Category: Gadgeteria

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Gadgeteria

Lightning quick review of Navigon’s Traffic Live add-on for Mobile Navigator

After five days with the add-on, my thoughts.

Good: routed me off the DVP (and back on again) to successfully avoid a slow-down; it updated a route “en-route” due to new traffic information.

Bad: doesn’t show that the Danforth is closed this weekend for Taste of the Danforth (the image below shows today’s data, Bloor Street / Danforth Avenue closure absent).

In closing: good for knowing about Toronto highway traffic, poor for knowing about city road closures.

The traffic data is provided by Inrix, so the quality of this data is the limiting factor. Inrix, which has its own traffic application for the iPhone, lists the following coverage areas in Ontario: Burlington, Mississauga, Niagara, Ottawa & Toronto.

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Gadgeteria

Why I won’t buy and e-reader (but would really like to)

I like the idea of e-book readers. Rather than printing versions of all the journal articles I’ve downloaded over the course of completing a PhD, I save the PDFs on the computer. I’ve transitioned to reading these articles on my screen at home and have a system where I can annotate the articles I’ve read. Simply, I would love the ability to take these files with me and read them places “normal” books are read (reading on the subway or not having to schlep pounds of paper around are especially appealing).

Now ignoring that Amazon’s Kindle looks like a beast, charges you money to upload PDF or Word files (so is quite the closed system and locks you into buying books from Amazon) and isn’t available in Canada, Sony’s reader is starting to look a lot better than it did just a while ago. The reader software was updated in the summer to allow any EPUB, PDF or text document to be uploaded.

Holding me back from buying any e-reader right now is the inability to mark-up documents. For me, annotation is key. Bookmarking is great, but I need some way when I’m reading to be able to mark a page and enter a thought or idea that is relevant to the text on the page. I can do this cheaply now when I read a book with a highlighter and a pen, but missing from that system is the searchability that my digital workflow allows: I can search for a term and up pop all the academic articles that have it

Just unveiled yesterday, however, is Plastic Logic’s entry into the market and it appears to be a marked improvement on Amazon’s and Sony’s readers:

Drool-worthy is the flexible touchscreen (missing from Sony & Amazon) and Wi-Fi connectivity (Kindle does connect to Sprint’s network in the states–but this is why, in fact, you have to pay to upload your documents to the Kindle. No one rides for free on cell networks). It also supports the ability to upload the regular suspects in terms of document files.

This product’s killer app is mentioned at 1:14 of the video above: the ability to mark-up documents, with drawing and text. If Plastic Logic is able to successfully integrate these features, this will have the potential to be an incredible device for my own digital academic workflow.

So, I wait with baited breath to hear more about this device.

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Gadgeteria Photography

My Tamron 90mm macro lens is b0rked

A small bite

More correctly, I should say that the autofocus on the lens doesn’t seem to be working. I’ve been using manual focus and that, combined with the lens’ razor thin DOF when it’s at 1:1, makes the photo on the left something of an accomplishment.

The plan is to drive to Amplis Foto in Markham with the lens tomorrow to drop it off for repair. It would be nice to have it back shortly, but we’ll see what lies in store…

Update (28/8/08): Seemingly, like magic, the lens is working again. I put it on the camera just before making the trek to Markham and it began to autofocus. Hrm. This usually means that the organic meat-bag is to blame rather than the inorganic technology. What have I done or not done? Here’s my preditction: this will be an on-going transient problem for a while. I just now know if this is to occur again to take the lens off the camera for a week and then try it again.

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Gadgeteria

That new iPod phone

I’m writing this about twenty minutes after the Macworld keynote and I’m sure you’ve already heard of this little gadget: the iPhone. Sure looks cool: mobile phone+ iPod + web browser. WiFi. Bluetooth. 4 & 8 GB flash memory.

Seeing as we don’t live in the US, I wonder which Canadian carrier will eventually sell it. Since Apple seems to be exclusively locked with Cingular in the US, and Cingular runs on a GSM network, expect to see this from Rogers, IMHO. Because it is a GSM phone, there is always the possibility of getting an unlocked phone and popping in your Fido or Rogers SIM in. I’m not sure this is necessarily going to work for this little piece of technology, though. The keynote outlines the ability to get voicemail “a la carte”, sorta like opening an email message (so if you really want to listen to message #5, you don’t have to listen to the preceding 4 messages). I’m not sure how or what kind of changes that need to take place on the carrier side of things for this to happen. Most likely, if unlocked iPhones appear north of the border, this little piece of technology won’t work. I’ll be interested in hearing more about the changes on the carrier side of things in order to make this phone a reality.

I can’t help but wonder what this means for the iPod proper. Is this the new iPod (6th generation), or are we going to see widescreen iPods with HD and larger capacities? For my own sake, I hope the answer is yes. For one, I just bought an unlocked Treo 680 and don’t have the disposable income to buy another “mobile phone plus.” My iTunes library tops out at 19.83 GB and no longer fits on my 4th generation 20 GB iPod. I like having all my music on one device. I’ve had to jump through all sorts of hoops to get a reasonable selection of music on my iPod now that it all can’t fit. And, frankly, not thinking about how the music gets from my computer to the iPod is part of the appeal of the gadget. So, if we’re topping out at 8 GB, I can’t help but think that will force more people to worry about this and make a once seamless step, well, not so seamless. I’m sure the Apples have thought long and hard about the capacity and I’m some weird outlier who likes all their music on their device. Otherwise, it makes a compelling product less so in my eyes.

Update: So, after reading this Time article, seems as though the demands that I suggested Apple has put on the carrier side of things was right:

Jobs demanded special treatment from his phone service partner, Cingular, and he got it. He even forced Cingular to re-engineer its infrastructure to handle the iPhone’s unique voicemail scheme. “They broke all their typical process rules to make it happen,” says Tony Fadell, who heads Apple’s iPod division. “They were infected by this product, and they were like, we’ve gotta do this!”