Apple's newest retail store is on Broadway and 67th Street in Manhattan.
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)Apple's latest Manhattan store doesn't officially open until this Saturday, but it had the press in today for a sneak peek. Of course, because the store's made mostly of glass, the general public can get a pretty good idea of what everything looks like inside--except for what's below ground.
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Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)
Windows Marketplace for Mobile debuted in October as Microsoft's answer to smartphone app stores. As with Google's Android Market, Windows Mobile 6.5 users could initially only find and purchase apps from the device. Now Microsoft has published an online catalog to mirror its mobile storefront.
As with iPhone's app store in iTunes and BlackBerry's online App World, Windows Marketplace for Mobile site lets you find apps by browsing, searching, or discovering programs from lists of what's most popular or new. App screenshots, ratings, and version details are accessible from product pages. Like BlackBerry's App World, you can pick apps from the online catalog to install via Marketplace for Mobile on your smartphone.
In addition to discovering new applications to download, the online mobile Marketplace has a management window for you to track your download history and tweak your account settings.
Developers will see a separate portal that contains community resources, blog posts, and lists of upcoming events. Although Microsoft has been the tardiest of the major mobile platform developers to implement an app store solution, it's to Microsoft's credit that the company is quickly rounding out its storefront with an online catalog. Now Microsoft just needs to open up the Marketplace to phone owners using older versions of Windows Mobile operating systems.
Click to see the Chumby One unboxing photo gallery.
(Credit: Donald Bell/CNET)That was quick. A day after going on sale, the Chumby One cheerfully landed on my desk this morning. Curious to see what's inside? Take a look at Crave's Chumby One unboxing photo gallery.
If you hope to survive against the reigning king of MP3 players, otherwise known as the Apple iPod Nano, you better have some jaw-dropping feature that makes you stand out. Unfortunately, while Haier America's latest offering, the HEC Video MP3 Player, puts a good foot forward with its solid sound quality and a very palatable price tag, its quirky navigation isn't going to do much to tempt prospective iPod buyers. However, if you've been hunting for a music device that actually has a decent shuffle algorithm, the HEC is worth a look.
Maybe this is the way to save newspapers?
Read nearly any newspaper in the world, right on your iPhone or iPod Touch.
PressReader brings more than 1,300 newspapers to your iPhone and iPod Touch.
In other words, it's a dream come true for news junkies. The app itself is free; you pay only for the content.
The above video explains most of what you need to know, but I'll sum up. PressReader lets you browse each and every page of the selected newspaper, zooming in and scrolling as needed.
Of course, if you've ever tried reading a PDF on your iPhone, you know it's not exactly comfortable. That's why PressReader also includes a text view: Just tap a headline to see the full story nicely formatted for the iPhone's screen.
You can also have a story read to you by tapping the headphones icon. Though it's a computerized voice, the quality is downright amazing.
For the month of November, developer PressDisplay is offering seven free editions of any paper--basically, a chance to give the app a test-drive (test-read?).
After that, each paper will cost you 99 cents--about what you'd pay if you picked it up off the newsstand.
I find that a little disappointing, for much the same reasons I think e-books are overpriced: There's no printing, no paper, no shipping, nor most of the other costs associated with newspapers--so why don't the e-editions cost a lot less?
Discussion for another day. If you're a voracious reader, you can sign up for one of two PressDisplay subscriptions: $9.95 monthly for 31 credits (one credit equals one issue, in most cases), or $29.95 monthly for unlimited content.
Interestingly, you can dip into the Online section of the app and read all the same content free of charge, with nearly all the same features as you get from a download. It also displays top stories culled from many sources, along with news, business, sports, and other sections.
Arguably, then, the only reason to download a newspaper at all is for offline reading, like when you're on an airplane.
That said, I found PressReader's Online mode to be slow and crash-prone, so maybe downloading is the way to go after all. In any case, this is one seriously slick app, a must-have for fans of news, newspapers, and the environment.
The debut of the Palm Pre got the tech world and gadget enthusiasts excited about Palm once again. Long considered dead in the water, Palm's innovative WebOS operating system buoyed it back into the spotlight, and the Pre was certainly a boon for the company as well as Sprint.
While not a complete savior, the two are hoping to create some more magic with the new Palm Pixi. A smaller, cheaper version of the Pre, the Pixi is aimed at a younger audience or for those making the jump from a feature phone to a smartphone. It goes on sale Sunday, November 15 for $99.99 with a two-year contract, but is it worth the price?
Find out in our full review of the Palm Pixi.
Modern Warfare 2
(Credit: GameSpot)With so many new blogs and Web sites that review video games and offer buying guides, it's hard to know who to trust; if you've ever vehemently disagreed with an online review and felt a boiling need to hunt down the writer, listen to today's episode of The 404--it's all about fanboys, online reviews, and our credibility as unbiased journalists.
(Credit:
Destructoid)
We start off the show with a quick verbal fanboy bashing, and Jeff is probably the most engaging participant as a result of an article that instructs video game fans on how to respond to a bad review. After grilling Jeff for a while on what exactly makes him qualified to review video games, we run down the list of excuses as to what outside sources might influence a writer to give a game an unfairly low rating. For example, it could be that the reviewer might just suck at the game, or maybe the writer is just trolling for hits to further their career. In any case, The 404 fully endorses MetaCritic as the definitive source for unbiased, aggregated user reviews. (Disclosure: MetaCritic is a part of CBS Interactive, which also publishes CNET.)
Jeff is jokingly ticked off after we challenge his legitimacy as a professional video game reviewer, so we help him let off some steam with a study out of Keele University in North Staffordshire that claims swearing relieves pain. Although we don't normally use foul language on the air, everyone agrees that a well-placed cuss word can certainly alleviate frustration and even mild physical pain. Without getting ourselves into trouble, we run down a list of curse word dos and don'ts and even offer a few choice expressions in our native tongues.
We also want to give a big thanks to everyone that e-mailed and called about the derogatory comments sometimes heard on Microsoft Xbox Live. We received a lot of excellent comments about censorship and age limits in video games as well, so thanks to everyone for their input. If you have something to say about today's episode, give us a call at 1-866-404-CNET or email us at the404[at]cnet[dot]com and tell us what's on your mind.
Have a great day everyone!
EPISODE 466
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Boxee Box: More fun than kittens?
(Credit: daveyp.com)Even though Hulu Desktop and other software have stolen its thunder a little, we love Boxee. It was one of the first and best ways to browse streaming media from multiple outlets on a big screen, and we like its indie spirit, even though some content providers have given it a hard time.
Rumors of a Boxee Box--an actual piece of hardware to free the software from a PC--have been floating for a while, but it's becoming real very soon, according to the Boxee blog. Boxee's first hardware partner has been found, and we are already guessing as to what the Boxee Box will have inside. More importantly, how will it compare with Roku? Or, could it possibly be...
A launch event on December 7 in Brooklyn will give a lot more details including mock-ups, and CNET will be there. Look for more then. Until that day, enjoy the kittens.
When we first saw Dell's new Inspiron Zino HD this summer, our thought was that when Dell brought this thing to market it would be introducing the affordable living room PC of our dreams. It's small, it's cheap, it has HDMI, and it supports Blu-ray and 802.11n Wi-Fi. What else could you want in a self-contained little Windows box to serve up media to your TV? We're not without questions (how well will the default ATI graphics and low-power AMD CPU handle Blu-ray playback, for example?), but on paper, the Inspiron Zino HD the Dell announced this morning seems to retain most of that promise we saw a few months back.
Dell's new Inspiron Zino HD offers multiple color choices.
(Credit: Dell)The Inspiron Zino HD starts at $229, which nets you a single-core 1.6GHz AMD Athlon 2650e CPU, a DVD burner, 2GB of RAM, wired networking, a DVD burner, and a 250GB hard drive. It's not much, but that's a better deal than the $199 Acer Revo we reviewed a few weeks ago because of the Dell's larger hard drive and a DVD burner.
And while these low-cost PCs are all the rage these days, we're more excited by the Zino's possibilities after a few key upgrades. Bump the CPU up to the dual-core Athlon X2 3250e, upgrade the RAM to 4GB, add 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, and a Blu-ray drive and the price climbs to a still-reasonable $498. A TV tuner option is coming at some unspecified time in the future.
You get two USB 2.0 jacks, an optical drive, and an SD Card reader on the front of the Zino.
(Credit: Dell)You wouldn't want to use such a spec for editing movies or playing games, for that we'd recommend starting with Gateway's SX2800-01 and adding a low-profile 3D card. You'd probably also run out of storage space with the Zino's 250GB default hard drive sooner than you'd like. But on a home network with another PC hosting the bulk of your media, a $500 or so Inspiron Zino HD would likely meet all of your prerecorded media consumption needs.
Among other ports, the back of the Inspiron Zino HD has both HDMI and VGA video outs, as well as a pair of eSATA ports.
(Credit: Dell)Dell offers a few color and design options for the Inspiron Zino HD, and all but Piano Black cost an extra $10. According to Dell's Web site, order's placed today will ship by November 26.
The National Federation of the Blind is applauding the decisions of Syracuse University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison not to Amazon.com's Kindle DX as a textbook replacement.
Kindle DX
(Credit: Amazon)The universities cited the Kindle's inaccessibility to the blind as the problem.
The federation said Wednesday that while it appreciates the Kindle's text-to-speech feature, the "menus of the device are not accessible to the blind...making it impossible for a blind user to purchase books from Amazon's Kindle store, select a book to read, activate the text-to-speech feature, and use the advanced reading functions available on the Kindle DX."
For its part, Amazon believes in the Kindle's potential. An Amazon spokesperson wrote in an e-mail that "With a few modifications, Kindle has the potential to be a true breakthrough product for the blind, and we're already working on it. We're excited about it."
According to the federation, the University of Wisconsin-Madison experimented with the Kindle in upper-level history classes.
"The big disappointment was learning that the Kindle DX is not accessible to the blind," Ken Frazier, the University of Wisconsin-Madison director of libraries, said in a statement. "Advancements in text-to-speech technology have created a market opportunity for an e-book reading device that is fully accessible for everyone. This version of the Kindle e-book reader missed the mark."
Frazier added that a suitable device would include better "accessibility, higher-quality graphics, and improved navigation and note-taking. I think that there will be a huge payoff for the company that creates a truly universal e-book reader."
Pamela McLaughlin, director of communications and external relations at Syracuse University, said in a statement that her school bought two Kindle DX units to see if it could replace hardcover textbooks and course materials.
Although students are still evaluating the devices, she said, the university has "no plans to purchase any more of these units in light of the fact that they are inaccessible to blind students. If Syracuse University decides to use e-book technology on campus, we will require technology that can be used by all of our students, including those who are blind."
Marc Maurer, president of the National Federation of the Blind, said his organization commends the universities' rejections of "broad deployment of the Kindle DX in its current form because it cannot be used by blind students and therefore denies the blind equal access to electronic textbooks."
Mauer pointed out that the federation does not oppose electronic textbooks and believes that "they hold great promise for blind students if they are accessible."
Updated at 10:14 a.m. PST to include Amazon comments.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
