iPhone App of the Week - Air Sharing

My iPhone app pick this week is the insanely great Air Sharing app. This app quite simply allows you to wirelessly transfer documents to your iPhone or iPod touch for viewing on the go. Once you download/install the app, you launch it and it immediately displays the IP address that you need to connect to [...]

Written by Terry White on September 12th, 2008 with no comments.
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The 3G iPhone: First Impressions

I’ll have a full, detailed review of the new 3G iPhone in a few weeks, but here are some first impressions based on Apple’s (AAPL) announcement today.

The Biggest Pluses

Speed: Because the biggest problem with the original iPhone was the slow AT&T (T) network, moving the device to the much faster 3G network, while no surprise, will have a huge impact. This is especially true since data already show that it is by far the most heavily used smart phone for Web surfing. It means that you won’t have to search for a Wi-Fi network to do decent Web surfing.

Price: Less than one year after it was introduced at a hefty $599 price, the 8 GB model of the iPhone will now be two-thirds cheaper, at just $199.

Third-party programs: Until now, in order to get third-party programs on an iPhone, you had to hack it. Now, there will be hundreds of them coming soon, and the handful that were demonstrated by Apple looked impressive, from blogging-on-the-go, to news and sports, to games and even medical software.

The Biggest Minuses

Still locked to one carrier: Even though the greater speed is a huge deal, it only matters if you have good AT&T reception. If AT&T’s coverage in your area is poor, the iPhone is still a bad choice, because Apple, unlike its competitors, doesn’t sell it through multiple carriers in one market.

Still missing some features: They haven’t added a real way to cut and paste, or to save files, other than emailed photos. And there still isn’t any MMS capability–the ability to instantly send or receive media files over the phone network without resorting to email. There’s also no instant-messaging program, though third-party developers are likely to offer these.

Still has a wimpy camera: The original iPhone camera was OK, but, given the phone’s brilliant screen and tight integration with computer photo software, it could stand to be better. It isn’t in this new model.

Written by Walt Mossberg on June 9th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on 3G and AAPL and ATT and Apple and Instant Messaging and Mossblog and Software and T and Walt Mossberg and Web and email and iPhone and network and price and wi-fi.

Super-Slim ThinkPad Sneak Peek

Only a month or so after Apple announced its MacBook Air laptop, which it calls the world’s thinnest laptop, Lenovo is about to spring its own super-skinny machine: the ThinkPad X300. Here’s a sneak peek. My full review will appear after I have fully tested this unusual new laptop, which I expect to be of great interest to road warriors.

Like the MacBook Air, this is a rare small laptop that is built around a full 13-inch-wide screen display and a full keyboard, rather than the little screens and cramped keyboards common in subnotebooks. And, like the Air, it offers a fast, rugged solid-state drive instead of a hard disk.

But, unlike the Apple, Lenovo’s new skinny ThinkPad comes with a hefty complement of ports and features, some of the very things critics complained Apple left out. It has a built-in DVD drive, removable battery, three USB ports, and a wired Ethernet networking jack. Inside, in addition to Wi-Fi, it can be ordered with a built-in cellphone modem and even GPS. It comes with either Windows Vista or Windows XP.

Sporting the traditional ThinkPad black slab design, the X300 isn’t as skinny or sexy as the Apple, but it’s still very slender and attractive, at under an inch thick. Also, unlike the Apple, most of the ThinkPad’s configurations are a bit heavier than the 3-pound weight that traditionally denotes a subnotebook. But it still feels very light to carry around, at 3.12 pounds with the standard battery and DVD drive.

The biggest downsides to the new ThinkPad X300 are price and limited storage capacity. Unlike the Apple, which can be ordered with a higher-capacity, lower-priced hard disk, the new ThinkPad will only be available with the expensive, limited capacity solid-state drive. So it will start at between $2,500 and $2,800–up to $1,000 more than the Apple’s base price–and will be limited to a paltry 64 gigabytes of storage.

Written by Walt Mossberg on February 13th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Apple and GPS and Walt Mossberg and cellphone and wi-fi.

Eye-Fi is cool but has limited uses

I first read about Eye-Fi Wi-Fi enabled SD card over a year ago and anxiously awaited its arrival. Eye-Fi is an SD card with built-in Wi-Fi capabilities for wirelessly transferring your shots from your SD based digital camera either to your computer or to an online photo service such as flickr, facebook, smugmug, shutterfly, kodak, etc. Although I requested to be on the beta program, I never got the call. So a year later I bought one of the 2GB cards to try out.

The card arrived and setup was very straight forward. You get a card reader with the card that you plug into the USB port of your Mac or PC to set it up. You configure the card with a web browser (although Safari on the Mac wasn’t supported). I used FireFox to get mine going. Once I got it setup (which only took a few minutes), I was snapping away and the images automatically downloaded to the designated folder on my computer. After the first batch I took some more and didn’t see a way to start the new picts transferring again. After a few minutes of scratching my head I just turned the camera off and on again and that started the transfer process. Since your camera doesn’t know anything about the Wi-Fi abilities of this card, there is no way to control the cards functions from the camera. It’s all automatic.

 

It works, but I question its usefulness?

OK, now what? I have this wireless SD card that can transfer the images to my computer or directly to a photo service. This sounds cool and I’m sure some will love this idea. However, here are the issues I have with this card. Like I said, it works as advertised! However, here’s the thing, rarely would I ever want my shots transferred to an online service without first reviewing/editing them. Secondly, even if I opt to have them transfer to my computer, the process is not speedy and drains the camera’s battery more. It takes several seconds for each shot to download over 802.11g/b. Even a USB2 card reader is MUCH FASTER (and doesn’t require the camera’s battery power)! The next problem is that there is no way to use this card where you might have public Wi-Fi access that requires you to accept usage terms via a web page first. So while this card is cool and works, what would it save you from doing? I guess if you want direct upload to a photo site from your camera without having to go through your computer first, then this is your answer. And a good answer at that. However, for me it has limited appeal in it’s current format. Perhaps if they come out with a Compact Flash version that operates at 802.11n speeds, I’ll want to take another look.

The 2GB Eye-Fi SD card goes for $99. Post a comment on how you would use this card!

Written by terrywhite on December 5th, 2007 with 1 comment.
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You can’t stop Starbucks; you can only hope to contain it

Two of nature’s most unstoppable forces — Starbucks and iTunes — continued their hand-in-hand march to total global saturation. You may recall that, last month, Starbucks stores in Seattle and New York began offering special iTunes Wi-Fi Store connections as part of the partnership twixt the coffee retailer and Apple. Well, Wednesday, it was San Francisco’s turn to join in the frappuccino-soaked fun, as my colleague Jonathan Seff reports over at Macworld.

The 350 stores in the greater San Francisco Bay Area join the 600 in New York and Seattle. And according to Jon’s report, that’ll just about do it for Wi-Fi Store-equipped Starbucks in 2007 — look for Apple and Starbucks to resume rolling out the service to L.A. and Chicago next February.

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Written by Philip Michaels on November 7th, 2007 with no comments.
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