Aug 07
Fountain pens seem hopelessly geeky to the uninitiated. Why bother with an expensive, finicky pen when most of us do all of our writing on keyboards and touchscreens anyway? And what’s wrong with a ballpoint?
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Aug 02
A Tag-Team Look At The New Nexus 7
Posted in: Today's Chili
Darrell: Google recently updated its Nexus 7 tablet, with a new design and brand new specs including a more powerful processor and much better screen. The device also has the distinction of being among the first in line for new Android updates, so it’s an early-adopter’s delight. But despite all the new, the Nexus 7 doesn’t really dramatically change the tablet space; it slots in more or less where the original version did, as a tablet that’s good for the price but unlikely to provoke any passion.
Chris: Well, maybe it doesn’t for you. But for a market teeming with people who are itching to buy tablets over more traditional computers, the new Nexus 7 represents a major step forward over the original without a corresponding increase in price. I suspect that a considerable chunk of people are going to look at this thing, mull their options, and take the plunge. And, you know what? They could do a lot worse.
Darrell: If anyone gets this instead of a computer, they’re in for a rough surprise.
Darrell: The Nexus 7 has a lot going for it on paper, not least of which is the super high resolution display. The 7-inch screen has 1980×1200 resolution, making it officially the sharpest knife in the drawer, if the drawer is filled with tablets and sharpest knife here refers to sharpest screen.
That’s not all that the Nexus 7 brings to the table; its other big selling point is price. In the U.S., the 16GB version retails for $229, which is $30 more than its predecessor, but still $100 cheaper than the iPad mini with the same amount of onboard storage and wireless connectivity. So that’s double the screen resolution, for a third less money.
Chris: Yeah, that’s fine, get on with it.
Darrell: It’s also smaller and lighter than the iPad mini (and has a smaller display, too). You’d think that would give it portability/usability benefits, but oddly it doesn’t. I can’t help but shake the feeling that the Nexus 7 is larger than the iPad mini, even though objective measures prove that isn’t the case. Is it the gargantuan top and bottom bezels? The slightly thicker case? Hard to tell exactly, but ergonomically it’s just not up to scratch with the Apple tablet.
Chris: Anyone ever tell you you’re sort of a tablet snob? Sure, it’s no iPad mini, but are you shelling out iPad mini money for this thing? No, you’re not. I agree that those bezels are huge and they make the Nexus 7 feel strangely long when you hold it vertically, but I certainly wouldn’t call them dealbreakers. Holding this thing is like holding a slightly heavier Paperwhite Kindle, which is most definitely a good thing — there’s definitely some heft there but I find it more reassuring than anything. The soft touch finish on the 7′s rear is a welcome addition too, as it helps you get a better grip on things if you’re playing games or furiously swiping through one of Darrell’s many Apple patent articles.
Darrell: Pricing arguments start to feel hollow when the difference is $100, and it’s only $50 if you go with Apple Certified Refurbished products. The Nexus 7 was a pricing bomb when it first hit and the full-sized iPad starting at $399 was the alternative from Apple, but no one’s going hungry over the difference now, so you can stop with the cries of class bias.
Darrell: It feels cheaper, too, but that’s because it is cheaper. And it doesn’t feel as cheap as some other third-party Android tablets I’ve held, so the build quality is actually a net plus for the new Nexus 7. Also top and bottom speakers make for better sound orientation when watching movies, but they don’t beat the sound quality on the iPad mini’s two bottom-edge stereo speakers.
Chris: I’ve got to give it you on that one. The stereo speakers that Asus loaded this thing up with produce reasonably loud, crisp sound, but they do fall flat when compared to the sort of sound that the iPad mini’s downward-facing pair can pump out. That’s honestly quite a shame considering that 7-inch 1920×1200 display is pretty great for taking in a mobile movie or two.
Darrell: This Nexus 7 comes with Android 4.3 (though you might need to update out of the box to get it up to speed), which brings a few new features for users including restricted access for multiple user profiles! Exciting! … sort of. If you have lots of mischievous children who share your device. Or if you want to keep your tablet porn habit hidden from your loved ones. It’s a nice addition, but Google certainly is not going to sell any tablets on the strength of Android 4.3 alone, unless dev shops are looking for new testing devices to cover their bases.
We’re not going to talk about cameras because if you’re buying a tablet based on its picture- or video-taking abilities you’re doing it wrong.
Chris: I’ll expound a bit since Darrell’s being sort of a grump — neither the 5-megapixel camera nor its 2-megapixel front-facing brother managed to produce anything worth writing home about. They’ll certainly do in a pinch if you’ve got absolutely nothing else on hand that could do the job, but you’ll definitely want to whip out your phone instead when the urge to snap selfies becomes too much to resist.
Darrell: Don’t listen to Chris: If it’s a choice between taking a pic with your tablet and missing the moment, you’ll always have your memories.
As for the other aspects of the Nexus 7′s performance, it’s absolutely fine in most cases, with some slowdown in Chrome when scrolling that’s a little disconcerting. Overall, nothing to write home about, but no problems that would annoy the average user to the point of making them want to return the device, either. Adequate, in other words.
Chris: Some people maybe nonplussed by the Nexus 7′s spec sheet since it isn’t loaded up with the absolute latest and greatest chipsets, but its 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro and 2GB of RAM kept things chugging along with a minimum of headaches. I’m not much of a mobile gamer, but I didn’t notice any lag or performance issues while putzing around in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City or losing at Riptide GP. And loading up and playing several high-definition films (that I, uh, own) didn’t present many issues for the 7 either. There was the occasional visual stutter, but that’s at least partially because most of the video player apps I use haven’t been optimized for Android 4.3 yet.
And there’s the battery, which has actually shrunk a bit since the last Nexus 7. I’ve been able browse web pages, fire up non-graphics intensive apps, answer emails, and basically mess around for about a day and a half before having to recharge. Loading up those videos definitely takes a toll on things though (especially if you’ve got that screen brightness cranked up) — I generally managed to get between six and seven hours of non-stop video going before everything went dark.
Darrell: The Nexus 7 is good for a few, very specific things: it makes an excellent e-reader; if you like digital comics they look amazing on this screen; and if you’re into acts of piracy such as torrenting it’s much easier to accomplish on Android than on iOS without getting a proper computer involved. But ultimately the Nexus 7’s screen isn’t enough to lure me away from the iPad mini permanently; if anything, it has only whetted my appetite for a Retina iPad mini, which indications suggest we’ll probably see before the end of the year.
Chris: I’d characterize it a little differently — the new Nexus 7 is a great generalist tablet. It’s reasonably handsome (those bezels aside), it can hold its own when it comes to pure horsepower, and that price tag can be awfully hard to resist. Is it a perfect tablet? Obviously not, but it’s definitely a worthy purchase for first-time tablet owners or people who want a hardy companion to throw in a bag every day.
Jul 29
We’ve been eagerly waiting for Nokia to make the Lumia 1020 since the PureView camera made its debut. And luckily, it doesn’t fall short of expectations.
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Jul 29
If you can first make peace with the sheer, pocket-hogging size of the thing, you’ll find a lot to love about LG’s beastly, 5.5-inch Android phone.
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Jul 29
Sure, Mountain View slowly infused Maps with Zagat content after acquiring the brand, but now it’s revamped the outfit’s mobile apps on Android and iOS, along with its website, to boot. As you’d expect, users can wield the apps and website to find venues with searches and map-based browsing, and catch up on news and videos from the service’s editors. In this fresh incarnation, Google’s lifted a registration requirement that was previously necessary to peruse reviews online. Schmidt and Co.’s redesigned experience only covers restaurants and nightlife in nine cities, but will include hotels, shopping and other points of interest in a total of 50 US cities over the coming months. In the meantime, Zagat promises its existing ratings and reviews for spots in those markets will soon be available on the web. Hit the bordering source links below to grab the reimagined applications.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, Google
Source: Google, Google Play, iTunes
Jul 26
With increasingly stiff competition and the threat of 4K on the horizon, television manufacturers are throwing every idea and accessory into this year’s flagship models. But do bells and whistles make a TV worth nearly three grand? In the case of LG’s new paramount LED, the answer is a strong… maybe.
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Jul 26
Fitness bands are a dime a dozen these days. Everyone has one, it seems, from audio manufacturers like Jawbone to upstarts like Fitbit and Basis. Now the EB Sports Group, a company that makes fitness devices under a number of brands including Everlast and Men’s Health. I’ve historically been wary of “no name” bands like this one – bands that are created to cash in on a trend rather than from an effort to create a software/hardware ecosystem, but I’ll give this unit a pass for a few reasons.
The most interesting aspect of the Burn is its 1-year battery life. As a regular Fitbit user, I would kill for a device with a fully readable screen that can last longer than two weeks, let alone 365 days. The device is basically a digital watch and is about the size of the Pebble smart watch. The button on the top right controls the readout – you can tag workouts, see your hourly energy expenditure, and see exercise history. The lower right button activates the sync features which, in turn, activates a low energy Bluetooth transmitter.
There is a central button on the bottom of the watch that doubles as a read-out control and heart rate monitor. You can scroll through calories burned, steps taken, and miles walked. If you press and hold the button, however, the watch measures your heart rate. This, in turn, helps estimate calories burned. It’s a wonky system and you have to press fairly hard with your thumb to get a reading but – and this is important – it works 99% of the time and helps conserve the battery.
The Burn is a product of trade-offs. It is a unique product – a quick visit to Alibaba didn’t turn up any similar, unbadged watches – and I’m pleased with the battery life and simplicity of use. To really get the most out of the device, however, you can sync it with an app called MapMyFitness, a free app (with a $29.99/hear training add-on that comes free with the watch for six months) that tracks your runs. By syncing with the app you can simply add your daily walks to the MapMyFitness database. You essentially get a screen like this:
Obviously this isn’t much better than any similar pedometer product but the heartrate monitor built in puts it on par with more expensive devices, like the Basis, and the lower-priced, $99 Withings Pulse. At $130, however, I’m hard pressed to recommend this over, say, a Fitbit Flex or the Pulse. Because of the odd choice to support only MapMyFitness, a popular but not particularly well-integrated piece of software, and the weird method for actually measuring the heart rate, the watch could end up being more trouble than its worth.
I used this primarily as a pedometer, checking my heartrate rarely during the day. To sit there and press and hold a thumb on the sensor is unfortunately too distracting while, say, taking or a walk or going to the gym. I far preferred the Basis’ always-on sensor or even the Fitbit’s overall passivity.
In terms of styling the Burn looks like any other sports watch with a nice red and black color scheme. The screen is a bit dark and unreadable at acute angles but I always enjoyed being able to read my steps taken with a simple direct glance at the watch, something almost none of the other fitness devices offer.
What’s the bottom line? If you’re a fan of MapMyFitness, this could be a solid addition to your regimen. If you’re a fan of a more developed ecosystem I’d recommend the Basis, Nike+, or Fitbit over this device. It’s a clever, nicely built sport-watch/fitness band but it just doesn’t have the depth of data and support afforded by other devices.
Jul 26
Nexus 7 2 Review
Posted in: Today's Chili
After a bit more than one year of Android tablet market disruption, Google has released its new Nexus 7 tablet. Official names is still Nexus 7, although you may hear of it as Nexus 7 2 or Nexus 7 2013. In any case, the update was much anticipated, and overall it has pleased the crowd. In this review, we will look at what’s new in this Nexus 7 tablet, how it compares to the previous one and how the real-world user experience is. Are you ready? Here comes the new Nexus 7: (more…)
Like It , +1 , Tweet It , Pin It | Nexus 7 2 Review original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Jul 25
A Week With The Shine, A Beautifully Designed Smart Activity Tracker Made From Japanese Metal
Posted in: Today's Chili
Fitbits. FuelBands. UPs. The market for smart, connected activity trackers continues to get ever-more crowded. And yet, there’s not an obvious winner yet.
Misfit Wearables’ Shine is a new entrant in the space and they may have the most beautifully-designed piece of hardware yet. The company behind the Shine is itself a homage to Apple founder Steve Jobs’ famous “Think Different” campaign and the famous 1997 commercial that began with the line, “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits.“
Backed by Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures, the company was co-founded by Sonny Vu, who built up a glucose-monitoring business called Agamatrix that had the first official medical device add-on to the iPhone, and former Apple CEO John Sculley. For a small startup, they have an impressively multi-national team with industrial designers in San Francisco, data scientists in Vietnam and manufacturing in South Korea and Japan.
The Shine is a tiny circle not much larger than a quarter that’s made from Japanese metal or aircraft-grade aluminum. It has LED lights beneath the surface that glow through minuscule holes on the metal itself. Those lights form a ring, indicating how far a person is toward completing their activity goals for the day. You tap the Shine twice to see how much progress you’ve made. If half the lights shine, you’re halfway done. If they complete a circle, then you’ve hit your goal.
I had a chance to test it out for a week or so, tracking everything from regular walks to dancing and downhill mountain biking.
Overall, I love the product. It looks like a piece of jewelry in many ways, and while I’m not an industrial designer myself, several other friends who work in hardware were impressed by the make and form of the Shine.
It is not plastic like a Fitbit. Then because it doesn’t have to be worn as a bracelet like the FuelBand or Jawbone UP, it looks a lot more elegant, especially if you’re a woman and want something more discreet. The Shine is comparable in price to its competitors at $99.95. The Fitbit is about $99.95, the Jawbone UP is $129.99 and the Nike FuelBand is about $150.
The Shine has four different accessories: a wristband, a necklace, a watch and a magnetic clip that makes it easy to attach anywhere, from your shoe to your sleeve to your shirt. My preferred accessory was the magnetic clip, but I didn’t have a chance to try out the necklace or watch.
Throughout the day, the Shine tracks how much you walk or run. It also handles sleep, swimming and cycling, but you have to program it. To do that, you tap the Shine three times, and it will recognize whichever activity you set up in the paired app. Unfortunately, like the other activity trackers, it doesn’t handle yoga (and as someone who practices pretty much every day, the Shine and other competing products are missing out on an hour of physical activity).
The tapping is a bit hard to learn. Sometimes I would tap with two fingers and sometimes with three. Sometimes the Shine would misinterpret a few taps as a signal to record a different type of activity instead of showing me my results so far. You can also use it to tell time with different lights glowing to represent the hour and minute hands of a watch.
“The data science to get the double tap is hard,” Vu told me. “There is no on and off button for the Shine and everything is powered by sensors.”
Indeed, the only way to turn the Shine off is for the battery to run out or for you to remove it.
That underscores the huge benefit of the Shine, which is that it doesn’t need to be charged every few days or weeks. It has a simple coin cell battery that needs to be replaced once every four to six months. It’s also waterproof to a depth of 50 meters. I dunked it in a river in the Sierra Nevadas this weekend and it came out fine, but you could theoretically scuba dive with it, too.
The data transfer to the iPhone is also beautiful. You can see how it works below. The Shine uses a simple Bluetooth connection, and the app directs you to place the Shine on a circle on the iPhone app’s screen. Circles radiate outward before the iPhone picks up the activity data in the Shine.
The paired app tells you how many points you’ve achieved in a day. The Shine doesn’t do “steps” because it would be hard to swim in steps. The middle-range goal of 1,000 points per day requires walking for 1.5 hours, running for 35 minutes or swimming for 25. You can move points higher as you please.
Overall, I was really happy with the product. It is just that much more beautiful looking than the standard Fitbit or FuelBand. For women who are turned off by the look of the bracelet trackers, it’s probably the ideal choice.
The Misfit Shine is only compatible with the iPhone for now, which was surely disappointing for Android-using supporters of the Shine who backed it on Indiegogo.
The company had a successful campaign on the crowdfunding site late last fall where they racked up 8,000 supporters in 64 countries, hit their goal in nine hours and went on to raise $850,000. That was nearly nine times as much as they targeted. Like many other hardware startups, Misfit Wearables used crowdfunding more as a marketing strategy than as a capital source. Misfit had no problem raising from some of the Valley’s better-known VC firms, and this product shows why.
Jul 25
The Fujifilm X100S Is The Perfect Constant Camera Companion For Photography Fans
Posted in: Today's Chili
If you want a rangefinder-style camera with classic styling and relative affordability, Fujifilm’s X100, and its successor, the X100S are some of the very few options out there. But the X100 had quirks around autofocus that made a niche camera even more specialized. The X100S zaps some of those issues, resulting in a camera that, while still quirky, is much more lovably so, for amateurs and enthusiasts alike.
- 16.3 megapixels, APS-C sensor
- Fixed, F2 maximum aperture 23mm (35mm equivalent) lens
- ISO 200 -6400 (100 to 25600 extended)
- 6.0 FPS burst mode shooting
- 1080p video recording
- Hybrid electronic view finder
- MSRP: $1,299.95
- Product info page
The X100S retains almost exactly the same classic styling as its predecessor, which features a leatherette body with metal accents, and it looks excellent. This is a camera that you’re actually proud to wear around your neck, even if it does make you look slightly like a tourist, and one that resembles the Leicas that cost oodles more money.
The X100S might be a little bulky for a camera with a fixed lens that isn’t a DSLR, but it’s actually a good size. It won’t quite fit in a pocket as a result, but it gives photographers plenty to hold onto, and offers up lots of space for its ample buttons and physical controls without resulting in a cramped feeling. Plus the thing oozes quality; it’s a $1,300 camera, but it feels even more solid and well-designed than its tidy price tag would let on, and it’s durable to boot – I’ve carted it literally around the world with minimal protection and it’s as good as new.
Functionally, the control layout is the real star of the X100S. A physical dial for exposure compensation and for shutter speed, as well as an aperture ring on the lens and quick access to ISO settings programmable via the Fn button on the top of the camera make this a manual photographer’s dream – and possible an automatic photographer’s overburdened mess. But that’s part of the quirk, and the real appeal of this unique camera.
The X100S offers a lot in the way of features, including the excellent hybrid viewfinder that can switch instantly between optical and electronic modes thanks to a lever on the front of the camera within easy reach from shooting position. It’s the best of old and new, giving you a chance to frame with true fidelity optical quality and also with a preview akin to the one you’d see on the back of the camera via the LCD screen. You can preview exposure that way, and white balance as well as depth of field. The EVF also offers 100 percent coverage of the image, meaning what you see is what you get in the resulting photo.
Manual focusing also gets a big improvement with the X100S, which is great because focus-by-wire is traditionally a big weakness on non DSLR advanced cameras. It uses a new Digital Split Image method that works with phase detection to adjust focus with a high degree of accuracy, and it works remarkably well. To my eye, which is generally very bad at achieving consistently reliable level of focus accuracy on full manual lenses with my DSLR, the split image trick (along with the inclusion of existing focus peaking tech) works amazingly well.
The X100S is a much better camera in all respects than its predecessor, the X100, and that was a very good camera. Its “Intelligent Hybrid Auto Focus” that switches between phase and contract AF automatically to lock as quickly as possible works very well, though it does struggle somewhat in darker settings and at closer ranges still. It’s heaps and bounds better than the original, however, and makes this camera a great one for street shooting; a task which, to my mind, it seems almost perfectly designed for.
Combining a camera that looks suitably touristy, with a short, compact lens and a 35mm equivalent focal lens, with great low-light shooting capabilities and fast autofocus makes for a great street camera, so if that’s what you’re after I can’t recommend this enough. It performed less well as an indoor candid shooter, owing to some leftover weakness at achieving focus lock close up, but it’s still good at that job too. In general, the X100S is a great camera for shooting human subjects, in my opinion, thanks to its signature visual style that seems to compliment skin especially well.
The X100S is a photographer’s everyday camera. It might frustrate newcomers, unless they’re patient and willing to learn, but it’s a joy to use if you have any kind of familiarity with manual settings, and the fixed focal length is a creative constraint that produces some amazing results. This isn’t the camera for everybody, but it’s a more broadly appealing shooter than the X100 ever was, and it’s also even a steal at $1,300 – if, that is, you have that kind of disposable income to spend on photography tools. Know that if you do spend the cash, this is definitely a camera that will stay in your bag and/or around your neck for a long time to come, and a worthy upgrade for X100 fans, too.
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