So now I can download music from iTunes and video from Google, but what about my late-night gaming urges? Alienware is now offering downloadable games, for those who are too impatient to wait by the mailbox or too lazy to run to the store.
The computer maker is known for its fabulous extraterrestrial PCs, and once you've purchased one, you can immediately download the games to go with it. As with iTunes, once you make a purchase, the record stays with Alienware. The games go with you wherever you can get a broadband connection. And yes, the games are DRM-protected, and each download is contingent on how many licenses you have. I didn't say it was perfect.
[Thanks to PC Magazine lead analyst for notebooks, Cisco Cheng, for the news and writeup.]
NEW YORK: You can tell your car to "dial home" as well as "call home," but that doesn't mean the voice-recognition system has artificial intelligence or that you can carry on a free-form conversation. Yet. Advances in speech recognition from IBM may get us there in the next couple years, and some of the most exciting applications are for motorists through their cars or cell phones.
At a speech-recognition seminar held in New York this week, for editors and analysts, IBM unveiled Version 4.4 of its Embedded ViaVoice software, which allows users to issue commands without referring to a predetermined list of several dozens of words. Technically, it's called "freeform command recognition," and it means the software figures out what you're saying from the context of the entire phrase, with supporting help from you've said recently. (For more detail, click to Robyn Peterson's story on this technology, at PC Magazine Online.)
For instance, if you were talking with the car about navigation routes, and road noise drowned out part of "time to destination," a vehicle equipped with Via Voice wouldn't mistake the phrase as "find FM station," as cars actually do now. Today's command-and-control voice recognition requires you to speak the exact words the car wants to hear. The best you can hope for, if you haven't memorized the command list, is that you can hit on the right word by guessing.
Via Voice already is used in some cars today, including Hondas; what's new is the conversational capability that lets you not only issue commands to the car but also use your car or cell phone as a portal to an Internet whose information content will likely increase tenfold in the next five years. "We have crossed the threshold into a voice-enabled era," said IBM's director of On Demand Business, Dr. Michael Nelson. "If you don't know how to type, if you lose your [Pocket PC or smartphone] stylus, it still works."
Among the automotive technologies shown by IBM for Via Voice:
Embedded Via Voice free-form commands. The user speaks in natural phrases, and the device determines what to do based on the phrases, not just individual words, as well as on the context of recent commands. You can control audio/video systems, navigation, and Bluetooth-connected phones and their in-car address books.
Car dialer. Using only the processing power available in today's in-car computers and slightly more memory, users can access any part of the address book of a Bluetooth connected phone. Say "Call Howard," and it will speak or present onscreen a list of all the Howards in the address book (say, Bill Howard and Howard Williams), let the user choose the right one, and then let the user choose, with a voice command, whether to try Howard's home, work, or mobile phone number (as illustrated, above).
Mobile info on demand. "Find me a Chinese restaurant within 10 miles," you can tell the car's navigation system, and it will fulfill your request in a couple seconds. (Since the demo was run in midtown Manhattan, that particular list was lengthy.) Some command-and-control systems could do the same thing now if you had the syntax down pat: "Show POIs [points of interest] … zoom display 10 miles … restaurants off … Chinese restaurants on." IBM's limited-functionality demo could sort the results by distance, but it couldn't show them on your side of the highway, for example (it was just a demo). IBM has high hopes for this function in cell phones and as a TV guide in the living room.
Voice navigation. With this technology, the driver can query the navigation system about progress on the current route or change destinations while driving. "Show me how to get to Tarrytown, Connecticut," a visitor to New York might say. And the car would respond, "I'm sorry, Dave, Tarrytown is in New York." (The "Dave" part isn't in the demo, but if an automaker with a sense of humor wanted it, IBM could make it happen.) Ask for "Tarrytown, New York," and the dashboard asks if you want the one in Westchester County or Albany County. Not currently, but in a production version, you could say, "The closer Tarrytown." And so on. Not only is voice nav safer than using a touchscreen or control knob, it also may be the only way to go, as more automakers lock down just about every navigation-system control the moment the car starts rolling, regardless of whether there's a passenger onboard.
XM Radio IBM-VoiceBox Demo. This prototype, currently running in a Scion, would eventually let any XM Satellite Radio user navigate channels by the genre ("show me rock stations"), channel number, or channel name. You could even ask, "Is Bono playing on any channel?" And since satellite radio also streams and caches some financial information, you could ask for a stock report by company or ticker symbol.
I'm reviewing the T-Mobile MDA and SDA right now, and I am reminded of what a lousy product the Pocket PC version of Skype is. Why are people so crazy about this software? I've dialed it up on both phones. It connects, but the sound quality is so much worse than bad, it requires me to get out my thesaurus to find the appropriate words to use. Here: "awful, terrible, dreadful, ghastly, horrific, dire, unpleasant."
Most of the time I sound like Darth Vader, Max Headroom or some sort of crazy art-student sound collage project. "C..ip...uck...me...ip...ip...now?" At best, it sounds like a satellite call to Zambia. At best. And this is over Wi-Fi networks. Sorry, but there's a certain boundary where something's worthless at any price, no matter how low.
If you need to make cheap international calls from your mobile phones, people, get a calling card. Send a text message. Or wait for T-Mobile's upcoming UMA VOIP solution, which will have some sort of quality of service.
Generate, a design company based in Quebec, Canada, likes to create environment-friendly furniture and lighting. One of its latest ideas is the Glow Brick: a night light with a light bulb set in a clear, solid brick. All you do is recharge it in natural light during the day and by night, it'll light up any room.
This is definitely not any ordinary night light, which is why I like it (okay, so I sometimes sleep with a night light on after watching scary movies). It may not really cure your nightmares, but it still makes you wonder, how'd they do that?!
$6K to unload an SUV Incentives cost automakers $2,410 per vehicle in 2005, but that's 4 percent less than the year before, says Edmunds. What were the mostly costly cars to move? At year's end, Jaguar was spending $7,039 per car sold and Lincoln $4,969. In comparison, Scion and Porsche spent just $91 and $278 per car, respectively. Big SUVs as a class required $6,019, or 14 percent of the sticker price.
Best OS for the dashboard? The Frost & Sullivan consultancy gave its annual Advancement of the Year award to the QNX Software Systems Neutrino real-time operating system (RTOS). A car OS typically powers navigation, Bluetooth, telematics, and dashboard entertainment. Competitors include Microsoft Windows Automotive and Wind River Systems.
Most researched. Honda Accord is the most researched car online, says Kelley Blue Book. Perhaps this is no big surprise, since it's also the second-best-selling car in the U.S. The top ten includes eight from Honda and Toyota: the Honda Accord, Honda Civic, Toyota Camry, Toyota Corolla, Ford Mustang, Toyota Highlander, Nissan Altima, Honda Odyssey, Honda Pilot, and Honda CR-V. The top European car is the BMW 325i, at number 12; the top Chrysler/Dodge car is the 300 at No. 18, and not one GM car is in the top 20.
And unborn baby doesn't make two. Nice try, mom-to-be Candace Dickinson, of Phoenix. Stopped and asked why she was driving solo in the High Occupancy Vehicle lane, Dickinson pointed to her belly. She got a ticket, took it to court, and claimed Arizona laws don't define what a person is. The verdict: guilty, and please pay the court $367. In California, that could spell trouble for an inner-child HOV defense.
As Sascha wrote yesterday, Microsoft dropped by the PC Magazine offices bearing various mobile goodies. As our resident phone and PDA analysts he was justifiably occupied with admiring the new smart phones. And those are pretty cool, but when all the gadgets were laid on the table my eyes went straight to the Toshiba gigabeat S30.
It is about the size of the 5G iPod, but the screen looks even better. With a 2.4-inch QVGA screen and the ability to record video from any TiVo Series 2, it is a nice package. According to Microsoft, it will get as much as six hours of battery life playing video, a claim that we are definitely going to have to test in the Labs. Still, with a competitive pricing 30GB for $299 and 60GB $399 this could be a legitimate challenge to the iPod. It will ship in March.
UPDATE: Michael Leung's hardwood Flash drives are now available for purchase at GreenerGrass Design and Singulier.
I firmly believe that there is no reason for functional not to be beautiful. These USB Flash drives, encased in gorgeous hardwood and leather, make my point nicely -- they'd look great hanging from anyone's neck. They are a product of Michael Leung's creativity (take a look at his site for other cool techie designs).
The Hardwood USB is produced and distributed by LEXON. It will be launched at Maison et Objet, a trade show held in Paris from January 26th through the 30th. Leung says he's hopeful the drives will be picked up by retailers within a month or so. I can't imagine that they won't be! The price and storage capacities are yet to be confirmed.
[Thanks to PC Magazine graphic artist Aaron Able for pointing me to these.]
Although I'm no coffee drinker, I gotta give props to Starbucks for wanting to make its 10,000 stores a whole lot cooler. Currently, you can watch live bands perform, partake in coffee tastings, and buy CDs. But soon you'll be able to download MP3s while waiting for your Caramel Macchiato.
As we're all aware, the music industry is, well, not what it used to be. CD sales have declined seven percent as digital singles are going through the roof with more than 350 million songs bought online (a 150 percent jump from 2004).
Ken Lombard, president of Starbucks, says that his MP3 download idea is still in the works, so no date has been set. However, the real question stands: which company will they choose to work with? Apple? Microsoft? Yahoo!? Real Networks? I guess it won't really matter to me since I've only been in a Starbucks twice, but I do have to confess that I buy their Frappuccinos in the grocery store.
Mixx It
Digg It
Stumble
More...
As Sascha wrote yesterday
