Is LED TV a new kind of TV?

Since my last two TV stories, I have received emails asking me about what the new LED TVs are about. Even TV stores I frequently visit, are getting questions from consumers asking to see the LED models.

So listen up folks. LED HDTVs are still LCD TVs but instead of the traditional panel lighting source, they use LED light instead. It’s brighter, offers wider contrast, energy efficient and displays pure whites. Most LED  LCD TVs use backlight LED, where the LED lamps are evenly spaced out behind the glass panel. But with some smart engineering, like Samsung’s new one-inch-thick UN46B7000 46-inch LED LCD TVs, you get the best of both worlds…anLCD on steroids that is a third the thickness of competitors and looks just as evenly lighted as backlight LCD LED sets.  To read my latest story on what is new in TVs in stores now, go to:

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/columnists/story.html?id=190b3a76-9441-4db5-9574-271af663fa96

Palm Pre arrives in Canada for surprise visit

BUT YOU WILL HAVE TO WAIT FOR BELL’S NEWEST PHONE

Toronto media got a short-notice invite Wednesday morning for a same-day sneak-peak of the new Palm Pre smartphone, available at Bell in the second half of this year. Reporters could not take pictures but they could see the phone.

A touch of drama for a phone that won’t be in Canada for months and that we all knew about at CTIA Las Vegas earlier this year.

You will have time to think about your next cellphone upgrade, Bell hopes. Should you wait? Before I get into some details about the Pre phone, here is the skinny:

Unless you don’t like everything that the hottest last-quarter top-selling PDA does, the BlackBerry Curve (yes, it outsold the iPhone in the U.S.) or the cool design functionality of the Samsung Omnia or you crave for the seamless multimedia, 35,000 (and counting) cool apps and best Internet experience of the iPhone, don’t bother waiting.

But if you want to manage your wireless life in different ways, Palm’s way, read on.

The Palm Pre is unique in many ways. You can read and see all the details on www.palm.com but briefly, it is a smart-looking PDA with curved sides, even front panel, designed with its own new WebOS platform, does deep multi-tasking and unobtrusive notifying, turns the large screen backlight off when outside for longer battery life and has a large touch screen but no touch keyboard opting for a real slide-out QWERTY keyboard. It’s loaded with 8 GB internal memory, all the goodies like 3 megapixel camera, Wifi, Bluetooth and GPS. Much thought seems to have gone into the Palm Pre from a diversified Palm engineering and design team.

As an option, it has an inductive power charger (a bit slower than a wall plug kind). You can set up HTML or pop email accounts. Palm does not have its own server, like RIM, so unless you get the Pre connected through work with email servers to do the pushing, consumer email accounts will not respond as fast as a BlackBerry phone.  

 Still, there are smart connections with social networking sites on the go, like Facebook, with automatic updates of other Facebook users on your Palm Pre device, when they change their contact information. You can organize and have faster access to both your business and personal contacts. Cool.

“The Palm Pre allows you to keep many applications and Internet sections open at once and move them around the screen with the touch of a finger, even moving them aside so the content isn’t lost,” said Bell Canada spokesperson Julie Smithers.

Palm is pushing the phone’s new WebOS platform claiming it is ready for prime-time application web development with new apps (no business model announced yet) that will be easier to develop than  competitors and the ability to run older Palm software in emulation, in native speed.

Where does the Palm Pre fit for you? It is a new offering, a fresh start from Palm who has managed to outlive its critics. Will it manage to carve itself a niche for customers who don’t care for BlackBerry, iPhone or Windows Mobility phones?

Matt Crowley Palm Product Line Manager in California, was straight forward:

“We are not competing with the multimedia aspect of the iPhone or the full business focus of the BlackBerry. It’s a consumer experience that is not a corporate environment and not 100 per cent competing in the multimedia crazy space of iTunes.”

At first glance from a distance,  I think the Palm Pre is a cool-looking PDA, smart in organizing your information, with a bit of iPhone and BlackBerry envy.

Bell is obviously excited about this phone. “We normally don’t pre-announce a device but we only do so when it’s unique,” said Smithers, adding Bell is the second carrier in the world to announce the Palm Pre offering, one more notch to its already largest Palm line-up in Canada.

 So with that, I will have to wait for a first-person experience for this “I’m no iPhone or BlackBerry” device for a final opinion.

Canadian Youth Flirt With Online Danger

CANADIAN YOUTH KNOW OF ONLINE DANGERS BUT…

A new survey, released today, of more than 1,000 Canadian youth aged 9-17 by Microsoft Canada Co. and Youthography, revealed surprising results of their Internet habits.

The results show that while young Canadians are aware of potential dangers online, many of them still engage in risky behaviour.

For the most part, youth rely on the Internet to communicate with friends and family, research information for homework and play games. They are concerned about Internet safety and more than three-quarters of them are very careful about the personal information they give out online.

The good news is that parents are becoming more engaged in their children’s online activities, compared to previous findings, with 84% of respondents saying they have had a discussion with their parents about the potential dangers of risky online behaviour. Eighty-six percent say their parents have taken measures to ensure they are safe online, such as locating the computer in visible locations like the family room or kitchen, rather than in a child’s room.

The bad news is that despite all this awareness, many youth still engage in risky online behaviour. The survey identified a number of key areas where Canadian youth continue to put themselves at risk, including:

Social Networking

·        Youth post personal information for public view, such as a profile picture (39%), home town (16%), name of school (20%), relationship status (22%), and e-mail address (21%) to social networking sites. Sharing more than one of these pieces of data can allow predators to easily uncover someone’s real identity.

·        30% of youth have lied about their age on a social networking site, 15% have pretended to be someone they are not, and more than 30% have accepted a friend request from a stranger.

Adult Content and Sexual Behaviour

·        1 in 4 males use search engines to find adult sexual content. 

·        More than 20% of youth visit sites that have pictures or videos showing violent acts, fighting, or racist content.

Cyberbullying

·        40% of youth have been bullied online, up from Microsoft’s research in 2004 where 25% respondents reported being cyberbullied. 16% admit to being the bully and of those, 50% say they did it because they were bullied first.

·        In general, 67% believe others bully online because they can do it without getting caught and 63% believe that the same kids who bully online usually bully in person.

Online Gaming

·        1 in 5 of those who play games in online communities has made contact (phone, email, in–person) with someone they have only ever met online gaming.

·        1 in 4 youth has been harassed when online gaming.

 

Online Behaviour

·        Forty-five percent of teens and 27% of tweens go to cyberspace to escape their problems, avoid family, deal with stress, relieve anxiety, deal with sadness or depression or feed their online addiction.

·        Youth, especially tweens are concerned about online safety, more so than drugs, alcohol, smoking, body image or sexually transmitted diseases.

 

“This is Microsoft Canada’s fourth iteration of online safety research and we believe this study offers one of the most comprehensive looks yet at the online activities of Canadian youth including gaming, cyberbullying and social networking,” said Gavin Thompson, Director of Corporate Citizenship, Microsoft Canada. “There are many encouraging results in the research, including the fact that youth rank online safety as a very important issue and that a majority of youth are making smart choices online. Despite this good news, many youth still engage in risky online behaviour. Microsoft Canada has made online safety and security one of our highest priorities and we recognize that as a leader in our industry we have a responsibility to do all we can to make it a safer place – especially for our children.”

In some ways I am not surprised of the risky behaviour of young Canadians. They are aware of the risk factours online, but continue to show more trust or simply think they won’t be the ones directly affected by online dangers.

According to numerous previous studies, it takes only 20 minutes for a stranger online to gain the trust of a young person.  

“It is important for parents to be involved in their children’s lives, which includes their on-line and videogame activities, as much as knowing about their friends, sports, music lessons and other things going on in their lives. It is also important to educate youth about the positives and the pitfalls of the cyberworld – but to do so, adults need to understand it first and to see how it has influenced their own activities, family values and work actions,” said Dr. Bruce Ballon, Head of the Adolescent Clinical Education Service (ACES) for Problem Gambling, Gaming and Internet Use at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).

To read more about the research please see the Fact Sheet.

To read more about Microsoft Canada’s online safety initiatives and Microsoft Corporation’s continued focus on helping to create safe and secure technologies and increasing awareness amongst Canadians, please click here.

 

This Internet Safety Report was prepared for Microsoft Canada Co. by Youthography, January 2009

Youthography conducted online, representative random sample surveys of 1,065 children age 9-17 across Canada.

With a representative sample of N=1,000, the results are considered accurate to within +/- 3.0 percentage points, 19 times out of 20

 

DARK CLOUDS AND LIGHT CLOUDS

NEW MICROSOFT OS IN CLOUD NINE

I am in Los Angeles at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) where Microsoft is announcing and showing new software and services that usually is for geeks. But this time there’s going be some exciting stuff for consumers and enterprise-end folks.

Worldwide media, including myself, were invited early for a preview of the, now official Windows 7. We were shown some cool new features in an immersive day-long session. I wish I could tell you what I saw, but attending media had to sign a non-disclosure agreement that lifts  this Wednesday 9 am EST.

Suffice to say, the Microsoft Windows 7 team, 1000-strong, have some cool new tricks up their sleeve for the next Windows OS, sort of being planned to be sort of ready by early 2010. Maybe.

Can’t tell you more, I wish I could, not to mention all this cloud stuff every Microsoft employee here is giddy about. So, check out the online news on Windows 7 and Microsoft’s version of cloud computing this Wednesday.

PRICE ADUSTMENT ON TECH GOODS IN CANADA COMING SOON

Just had a chat with Steve Boone from the Edmonton mymacdealer.com shop who is predicting some dark clouds about to hit Canada…not the Microsoft kind but a jolt of reality on how much more expensive it’s going to be to buy tech hardware here in November. With the huge drop of the Canadian dollar against the U.S. buck you can expect some harsh increases.

Currently, a new Apple MacBook Pro sells HP Pavilion dv7-1000 for $2,149 CDN off the Canadian Apple site. That’s $1,675 US compared to $1,949 US on the U.S. Apple site. So while Americans can get great deals up here with more than 15 per cent savings, we are stuck, again. If you are planning to buy a PC soon, or other pricey hardware, I would consider doing so before November.

Back in the Saddle

CHEAP iPHONE

Technology get’s better and cheaper with time, but that’s not the reason Apple’s new iPhone 3G is available at Rogers for $199.99 with a three year contract. You can thank AT&T, south of the boarder and Rogers following suit, for forging ahead with a new business model that will make Internet-capable cellphones more affordable and commonplace.

How does it work? Instead of charging the customer a lot more upfront for the new iPhone, AT&T decided to eat several hundred bucks, make the hot iPhone super-affordable and get its money back on customer contracts and additional service charges.

That’s smart thinking. This could even make other pricey smart phones like the Blackberry more affordable. By the same token, a common place cellphone on the same business model would drop down in price so much that the cellphone providers would actually pay you to own a phone! Sweet, but that isn’t going to happen, is it.

The iPhone will also be available without a plan at three times the cost.

 THE AMAZING GATES

When I first interviewed Bill Gates at the Windows XP launch in New York in 200, I asked him what hot new technologies would change computing. He accurately predicted solid state hard drives that take up less room and energy and run computers faster. He also said that flexible computer displays on magazines and newspapers would revolutionize how and where we read information and see pictures. Bill was seven years ahead of his time. Several laptop makers like Apple, Lenovo and Bell now make 64 GB solid state drives, soon available in 128 GB size. And next month’s Esquire’s cutting-edge battery operated e-paper cover will feature animation and changing information. You can even bend it. My question to Bill now is, how do you recycle e-paper?

 MY ANALOG LIFE

Please excuse my absence folks as I was away overseas, attending a private family gathering, deep in Greek analog country, that saw the untimely loss of my mother-in law, a much loved Eva Dascollas, a dynamic woman who in her 80’s still hiked Greek mountains gathering tea and herbs and baked a mean loaf of bread, not to mention other Greek desserts and goodies. She drew her last breath on the evening of July 28 in her family home in the hillside village of Kastri surrounded by loving family in a room filled with the air and sounds of a sadly fading way of life. But I had her set up with her very own hotmail. Although she never touched a mouse, I wish I could set up and redirect her new email. It would be  evadascollas@heaven.com

 

Me and Gia Gia Eva showing off my hi-tech dandellion exctractor. She prefered the old fashioned analog get-on-your-knees-hands-in-dirt technique!

 

 

TV SALES WARS HEAT UP

WHAT’S NEW IN TV

I was in Toronto this week checking out the newest TVs from Samsung, LG and Sony. There are no new cutting edge screen technologies this season, but small innovations and a big drive on design. So for this year, don’t expect dramatic improvements in TV picture quality. But new curves and looks, especially for top-tier models will make buying  a TV for its outside looks just as important as for its inside looks.

Samsung’s new colour bevel, a deep hint of rich red, around the frame adds a touch of class as does LG’s rear coloured panels. LG’s Frank Lee tried to make amends for all the big hoopla at the company’s recently much touted, but alas, fake launch of new products under the guise of an also fake upcoming show. All to basically show the same TVs but with newer sleeker outside looks, blended speakers and better auto brightness sensing. If LG wanted media attention, they got it. Disappointment? They got that too.

Lee showed LG’s top model that has a “scarlet red” derriere, meaning you can’t mount it on the wall if you want to show off this latest design innovation.

I must admit though, the smaller LG bedroom screens with the red touch looked appealing. Lee tried to smooth things over at a Toronto media showing of the newest models saying consumers need a break to catch up on current TV technology. I say, these companies are reaching the current tech limit, other than thinner TV models.

Speaking of which, there where no new OLED ultra –thin TVs shown anywhere. Most folks in the know, say it will be al least several years before the currently pricey OLED becomes mainstream. The exception off course, is Sony’s 11 inch screen, 3 mm thick XEL1, $2,499 available at select Sony shops. Its actual resolution is half that of the top 1080P that bigger screens have, leading some critics to say that much of the screen’s visual impression is owed to its size rather than OLED technology. I measured the brightness and I can tell you it is at least four times wider bright-to-dark than any LCD or plasma panel in the market.

NO MORE MISTER NICE GUY

The TV makers are rolling up their sleeves for a competitive season. It’s no secret the big brand names are buying up showroom space in big stores in Canada, but I had to chuckle when a Sony manager at the annual Toronto dealers show told me of the Sony Kill Switch. It’s a small remote control that Sony sales folks around the country use to reset Sony TVs to their default settings when visiting stores. Sony feels that their TVs are made to look bad either because of incompetent retail staff or deliberately, so competitive models can look more attractive.

And it’s not uncommon today to see, like I have, internal TV comparisons  between competitors models in big brand training sessions.

Let the games begin.

The Week That Was

MICROSOFT 2.0

OK, so we all had a chuckle at Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s quip that the software giant’s $42.3-billion US bid for Yahoo Inc. seemed like it was worth 31 bucks a share. That was after a small show of hands, at a recent tech conference, went up from Yahoo search engine users. There were more hands for Microsoft’s Live search but it was clear that the majority of folks, even die-hard Windows fans, prefer Google. Meanwhile, Google’s shares were still on the rise. You might think that even combined, Yahoo and Live can slow Google down. I think not. Playing catch-up today with hot ideas like the Google and YouTube concept is tough, even if you have deep pockets like Microsoft. The company was slow to take the Internet seriously at first, and is still paying the price. Microsoft shareholders may wonder why their hard-earned money still goes into so many wanabe catch-up efforts. There are some exceptions. A Microsoft product manager at the recent CES show in Vegas characterized his employer as a “dot 2.0” company. For example, take Microsoft’s second generation Zune player, available in Canada soon. Like the successful Xbox, it’s not a “me-too” device , but smartly designed and in tune with the social networking crowd. If Microsoft concentrated earlier, on offering its traditional money-making software business online, instead of trying to re-invent every wheel, and cut its huge marketing budget in half (you don’t need to flog smart product…it sells itself) it would be better off today.

 

IS THAT MORE MUSCLE IN YOUR POCKET?

Intel’s record first-quarter revenue of $9.7 billion and 25 cent share earning last week re-iterates the point that if you innovate and stick to your “CORE” product, you will do well. Much of the chip-maker’s success is in the efficient and powerful Core chip architecture (you knew that was going somewhere when Apple adopted it for its computers). They can thank their Israeli propeller research heads for that run. But Intel is learning fast. Unlike its pre-Core “build them big at any cost” mentality, the chip-maker is also focusing on making affordable computer chips and adding more processing power for the mobile crowd.  At its recent IDF conference in Shanghai China, Intel unveiled Second-Generation Intel-Powered Classmate PC — ‘Netbook’ for Worldwide Education Markets and the new mobile Intel Centrino Atom Processor Technology. Check it out at www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/events/idfspr_2008/index.htm