Google just launched their updated Voice service that offers some very compelling features. The service is a bit tough to understand because it is new and it comes in a few flavors. For the most part Google Voice is a portal that allows you to manage your incoming and outgoing communications. Here is brief list of features:

• Choose one phone number for free (additional numbers are $10 each) from a huge list. The number can be local or remote and you can search for easy patterns or even vanity numbers.
• Have incoming calls ring multiple phones at once. Someone calls your Google Voice number and it can ring your cell phone and your home phone.
• Require callers not found in your Gmail contacts list to announce themselves. This plays a message to you that allows you to answer the call or send them to voicemail.
• Have different outgoing messages for different people, route calls differently for different people.
• Do Not Disturb option sends all calls directly to voicemail. We have a separate Google Voice account just for spam calls (the inevitable solicitation calls you get from companies that require your home telephone number). This has allowed us to disconnect our landline and keep our cellphones free from unwanted calls.
• Transcribes your voicemail messages! Your voicemails appear as a Gmail message with the text of the call. You can still listen to the message but the text makes it so much easier to manage voicemails.
• Forward voicemails or text messages to your phone and/or Gmail account.

Google Voice is available in a number of versions:
1) Gmail - A “Call Phone” button appears in your contacts list. This now allows you to place calls from your computer.
2) Google Voice Page - Manages your settings, Contacts, Inbox and allows you to send text messages and place calls. Placing calls is not quite like the Gmail feature that connects directly from your computer headset. In the Google Voice page the call will connect to a phone you have on record or your headset if you have a Google Chat client. I expect this limitation to be overcome soon and work more like Gmail.
3) iPhone App - Actually not an app since Apple rejected it because it allows you to send text messages from your cellphone for FREE! It is actually a HTML5 webpage that works on your iPhone. Integration is a bit limited but you can send text messages and place calls. Making a call is a little strange since your phone acutally calls Google then connects you to the person you wanted. This is all automatic though and shows the person on the other end your Google number instead of your cellphone number (unless you change the settings).
4) Android App - This version is much better integrated into the phone since Android phones are already integrated with your Gmail account. Right now, this is the best way to go with Google Voice.

Right now the primary benefits of the Google Voice app are:

• Free voicemail and phone portal system.
• Very cheap international calls
• FREE text messages from and to your computer and cellphone

The only thing that Google Voice is currently lacking is the ability to make calls via the Internet from mobile devices. This currently works from Gmail, but adding it their mobile apps would be an amazing solution. Imagine having a cellphone with unlimited voice, data and texts that costs only what an unlimited 3G/4G data plans runs (around $40/month). Or a more limited but FREE cellphone that works only in Wifi hot spots.

If you haven’t done so, please check out Home Theater on a Dime Part I and Part II.

This time around I want to talk about accessories. I was chatting with my friend Mike (who I rent an office from) yesterday and the topic of HDMI cables came up since I had a box full of them under my arm.
I took out a high-end 35 foot long HDMI cable and asked him how much he thought the cable cost. He guessed about what I figured he would, around $100. Well the truth is that if you bought the cheapest 35′ cable at BestBuy it would run $200.

I told him that I bought the cable for $31 online. And this is not a cheap, tin-plated cable. This is a full-on HDMI 1.3a-spec certified, gold-plated cable. What most people don’t realize is that Best Buy makes more money off the HDMI cable than they do off the Blu-Ray player. Best Buy knows that it has to compete with online prices so they price their major components competitively. But once you buy the TV, camera or DVD player in the store, you want to buy the accessories there too. And the prices for accessories are inflated as much as 1000%.

Here are some examples:
——————————-Best Buy————-Online
HDMI Cable 1.3a 6′ ———– $30——————-$6.50
Flat Panel TV Mount for 50″+—$150——————$25
2GB SD Card for Camera——-$13——————-$7.50
iPhone Video Cable————$40——————-$2

These are the most mild examples I could find. I found the BEST priced options at Best Buy and compared them to quality items from the Internet.
It gets much worse than this. Probably the most extreme example of price gouging comes from a company that I even cringe to mention…..MonsterCable.
Please, please do not ever buy anything from this company. They must put magic snake oil in the cables to justify their exorbitant prices.
The fact is, with a digital cable (like DVI or HDMI) you can justify buying the lowest price cable that meets the minimum specifications.
For analog signals (like speaker cable, VGA or component video) it actually does benefit you (slightly) to buy nicer cables. Even with that in mind a recent informal study put Monster’s top-end speaker cable up against a set of coat hangers. Yes, they unraveled coat hangers and hooked them up to high-end speakers. Seven different audio experts could not tell the difference between the very high-priced cable and the coat hangers.

Here is my list of best buys for consumer electronics and accessories. These are the places I go to shop.

Accessories - Cables, mounts, etc. always buy online, favorite site, www.monoprice.com
Computers - www.Acer.com, www.Dell.com, if you have cash to burn, www.apple.com
Computer parts - www.newegg.com always
TVs - shop around, but after shipping charges you are likely to end up buying from a local store like RC Willey or Best Buy
Stereo and Speakers - This is the most challenging category. You have to shop these around.. best to chose WHAT you want THEN buy it. NOBODY carries a full range of of amps and speakers, but you will usually get a much better deal online.

There is no doubt that this is an exciting age for technology enthusiasts. We are finally seeing elegant technology solutions to our everyday wants and needs that actually solve more problems than they create.

The next big breakthrough is coming, once again, from Apple. This June Apple is poised to announce a new device that is neither phone nor notebook, neither iPod nor PDA, but all of these things combined. I am not sure what to call it yet but some speculators are calling it the iPad and others the second generation Apple Newton.

The Apple Newton, released in 1993, was the earliest entry into what became called the Personal Digital Assistance (PDA) category. It was initially thought to replace the paper day planners that were so prevalent back then. The Newton was the same form factor as a day planner and included a large screen with handwriting recognition. The platform ultimately failed largely due to Apple not wanting it to cut into their already dismal Macintosh computer sales. They hamstrung the development effort and the Newton never reached its promised goals of accurate handwriting recognition and performance.
Even with these shortcomings the Newton was far ahead of its time but ended up being edged out by smaller form factor PDAs which eventually gave way to smartphones.

Today we have witnessed numerous attempts to fill the segment that lies between the phone and the laptop. Tablet PCs were long hailed by Microsoft to be the one. The concept of the tablet was compelling but not one that ran regular old windows, cost more than a laptop and took hours to boot up. Microsoft addressed some of the issues with Windows Tablet edition and the excellent OneNote software. But the tablets were still unwieldy expensive and slow. Microsoft later launched a top secret project they called Origami that ended up being a smaller form factor PC, the Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC). But they were just a smaller version of suck. These devices gave way to Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) and now netbooks.
Netbooks have found a price/feature niche that makes them attractive alternatives to full blown laptops. But the problem here is that everyone has been trying to cram a modification of the PC (with a full blown OS) into this niche. Netbooks are moderately successful, but produce razor thin profits and undermine the economics of the laptop industry. I don’t think anyone can sell them for too long without going out of business. The only time they make sense at all (for the manufacturers, not the consumers) is when they are bundled with an aircard and subsidized for a multi-year contract.

Apple has seen this problem for a long time, but was not willing to eat into its Mac sales to fill the gap. But now that they have a proven and extremely profitable mobile platform (the iPhone). They can justify being much more assertive with their efforts to innovate within this niche.
Apple has turned its nose up to netbooks calling them “cheap laptops” and sees the relative success of the Amazon Kindle as a mobile book reader and more importantly book portal. So I believe this June we will see a completely new convergence device that brings all the benefits of a iPod, eBook reader, Newton/PDA and netbook into one device. Supply chain insiders have leaked a very large order of 7″ touchscreen LCD panels that Apple made months ago. So this would put this new device around the size of a Kindle and squarely between the iPhone and Macbook.

I expect this device to run the iPhone 3.0 OS which may mean that it has all the voice features of the iPhone (requiring us to use a headset in lieu of holding a book-sized device to our heads). This could also mean HD playback of movies, a larger mobile browser and whole new slew of iPhone (iPad?) apps and games in the App Store.

But the two features that will really set this device apart and, in my opinion ensure its success, are:
1) eBook Reader. I can bet Apple hates to see another company make bank using their new cash-printing model. That is, provide the proprietary device with an integrated portal for purchasing content. They know that expansive content is the only way to make it work, so they will likely have to use some serious leverage to launch with as large a library as Amazon has for the Kindle.
2) Pen Digitizer. Bring back the Newton! The world is sorely lacking in a good portable device that allows for pen-based input. Imagine a device that not only allows you to carry every book, text book, reference manual and storybook you own, but also allows you to annotate, scribble, take notes with diagrams and uses OCR to index your notes so they can be organized, categorized and searched. All in one device.

Now add to that the ability to browse the Internet, manage your Outlook email and calendar, make calls and watch HD movies!?! Geeky chills run all through my body.
And my head will truly explode if they ink a deal with AT&T to subsidize these devices with an included aircard for everywhere Internet.

I can’t wait till June to find out!

Australian photographer Keith Loutit has created several amazing tilt-shift time lapse videos. Tilt-shift photography uses a special lens that rotates (or tilts) and shifts the lens parallel to the image plane. This creates an extremely shallow depth of field mimicking the effects of macro photography. The result is an image that appears to be made of a miniature model.
Very cool stuff.

Beached from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Bathtub II from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Bathtub III from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Since my last ‘Home Theater on a Dime’ got so many comments, I decided to hurry and write the second installment.

Home Theater Displays, or “TVs” as the rest of you call them…
There is a lot of information and mis-information out there about displays. Large, High Definition displays have finally reached the magic sub-$1000 mark. People are grabbing them like mad, and lots of new models are arriving every week. This means lots of options. So, first I am going to run-down the basics of HD displays. If you don’t care about all the geek-speak then scroll to the bottom for the Buying Guide.
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We live in an exciting time (for geeks). Technology is advancing rapidly. Almost every day there is a announcement that brings exciting new possibilities. Just look at the Omni-directional treadmill and imagine the applications for immersive gaming.  <Geeky chills run all through my body>

I love music and movies, who doesn’t?  So in this day and age all I want is to buy media online (music, movies and TV shows), download it, store it in a single place and be able to enjoy it in any room in my house or on any device that I own.

But I can’t.

I am not allowed to.

Sure, it is possible. The technology exists, the devices are on store shelves, but the RIAA (Record Industry) and MPAA (Movie Industry) don’t want me to. THEY want to control my media. They want me to go to the store and buy a disk that gets manhandled by my kids until I have to go to the store and buy it again. They want me to heft the disk on to my back and lug it for tens of feet to watch a DVD in another room!  If I am really stubborn and insist on buying my media online (since it is much lighter that way), then it is crippled with Digital Rights Management (DRM). This means that I can only watch the movie on the computer that I downloaded it from or only listen to the music on the device that has been registered to the computer.  DRM prevents me from backing up my movies or sharing them with 10,000 or so of my close personal friends. psshht!

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As a self-proclaimed expert consumer and gadget geek I spend a considerable amount of time researching the latest electronics. One of the areas that I am particularly interested is Home Theater.

Most people get their Home Theater information from Best Buy or the local Hi-Fi shop, but these are really poor sources of unbiased information. You see, Best Buy (as well as all brick-and-mortar stores) only sells certain products. The products that they sell are typically exclusive to retail stores (so you can’t try it out at Best Buy then go buy it online for half the price), and they must have sufficient space to profit ratio. Shelf space at Best Buy is at a premium. They don’t want to sell an item with a low markup unless they have to. So there are niches and entire categories of products that never make it to the shelves of the mega-chains or hi-end AV stores. These missing products can often provide a significantly better value and are often of much better quality than what you find locally…and they only exist on the Internet.

Receiver/Amplifier

One category of product that you will never find at Best Buy (at least not a good one) is the Full-Digital Amplifier. About 10 years ago these came out on the market as very expensive alternatives to analog amplifiers. The problem with them was that the processor (similar to a computer processor) was not powerful enough to amplify the entire audio signal without some attenuation. So the result was a significant loss at the higher frequencies. Digital amps (or Class-D amps) got a bad name and were only used when size and power were significantly limited (cell phones, MP3 players, etc). But, as we all know, computer processors have come a long, long way in the last 10 years. So 3 years ago Texas Instruments released a new Class-D audio amplifier on a single chip that could be used for high(ish)-power applications such as 2-channel audio and 5-7 channel Home Theater. Panasonic was the only company to jump on the bandwagon with a consumer product (SA-XR50) 7-channel Home Theater Receiver/Amplifier. The results were astounding. This unit was released with a retail price point of $575 and was quickly being compared to $20k + amplifiers. The units were smaller, consumed significantly less power and thereby produced much less heat. The only real draw-back is that the Class-D amplifier is more power-limited than analog alternatives. The units are plenty powerful for a regular Home Theater setup, but are not appropriate for larger rooms or high-powered audio solutions.
The latest model (SA-XR700) can be had (online) for under $600 and will outperform anything for less than 4 times that price.

Join us next week for Part 2 of Home Theater on a Dime when we discuss HT displays.

The future as depicted in the 50’s was always appealing to me. A sort of naive, squeaky-clean utopia where people wouldn’t have to lift a finger for anything. No thought or care for the realities of population pressure, infrastructure and logistics. They knew what they wanted, just not how complex it would be to accomplish it. When air travel became ubiquitous at the same time that automobiles became affordable for the common man, the natural prediction was flying cars within a decade.

Everyone would simply taxi their cars to the neighborhood runway and take off. What wishful thinking.

The realities of the flying car have been the challenge of one man for the last 25 years. Paul Moller has been designing aircraft since he was 11 years old. In the last 15 years he has been pushing legislation that would expand the air traffic control system to allow for small, personal aircraft to managed remotely across the entire US. His latest project, the M400 Skycar is still just a prototype, but his company is going into production on the M200X.

All I can say is…my birthday is coming up!