistakes — err, improvisations — and some other funny effects like views of the audience members as they bob their heads listening to you play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Album covers can be made for these videos, and the finished product can be sent to other friends’ Wiis if they also have Wii Music. Those friends can play over parts of your song and send the revised video back to you. While you’re playing songs, small black notes with faces on them called Be-Bops appear in the bottom right of the screen and work as a metronome would, steadily keeping the beat.

But cool accessories like guitars and microphones that are used to play music with other games aren’t available for Wii Music; instead, you must use your trusty Wii remote and Nunchuk to make one of four motions: piano-type, guitar-type, trumpet-type or violin-type. These four motions work to play a variety of instruments in different music styles, but some are easier to pretend to use than others.

While playing the imaginary trumpet I held the remote like one, pressing its 1 and 2 buttons like trumpet keys. But playing the piano uses the same motion as that which is used for playing drums — a downward hitting motion with the remote and Nunchuk — and this felt more like using a hammer than playing a piano. If you own a $90 Wii Balance Board, you can use it in drum mode in addition to the remote and Nunchuk. I tried this briefly, and it was fun to use the balance board in place of drum pedals.

Wii Music isn’t meant to replace a music lesson, but it’s intended to get people thinking about music and their own music style, without fear of making mistakes. It’s fun, unintimidating and will even teach you a thing or two. Just steer clear of the Dog Suit, if you can help it.

Discuss: Share reviews of videogames and systems in Journal Community.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Mossberg Solution will return, Wednesday, Jan. 14. Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

Family Snapshots in the Splendor of HD

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 01:28:02 +0000

This Thanksgiving, families across the country will gather around the television just as quickly as they gather around the turkey. And with good reason: Many people will be staring at beautiful high-definition TV sets. (According to the Consumer Electronics Association, 47% of U.S. households had HDTVs as of July, a percentage that’s likely to increase as the date for analog-to-digital conversion approaches.) But if Eastman Kodak (EK) has its way, many people will be gathered round the TV this holiday season, gazing at family memories in full HD splendor.

The Kodak Theatre HD Player’s motion-sensing pointer remote works much like a mouse on a TV screen.

This week I tested the Kodak Theatre HD Player, the photo-centric company’s attempt to snag valuable real estate in the living room. This small, black box pulls photos and videos from computers around the house and displays them on an HDTV. It also enables the sending and receiving of photos via Kodak Gallery, and connects to Web-based photos stored on Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, .Mac and others. Podcasts, Internet Radio and updates from news feeds, weather forecasts and stock quotes are also accessible using the HD Player. And it has a terrifically simple motion-sensing remote that works like using a mouse on a TV screen.

But the HD Player isn’t all smiles. Its $299 price doesn’t include any built-in storage for keeping content directly on the device. It currently has no way of accessing HD movies or television shows, nor will it work with Macs. In comparison, Apple’s (AAPL) $229 Apple TV has 40 gigabytes of storage, can access HD television shows and movies via the iTunes Store, and works with Macs and Windows PCs. This is important because as budgets tighten in the current economy, gadgets have to prove their value and versatility more than ever.

After using the Kodak Theatre HD Player with Windows XP and Vista machines over the past week, I can conclude that this device’s interface shines in its simplicity and is a lot of fun to use. Kodak teamed with Hillcrest Labs to make the player’s motion-sensitive remote and corresponding software, which includes satisfying extra features like images that automatically magnify when the remote control’s cursor points at them and icons that make chirping sounds when selected. The remote itself is shaped to rest comfortably in a hand and has three simple buttons and a scroll wheel.

Quick-access memory-card slots for six types of memory cards appear on the box’s front, and two USB ports can connect to digital cameras or USB storage devices.

Currently, the player’s software works directly with Flickr, RadioTime (8,750 radio stations) and FrameChannel, which grants access to various “channels” like Facebook, .Mac, Picasa, People.com news and National Geographic. Kodak says it will incorporate YouTube access in January; I got a sneak peek at the interface for this and it looks well-organized.

Yet the HD Player’s smart combination of software and remote left me wishing it did a bit more. Photo sharing is enabled only via Kodak Gallery, so you can’t use another Web-based account to share photos directly from your TV. Likewise, a blue light on the box slowly blinks only when new Picture Mail (a message containing shared photos) is received on a Kodak Gallery account, not when new photos are added on other sources such as Flickr Photostreams or Facebook pages.

The Home screen of the HD Player shows four categories: Pictures & Videos, Kodak Gallery, Music and Entertainment. Subcategories are where you might guess they would be, for example podcasts are listed under Entertainment. And a tiny Home icon appears in the top right corner of every screen so you can always get Home with one click. The Pictures & Videos category holds photos and videos from a currently selected Windows PC.

An unlimited number of Windows PCs can wirelessly pair with the player as long as they have special Kodak software installed on them. But only one PC’s content can be accessed at a time. I toggled between two paired computers without a problem, but would’ve preferred accessing music and photos from both sources simultaneously.

The HD Player’s motion-sensing pointer remote works much like a Wii remote control. Wherever you move it, a tiny leaf-shaped cursor appears on-screen. A Hide button on the remote will hide the cursor while you watch slideshows. The remote’s Back button is helpful; when pressed, it backs you out of one screen using visual effects that make the screen shrink into the TV as if you were moving backward.

A play button appears on the first photo in a folder so users can select this icon to quickly start slideshows. Whenever the HD Player receives new Kodak Gallery Picture Mail, or a slideshow is created on a connected PC, yellow alert circles appear on the screen to notify users and a number in the middle of these yellow circles indicates how many new items are available for viewing.

Some content on my PCs took a little while to be recognized by the HD Player, including podcasts that I subscribe to on iTunes. When they did show up, both audio and video podcasts played without issue and on-screen playback buttons made them easy to control.

The HD Player uses your photos to create automatically generated slideshows, called Picture Chronicles, once a week. These Picture Chronicles use up to 50 photos from the same time of year in all of your folders, for instance grouping all Thanksgiving photos together from the past five years.

Kodak has plans to make its player Mac-compatible in the future and also hopes to add other partnerships with new types of content following its YouTube announcement early next year.

The Kodak Theatre HD Player does its job well, bringing photos and videos that might otherwise live only on your PC to your big screen HDTV. For the holidays, this device could be a real plus. But Kodak has some work to do to make this a more useful Web-connected tool.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

Dell Remote Access Keeps Your Files at Your Disposal

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 01:06:02 +0000

Say you’re on the road and you need to look at a file that’s on your main computer back at your office or house. Or say you’re using a device with limited storage, like a smart phone or one of the tiny new “netbook” portable PCs, and you want access to a file that isn’t on the device at hand.

You might be able to get at the desired file if you have previously uploaded it to an online storage or photo-sharing service, or emailed it to yourself. But, in many cases, you could be stuck.

[ See post to watch video ]

Now Dell (DELL), the big computer maker, is aiming to solve that problem with a new service called Dell Remote Access. Despite the name, the service can be installed on any brand of Windows PC running Windows XP or Windows Vista to make its files remotely accessible, as long as it has a broadband connection. You can transfer, or stream, or share these files with others. You can even remotely use the host computer’s Web camera.

And some of the service’s functions also work even if your remote device is one of Apple’s (AAPL) Macintosh computers or iPhones, or a computer powered by the Linux operating system, like Dell’s own Mini netbook.

For basic functionality — making the files on one Windows PC remotely accessible from other devices — Dell Remote Access is free. If you want to use its advanced functions, like the ability to remotely control the host PC or to access other devices on your home network, it costs $9.95 a month, or $99 a year. This paid version of the service also includes the ability to share with others access to files or to devices on your network, such as stand-alone Web cameras.

You only need to install special software on the host PC whose files are to be remotely accessed. For basic file access, the remote devices require just a Web browser and a password to tap into the host computer. You can download the software, and get started with the service, at dellremoteaccess.com.

I’ve been testing Dell Remote Access for a few days, at home and on the road, and found that it works well, despite a few glitches and limitations. It’s not revolutionary — many other services and software programs do part or all of what it does, with varying degrees of technical difficulty and at varying fees — but Dell Remote Access combines a wide variety of functions into a fairly simple package. It will be available as a preinstalled option on Dell’s PCs later this year.

Dell also is hoping it will give a boost to sales of its Mini line of very small machines with limited internal storage for files.

For my tests, I installed Dell Remote Access on my home Dell desktop, an XPS One model running Windows Vista. The installation was easy and quick, except for one oddity: To use the new service, you have to uninstall a network diagnostic utility Dell installs on its machines, called Dell Network Assistant. Since I had little or no use for the utility, this was no big loss, but if you rely on it, this conflict could pose a problem.

Next, I used the Remote Access software to select folders I wanted to make remotely accessible. By default, the program assumes you want to share your documents, music and pictures folders, but I added some others. The software tests your network connection to let you know how well it’s likely to work.

I used a variety of remote devices to access this home Dell. These included a Sony (SNE) Vaio laptop running Vista, a Mac laptop and an Apple iPhone. I even tried accessing the Dell machine from a virtual Windows XP installation running on the Mac.

Some of these tests were conducted from within my home network and others were conducted from across the country.

In general, the tests went well. With the Sony laptop, and within Windows XP running on the Mac, I was able to view photos and slide shows, and stream music and videos, from the Dell in all locations. I opened Microsoft Office (MSFT) files and PDF files remotely and transferred files to the remote machines. I was even able to remotely control the Dell at decent speeds and use the Dell’s built-in camera.

The only annoyance was that every time you want to remotely control the host machine, you must download and install a small utility. You also have to leave on your home computer.

Dell’s system provides more limited functionality if your remote machine is a Mac using Apple’s operating system, or a Linux machine or a mobile phone. With these setups, you can only view, stream or transfer files only from the main host computer. You can’t do remote control or view cameras.

But these limited functions did work pretty well on the Mac and the iPhone, although in some cases I had to first download a song to the Mac before it would play, rather than simply streaming it directly from the Dell.

But Microsoft Word documents stored on the Dell opened right up on the Mac. It was particularly impressive to be able to view a document or photo stored on the Dell from an iPhone thousands of miles away.

Dell Remote Access is a worthy service that’s worth a try.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Ten iPhone Programs to Check Out

Walt Mossberg — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:32:30 +0000

I’ve spent part of the weekend downloading and trying out dozens of the more than 800 new third-party iPhone applications that launched with the debut of Apple’s (AAPL) “App store.” The store is part of the new iPhone 2.0 operating system, which not only comes with the new iPhone 3G, but is also a free upgrade on older iPhones and a $10 upgrade on the iPod Touch.

These first applications range from serious programs for doctors and pilots to silly parlor tricks that take advantage of the iPhone’s motion sensors. One, called PhoneSaber, merely displays an image of a Star Wars-like light saber and makes varying light saber noises as you wave the phone in the air.

[ See post to watch video ]

Here are ten apps I think you might enjoy checking out, in no particular order. These aren’t meant as full reviews, just pointers to interesting items. There may be ten others, or 200 others, you think worthier of attention. Feel free to add comments with your own suggestions.

AIM. Finally, a native iPhone program for accessing one of the world’s most widely used instant-messaging networks. It lacks some of the more rarified features of the PC or Mac versions, but does the basic text-chat thing quite well. One downside: because Apple isn’t allowing third-party programs to run constantly in the background, you can’t receive new messages in AIM while doing other things. This will supposedly be remedied by new Apple server technology due later this year.
MotionX-Poker. This is a simple poker game played with dice instead of cards. But it can be mesmerizing, because it makes full use of the iPhone’s graphics engine and motion sensors. You play each hand by shaking the phone to roll gorgeously rendered 3D dice, which even sound like dice. The $5 game comes from Fullpower, a company developing many motion-based programs that was founded by software industry pioneer Philippe Kahn.
TruPhone. This is an Internet phone-calling program that works over the iPhone’s Wi-Fi radio, potentially saving you big money over using the device’s regular cell phone capability, especially when calling internationally. Biggest downside in my initial tests: it sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t.
FileMagnet. One of the frustrating things about the iPhone is that it has no easy way for users to transfer files from their computers and store them on the phone, even though it is capable of viewing many types of files. FileMagnet, which costs $5, places a small program on your computer, and then wirelessly transfers any files you drag into it to the FileMagnet program on the phone. It works with Microsoft Word files, PDF files, images and more. Biggest downsides: it only works on Macs, but I’d bet a similar Windows program will come along soon.
SpeechCloud Voice Dialer. This free program allows you to dial anyone in your contact list by simply saying his or her name.
Movies. This is a free service that lets you find movies in your area, watch the trailers, buy tickets to them, and view a map to the theater.
Remote. This free program, written by Apple itself, allows you to control any copy of iTunes, on any Windows or Mac computer, over a local wireless network. It also works on Apple TV boxes.
Where. One of many new IPhone apps that attempt to provide information based on your location, Where, which is free, aggregates local content from services like Yelp and Eventful, which also have their own iPhone apps.
Pandora. The new iPhone version of the wildly popular Pandora music-streaming program, is also free. It creates personalized radio stations based on artists you like.
MLB.com At Bat. This $5 program lets you track games in progress, which is no big deal. The big deal is that you can actually watch video clips of key plays before the games are over.