Well, isn’t this a doozy. ASUS was a bit of a no-show in the e-reader arena at CES, but has dropped some knowledge on the Times Online’s InGear: it’s building a 6-inch color OLED e-reader, which flies in the face of previous rumors about an ASUS e-reader entry. The device, currently dubbed the DR-570 and pictured to the left, will play back Flash video, includes WiFi and 3G, and supposedly can last for 122 hours on one charge under “real world conditions.” It’s supposed to be released by the end of the year, and while from anybody else we’d assume this would cost an arm and a leg, the ASUS brand gives us some hope that we might actually be able to afford one when it hits.
Every decent DVR today supports remote scheduling via the web — well except Windows 7 Media Center — and Verizon’s FiOS TV DVR is no different. But of course web apps don’t compare to real apps like this new one for Android users. The new FiOS Mobile app features a guide for remote scheduling as well as VOD browsing so you can mark what you want to watch later, as well as parental controls and a free space indicator — something TiVo doesn’t even offer on the DVR itself. Of course there’s no way to actually watch content from your DVR, and we’re not surprised. Now before you get too jealous of Android users with Verizon’s FiOS TV DVR, we’d like to remind you that the FiOS DVR has a measly 160GB hard drive and no external disk support, and as you can see from the screen shot, FiOS users don’t have any free space left for new recordings anyway.
Digital cameras are fantastic for letting us experiment, take tons of photos, and search for the perfect shot. Digital picture frames and at-home prints are often poor substitutes for real photos. Get a great print at one of these five photo-printing sites.
Once upon a time people took photos and dutifully carted their film down to the photo shop to get developed, waiting to see how the photos turned out. Now people immediately check whether or not the shot was good on the display of their digital camera, and more often than not stuff the photos onto their hard drives or upload them to their Flickr accounts, but never get around to actually printing them and preserving them in a physical form. If you’ve been meaning to get around to printing more photos and saving them from their fate of digital obscurity, the following five Lifehacker reader-selected sites can help you.
For the sake of consistency among the pricing notes, each site’s price will be listed as the current price (as of 1/17/2010) for one 4×6 and one 8×10, two of the most common U.S. photographic print sizes and good indicators of the overall pricing scheme at the site. Pricing is only one element of photo printing, however, and we would strongly suggest reading our notes here and checking out the individual sites before selecting one over the other based on a few cent price difference.
It’s also worth noting that reviewing photo-printing services is very similar to reviewing, say, netbook computers. The end products are so similar to each other that the real test of whether or not you like one photo service over another photo service is to upload a couple photos and see if the little things—like the bulk uploader, the built-in editing tools, and the ordering interface—are features you are comfortable with—just like something as small as the keyboard spacing can make or break a netbook purchase.
Snapfish is the most generous of the photo printing sites in the Hive Five. They offer 50 free 4×6 photos to first time customers—and have done so for years—so it’s a great place to start when trying out different photo sites. They also have some of the lowest pricing on basic prints, like glossy 4x6s, you’ll find anywhere. Snapfish also offers a happy medium between storing and ordering prints online and sometimes wanting or needing them immediately. Snapfish allows you to order your prints for delivery through the mail or for in-store pickup at stores like Walgreen’s, Walmart, or Meijer. Snapfish has an upload tool called PictureMover that will auto-detect when your camera or camera card is inserted into your computer and optionally upload the photos to a new album. Snapfish has—rather confusing—tiered pricing for every product they offer. Rather than even attempt to decode their shipping tables, you should always stop by RetailMeNot and grab a “free shipping” coupon code—Snapfish is almost perpetually running free shipping deals.
Shutterfly doesn’t offer rock bottom prices compared to other online outfits—although for small prints they are certainly reasonable—but it does shine with the most polished organizing and sharing system of the sites featured here today. It’s obvious a lot of time and thought was put into making it really easy to share photos and prints with friends and family. Although Shutterfly doesn’t offer a variety of pickup locations like Snapfish, you can order prints through Shutterfly for pickup at Target stores that have in-house photo processing. Shutterfly also has tiered—albeit less confusing—shipping rates which start at $1.79 for basic shipping and rise accordingly. You can view them here.
MPix offers a wide variety of print sizes (25+) and a diverse portfolio of additional services like mounting on standouts and canvas printing. They also, unlike some of the cheaper outfits, offer silver-based black and white printing to help digital photographers really show off their black and white prints in a more authentic way. MPix, unlike many other online photo services, also deals in film, but the price per exposure for development, scanning, and uploading to your MPix albums is $0.19 per exposure—we cringe to think what an 8GB SD card would cost to process at the film-rate. Shipping starts at $3.00 per order, additional rates are available here.
AdoramaPix is the photo processing division of the enormous Adorama photography store—offering photo development services for photographers was a natural extension of their retail business. They offer the largest selection of photo paper of any contender in the Hive Five. You can select from seven different papers including those from the Kodak Endura line, Kodak Metallic, and True B&W for better black and white photos. Adorama offers 25 free 4×6 prints with every new account. Shipping is $2.95 for 50 prints of 5×7 size and under, $4.99 for any size prints of any quantity. Additional shipping rates detailed here.
Many people use Costco for printing because of the convenience of uploading their prints and then picking them up later that day at Costco while doing their shopping. The strong point of Costco’s printing services is definitely a combination of reasonable pricing and in-store pickup. The mail-order side of things isn’t a strong point with longer-than-average shipping times and lack-luster support. That said, if you’re already a Costco customer and you’re looking for convenient pickup without a heavy emphasis on print or paper variety, it’s an easy sell. Shipping is free for 4×6 prints, variable pricing for larger prints.
Now that you’ve had a chance to look over the contenders in today’s Hive Five it’s time to cast your vote.
Have an experience with one of the above vendors—or bummed your favorite didn’t make the list? Let’s hear about it in the comments.
Oh, Meizu, how do we love thee? Let us count the ways. The KIRF-rooted company has released a promo touting the UI for its M8 phone. If any of it seems familiar, just remember that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Honestly, we’re a bit surprised just how professional the video feels, and the tune’s pretty memorable to boot. Get it caught in your head all day, footage is after the break.
That lovable little Windows 7-powered Cowon W2 MID has gotten two steps closer to reality this week with a price tag and release date. In order, 599,000 to 739,000KRW (equivalent to $533 and $658 in US, respectively) and Monday, January 25th. Unfortunately, those only apply to Korea only, but if you are thinking of importing, how about we take a look at the full specs list: 4.8-inc WSVGA screen, 1.3GHz Intel Atom Z520, 1GB RAM, 60GB or 80GB HDD, Bluetooth 2.0, 802.11b/g WiFi, two USB one miniUSB ports, and a battery promising 10 hours idle / 7 hours video playback. Yeah, we’re not sure about that netbook-caliber processor either, but surely that MID form factor makes up for something… right?
This article was written on June 07, 2007 by CyberNet.
Tutorial Thursday
One of the things that Windows is notorious for is not completely uninstalling an application when you go through the Add/Remove Programs. There just always seems to be some junk left behind that is impossible to get rid of, well, almost impossible.
ZSoft Uninstaller (Download Mirror) hopes to conquer all of your uninstallation woes by providing a more advanced method for keeping track of the applications you install. Normally when you install a program it creates an uninstall log that monitors where all of the files and registry values are stored. That way it can reference when a user wants to uninstall it later on.
Some things, such as registry values associated with your program settings, aren’t removed in case you decide to install the program again later on. That way you won’t have to reconfigure it all again. I don’t know about you, but when I want to uninstall a program I want everything it created to be removed.
That’s where ZSoft Uninstaller comes into play. It will scan your hard drive and registry both before and after installing a program. Then it will compare the differences so that there are no worries about everything not getting removed. All it takes from you is a few clicks…
Click the Analyze button in the toolbar. Press Next when you see the popup on the screen.
Click the Before Installation button to begin the hard drive analysis. Depending on the speed of your hard drive and how many files are on it, this could take several minutes.
Begin the installation of your application, in our case we are installing Google Earth.
After the installation completes, press the After Installation button on the ZSoft Uninstaller. This will reanalyze your hard drive and Windows Registry looking for changes. When it completes it will ask for the name of the application.
Now the comparison between the before and after will take place, and then the window will close. If you want to see the differences just switch to the Analyzed Programs tab, right-click on the program, and choose Show Recorded Info.
Similarly, you can go to the Analyzed Programs tab and click the Uninstall button to truly remove the application from your computer.
One thing that you want to make sure when using this program is that you promptly perform the before and after scans without doing anything “extra” in between. If you create a file in between the two scans, ZSoft Uninstaller will think that the application created it during the setup routine, and if you try to remove the program later on, that file would also be removed.
In case you weren’t aware, Mobile-review’s Eldar Murtazin is somewhat of a living legend around these parts. The Russian-borne phone guru manages to get his hands on an ample number of then-unreleased devices and juicy scoops — but he’s also been known to get things dead wrong from time, so keep that in mind. This time he might’ve just outdone himself with some apparent hands-on time with Windows Mobile 7. Here’s what he’s saying via Twitter: the OS has been built on scratch, and none of the old WinMo 6.x apps worked. There’s “a lot of horizontal movements, a lot of additional info by clicks… for WM users it will be a great step ahead. For market it’s a copycat of Android 3.1/3.2 [sic] or iPhone.” No direct comparison to Zune HD, except to say that it’s a simpler UI than what he was seeing here, and also no clue on the kernel underneath. Still, the lack of legacy compatibility is either a huge bummer to the fan base, or if not that then Microsoft is preparing for a two-platform WinMo world. Then again, this is a purported early build (and while we’re at it, an unconfirmed hands-on), so who knows what’s bound to change before the final release. There’s a lot of other details if you’re willing to check his feed, or just head over to WMPoweruser for the abridged / “good parts” version. Boy, February just can’t come soon enough.
While we have yet to see the Acer Liquidpopping up for real on American soil, the lucky Brits have just been treated to a second color option — black — for this underclocked SnapdragonAndroid phone. Still no sign of the red option that Acer promised, though. Price remains steady at around £330 (which is about $537) at a couple of UK e-tailers, but hey, with that shiny $529 tag on the Nexus One it’s hard to be mad at our British friends. Let’s hope Google and Vodafone can work out something nice for them.
Oh, Henri Crohas, you tease. In an interview with French site L’Expansion, the Archos CEO made reference to fate of the Archos phone tablet, saying that the company has built a device with strong multimedia capabilities… but it’s not gonna see the light of day without the support at least two major operators. Sad to hear, as the proposed specs — Android OS, 4.3-inch touchscreen, 1GHz ARM processor, 3.5G bands, 10mm titanium casing, and a possible front-facing camera — were mighty intriguing. In the meantime, keep dreaming of that Android-powered HTC HD2, k?
This article was written on August 23, 2007 by CyberNet.
I just spent some time hands-on with YouTubeDesktop which makes viewing and interacting with YouTube videos much like what you’d experience with a desktop application, except it’s web based. While YouTube videos are simple and convenient to watch as-is, YouTubeDesktop does give you a unique experience, and offers a simple-to-use interface.
What can you do?
With YouTube Desktop, much like a window open on your desktop, you’ll be able to drag, resize, and minimize windows to a tray. You can also create players and drag and drop videos between those players. And just like YouTube, you can search for videos, or browse them. When you first visit YouTube Desktop, it will display some of the videos that are currently popular.
Other features include:
Watch multiple videos at the same time or have multiple players open at a time
Download Videos as avi, MP4, mov, wmv,flv,exe – “converted on the fly”
Change themes
Share videos via email
View recently played videos
At first I wasn’t really quite sure how this would be beneficial to the typical YouTube user. However, after playing around with it, I see it as a “distraction-free” way to view movies. They don’t display any comments which some may see as a draw-back, but I’d actually rather do without all the comments. This would be perfect if you’d like to watch/listen to a bunch of music videos or movie trailers as well because you can find all the ones that you want to see, and just add them all to your playlist. Once one video is done playing, it will play the next one in queue.
Down-sides
The first problem I see with YouTubeDesktop is actually the name. Because there’s YouTube in the name, I would bet that YouTube’s lawyers will eventually require them to change their name.
Another issue as Last100 points out is that they allow users to save the YouTube videos to their computers. YouTube actually has it written in their terms and conditions that third parties are not to allow users to save the videos.
Overall it’s a service that would be great for those of you who regularly watch a lot of YouTube videos. If you just watch a video here or there, it’s probably not worth using it. Remember, it is web-based so there’s no downloading involved, which makes it convenient to use.
Currently YouTubeDesktop is in private beta and an invitation is needed. They’re not giving away any invitations right now, but when they do, we’ll let you know!
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
Well, isn’t this a doozy. ASUS was a bit of a no-show in the e-reader arena at CES, but has dropped some knowledge on the Times Online’s InGear: it’s building a 6-inch color OLED e-reader, which flies in the face of previous rumors about an ASUS e-reader entry. The device, currently dubbed the DR-570 and pictured to the left, will play back Flash video, includes WiFi and 3G, and supposedly can last for 122 hours on one charge under “real world conditions.” It’s supposed to be released by the end of the year, and while from anybody else we’d assume this would cost an arm and a leg, the ASUS brand gives us some hope that we might actually be able to afford one when it hits.
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Digital cameras are fantastic for letting us experiment, take tons of photos, and search for the perfect shot. Digital picture frames and at-home prints are often poor substitutes for real photos. Get a great print at one of these five photo-printing sites.
Many people use Costco for printing because of the convenience of uploading their prints and then picking them up later that day at Costco while doing their shopping. The strong point of Costco’s printing services is definitely a combination of reasonable pricing and in-store pickup. The mail-order side of things isn’t a strong point with longer-than-average shipping times and lack-luster support. That said, if you’re already a Costco customer and you’re looking for convenient pickup without a heavy emphasis on print or paper variety, it’s an easy sell. Shipping is free for 4×6 prints, variable pricing for larger prints.
While we have yet to see the 
