The Onion comments on Sony--hilarious but with language alert

The Onion comments on Sony and technology in general. Be warned, there is language in this clip of the sort not usually seen or heard on eebahgum!

See more Technology Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Sony's misleading advertising 2

Yup, there's more from our friends at Sony. It's the impossibly thin LCD TV which isn't as thin as they say it is. "Be the first to be seen," says Sony, "with the new ZX1". It's as thin as a CD case at 9.9 mm! But wait, there's an asterisk and it goes ... let's see, down to the bottom of the ad ... oh, here it is: "At its slimmest part". So it's not 9.9 mm thin then. My house is 1 brick thick* (at its thinnest part, the bricks that protrude from my window sills). My car is 10 cm high* (*at the front bumper). I don't have a pot belly* (*when lying down).

The picture below clearly show that more than 2/3 of this new TV is not 9.9 mm thick. Sure the LCD panel itself is that thin, due to the clever side rather than back illumination, but you can't just watch an LCD panel. It's got to have those, you know, TV bits and stuff to make a TV--power supply, tuner, etc. Sony have actually made all those things impressively thin, so the whole TV (minus stand or speakers) is actually only abut three times as deep as the screen. Wouldn't it be just as impressive to tell the truth and advertise the set as "an amazing 3 cm thick, and no asterisks required!" But once again, Sony's marketing department chooses to mask the very real cleverness  of their R&D people with a downright, dare I say it, LIE! And the media are picking this up as if it were gospel, though most of the reports, even on tech-savvy sites such as gizmodo, uncritically omit the asterisk and accompanying phrase. Shame, shame, shame, as Australian media character Derryn Hinch used to say.

Sony's misleading advertising 1

The new Sony Bravia LCD TVs boast 200Hz Motionflow technology and claim to have "the smoothest picture ever". Unfortunately, some of the explanations given for the technology are simplistic, or just downright misleading. They show pictures of a footballer with added frames, and have a little video on their website showing a flickbook with lots of frames looking smoother than one with fewer frames. All very convicing, and well, wrong.

The bottom line is the broadcast signal you are watching was only recorded at up to 50 Hz to 60 Hz or fields per second. That's all the information there is. There's nothing between those frames and no amount of post processing by the TV after the event will change that. What the Sony sets (and others) are doing is looking at two of those frames and making up other frames in between them by averaging the two actual frames. They're not real frames, so these sets aren't really giving you 200 Hz, they're just interpolating between the actual frames to smooth the transition that the eye sees.

Now if you look closely at the deepest explanation that Sony gives, you'll see them describe that interpolation process accurately enough. They say "the sharpness of each image frame is boosted by Image Blur Reduction before its contents are analysed and three 'in between' frames are added between it and the next frame. This spreads two frames worth of motion across five frames". So far so good until they conclude "so effectively 50 frames per second becomes 200". No, sorry, that's wrong. These are made up frames. It is not at all the same as a genuine 200 Hz frame rate and neither does it look it.

So even Sony's most detailed explanation has been hijacked by the marketing boys and made into an untruth. But of course, the evils of marketing don't stop there. Most explanations aren't even that detailed, and as the ideas become more and more like sound-bytes, so any attempts at accuracy become the first casualties.

This kind of deception is pretty inexcusable, not only because it's playing fast and loose with the truth but also, and perhaps worse, because it insults the consumer. It attempts to reduce the issue to a 'numbers game' at point of sale and as such it's deliberately aimed at the consumer who doesn't know better. Rather than educate, it's an attempt to befuddle with meaningless numbers, rather like the battle for megapixels in digital cameras.

But the good news is, this technology does actually improve the picture. Sony's new 200Hz-interpolated sets do have the smoothest motion I've seen on an LCD. Is it the smoothest picture ever? No, because a good plasma set still looks better by a reasonable margin to my eye, but these Sonys are the first LCD sets I might be convinced to watch sport on.

Stupid idea of the month—Toshiba laptop keyboards

I've ranted before about shiny screens on laptops and how unusable they are in many lighting situations. Now Toshiba has tried to go one better in the sheer stupidity stakes by equipping many of its new laptops with highly reflective keyboards.

Putting aside the fact that they look tacky, you can just about guarantee that at least one row of keys will be impossible to read at any give time because of reflections. This won't worry the experienced user who is a good touch typist, but the sort of people likely to buy a shiny bling-ridden laptop are also the users most likely to be hunt-and-peck typists who will be looking at their keyboards. Indeed, Toshiba's top-of-the-line business-oriented machines seem to have matte keys like the good old days.

And I thought laptop design stupidity had reached its limits--congratulations to Toshiba for raising the ante once againI

Firefox 3 beta 5 and Scribefire

As an avowed Firefox fanboy, I've just upgraded to Firefox 3 beta 5 and was surprised to see it smoothly pick up all my add-ons. Of course, it crashed the first several times I started it up, but now a certain calm seems to have descended, and it's working fine.

Some months ago I installed the Scribefire add-on, and although it's been quietly updating away in the background, I've never actually used it in anger until today. So I guess this is a test of whether it works with the Firefox 3 beta. Now I'm going to press the Publish button, and if this appears on eebahgum! then it works. If it doesn't, I'd appreciate your feedback to tell me so. Here goes...

Shame on you APC magazine! (Plasma & LCD wars)

Something odd is afoot in the world of large format televisions. There seems to be a global attempt move by the media and sales outlets to trumpet the cause of LCDs at the expense of plasma. Never mind the fact that a blind man in a snowstorm can tell that plasma is better at almost everything. Never mind the fact that large LCDs are still more expensive than comparably sized plasmas.

So walk into a major retail outlet and look at how the floor is set up to drive you towards the LCDs. Look at the way the screens are calibrated to minimise the differences between the two, and the store lighting is set to flatter LCDs. Notice the reluctance of shop staff to tell you flat out that plasmas are still generally better at motion, colour, blacks and that resolution is not ultimately important compared to what you see with your eyes.

Look at the media's constant prattling on about LCD 'closing the gap' and becoming the equal of plasma in so many areas. Then think how many years they've been giving us that message. The media is now speculating that Pioneer's recent decision to stop making plasma panels is a sign of their resignation to the victory of LCD in the long run. Nonsense. Although Pioneer has long since made the world's best plasma panels they just can't make them at a realistic cost, and they realise it. Their chief competitor, Panasonic, works to very different economies of scale and has significantly closed the quality gap such that Pioneer screens are simply not competing in the market. Only sensible then, that Pioneer source their screens from Panasonic in return for sharing their technology. It has nothing to do with Pioneer changing its mind about the superiority of plasma in large screens.

So where does Australia's erstwhile APC magazine come into it? Well, this publication, for whom I have always had the utmost respect, has a headline this month which loudly announces "LCDs CATCH PLASMAS" and "SHOCK RESULTS" implying that the LCD panels on test match the plasmas. The trouble is, that is simply not the conclusion of the tests inside the mag. The article in question evaluates 2 plasma and 3 LCD panels and the plasmas come first and second, closely followed by a Sony LCD with the other LCD a distant 4th and 5th. And anyone who has been shopping recently knows that Sony LCDs still cost significantly more than equivalent sized Panasonic plasmas, for example.

So, APC editors, a far more honest cover headline would have been "LCDs STILL TRAIL PLASMAS". Why did you chose to run the misleading one, and are you too part of the global conspiracy against plasma screens?

Laptop crashing? Try this cool trick

Recently my laptop started crashing at random times, usually when I was in the middle of something critical. Like browsing YouTube videos, playing StickCricket and, oh yes, working. I've always had a theory that laptops were pressure-sensitive, that's to say they are sensitive to the amount of pressure I am under, and more likely to fail when that is high, purely out of spite.

When I started thinking about it I realised that my laptop had once run rather quietly, but now seemed to be a noisy beast with the cooling fan running all the time, and it had become consistently too hot to have on my lap. I hunted down the excellent, if slightly confusing, free application called Notebook Hardware Control, which lets you monitor hard disk and CPU temperatures, and was shocked to find my CPU regularly running in the 90s (Celsius/Centigrade) and peaking as high as 112 degrees before crashing. Being famous for my insight and deductive reasoning, I surmised that this was perhaps less than ideal.

So I took a trip down to my local electronic hobby shop, Dick Smith, and bought myself a can of air, the compressed variety used for cleaning equipment, and sprayed it in every hole and gap I could find. My machine was instantly cured, and is now running in the high 50s and low 60s. It's also far quieter, because the fan is now only one a fraction of the time, rather than all the time as it was. Cost $15, Time 30 seconds, result, dramatic and instant cure.

I'd be willing to bet that most laptop crashes are caused by overheating, and recommend you try this before anything else. The reason it works is that over time, dust, skin and so on build up inside your laptops fan, vents, and in particular, the CPU heatsink. Just make sure you get the right sort of spray, avoiding freeze sprays, or anything that leaves a deposit. And good luck!

Paypal’s new logo. What do you think?

Paypal are in the process of giving their website a new look and feel, and with it comes a new logo. There’s no question the previous one looked a bit old-fashioned, even when it was new. Rather than a complete redesign, Paypal have used the same type and style, just got rid of the outline. I think it’s a little more modern looking, preserving the integrity of the brand, whilst moving it forward a little. It’s hardly earth-shattering, though. And given that tens of thousands of sellers are probably hosting the current logo on their own servers, it will take months or years for the old logo to completely disappear.

I’m in two minds about this one. Is it really worth the effort for so little change? Is it a missed opportunity? Tell me what you think, by way of a comment or through the poll at the top of the right column.

Deal with eBay negativity using Toolhaus and Firefox

Following on from my previous post about ebay negatives, let me introduce Toolhaus—my favourite tool as a buyer on eBay. Just type in the name of a seller and it shows all their negative/neutral and withdrawn feedback, uninterrupted by those pesky positives. This, as Bowie would say, is the Nazz!

Just look how it seems to polarise eBayers. Some (most) seem to love it, but you get comments such as “That site is HORRIBLE and a disservice to EBay users. I understand the intention but it is very dangerous and produce (sic) more harm than good”, “I hate that toolhaus thing. Lame. “ and “That site is digusting (sic), what is it, lets find the bad side of sellers and exploit it”. Hey, anything that “digusting” must surely have merit!

And there’s a little plug in for Firefox that makes Toolhaus even easier to use by adding quick access to the tool to your right click menu. Just point at a seller’s eBay id, right click and Bob’s your auntie’s grandmother’s poodle. If you are using Firefox, and of course you are, download it here.

Ebay feedback—reading between the lines

Newbies to eBay are often misled into putting too much faith in eBay feedback numbers. On the surface 99% seems like a high number, but in reality could be telling a very different story, particularly if the seller is moving high volumes.

So my advice to eBay newbies is to forget about the percentage and look instead at the number of negative/neutral and withdrawn feedbacks and their nature. For example, I came across a seller the other day who had a feedback rating of 98.8% based on 3,500 transactions. This tells me that there were a lot of people who were not impressed, in fact 43 negatives, more than 60 neutrals and dozens of withdrawns. And when I looked through the comments, I noticed significant patterns, falling into the three or four usual groups. People were complaining about slow despatch, receiving the wrong items or items in bad condition, excessive postal charges and items being despatched from Hong Kong though advertised from the UK.

Now, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, and even the most conscientious seller can make honest mistakes from time to time, so I do not expect sellers to have 100% feedback. But when you get the same feedback for the same problems over and over, you are a seller to be avoided. In the case of my example seller, it was clear that he was breaking a number of eBay rules. He was a Hong Kong seller who was pretending to be based in the UK; he was lowering the buy price and padding out the P&P unreasonably, a favourite trick of Hong Kong sellers; and he was selling stock he didn’t actually have. He was also selling some crappy product, but that, alas, is not against eBay rules. Caveat emptor, as always.

Interestingly, this seller’s answer to disgruntled buyers was always to try and discredit the buyer. “Another deadbeat buyer” he would opine repeatedly, or he would defend his excessive padding of P&P by encouraging buyers to look at the overall cost. Of course, that’s not bad advice in itself, but it’s still against eBay rules to sell an item that is clearly worth $300 for $0.99 plus $299 in postage. But his most amusing defence was to say “If this were true... why would we have such good feedback?” Er, I’m looking at your feedback, mate, and all I see is 150 or so very annoyed customers.

Of course, 98.8% of buyers are apparently happy with this seller, who is certainly not an extreme case as eBay sellers go—many are far worse. But even that positive feedback is misleading because most sellers refuse to leave feedback until the buyer has done so. This is, effectively, a form of blackmail. In fact the buyer has fulfilled his contractual obligation in an eBay transaction as soon as payment is received by the seller, and it’s at this point that sellers should leave feedback, as, indeed, a few of them do. Hats off to those people, but eBay should build this into its system and force sellers to leave feedback first, in my opinion.

Ebay has recently introduced the option for buyers to leave detailed feedback on four aspects of a transaction: item description, seller’s communications, speed of posting and postage and packaging cost. Whilst the overall feedback is visible to the seller, this detailed breakdown is not, so you could theoretically avoid a bad seller blackmailing you by leaving positive overall feedback and then very poor detailed feedback. It’s a major improvement, and will work very well if buyers use 4/5 stars as the benchmark for a good transaction and only award the fifth star in exceptional cases. I think ebay is to be commended for this initiative, but I’d still like to see sellers forced to leave feedback as soon as payment is received.

In my experience, the vast majority of the sellers I have dealt with have been honest and remarkably efficient, and I am constantly amazed by how many people seem to live at the Post Office, ready to despatch my orders the nanosecond I press the Buy button. Reading between the lines of eBay feedback will help you identify these people before you buy and avoid the others.

In my next post I’ll point you towards a great tool for analysing negative and neutral feedback. Watch this space :-)

Silly idea of the week: Sony Vaio keyboards

Sony Vaio notebooks have traditionally been stylish, highly specced machines, but one has to wonder what Sony were thinking with their current keyboard design. All current models seem to have very square keys. They look neat and have a reasonable feel, but they are quite awful to type on. If you’re one of those typists who cleanly hits the middle of the keys each time, then you’ll probably not mind them, but the rest of us will be constantly catching the edges of other keys until the backspace key becomes well worn.

The three most important aspects of a laptop are, to my mind, the things one actually interacts with — screen, keyboard and pointing device. Most trackpads are abominations, the new shiny screens are great to watch movies on (for which you have a TV), but awful for working in almost any kind of lighting, and now Sony are trying to neuter the keyboard as well. Is this progress?

My new Samsung Blackjack has arrived!

A week ago I took possession of a shiny new Samsung Blackjack on Telstra's NextG network. I love it, and it's the best set of compromises I can find at the moment, but it's far from perfect. My full review will follow in the next few days, as well as extensive tips on what add-on software to try and what cases to use to protect your investment. If you're thinking about investing in a Blackjack, Treo, MotoQ or phone enabled PDA, and let's face it, who isn't, stay tuned!

Review: Apple USB keyboards

I must admit, I am a bit of a keyboard tragic. I have spent countless hours of my life testing keyboard after keyboard searching in vain for the perfect action. And frankly, I am appalled at most modern keyboards, with their soft, squidgy, imprecise keys.

To my mind, the best keyboards ever made were the old IBM ones which had a lovely tactile 'click' at precisely the point the letter appeared. You had absolute certainty about what you were typing, with audible and tactile feedback. The result? More accurate typing with less fatigue. When they were discontinued I spent my spare time scouring garage sales for second hand ones, with some success.

Alas, there are no keyboards on the market which are that good any more, and others I know share this sentiment. Why is that? Have modern keyboard manufacturers lost touch with what makes a good keyboard, or is the pursuit of low cost and high margin compromising quality?

Never fear. Apple has the answer. In fact, they have two answers, in their wireless and wired USB keyboards, and the good news is that they work with both PCs and Macs, so PC users can also have Apple style.

Make no mistake, these keyboards are pretty. With lovely white keys and compact transparent surround, they are neat, modern and minimalist. But it gets even when you start to type. The action is excellent--soft but decisive. There's enough tactility to be certain of the keystrokes, but very little actual resistance. I sometimes suffer from sore finger joints from typing, but that will be less of a problem now. And like the old IBM 'boards, you can hear these ones, not with that lovely precise IBM click, but a slightly more subdued one, almost as effective. It sounds a little loud when you first start tapping away, but it's a gentle and pleasant when you really start getting into it. It somehow sounds like quality and money :-)

Downsides? Of course, there are some. On the staff machine in the Apple store I could see just how grubby these white keys can get. You'll need to clean them down the track, no question.

Also, these keyboards will not please the 'media' heads who think they need a hundred little silver buttons to control media players, quick launch buttons for every application on their machines, etc. Frankly, I wonder about those sorts of people anyway :-) I used to have a KB like that, but never used any of the other keys, and it took up a vast amount of desk space. Apple have taken away all the keys I don't use and given me back a large chunk of desk. To me, that's a no-brainer.

These 'boards do have keys to raise, lower and mute the volume, and all worked first time on my Acer notebook. You also get a disk eject key, which is, of course, Mac only.

So far all my comments apply equally to Apple's wired and wireless keyboards. Of course there are differences. The wired one has a short cable and two USB ports on the back. It also comes with an extension cable if you need more reach.

The wireless one is Bluetooth, so no cables, but also, unfortunately, no USB ports. Instead it takes batteries and is therefore heavier. It sometimes takes a little while to connect via Bluetooth, and from what I here, you might get really frustrated when batteries start to wear out as strange things happen. But if you know in advance, that shouldn't be too much of an issue. However, the web has plenty of sad Bluetooth stories, so maybe there's a caution in there.

At the end of the day, I think the Apple wired keyboard is better than the wireless. Who really needs wireless on your desk? A short KB cable is hardly a great hardship, and it also gives you two additional USB ports, potentially far less problems, and costs half the money, with no future costs. Either will look cool on your desk.

Shimano bike components are a joke!

Once upon a time I was a serious cyclist. That was before the fractured kneecap, inflamed plicas, pot belly and so on. And 20 years ago I acquired a couple of top of the line bicycles. My road bike was the bee’s knees—hand built Reynolds 531 SL frame, Campagnolo Super Record Groupset and Suntour Superbe brakes. It was sold to a happy owner long ago. Still in my possession is my time trial bike, a Kettler, handmade in Germany from very early aluminium teardrop tubing and fully equipped with top-of-the-line Shimano aerodynamic gear. Because I used this bike only against the clock I stripped off every unnecessary part, including most of the cogs, so it now has 2 front cogs and a rear cluster of only 3. Low gears not necessary when sprinting or when young.

So after a break of more than a dozen years from cycling I’ve decided to take it up again to accompany my 9 year old on his flash new aluminium framed Giant. And unsurprisingly, there are a few parts on my bike which could use a refresh. Most notably, the rubber brake hoods are withered, the brake cables are rather stiff and the shoes seem to have hardened up. So down to the bike shop I go to get a few replacement parts, only to discover that Shimano stop making them after 5 years or so. The mechanisms may be in perfect working order, but as far as Shimano are concerned, you need to buy new ones. Even the brake shoes are not replaceable any more. That’s great customer support, eh? Compare that with Campagnolo, Italy’s major component manufacturer. I have an old track bike I bought as a novelty item. It’s in lovely condition but is about 50 years old. Even so, spare parts are still available because it’s equipped with Campagnolo Record components.

Problem is, when you walk into a bike shop, almost every bike is equipped with Shimano components. And they look very trendy and beguiling to the unwary, but you won’t catch me buying them again.

And speaking of Bike Shops, I went into Super Elliots in Adelaide today, and was greeted by some of the most arrogant service I have ever seen. I asked about rubber brake lever covers, and the young bloke scoffs at me and says “That bike’s older than I am.” Yes mate, so am I, but I bet both my bike and I work better than you do. He then suggests I just buy replacement levers for $20, and shows me some for $60, so clearly numbers were not his forte either. Then he just looks dismissive and grunts “Just buy a new bike, mate”. I told him about Campagnolo and spare parts, and he went into a great diatribe about how out-of-date they were, and how great Shimano gear is. That must be why top line racing bikes use Campagnolo, then. I can see why bike shops like Shimano though—all their customers have to buy new bikes after 5 or 10 years when all they need is a set of brake shoes or rubber hoods.

So a great big raspberry to Super Elliots and Shimano.

Speeding up Windows—Startup Items

Any computer running Windows tends to slow down after a while under the weight of accumulated rubbish most of us install. Disk defragmenting and Cleanup tools are provided by Microsoft under Start Menu_All Programs_Accessories_Sytem Tools, and whilst they may not be as good as some commercial alternatives, they're good enough for most of us.

Harder to seek out and destroy are the numerous little startup items that load into the background of your machine. Some of these are essential, but many of them can be useless bloatware, or worse, spyware nasties. It's easy enough to look at what's running by going to Start Menu_Run and typing msconfig to bring up the System Configuration Utility. Under the Startup tab you'll see a long list of items, but how do you tell what you do and don't need?

Some software vendors helpfully give their startup items logical names. The Skype application, for example, is simply called Skype. Others are not so helpful. On my system are a whole raft of Microsoft items with names such as TINTSETP.

Help is at hand, at the marvelous Network Techs website. You can just type the name of the startup item you're not sure about into their search engine and find out what it is, and most importantly, whether you need it. That's definitely one to bookmark.

Review: Acer Ferrari 4005 and 8104. Power and style

As with most of my reviews, I am not going to give you a run-down of all the features and specs of the Acer Ferrari 4005 and 8104, as that's all available on Acer's website and any number of reviews on Epinions. Instead, I'm going to cut to the chase and tell you what's good and bad about these machines and why you may or may not want one.

First up, bear in mind that the Ferrari 4005 is an Acer Travelmate 8104 in wolf's clothing. They are the same machine, apart from the fact that the Travelmate has a silver exterior and Intel CPU as against the Ferrari's AMD chip and stunning black and red livery with carbon fibre inlays. In addition, Acer have cranked up the clock speed on the Graphics Processing Unit of the Ferrari a little, so it does have marginally quicker video than the 8104. That would be appealing if you are a game player.

As for the AMD v Intel debate, it's mostly stuff and nonsense. Don't believe anyone who tries to make a very strong argument for one over the other. You'll see very little difference in performance. Also, the argument that 64 bit is better because it's the way of the future is also fairly shallow. Very few of your applications are available in 64-bit now, so even with the Ferrari you'll be using 32-bit Windows and 32-bit apps. When Longhorn comes out to replace Windows XP, which may still be more than a year away, you'll still need to upgrade all your applications at considerable expense, and all your drivers, and by the time everything is stable and available under a 64-bit operating system you may well be looking at 3 years down the track. By that time your machine will be 3.5 years old in its technology and you'll be looking to get a newer, faster machine anyway. So it's a non-issue in my book.

Apart from that the 8104 and 4005 are the same. Same excellent build quality, great screen, shape, weight, features and form factor. Same curved keyboard which you may dislike at first but will get used to. Same tendency to run quite warm and have the cooling fan spinning all the time. Same fairly clunky trackpad, which you probably won't use because a mouse is far better--except for that stylish but skippy bluetooth one which Acer ship with the Ferrari--it's a gimmick, and you'll put it away in frustration. In fact, all bluetooth mice I have used are frustrating at the end of the day.

Their inherent similarities mean that both the Ferrari 4005 and Travelmate are great machines. Fast, good graphics, great screens and plenty of power for the reasonable weight. They don't have CrystalBright type screens with their ironically-named 'anti-reflection coatings', which means they are clearly not as good for watching DVDs, although not bad, and clearly vastly better for using as a computer, which is after all, what they are for. I don't get how anyone would think that a shiny screen is an improvement for working on documents and spreadsheets in the differing lighting conditions under which a laptop is often used.

So what are the differences, and why would you choose one over the other or over competing models from other manufacturers? To the last question first--there are not that many competing models. As far as I can tell, Sony, Asus and Toshiba's models in the same price range are less powerful, IBM's are much more expensive, and Dell's heavier. That leaves the likable HP Compaq nx8220 which has better sound and is slightly smaller, but suffers from very poor screen brightness and uneven backlight in the one I've seen--bad enough to instantly take it out of the running.

So it's Acer v Acer up the final straight. The Ferrari wins on looks and sex appeal, but loses a little on the fact that you pay a premium for that. The Travelmate 8100 series gains on the fact that there are now faster models available (2.26 Gig 8106 for example) but loses again on the slightly slower video clock speed.

So it's pretty even coming up to the finish line, until the Ferrari hits its fatal flaw, one that I have not seen mentioned in any other review (though apologies to anyone who has covered it). The keyboard surround/palm rest of the Ferrari is covered in this lovely looking matte rubber finish. Unfortunately, I found it felt absolutely awful under my palms. My hands didn't move easily over it, rather the slightest bit of dust or dirt on the palm rest felt really gritty and I found myself constantly dusting the wretched thing down. I simply could not have seriously considered living with that.

So in the end it's an easy choice. The 8104 won, as it were, 'hands down'! Then I got the bonus prize. When I opened the box in the shop to check the display (always check for dud pixels and keep checking until you get zero. If the shop doesn't like it, go elsewhere) I found that my 8104 had a different finish to every other one in the shop or that I had seen elsewhere. Instead of the plain-Jane silver lid, this one has a metallic, textured, mesh-looking finish which looks like a silver version of the Ferrari. It's still not as stunning as the Ferrari itself, but far better than the usual finish. I think of it as my Aston Martin!

Review: Apple's own iPod killer, the Nano

Call me a Luddite if you will (okay, okay, stop now) but I never really ‘got’ the Sony Walkman thing. I really love music of every variety (except, of course, country and western), and thoroughly enjoy listening to a very good audio system, so listening to music through scratchy little earbuds with the sounds of the outside world disturbing the rhythm and sanctity didn’t seem all that appealing. Besides, most of the time I actually enjoy interacting with the world outside my head, rather than retreating into the twisted space within.

So Walkmans, Discmans and MiniDisc players came and went, and I remained disinterested. Even the iPod, for all its obvious style, didn’t do much to change my mind. Admittedly, I did take to listening to music on my PDA from time to time, but I wasn’t exactly hooked. I did it simply because I am a gadget freak and I could.

When I added the Orange C500 Smartphone to my gadget arsenal, the first signs of enlightenment quickly followed. At last, here was a device small enough and with good enough battery life to make listening to music on it seem pointful. Besides, it was already with me all the time. Recently I have found myself watching movies and TV programs on it, as well as listening to language learning CDs for my holiday in Barcelona last week.

But the iPod Nano has almost got me convinced. If you haven’t yet seen one, it is very small, if not quite, as Apple claim, ‘impossibly’ so. And it’s absurdly stylish, which will surely be the main motivator for sales. On top of that, it has a number of excellent features such as syncing with Outlook on the PC, a built in stopwatch, and an inbuilt screen lock function that may discourage theft. I’ve blogged before on my view that portable electronics, in particular digital cameras, should have inbuilt security, so it’s good to see Apple doing something on this score.

But the iPod Nano is still far from perfect. Some of my gripes:

• It needs a larger capacity than the current 4 Gb if it is to serve a serious photo storage device. Of course, that will come soon enough (as soon as Apple have sold out of full-sized iPods, I imagine)
• The headphone socket should be on top of the device. At the bottom it pulls on the connector, requires more trailing cable and looks less cool
• An FM Tuner in there would be really nice
• It is flawed as a photo viewer—the screen is not really of high enough resolution and the inability to pan or zoom into a photo is a surprising omission
• Some people will also feel the lack of Firewire syncing and the absence of a remote control are also issues, though neither of them worries me.

But minor issues aside, there’s no doubt that the Nano is tiny, light and gorgeous and it sounds good to boot. It’s the iPod killer that none of Apple’s competitors have managed to build. I mean, who would want to carry around a huge iPod when they could have a Nano? Does anyone really need to have their entire music collection on hand all the time?

Actually, I don’t need even need to carry 4 Gb of music with me. A 1 Gb card in my phone holds all the music I need, plus all my TomTom maps for my mobile GPS. And I can watch videos, run applications, use it as a powerful alarm clock and make telephone calls, all without needing to carry a second device. That’ll do me just fine until Apple bring out a Windows Smartphone with an iPod Nano’s size, style and functionality. Until then, I can't see the benefit in giving up telephone, GPS navigation, video player etc just to get more music and more cool.

At the end of the day, if the ultimate converged device is the goal, then my Smartphone is closer than the iPod Nano. But my advice is rush out and buy an iPod Nano today. I have a birthday coming up soon, and it would be the perfect gift for a gadget-obsessed guy like me.

Link exchange—why it works and why I don’t do it

One of the secrets to getting more visitors to your blog is having more people link to you. That seems pretty obvious: more links = more traffic through those links. What isn’t quite so obvious is that more links also means more hits through search engines. If Google sees plenty of references to your website when it is spidering, I am led to believe that it will receive a greater weighting, meaning that it will rank higher in searches, and perhaps even be spidered more regularly.

If that’s the case, then exchanging links, either ‘manually’ or using a link exchange tool such as Reciprocal Manager or SolvoLink, would be a great way of boosting your traffic.

But although I would love more visitors, I just can’t bring myself to exchange links. My philosophy is that I should only refer people to sites that I really like or are relevant to the topic in question. Equally, I only expect other people to link to me if they see merit in something I write or in my blog as whole, or if they know I know where they live (just kidding!). So if I link to you, I’d be flattered if you reciprocated, but I neither request nor, indeed, expect it.

Okay, that’s all very altruistic, but how does it sit with my occasional use of BlogExplosion, which is, in a sense, a reciprocal linkage system? Well, I guess I’ll just have to admit to being inconsistent there. I do like to browse blogs, and if I’m going to be doing it anyway, I may as well get some hits from it. And I’ve found quite a few BlogExchangers do actually read, digest and comment, rather than just click mechanically. I see that as something a little different from actively recommending a blog by linking to or blogrolling it. But perhaps that’s just my inner ‘hit junkie’ speaking :-)

Silly idea of the week: Samsung E760 cellphone

Samsung’s latest mobile, the E760, is certainly a stylish piece of ear candy, but its ‘unique selling proposition’ is the silliest idea I’ve heard this week. To quote from the latest Link catalogue, in order to start the phone’s camera or mp3 player:

“…no need for keys, just shake the phone while holding the hotkey.”

No matter that you’ll look a complete dork standing there shaking your mobile, but you still have to hold down a key! Oh, sorry, it’s not a key, it’s a hotkey. I see the difference.

Another great idea for your portable music player

In case you haven’t been able to tell from my recent postings, I’ve got headphones on the brain at the moment (though I suppose that’s the usual place for them, in a sense). My last post reviewed a set of retractable ‘phones, but for those who already have a set of favourite ear companions, you can get some of the advantages of retractable ‘phones with this clever little piece of plastic from Sumajin, called the Smartwrap. It’s a stylish cable management device, available in a range of colours to match your entire wardrobe. You could conceivably make something very similar yourself, but for the ultimate style statement, pick up one of these from Sumajin’s website, and while you’re there, get some of their coloured earpads to match.