On today's show, it's the last day of the Becks Beer sponsorship, so we end on a high note. Joining us in the studio again is Caroline McCarthy, bringing her wit and charm, and we also have Timothy Geisenheimer, who always has something clever to say. So apparently, CNET broke during today's live stream, which is why some people are getting 404 error pages when they visit our Web site. Today's Audio Draft is sponsored by Becks Beer in Conjunction with Last.fm, a subsidiary of CBS Corporation, 5000 XP GTS, is a rising European pop-rock star, Paolo Nutini.
(Credit:
MuffinDeluxe/Last.fm)
After featuring mostly Indie bands, we're going to bring in some pop from across the pond. Paolo Nutini has a surprisingly sultry yet mature voice for a boy of only 22 years old! Trust us, you'll get knocked off your feet when you hear a dulcet voice come out of what seems to be a skinny Scottish kid. On today's show, we feature two songs from his album Sunnyside Up. The first is "Coming Up Easy", which is a nice tune about waking up in the morning to your significant other. Rounding out the show, we finish with "Candy," a slow-going song about getting some "sweets" from your lover before they leave. Yes, Paolo Nutini is "geting-down" music.
The Semi-Weekly Audio Draft has become so popular that we're going to list our previous picks so you can find the great, new musicians we're featuring here on The 404:
- Paolo Nutini
- Koufax
- Why
- Priscilla Ahn
- Mayer Hawthorne
- The Hold Steady
- Grizzly Bear
- Matt Pond PA
- The Twilight and the Sound
On top of some great music, we have some great stories on today's show. At the top of the show, we discover the coolest invention ever: the dissolvable bikini! We wonder why it took so long to create this! All this is courtesy of Tim Geisenheimer's German descendants. It might be something you should give your date if you live in New York City! According to Forbes.com, NYC is the best place to live for singles. Caroline really disagrees, but that probably has to do with the fact that women in their 20s outnumber guys by a heavy margin. Wilson loves this, but bemoans the fact that a lot of these ladies are always trying to find the next best one.
In more technology-related news, AT&T and Barnes & Nobles have announced free Wi-Fi in their coffee shops. Sounds like a great idea at first because we've all hated paying $12.95 for an hour of Internet access, but imagine all the start-ups and college students crowding what used to be a nice place for conversation. Also, Twitter and Facebook are coming to Xbox 360, while we don't really have any interest in Twittering while we're playing Resident Evil 5, we kind of hope we can hook up with other gamers through Facebook Connect. Finally, there is a movement that we can all jump on! David Pogue's campaign to bring back the "BEEP", rather than the freakin' 15-second long voice mail message that we all love to hate. If we can call you from our phone, we know how to leave you a message!
EPISODE 394
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The Samsung Alias 2: You can touch and feel its keys.
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET)You know you've arrived when a New York Times writer takes notice of your work, even if it's to make a snarky remark about it. CNET got such an honor Monday when David Pogue, the newspaper's tech and gadget columnist, included us in a tweet about one of his pet peeves.
Here's what Pogue twittered: "CNET writes 'All the keys feel tactile.' HELLO? 'Tactile' means 'You can feel it.' What the hell is a 'tactile feel'!?"
Now, I'm not 100 percent sure, but I'd wager that Pogue was referring to my recent review of the Samsung Alias 2. I admit that "tactile feel" is redundant, and I regret any confusion I might have caused. I'll try to clear that up now.
The quality of a phone's controls are an important factor in CNET's cell phone reviews. We look for keys that allow you to dial without looking at the phone. We examine a handset to see if its keys are raised and if they're separated from each other by a ridge or crevice that you can feel. Either way, we keep the feeling of the keys in mind when figuring the final rating.
At CNET, we try to look for those "little things" that will annoy or please consumers over time. Too many phones have flat, slippery keypads that resemble one big touch pad. We don't think such handsets are easy enough to use so, at the end of the day, we're looking out for you.
New York Times tech columnist and camera critic David Pogue attempts to take the mystery out of digital photography in O'Reilly Media's new release, David Pogue's Digital Photography: The Missing Manual.
In fairly concise, jargon-free terms, Pogue works to explain shooting, editing, and organizing pictures, and distributing them to your audience.
"These days, digital photography *is* photography. But even the cheapest pocket camera has over 100 features, half of which are never decently explained anywhere. I mean, come on, read the photo magazines: 'Boost the ISO to 1,600, dial up the aperture, or change the exposure compensation by 1/3EV.' Huh?" he notes.
And here, from the introduction of the new $24.99 book, are some of the subjects covered.
Part 1, The Camera, distills which features are worth looking for, and which are just marketing blather.
Part 2, The Shoot, is a course in photography and digital cameras. These chapters cover composition, lighting, shutter speed, aperture, when to use the flash, eliminating blur, and how your digital camera controls all of these parameters.
Part 3, The Lab, covers the fundamentals of getting your photos into iPhoto or Picasa, organizing and filing them, searching them, and editing them.
Part 4, The Audience, covers the many ways you can present photos: as a slide show, prints you order from the Internet or make yourself, a published custom book, a Web page, an e-mail attachment, a slide-show movie that you post on the Web, a photo gift, and so on.
David Pogue has written up a review of seven LCD picture frames (you know, the kind that sit on a desk or mantlepiece and have pictures you've taken pushed to them by various means), and his critique is not pretty. He lays into most of them pretty harshly and concludes that most have had some very basic things screwed up by inattention to the user experience. Why, he asks, can't the manufacturers be bothered to do what's right?
I'm sure they have all kinds of excuses for compromise: "That would cost money," "That would set us back a month," "That would limit sales in Eastern Europe," whatever.
But you don't have to have an M.B.A. to understand that refusing to compromise on design, for any reason, can lead to fantastic commercial success. Look at Apple, Google, Sonos, R.I.M. (makers of the BlackBerry), or (in its glory days) Palm.
So what goes through the minds of executives who don't sweat the small stuff? Don't they realize that critics and bloggers will find and publicize the limitations? Don't they realize that customers nowadays can compare notes, can warn each other away? And in a crowded field like digital frames, why on earth can't they see that the only way to differentiate is to be better than the other guys?
Many of the things he points out are indeed not very bright ways to handle things. But I can sympathize with a manufacturer executive Pogue quotes: "Consumer electronics is a very difficult business. It's difficult to get it right." Apple, Google, Sonos, R.I.M and (used to be) Palm only make it look easy. When it's done well it seems shoulder-shruggingly obvious. When it's done badly it's screamingly obvious.
Read David's review.The $100, er, $200 laptop just got a glowing review from The New York Times' top tech reviewer.
Nicholas Negroponte's project to bring laptop computing to developing nations has been plagued by delays, price hikes and bad publicity. But according to David Pogue, the XO is "a wonder" to behold and a "technological breakthrough."
"The truth is, the XO laptop, now in final testing, is absolutely amazing, and in my limited tests, a total kid magnet. Both the hardware and the software exhibit breakthrough after breakthrough--some of them not available on any other laptop, for $400 or $4,000."
He takes pains to describe why it will work for kids, not adults, and not we citizens of industrialized nations who are used to Windows machines.
(Credit:
OLPC.com)
"Most of the XO's programs are shareable on the mesh network, which is another ingenious twist. Any time you're word processing, making music, taking pictures, playing games or reading an e-book, you can click a Share button. Your document shows up next to your icon on the mesh-network map, so that other people can see what you're doing, or work with you. Teachers can supervise your writing, buddies can collaborate on a document, friends can play you in Connect 4, or someone across the room can add a melody to your drum beat in the music program. You've never seen anything like it."
Whether the actual device achieves what it sets out to do--making computing an integral part of educating students in some of the world's poorest nations--remains to be seen. There are a lot questions yet to be answered. But though he takes pains to laud the actual technology, while some might disagree, it seems the idea is really what he loves the most.
Continuing my series of unedited, incoherent clips from the iPhone launch in NYC that were taped with a pocket-size Canon point-and-shoot, here is a little clip of the most popular person on the block (the Starbucks employee handing out free coffee) and the second most popular person on the block (New York Times tech columnist David Pogue, talking to fans).
Also being handed out: Evian water and Godiva chocolate. This liveblogger is happy!
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