Can't take the sweat? Get out of the gym.
(Credit: CBS Interactive/Corinne Schulze)Update: W-Series Walkman owners experiencing an issue with their players can visit the Sony help site for more information. It appears the issue is only affecting devices within a certain serial number range, so not all products should have the problem.
Original post: The Sony W-Series Walkman is an MP3 player built into a set of earbuds, which feature modules resembling Bluetooth headsets connected by a flexible neckband that loops over the back of the ears and behind the head. The design is undeniably innovative, and the player's ultralight weight and lack of headphone wires does appear to make it ideal for active applications. And in fact, I found this Walkman to be quite handy at the gym during my testing for the review. However, several Sony customers have logged complaints that the device isn't actually sweat-resistant, a rather important feature for any fitness-friendly gadget.
The main complaint is that the Walkman has a tendency to short out after just one or two particularly sweaty workouts. Volume gets wonky, or the music just refuses to play back altogether. In some cases, the player's Zappin feature will turn on and off on its own. Although our review unit did not suffer from such problems, and not all users have experienced the issue, there has been enough negative feedback to warrant a response from Sony, which is just what I solicited after receiving a couple of e-mails on the topic. Below is the company's reply...rather canned, if you ask me, but at least it's something.
Sony makes every effort to ensure that its products not only meet its own strict quality standards, but also support a positive customer experience.
Recently, there have been comments made about the W series Walkman (NWZ-W202), which has been available for purchase in the US and Europe since April 2009. These comments involved a small number of W series Walkmans reportedly malfunctioning following exposure to sweat or other liquids.
We take all customer feedback seriously, so we have implemented additional safeguards to promote sweat/moisture resistance. We are confident that these measures will ensure all W series Walkman models support increased customer satisfaction and meet our high quality standards.
Sony will provide information for contacting Sony Customer Support and replacement unit availability by Tuesday, June 30. We sincerely apologize to our customers for any inconvenience.
Sony promised to supply me with a customer support link as soon as it is up and running. I will post that here when I receive it.
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The city of Boston is set to launch an official iPhone application for residents to file complaints about "neighborhood nuisances--nasty potholes, graffiti-stained walls, blown street lights," according to The Boston Globe.
Called Citizen Connect, the app will let Bostonians send pictures and tips right to City Hall.
The app was built with the help of a New Hampshire mobile development firm called Connected Bits.
Citizen Connect has been submitted to Apple but hasn't made it into the iTunes App Store just yet. When it does, it will be free.
Beware, Citizen Connect: complaints about this 'Aqua Hunger Teen Force' ad campaign turned into a huge mess for Boston two years ago.
(Credit: Boing Boing)The Boston Globe said Citizen Connect is the first app of its kind, but other cities have also been turning to new technology to make the minutiae of municipal government run more smoothly. New York's 311 nonemergency hotline for residents now has a presence on Skype and Twitter. New York also now accepts photo and video submissions for 911 and 311.
But the iPhone app has a few advantages. Per the Globe: "The application, which will be free to download from Apple, will allow residents to use the Global Positioning System function on their iPhones to pinpoint the precise location of the problem for City Hall. After submitting a complaint, users will get a tracking number, so they can pester city officials if the problem persists." Ooh! Pestering city officials sounds like fun!
That said, the idea of a complaint-filing iPhone app for Boston is particularly hilarious: the most famous instance of Boston municipal complaints in recent history happened when people started calling in concerns about suspicious-looking devices that turned out to be an ad campaign for the cartoon flick "Aqua Teen Hunger Force." This fact, however, did not come to light until the city had already shut down all traffic on the Charles River.
Or, as one blogger has pointed out already, the system could easily get flooded with photos accompanied by captions like "Please send a cop over to make these Yankees fans leave this bar."
This post was updated at 10:34 a.m. PDT with further details of the server issues.
NEW YORK--The process of obtaining an iPhone 3G appears to be going in slow motion because of AT&T activation server crashes that have been confirmed in New York, San Francisco, and Palo Alto, Calif.
Unlike its predecessor last year, the iPhone 3G must be activated in-store, an antihacking measure that Apple had said could take 10 to 15 minutes.
That's long enough to make the line move a lot more slowly than the speedy process that made last year's iPhone launch astonishingly efficient. But crashing AT&T servers required for the activation made it even worse.
The initial lines for the iPhone 3G paled in comparison to the lines for the original iPhone, when everyone predicted shortages, but ultimately, it was possible to waltz into the Apple store several hours after launch time and get a phone almost immediately. Apple set an excellent precedent for any future tech product launches.
It seems as if the iPhone 3G launch has failed to live up to the product launch standard Apple set last year. The new process didn't have the same assembly line precision, as evidenced by the first person to walk out of the Fifth Avenue store with an iPhone: 24-year-old David Yoo estimated that he'd been about 75th in line, but he somehow managed to be first out of the gate with a phone activated.
But later in the morning, overloaded activation servers made lines slow to a crawl, with outages across the country. As the hordes of geeks and bloggers on Twitter reveal, some lines were at a standstill. High-energy product launches can, of course, lead to exaggeration, but it's clear that some people are a bit impatient.
"In-store activation is a really, really bad idea--every line I saw was around the block and not moving," New York-based Fred Benenson wrote. "I tried getting an iPhone today--lines, lines, lines," wrote Darren Herman, who posted photos to his blog of a slow-moving line outside the SoHo Apple store in downtown New York.
But then, in what the Twitter-verse has come to call the "iPocalypse," the servers needed for the activation process crashed completely.
Apple soon ditched the in-store activation and was simply "unbricking" phones, letting buyers activate them at home rather than hold up the line because of crashed servers.
CNET News' reporters in San Francisco confirmed this, and later in the day, employees at the New York Apple store confirmed that they were doing this as well. My colleague Tom Krazit was told that while it was initially AT&T's activation servers that crashed, those are back up and that the current problem is with Apple's iTunes.
That's not entirely accurate, AT&T representatives told CNET News.com later. "This is not an AT&T activation server issue...Apple (is) working to address issues affecting its iTunes software right now," an e-mail read. "We are suggesting to our customers that, after purchasing their new iPhone and voice and data plan, they sync the device later at home."
The unbricking process was taking about 10 minutes, even minus the final activation. Around 10 a.m. PT, an Apple store employee in San Francisco informed those waiting in line that the activation service was back up and running.
Outside of major urban hubs, there were also early signs of shortages. Boulder, Colo.-based Matt Galligan twittered that his local AT&T store had only 55 phones in stock and that he wasn't sure whether he'd be able to get one. And Jacksonville, Fla.-based Judson Collier said he'd checked three AT&T stores, only to find them all out of stock. Murray Williams in Lowell, Ark., twittered that the store would be out of stock before he got to the front of the line.
The AT&T store in New York's Times Square was out of 16GB iPhones by noon. Elsewhere, tensions amounted. CNET's Josh Lowensohn posted to Twitter that a fight broke out at an AT&T store when a group of people tried to cut the line.
Meanwhile, owners of older iPhones who were attempting to upgrade the software were getting error messages instead. The activation servers had affected those, too.
But ask yourself this, gadget fans: do you really need the iPhone today? At worst, the activation process will get more efficient as store employees grow more used to it. At best, you can get one tomorrow or next week. It's OK. You'll survive.
Is Samsung's BD-P1200 a defective product?
(Credit: CNET)Samsung was the first to market with a Blu-ray player, but it hasn't exactly been a smooth ride. Home theater enthusiasts will undoubtedly remember the brouhaha over the first Blu-ray player, the Samsung BD-P1000, which was blamed for the initial lackluster video performance of Blu-ray (although, we always thought the fault lied more with poor movie transfers, rather than the BD-P1000). More recently, we've blogged the entire slate of firmware fixes Samsung has released to correct compatibility issues with certain discs on its entire line of Blu-ray players.
Apparently those firmware fixes aren't enough for everyone, as a class action complaint has been filed against Samsung for selling "defective" Blu-ray players--most notably the . The main complaint is that the BD-P1200 hasn't been able to play certain Blu-ray discs, and although it doesn't specify which movies, we personally have experienced issues with Live Free or Die Hard, Rescue Dawn, and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Now Samsung certainly isn't the only company that has had to update its player to accommodate new releases, but the delays have certainly frustrated the early adopter community past their breaking point.
The latest firmware update for the BD-P1200 has supposedly fixed the issue, which definitely won't help the class-action complaint. Let's hope that Samsung gets the message that a Blu-ray player that doesn't play all Blu-ray movies just isn't acceptable. As Senior Editor John Falcone will be quick to point out, it's just another reason not to buy Blu-ray--yet.
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