multitasking

Some Early Impressions and a Word about Authenticity

[Some of my earliest comments after playing with the Pre I purchased.]

Though I understand the skepticism some might have about the sincerity of positive user reviews of the Pre made by folks given free Pres to "test drive," I can assure you that everything I write in my posts--both Pre positive and Pre negative--will be sincere. And not only because I actually chose to purchase the Pre over the iPhone before I was asked to guest blog.

Also, you should know that, as far as I can tell, our posts for this test drive are not being edited at all by anyone at Palm, Sprint, or CNET. We paste what we write into the CNET blogging tool, save and "publish" there, and what we have written goes live almost immediately.

When I purchased my first Pre before receiving one to write about in this test drive, I was really excited. For months, I had been reading everything I could find about all new cell releases on Engadget, Boy Genius Report, CNET, Pre Central, Gizmodo, and Mac Rumors (because I had expected to purchase the iPhone) and so my enthusiasm was palpable. So much so, in fact, that I really can't recreate it now.

So...what follows are some of my first impressions of my Pre experience--impressions posted to Pre forums in the first few days after I made my purchase, before I knew I would be guest blogging here on CNET, and before I was given a free phone.… Read more

Kitchen scale weighs in on multitasking

I used to have an old mechanical kitchen scale. Rickety and imprecise, it served more as decoration than as an actual scale. While it served no needed purpose in my kitchen, it sure looked cool. It had small images of meats and vegetables printed or painted on its surface. Though it didn't do much actual measuring, it did make for a nice cookbook stand. While this Maya Kitchen Scale may not have little pictures of common food items on it, it makes up for its lack of kitsch by being actually useful in the modern kitchen.

I tend to … Read more

iPhone OS Push Notification Redux: Where Did it Go?

We visited the topic of Push Notification services for the iPhone 3G in November 2008. At that time, the feature was a month late and there was no word from Apple. Now five months later, Apple is still keeping mum regarding the status of push notification for the iPhone. Apple's self-imposed deadline for releasing the push notification services is now long past, and nothing about it was mentioned at Macworld 2009.

What Push would do: Push notification services would have allowed applications like instant message services to operate in the background while the iPhone is asleep or another application … Read more

USB gadgets gone wild

Once USB gadget makers started competing over aromatherapy, we should have known this was coming. As useless devices continue to pile up in warehouses overseas, at least one manufacturer has just decided to combine several of them into one "Mini USB Desktop Multi-Tasking Device" and be done with them.

OhGizmo says this over-achieving setup includes a USB cup warmer, USB flexible mini-lamp, and USB mini-vacuum cleaner, among other things, as if we need any of them. But given all the competition in this space, we can afford to be picky: We won't even consider one of these … Read more

Profs compete for students' attention

"...Nobody is in the room. The professor is just another open browser window, 1 of 10." --UNC graduate student on the distracted classroom experience

Immersion in online technology and media has fundamentally changed the way our minds work, the way we gather information and split our attention. It may be harder than ever for educators to avoid coming across like the monotonous economics teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I taught high school 10 years ago, and in many ways I am thankful that I was teaching in the era before networked laptops.

I was a talented teacher, but let's face it, when you are trying to convince 16-year-olds that they really are interested in learning chemistry at 8:30 in the morning, it helps to have a captive audience.

Now teachers face new pressures: competing for their students' attention inside the classroom, and presenting material in a way that resembles the variety of mass media that teens consume on average more than 40 hours a week.… Read more

The latest in kitchen multitasking, Dutch-style

A few months ago, when I came across that gadget that prepares eggs, toast, and coffee for you, I rashly and wrongfully asserted that such "breakfast multitasking" was endemic to Japan. That was an erroneous assertion on my part: the Dutch are doing it too, except that this gadget really isn't specific to breakfast. Holland Electric has a fun little product designed by Marcel Wanders. Called the Wave TV, it combines a microwave with a 15" TV and DVD player. We've seen kitchen TVs before, but until this point they've been largely confined to … Read more

Rental car as hot spot

Soon you'll never have to leave your car while on business out of town. Starting in March, Avis will make any one of its rentals a potential Wi-Fi hot spot using a service from a San Francisco-based start-up called Autonet Mobile.

For $10.95 a day, according to The Raw Feed, customers can rent a portable "In-Car-Router" that provides wireless high-speed Net access. The main challenge will be dropped signals, which have bedeviled other mobile access products, but Autonet told the International Herald Tribune that it has overcome that problem with a new "wireless router" … Read more

'Tis the season to Crave: Erica Ogg's picks

NOTE: From now through December, every few days a different Crave expert will be posting his or her top 10 gadget picks for the holidays. See what we crave, and maybe you'll get some ideas! Here's our seventh installment.

Erica Ogg is an unapologetic Dodgers fan living in San Francisco, has found herself hopelessly addicted to Starbucks chai lattes (with 2 percent milk), and readily admits to being a history geek. And no, she has nothing to do with Ogg Vorbis.

1. LG Chocolate. So the first version was panned by a lot of critics, but the second … Read more

This clock tracks time--and crime

Fans of the multitasking gadget, get a load of this baby. It's a radio/police scanner/weather checker/atomic clock that will also clean your house and raise your children!

Actually, scratch those last two capabilities, but the product does combine AM/FM radio functions with police, traffic, weather and TV bands, in addition to atomic clock technology that automatically synchs with a signal from the National Institute of Standards and Technology's timekeeping system. (This latter feature, in short, apparently means an accuracy that'll make it much harder for you to blame your tardiness on the watch.) … Read more