Category: Computers, Internet & Technology

According to David Pogue, WeatherNews is software for your cell phone. Among other things, if you also use your cell phone for an alarm clock, it will wake you up earlier if the weather is bad and you might need more time to catch your plane.

Mossberg’s Mailbox has some useful information today in response to these two questions:

I have ordered an Apple iPod music player, and now need to convert my song files, which are in a format called WMA that the iPod can’t play. All of these files came from CDs I own and were created with Windows Media Player. How can I convert them to a format the iPod can handle?

How do I remove TurboTax for Windows from my computer?

Mossberg also has a buyer’s guide for new PCs.

See the beta. “In addition to web search results we present book results from Amazon.com that include Search Inside the Book. When you see an excerpt on any of the book results, click on the page number to see the actual page from that book. (You will need to be registered at Amazon.com.)”

Dan Neil, recent Pulitizer prize winner for criticism, has a column this week on the new Lotus Elise, Catch me if you can.

According to various news reports, McDonalds will be offering wireless Internet at 3,000 of its restaurants by the end of the year — $2.95 for two hours. Still, McDonalds is pervasive and not everyone wants to go to Starbucks or Schlotsky’s.

According to an AP story McDonalds is planning to have wireless “hot spots” in half its restaurants by the end of the year. “They said the familiar golden arches will offer a reliable place for road-weary workers to download e-mail or surf the Internet.”

Subway, are you paying attention?

From various columns —

This $35,000 front-drive sedan — pitted against entry-luxury choices like the Lexus ES 330, Audi A4 and Saab 9-3 — is one lulu of an automobile, no doubt about it. The TL carries on Acura’s tradition of engine-intensive performance, unimpeachable build quality and irresistible value. I drove the car to Tucson and back in 72 hours and would gladly have done another lap. Everything works, everything fits, everything goes like hell. What’s not to like?

Then again, what’s to love? The cars we love say something about us that we ourselves are desperate to say. I’m fun and unconventional (BMW Mini). I’m a wheel in Hollywood (Bentley Azure). Ask me about my grandkids (Mercury Grand Marquis).

What does the TL say? I subscribe to Consumer Reports? I use a discount brokerage house?

*****

The BMW-built 2004 Mini Cooper is not a perfect automobile. Let us just take a moment to let that understatement reverberate: The back seat is the automotive equivalent of a spider hole in Tikrit. The ride is rough enough to disqualify you from future organ donations. Compared with the amniotic hush of a Lexus LS 430 or Volkswagen Phaeton, the Mini’s warbling, static-filled ambience sounds as if it was recorded in Sam Phillips’ Sun Records studio.

But the Mini — especially the John Cooper Works edition I drove recently — is a righteous piece, a snubbed-down, amped-up, hot rod Hobbit that turns the most galling stop-and-go errand into an occasion for joyous gear-jamming and games of Diss the SUV. I defy you not to love this car.

And in Los Angeles — ohmigod — the car flat-out dogs traffic.

*****

But what makes the Crossfire work is its surface detailing: the Art Deco fluting, polished strakes, raised spine and sculpted surfaces, which make the car look like a piece of precision-milled machinery.

This is the kind of car that makes you set your alarm clock early so you can go stare at it in the driveway. It’s gorgeous.

Ah! to write like that.

It surprised many when Dan Neil, the Los Angeles Times auto columnist won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, especially since Neil had only been at the Times since September. It doesn’t take much reading though to see that his style is special. He begins his most recent column:

Only about 15% of Americans know how to drive a manual transmission. This is not surprising. Most Americans couldn’t find France on a map and couldn’t name the chief justice of the United States if William H. Rehnquist bit them on the face.

As a consequence of this mechanical illiteracy, 85% of Americans won’t be able to enjoy the new, hair-igniting Cadillac CTS-V, the GM division’s first foray into the factory “tuner” market and one of the most amazing performance sedans ever to light up a cop’s radar gun.

So much for ignorance being bliss.

If you have any interest in hot cars and/or award-winning writing, continue reading The ‘V’ is for victory.

Whether you think you might be interested in Google’s new email service Gmail, or think its use of email content to generate context-related ads is outrageous, you should take a look at a good review in The New York Times — In Google We Trust? When the Subject Is E-Mail, Maybe Not.

Various organizations, most recently The Internet Engineering Task Force, have maintained a numbered series of documents called Request for Comments (RFC). These now number 3751. The first was issued on April 7, 1969, and serves as an unofficial birthdate for the Internet.

NewMexiKen has had some success using rules to automatically delete spam emails with certain words in them. But the author of this piece is correct — There are 600,426,974,379,824,381,952 ways to spell Viagra.

Prominent blogger Jason Kottke is thinking some far out thoughts about Google. He concludes:

Even though everyone’s down on Google these days, they remain the most interesting company in the world and I’m optimistic about their potential and success (while also apprehensive about the prospect of using Google for absolutely everything someday…I’ll be cursing the Google monopoly in 5 years time). If they stay on target with their plans to leverage their three core assets (which, if Gmail is any indication, they will), I predict Google will be the biggest and most important company in the world in 5-8 years.

Read what Kottke has to say in GooOS, the Google Operating System.

From Mossberg’s Mailbox —

Q: If you were to build a new house today, would you have the house prewired for a home broadband network, for a security system or a home stereo system? Or would you utilize wireless devices for any or all of these features?

A: I wouldn’t bother with a wired home network for linking my computers and sharing a broadband Internet connection. The Wi-Fi wireless networks can do those jobs without tethering you to a network wall socket. You might consider a few wired connections in rooms where tests showed the wireless signal didn’t penetrate. But, even in those cases, there are ways around the problem short of in-wall network wiring.

However, the wireless systems for carrying high-quality audio and video around a home, while heavily touted, are much less mature and refined. If you just want to route music and video from your PC to your audio system or TV, then wireless might work. But, if you want a fully distributed multimedia system, I’d be inclined to hard-wire it today. This is a tough call, though, because the technology for this is moving fast. I might answer differently next year.

On the security system, where confidence and reliability matter hugely, I’d use hard wiring, not wireless.

NewMexiKen posted an item Friday about a new free email service from Google. This report from Wired News describes the catch that, as Wired’s headline states, makes for “Free E-Mail With a Steep Price?” Too steep, NewMexiKen thinks.

But Google said it would use automated technology to scan the content of incoming e-mail for keywords and place related text ads inside the mail. For example, if someone sent an e-mail to a Gmail user suggesting they go out for Mexican food, the recipient might see a couple of text ads in the right column of the e-mail suggesting specific Mexican restaurants in their area.

Wayne Rosing, Google’s vice president of engineering, said the system would not read and insert ads into correspondence that the Gmail user sent out.

“That would be editorializing your outgoing e-mail,” he said.

Gmail would only insert ads into incoming mail — presumably editorializing only incoming mail.

Google already targets ads on its search results pages. But Richard M. Smith, a privacy and security consultant, said scanning e-mail to seed it with ads is a bad idea.

“I think it’s crossing a line that shouldn’t be crossed. They should just transfer content. They should never be looking at content,” Smith said.

Welcome to Gmail

Gmail is a free, search-based webmail service that includes 1,000 megabytes (1 gigabyte) of storage. The backbone of Gmail is a powerful Google search engine that quickly recalls any message an account owner has ever sent or received. That means there’s no need to file messages in order to find them again.

When Gmail displays an email, it automatically shows all the replies to that email as well, so users can view a message in the context of a conversation. There are no pop-ups or banner ads in Gmail, which places relevant text ads and links to related web pages adjacent to email messages.

From Wired News �

When Intel said last week that it plans to stop using gigahertz figures to market its microprocessors, analysts said it was about time. A chip’s clock speed is almost irrelevant in determining the overall performance of a computer.

But while Intel won praise for the move, industry analysts in the same breath said it’s now even harder for consumers to shop for computers that fit their needs — mainly because none of the chipmakers can agree on how to measure performance.

Read more.

From the San Francisco Chronicle — Dolby possible IPO.

The name of Ray M. Dolby, chairman of Dolby Laboratories Inc., has been synonymous with high-fidelity sound for four decades.

The noise-reduction method he pioneered in the mid-1960s is used today to record the sounds of nearly every movie, professional music performance, and radio and television broadcast in the world. Technology made by Dolby Labs, headquartered in San Francisco since 1976, has been built into more than 1.4 billion consumer electronic products sold — including everything from car stereos and cassette decks to DVD players and high-definition TVs.

Now, 40 years after founding a singularly successful private company inspired by a dream, Dolby, 71, is preparing for another first, one he can’t talk about. As The Chronicle first reported in December, people familiar with Dolby’s plans expect the company, almost wholly owned by Ray Dolby, to initiate an IPO worth about half a billion dollars by the end of this year.

Dolby agreed to speak with The Chronicle on the condition that he would answer no questions about any possible IPO plans. “My lawyers would kill me,” Dolby joked as he sat down with a Chronicle reporter in the Presidio Golf Club Cafe on a breezy, cloudless Friday in March.

Read more.

Astronomy Picture of the Day tells about the X-43A.

Using oxygen from the air itself, a NASA experimental jet propelled itself past Mach 7 in the atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean this weekend. The small automated X-43A Hyper-X craft was dropped from a huge converted B-52 bomber and then accelerated by a standard Pegasus rocket. At Mach 7, seven times the speed of sound, the X-43A separated and the novel scramjet kicked in. Atmospheric oxygen was then scooped up, combined with onboard hydrogen, and combusted in flight to propel the X-43A to record air speeds during maneuvers over the next 10 seconds.

Even at 5,000 miles an hour you can’t get very far in 10 seconds (14 miles).

The New York Times reviews two new S.L.R.-digital cameras:

Only four years ago, a six-megapixel digital S.L.R. made a $25,000 dent in your life savings. But last fall the air was filled with the sounds of Visa cards being slapped onto shop counters after Canon introduced the first digital S.L.R. for $1,000: the EOS 300D Digital Rebel. Next month it will be joined by a second $1,000 model, Nikon’s new D70. (Canon includes the lens for that price; Nikon does not. More on this in a moment.)

These are precision machines that, even in Auto mode, will reward the photographer, skilled or unskilled, with huge, crisp, brilliant, joyous photos.

Read more.

There’s also a nice slide show comparing cameras (see right sidebar of article).

The New York Times’ David Pogue interviewed Google executives for the program CBS News Sunday Morning. According to Pogue, Google is expected to go public this spring with the highest valuation in high-tech history — $25 billion.

But, more importantly, along the way Pogue asked Google execs and staff to name their favorite Google tips and tricks.

• Download and install the Google toolbar. Not only does it put the Google search box into your browser full-time, but it also blocks pop-up ads and fills in forms for you. For Windows at http://toolbar.google.com. (Ad blocking, form-filling and Google’s search box are already built into the Apple’s Web browser, Safari.)

• Phrase your question in the form of an answer. “After all, you’re not looking for Web pages that ask your question,” explains director of technology Craig Silverstein. “You’re looking for pages that answer it.”

So instead of typing, “What is the average rainfall in the Amazon basin?”, you might get better results by typing “The average rainfall in the Amazon basin is.”

• This is an old one, but very important: Put quotes around phrases that must be searched together. If you put quotes around “electric curtains,” Google won’t waste your time finding one set of Web pages containing the word “electric” and another set containing the word “curtains.”

• Similarly, put a hyphen right before any word you want screened out. If you’re looking up dolphins, for example, you’ll have to wade through a million Miami Dolphins pages unless you search for “dolphins -Miami.”

• Google is a global White Pages and Yellow Pages. Search for “phonebook:home depot norwalk, ct,” Google instantly produces the address and phone number of the Norwalk Home Depot. This works with names (“phonebook:robert jones las vegas, NV”) as well as businesses.

Don’t put any space after “phonebook.” And in all of the following examples, don’t type the quotes I’m showing you here.

• Google is a package tracker. Type a FedEx or UPS package number (just the digits); when you click Search, Google offers a link to its tracking information.

• Google is a calculator. Type in an equation (“32+2345*3-234=”). Click Search to see the answer.

• Google is a units-of-measurement converter. Type “teaspoons in a gallon,” for example, or “centimeters in a foot.” Click Search to see the answer.

• Google is a stock ticker. Type in AAPL or MSFT, for example, to see a link to the current Apple or Microsoft stock price, graphs, financial news and so on.

• Google is an atlas. Type in an area code, like 212, to see a Mapquest map of the area.

• Google is Wal-Mart’s computer. Type in a UPC bar code number, such as “036000250015,” to see the description of the product you’ve just “scanned in.” (Thanks to the Google Blog, http://google.blogspace.com, for this tip and the next couple.)

• Google is an aviation buff. Type in a flight number like “United 22” for a link to a map of that flight’s progress in the air. Or type in the tail number you see on an airplane for the full registration form for that plane.

• Google is the Department of Motor Vehicles. Type in a VIN (vehicle identification number, which is etched onto a plate, usually on the door frame, of every car), like “JH4NA1157MT001832,” to find out the car’s year, make and model.

• For hours of rainy-day entertainment, visit http://labs.google.com. Here, you’ll find links to new, half-finished Google experiments-like Google Voice, in which you call (650) 623-6706, speak the words you want to search for and then open your browser to view the results. Disclaimer: It wasn’t working when I tried it. (Ditto a lot of these experiments.)

• Poke around the “Services & Tools” link on the Google.com home page and you’ll find some of the better-known lesser-known Google features, if that makes any sense.

For example, there’s Froogle (product search), News, Groups (Internet discussion boards), Google Catalogs (hundreds of scanned-in product catalogs), Images (find graphics and photos from other people’s Web sites), Blogger (publish your own online journal), Google language translation, Google Answers (pay a couple of bucks to have a professional researcher find the answers for you) and much more.

Looking for a particular topic on NewMexiKen? When NewMexiKen upgrades, it will be easier. But, for now, you can search this page (or any other web page) by using your browser’s “Find on this Page” feature. Ctrl + F will open it.

That’s a 64MB (or 128MB) USB memory stick in a Swiss Army Knife. ( €55 for the 64 MB version.)

Read more.

Walt Mossberg has a nice little rant about the hassle of keeping your PC secure and that it’s about time the industry (i.e., especially Microsoft) stepped up and gave us an easy way to “fend off all kinds of threats and invasions of privacy, including viruses and spyware, without getting all tangled up in academic distinctions.”

David Pogue of The New York Times has a weekly email column that is often quite useful. Today’s is especially so I thought.

In last week’s column, I described the weird and wonderful Comfort Keyboard, a three-section split keyboard whose universal joints permit total 3-D freedom of positioning. I mentioned in passing that I also use speech-recognition software to avoid typing and speed up my work.

As it turns out, more readers seemed interested in that part of the column than in my wacky keyboard. Many of you wrote for more details — and so here they are.

The program I use is called Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7 for Windows. (Mac fans always write to ask which program they should use. Truth is, the dictation software for the Macintosh isn’t anywhere near as good. I always suggest picking up some cheapo used PC to run NaturallySpeaking, and then transfer the resulting documents via network cable to the Mac.)

NatSpeak now comes from ScanSoft, which picked it up for a song when Lernout & Hauspie disintegrated in the European courts, thanks to embezzlement and fraud by its executives.

NatSpeak is available in a bunch of different versions, ranging from $60 to $200; you can see a feature comparison table at www.scansoft.com/naturallyspeaking/matrix. Each package includes a headset microphone, although aficionados who are really into accuracy replace it with a nicer U.S.B. model. (I use an Andrea headset with U.S.B. adapter from, for example, speechtechnology.com.) Ambient sound and coworker noise generally isn’t a problem, because the microphone is a half-inch from your mouth.

All NatSpeak versions offer the same accuracy, let you dictate into almost any program and let you both dictate and control your PC with voice commands (like “Close this window,” or whatever).

The Preferred Edition (which, in fact, I prefer) also lets you create voice shorthand. For example, when answering e-mail, I can say, “go away” to trigger a much longer response like this:

“Thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to let me know about how violently you despised my latest column. I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree this time around. After all, a healthy garden of opinion and independent thinking is what makes the world go round, n’est-ce pas?”

(Just kidding.)

You talk fluidly and normally—not—broken—up—like—this. You generally have to say the punctuation. (“Love, comma, new paragraph, David, period.”) The program nails homonyms like “to,” “two,” and “too” by looking at the context of your speech.

When the program does make a mistake (“the writer left” instead of “the right or left,” for example), you can correct it entirely by voice. You just say, “Correct ‘the writer left,’” and a little pop-up numbered list of alternate transcriptions appears just below the erroneous text. Usually, the version you wanted appears at the top of the list (it appears like this: “1—the right or left”). You just say, “choose 1.” Instantly, NatSpeak corrects the error, moves your insertion point back where you stopped, and teaches itself never to make that mistake again.

Now, if you could see me using NatSpeak live, you’d be floored. I routinely dictate a page or two without errors, at terrific rates of speed. My wife once clocked me at 120 words per minute.

But here’s the big “but.” Not many people actually use dictation software; the huge majority of people buy it, try it and never use it again. See, after “training” the software for the first time (reading a five-minute canned script), you get something like 95 percent accuracy. That’s one error out of 20 words, or several gaffes per paragraph. The program starts getting a lot better the more you use it. But you have to keep making those vocal corrections.

Within a couple of weeks, the software creeps closer and closer to 100 percent accuracy.

But most people, alas, simply don’t have the patience. There are so many times in life when an investment in time and learning up front leads to a long-term payoff. And in computing, that’s especially true (learning to use macros in Word, learning a few keyboard shortcuts in Mac OS X and so on). Dictation software falls squarely in that category.

For me, it’s a lifesaver and very nearly magical — but only because I stuck with it.

Visit David Pogue on the Web at DavidPogue.com.