Right On Technology

Introducing the “Little Buddy Child Tracker” an interesting device to be sold by Best Buy. This compact device can be placed in a backpack or pinned to a child’s clothes and then transmits data back to parents using global satellites to track the whereabouts of the child.

While devices like this have been around for a while, they have typically been rather expensive, anywhere from $200-500 dollars. The Little Buddy will sale for only $100, so it is a real alternative to obsessive parents who want to track their children’s every move.

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One of the best times of the year for the tech enthusiast (read geek) can be the Christmas season and specifically Black Friday. We often see new product releases, new operating system upgrades and all sorts of fun new gadgets, video games and DVDs released just in time for the shopping holiday.

One of the best days for shopping (if you are looking for deals) of course is Black Friday. Black Friday, the first shopping day after Thanksgiving is usually chalk-full of great deals just to get customers in the door. Of course, you usually have to put up with thousands of other clamoring customers who also all want that same deal. Last year I got up at 3:00 in the morning (in Branson MO no less) and drove to the local Wal-mart and stood in line to get an $80 dollar Blu-Ray player and a sub-$100 GPS system. I felt that it was worth the pain, but often the key is coordinating where the best deals are so you can make sure you get the most of your crowd-packed Black Friday.

To that end, I’ve compiled a list of some of the top web-pages that track which stores are offering great deals on various products. So, in no particular order:

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Look out Kindle, Barnes and Noble is set to introduce their new “Nook” e-Reader! So far the e-book industry has been dominated pretty much by a single player, Amazon. The Kindle is far and away the best device for reading e-books and the selection of books is also hard to beat. The biggest downfall of the Kindle so far is the price point. While they have recently dropped the price of the Kindle to $279, which is a good start, the initial $400 price point was such that only the true early adopters could really even think of purchasing the device. Also, the device is good, and e-ink is a great concept, but it’s pretty much a proprietary device that allows very little outside of reading books and newspapers (for instance you can’t even surf the Internet with it).

So, enter the new Barnes & Noble “Nook” (the supposed name, all though this is unofficial so far). You can see pictures of the beauty here. The Nook will feature two separate screens, a top e-ink screen and a separate bottom screen which should feature multi-touch very similar to the iPhone. Best of all, the price point is rumored to respectable $259. True, it’s only $20 cheaper then the Kindle, but it features both multi-touch and, presumably, Internet access.

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Lifecasting! A strange word to some of us, but many folks think it’s the next big thing since the Truman Show. What is lifecasting you ask? Essentially it is 24/7 recordings of what you are doing and where you are. Sounds kind of creepy to some folks, but it is an intriguing idea to others, especially those who want to chronicle their lives or have very large egos.

There are many different products coming that fullfill some aspect of this lifecasting future, but one that is ready now, and at least does some of this is the new Fitbit, and high-tech pedometer that does more then just count your steps. This $99 device is about as small as a credit card and you can clip it to your pocket or your wallet and it tracks your daily . . . and nightly activities, then sends all that information to the cloud wirelessly.

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First the Segway (remember when that was going to revolutionize personal travel and mobility) and now we have the next step in pointless tech gadgets, the Honda U3-X (catchy name).

Looking like a stylized, ultra-modern unicycle, the U3-X zips it’s occupant around simply by balancing forward, sideways or backwards. It can keep a constant speed of around 3.7 MPH. Amazingly the device only weighs about 22 pounds and has a lithium battery that can last around an hour or so.

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It looks like ASUS is getting ready to jump into the e-reader game, competing with Amazon’s Kindle and the Sony e-reader. ASUS, who essentially invented the netbook, stands on good ground to introduce a capable product that would compete well with other e-readers that exist.

ASUS is claiming that this will become the world’s cheapest e-book reader and it will sport some pretty impressive features. Some of the features included will be built in 3G, a web browser and more impressive, a dual screen form factor touch screen (picture at the link). The dual screen is intended to mimic the style in which we usually read books, however it also offers some interesting possibilities. You could read your book on one panel and surf the web or type on a virtual keyboard on the other, pretty neat concept.

Most impressively, the price point for this new reader is reportedly around $150! This has got to be a scary concept for the Kindle and Sony as both of their premium readers are nearly double that price. The question that remains for both Asus, Sony and any other competitor (and there are a few) that decides to enter this market is, can anyone compete with Amazon for content? Amazon has such a huge advantage when it comes to providing content that this will continue to be a very difficult market to penetrate. No one touches the number of books that Amazon provides at the touch of a button, and as of now the Kindle remains proprietary and DRM protected. Ultimately, my hope remains that Amazon will decide to un-DRM their content so that any device, whether it is Sony, ASUS or whatever, can just access and download books to their reader. I think this actually makes a lot of business sense for Amazon as well. Imagine, instead of being able to sell 1 million books to Kindle only users, you can sell 30 million books to the combined e-book world, it seems like there is more money in doing just that then selling pretty expensive hardware.

The e-book reader is getting ready to explode and finally claim it’s own time, of course, the big 800 lbs gorilla is Apple, should they announce their “i-pad” or whatever they’ll call it, the game changes again. We shall see.

Amazon Kindle

In July, you may remember, Amazon took much flak for “recalling” the George Orwell book “1984″ from hundreds of Kindle e-readers. Eventually, after they were caught, Amazon and Jeff Bezos apologized calling the act “stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles.” While Amazon also issued a credit back to their customers, this didn’t satisfy many users who thought this was a tremendous invasion of their privacy.

The good news is that Amazon has decided to return the deleted books to anyone who was affected by the intrusion, alternatively customers may choose a $30 gift certificate if they so choose.

One student was so annoyed by this by what Amazon did that he has actually filed a class action lawsuit against the company, claiming that “Amazon ate my homework”. In this case not only did Amazon take his book, but also all the notes that he had included as he read it. Seems like a bit of a stretch to me, but I guess you can sue anyone these days. Reportedly the offer of the refund of the book has nothing to do with the lawsuit. Uh huh, sure.

The e-mail from Amazon to their customers who were affected read thusly:

“This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our ’solution’ to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission,”

I will say this, Amazon and Bezos are not perfect, but they usually respond well to situations like this. I’m sure this was the fault of some middle-manager somewhere who just didn’t think about the repercussions of snatching a book back from their users’ Kindles, and I do believe Amazon will not allow stunts like this to happen again. However, it does open a whole discussion about who owns digital materials like this. It is a very unsettled area of the law and society is still adjusting to copyrights and licensing agreements in this brave new world.

Photo Source: Shakataganai

In what I think is pretty cool news, today Sony announced their new e-reader called the “Reader Daily Edition”. This new e-reader by Sony is figured to compete with Amazon’s Kindle, or at least kick some real competition in a market that is nearly controlled by the Kindle. The new Sony Daily Edition will have some pretty impressive features as well. First, it will feature 3G wireless through AT&T. This is an almost must have feature so that users can download books at will. This feature on the Kindle is awesome as it allows you to get books, newspapers and magazines whenever and where ever you like. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at home, wanted a new book, but didn’t want to go all the way to Barnes & Noble or wait for Amazon to deliver it. Instant gratification, gotta love it.

The new Daily Edition will also include a 7-inch touch screen. This is one thing the Kindle lacks; a touch-screen interface, so I think this is a clear winner for Sony. The Daily Edition will also take advantage of open source materials with a new feature called the “Library Finder”. This allows you to access local library materials and download free books offered through your library. Right now it is a pain to do this through most local libraries and the interfaces are generally horrible. What a great idea, kudos Sony! Finally having some real competition in this platform will only mean good things for the consumer. It’s hard to say what the user experience will be, battery life, etc, but having a decent product that competes with the hefty price-tag of the Kindle is good. The Daily Edition is getting good reviews everywhere:

“Sony has given the market what everyone was waiting for in terms of a wireless device,” says Sarah Rotman Epps, a Forrester analyst who has been covering e-readers. “Not only that, they have gone one step further, and shown their latest product is no copycat of the Kindle.”

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Blackberry to Include Flash?

Wowsa, Blackberry to include Flash and Silverlight support!?! I have to admit, one of the most annoying things about mobile browsing is the inability to view any web page that uses Flash. Even the iPhone, which is clearly the best mobile browser out there, doesn’t support Flash. Apple does have a deal with YouTube and some other services that allows you to watch video on the iPhone, but there are many many web pages that just don’t work properly on either the iPhone or the Blackberry.

However, there is definite news out there that Research in Motion (RIM), the makers of the vaunted Blackberry, is working on including full Flash (not just Flash Lite) and Silverlight support. Silverlight is the Microsoft product that competes with Flash to do a variety of video and scripts on web pages. The other reason this is good news for Blackberry users (which I use for their superb enterprise support) is that Apple has been very very resistant to including Flash support on the iPhone. I think the reason Apple has done this is A) They hate Adobe and don’t want to give that huge market share to a rival and B) they are probably looking at coming up with some kind of HTML 5 or similar Flash like product that will do video, sound, etc.

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In what has to be one of the funniest stories of the day, a man was recently busted by cops for selling what he purported to be a HDTV, but in actuality was an oven door (pics and video below). Apparently he California man would hang out in the parking lot of Wal-mart and plastic wrap a 37 inch “television” or oven door, tape some cables and a remote to it, and then approach potential buyers and offer the “television” at about a $100 price tag.

I don’t think this scam would ever get me (knock on woods), hopefully I’m savvy enough to be able to recognize an oven door. I do wonder about someone like my father who is a notorious bargain hunter. He might see this and totally think he was getting the deal of the year. I guess these guys know that folks like my father exist and are to be preyed on.

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