My co-worker. . .Whitney. . .and I went to see Snakes on a Plane last night, and it was Snake-tastic! We were at the 10 p.m. show at the Regal Union Square movie theater, with a rowdy audience so excited to see this flick that they lined up for the "soft opening." (The movie goes into wide release today.) I was the loudest one there.

It was quite an event--we got free posters, t-shirts and glowing snakes from the 8th Street Lab. There was trivia and prizes. We even got special safety instructions about what to do if Snakes on a Plane happens to you. The entry on the left is my favorite. Who knew snack trays were so versatile? Be sure to check out the full snaked-up safety chart.

PC silicon vendor VIA Technologies is offering quite a prize: a weekend stay at its world-class gaming facility in Sweden. The catch: No boys allowed. Via's "Get the Girls into the Game" contest aims to encourage girls to hone their gaming skills. Another catch: Any gamer 18 or over can nominate another gamer, female only and also over 18, explaining why she should have the experience of living the pro-gamer lifestyle, at least for that weekend. 

The lucky winner will be flown to Sweden with a (female) friend and stay at VIA's Home of Chrome, in Stockholm. She'll receive high-powered training from VIA's professional female PC game team, the girlz 0f destruction (a few of whom are pictured at right). Made up of members from around the world, this team is considered one of the best at playing QUAKE 4. The girlz train about 5 hours a day, and have played roughly 10,000 matches. Last year, they collected over $30,000 in winnings. As an added bonus, the winner also gets $250 to spend on souvenirs during her stay in Sweden.
 

The contest runs until September 10th. You can nominate a deserving female gamer at VIA's Web site.

Thanks to our intern Errol Pierre-Louis for this post!

In its ongoing game of catch-up with XM Satellite Radio, yesterday Sirius Satellite Radio announced a series of affordable satellite receivers for cars that match the smallest from the competition. Sirius also showed an iPod-looking portable receiver that can record up to 100 hours of music.

Sirius made the announcements Thursday, August 17, at a media event at Top of the Rock, at the summit of Rockefeller Center. It was one of the handful of days when New York City is at its most attractive: no haze, not too much humidity, and few muggers. The event was odd, because Sirius invited the press but didn't allow picture-taking inside (we could take photos from the 65th floor balcony facing Central Park only) and provided no press releases or PR photos. Writers and editors were expected to—gasp—take their own notes.

The event also occurred against the backdrop of a front-page story in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, which said that, once again, both Sirius and XM are having growth problems because of subscriber churn (reportedly 2 percent a month dropout), competition from iPods, and legal hassles for XM over its portable recording receivers.

The Stiletto: Personal Portable Receiver/Player

The most significant, and expensive, product shown was the iPod-like Stiletto SL100 ($350 list), a portable, battery-powered receiver with a 2.2-inch QVGA display and 2GB of flash memory; it records up to 100 hours of music from Sirius, or can hold a combination of Sirius tunes and your own MP3s or WMAs. The device is about 4.5 inches high by 2.5 inches wide (size and weight, another detail Sirius didn't provide, was on the Stiletto) and has a scroll wheel at the bottom that turns, with a press-to-select button inside.

The Stiletto comes with two batteries, a remote, a headset antenna (an antenna is built into the SL100 unit also), and an AC adapter. There are also vehicle ($70) and home ($60) adapters available. The Stiletto will be available in September.

Sirius was close-lipped about how you'll record streams and songs onto the Stiletto; the company says it has an agreement with the recording industry that XM doesn't have. The Pioneer Inno and Samsung Helix XM receivers let you record and store any song at the press of a button, but recordings can't be offloaded from the devices.

Sirius also announced the 10-hour, Sirius-only (no MP3 or WMA) Stiletto SL10, coming in October, that will cost $250, and for the time being the earlier-generation S50 (50 hours of recording, but no built-in receiver) remains on the market.

Receivers For Cars

Among portable devices that are meant for installation in the car or for use at home via a mounting kit, the Sportster3 has shrunken to 2.9 by 4.5 by 0.6 inches (HWD), and now weighs 4.2 ounces; it has a five-line display. This will retail at $120 and will be available in September.

The Starmate4, $120 and available in October, measures 1.9 by 4.9 by 0.6 inches, weighs 3.2 ounces, has a five-line display, and provides 44 minutes of volatile memory: You can save music, but only so long as you don't change the channel or power down. It comes with a vehicle mounting kit, and represents the best mix of features and small size. In comparison, the smallest XM unit is the Delphi Roady XT, a more squarish 2.3 by 3.8 by 0.7 inches. The Starmate3 is the same unit, minus the volatile music cache; it will cost $100, and also will arrive in October.

For price-conscious buyers, there's the Stratus3, $60 with a vehicle mount kit, coming in October. Just bear in mind that the initial purchase price is quickly dwarfed by the $12.95 monthly subscription to Sirius.

The Stiletto, Sportser, and Starmate devices all use a new Sirius universal connector for vehicle, home, and portable boombox connections. Sirius says some of the third parties that provide Sirius devices under their own brands may also use the Sirius connector, although for now, most have proprietary connectors—meaning, for example, a Sirius-branded portable wouldn't fit in an Audiovox-branded car mount. All the portables (except the Stiletto) have monochrome screens and require external antennas and battery power.

A handful of entry-level products won't have a connector at all. For instance, the Stratus InVehicle, which has no dock connector, is $50, compared with the $60 Stratus3. And it may be so heavily promoted that it's almost free—except for the programming. Sirius's programming now includes much of major league sports except baseball (NASCAR moves over in January). And of course, Howard Stern. Most of the Sirius models have sports-fan-friendly features, such as GameAlert, which alerts you to the starts of games and score change; GameZone, which lets you view league scores on one screen; and on larger models such as the Sportster, a score ticker.

A great idea that's not ready for prime time: That's OnStar Turn-By-Turn, which at the press of a button connects you to a friendly operator who looks up and downloads navigation directions to your car--assuming, of course, that the operator can find where you want to go and that atmospheric conditions permit a download.

I drove using OnStar Turn-By-Turn (free the first year, then probably about $10 a month beyond the cost of basic OnStar) a couple months back in Detroit, in a car full of GM engineers and PR people. To use it, you just press the OnStar button on the mirror and tell the operator where you want to go. He or she looks up your destination, then downloads route instructions to a rudimentary GPS system with a one-line text display and a directional arrow on some models, and you're off. It worked well then; not so well when I was turned loose on my own, though.

Weekend from Hell

I set out in a Cadillac DTS with OnStar Turn-By-Turn, and began my weekend from hell. For a couple locations in the Adirondack area of New York State (that are both in Yahoo Maps and Microsoft Streets & Trips), the OnStar operators couldn't find a long-established road or even the road leading to that road. They could find the nearest town seven miles away (but had trouble downloading the directions for me) and a bigger town 65 miles away. OnStar also couldn't locate a been-there-forever country road in Keene, NY, and that's with OnStar having access to both of the major computerized roads databases from NavTeq and TeleAtlas (formerly GDT).

My first eight calls to OnStar yielded two on-holds of 10-plus minutes before I was cut off, and the service made six failed attempts to download the information. OnStar blamed poor cell coverage and/or system problems. When I made my first few calls, I was working my way through traffic on Interstate 287 in New Jersey, near Interstate 80, and heading toward the New York State Thruway. If there was lousy cell coverage in one of the most populous areas of North America, my Verizon phone didn't know about it. It showed three bars, four bars, and just occasionally, two bars of signal strength, and OnStar uses the Verizon network.

The operators were invariably polite, but sometimes I got the feeling that they were chosen for their affordability over their efficient and speedy problem-solving abilities. When I later talked through the problems I had with Nebo Nedeljkovic, OnStar's online service manager, he was able to locate two of three roads. He told me, "Although infrequent, there are incidents as you experienced."

To be fair, if OnStar operators find the location you need but the OnStar technology can't download the GPS routing, there is a fallback: The operator can speak the instructions, the car records the voice (up to 90 seconds), and you can play back the instructions as needed.

Other Limitations

Assuming you can get route instructions downloaded (I had better luck on other days), going from city to country is no problem. You don't need cellular coverage at the end of your journey, only the GPS satellite network. But if you're in the scenic middle of nowhere tomorrow and can't get cell coverage, you can't call for routing for the second day's trip. And unfortunately, you can't ask OnStar to download and cache today's trip and tomorrow's trip. Only one trip can be in memory at a time.

OnStar downloads a route corridor of information to get you back on track in case you make a wrong turn or pull off the interstate for fuel, but it's possible to stray off the route; you then have to call for revised directions. Or OnStar can give you compass directions to get back on course but not actual street names and turns. Also, if your GM car has traditional in-dash navigation, OnStar Turn-By-Turn can't link to it. That's an obvious and needed enhancement. OnStar is working on it, but gives no date for when it will be available. I think most people will be satisfied with Turn-By-Turn once OnStar gets the bugs out, but some will want both kinds of navigation, and they'll want the two interconnected.

Key-85? No, E85

GM is big on alternative fuels, particularly E85, the 85-percent-ethanol, 15-percent-gasoline blend that many of its cars use. When I asked operators about locations near the New York Thruway for purchasing E85 fuel, though, they seemed baffled. On my second try, I got a supervisor who, after several minutes of research, said she couldn't find any gas stations called "Key-85." Finally, on my third try, I got an acknowledgement that New York State has just two E85 stations, and an offer to e-mail me a link to all current E85 stations nationwide.

To its credit, Turn-by-Turn operators did find my home address, PC Magazine's address, the Pepsi Center in Albany (it's hard to miss, not unlike the Caddy I was driving), the Olympic ice arena in downtown Lake Placid, and a "Baptist church on Staten Island, N.Y." for which I deliberately left out the full name. That's OnStar at its best, both traditional OnStar Directions & Connections (the operator reads directions as you go) and OnStar Turn-By-Turn. If you know sort of where you're going and you get the city or town right, and the destination is urban or suburban, OnStar can tell you exactly where to go.

TBT rollout through 2007

GM is rolling out the Turn-By-Turn service to its cars lines, about 1 million total of the 4 million it builds in a year, from now through the end of 2007. Currently the service is available in the Cadillac DTS; its mechanical twin, the Buick Lucerne; and the Cadillac STS. If your 2007 GM car doesn't come equipped with TBT, you can probably have it added or activated fairly easily.

Actually, some GM cars, going back to about 2003, also can be retrofitted with up-to-date OnStar. There will be two kinds of retrofits: One is quick, easy, and affordable (other than the monthly service cost) and gives you Turn-By-Turn. The other will be necessary if you have a really old, analog-only OnStar system: It would give you digital OnStar but not OnStar Turn-By-Turn. The analog-only network goes dark around 2008, and if you don't upgrade by taking a three-year contract (in which case GM pops for the cost of the new equipment), you won't have OnStar service. That's going to be the case with other older (non-GM) cars offering first-generation telematics services.

Other Downsides

One other thing to know about OnStar: If you decide not to continue the service, OnStar disables the crash notification feature. It doesn't have to, but it does. Some other automakers keep emergency crash notification active even if you stop paying for the telematics-assist services they offer. (As required for any cell phone, the OnStar service has to be able to let you dial 911 manually, whether you've paid your bill or not.) I understand why GM does this: OnStar is a recurring revenue stream. If you get one of the key features for free, that's one less reason to re-up. Even so, it's still troublesome that GM deactivates a potentially lifesaving feature.

A minor, non-life-threatening annoyance, for me: When you're on hold—and with OnStar you can be on hold a lot—you will hear, interspersed with the be-right-back recordings, repeating house advertisements for OnStar touting its reliability, efficiency, and usefulness. OnStar says there is no way to opt out.

Better Luck Next Time?

I'll try to drive Turn-By-Turn again in a few months and report on improvements. This is too promising a service to give up on. It will likely cost about $10 a month beyond basic OnStar, but since OnStar Turn-By-Turn is free for the first year, and the first cars got it this past spring, GM hasn't seen fit to tell buyers what they'll be paying for OnStar Turn-By-Turn come 2007.

My belief is that Turn-By-Turn has to cost $10 a month in addition to the basic OnStar charge, because that's the going rate for competing navigation services, particularly the cell-phone navigation packages. Currently OnStar is $200 a year for the basic Safe & Sound package of remote door unlock, emergency notification, vehicle diagnostics (uploaded to your dealership and also sent to you as free e-mails), and stolen vehicle tracking (but no navigation help). The Directions & Connections package, $400 a year, adds operator-assisted navigation instructions, where the operator actually stays on the line with you during trips (short ones, at least). Most likely the Turn-By-Turn service will come in around $300 a year, because it involves less operator-assist time each month, though it's possible GM could just stick to $400 a year.

Like most technology, TBT, Version 1.0 needs improvement. And if General Motors is going to survive, the company needs to hit home runs with its cars and services. OnStar has that promise, and some facets are unique or best-in-class, such as the diagnostic uploads and the operator lookup, direction download service. Right now, though, the best you can say is that OnStar's glass is half full.

The SteelPad Qck heavy, from gaming equipment company Steel Series, is an extra-big, extra-thick mouse pad that's perfect for professional gamers: It measures 17.7 by 15.7 inches, which gives you more than enough surface area to play with. The pad, made from cloth covering a think layer of rubber with non-slip material on the bottom, is dense enough to make up for uneven surfaces.

Plenty of desktop space is a must if you want to take full advantage of the Qck heavy. On my desk, the Qck Heavy covers up an annoying divot that has made using a mouse awkward; the pad smoothes it out nicely. The surface gives your mouse movements a silky feel, with just enough friction that you're not gliding all over the place.

The one negative I noticed was the smell. If you leave your body in contact with pad long enough, your skin starts giving off a funky synthetic odor. But hey, a stinky arm and wrist aren't too bad a cost to pay for a quality piece of gaming equipment that can smooth out less-than-optimum desktop terrain. The SteelPad Qck heavy goes for $29.95 at Steel Series' site.

Thanks to our intern Errol Pierre-Louis for this post!

1. Helio Stores: Now With More Tentacles! The design for Helio's new stores look modern, clean, and pristine: But is that a cephalopod lurking in the corner?

2. Portable Sirius Stiletto 100 Receiver/Player Confirmed. Despite Sirius's efforts to keep this news under wraps, the Stiletto has been outed.

3. 10 Strangest Back-to-School Gadgets & Gear. We found ten of the oddest gizmos out there, for all the weird kids going back to school. (Can you guess what that is, at right?)

4. The Firefly: A Camping Essential. It's a lid with embedded LEDs that fits on wide-mouth jars; simple but very covetable!

5. Uptown Clutch: Carry Your iPod nano in Style. Classy! A posh leather wallet that carries and protects your iPod nano (1GB, 2GB, and 4GB sizes), along with money, credit cards...anything you can squeeze in.

Honorable mention: Costa Living: Guns, Garmin, and the Open Road. Dan Costa's column this week details the ups, downs, and sideways moves of a roadtrip taken with the help of the Garmin nuvi GPS system.

USA Today wrote an excellent article online about mobile TV. I, for one, don't think I'll ever pay to watch TV on my cell phone because (1) The screen is too small, (2) I like to keep my bill as cheap as possible, and (3) I'm just not that desperate to watch TV on the go.

However, according to the IDC, they predict that 7 million U.S. cell phone subscribers will watch TV on their phones this year, and 24 million by 2010. Hmmm, that's real interesting, considering the company also did a study asking if consumers would spend $8 a month to watch the following broadcasts on their cell phones:

Live TV broadcasts
Not at all likely: 70.5%
Very likely: 3.7%

Highly edited on-demand TV/video clips
Not at all likely: 74.8%
Very likely: 1.9%

Short-format original mobile-only content
Not at all likely: 74.2%
Very likely: 2.4%

Full-length TV shows or movies on-demand
Not at all likely: 69.8%
Very likely: 6.4%

 

IDC predicts 7 million subscribers out of those statistics? I don't know about that. But tell us what you think!