My daughter relocated to Austin, Tx recently. She had a webcam, I didn't. After a little research on Retrevo  which indicated that Logitech had the edge over Creative I headed over to Fry's. We have the good fortune (or bad) of having a Fry's five minutes from Retrevo World Headquaters in Sunnyvale , CA . I decided to splurge on the high-end Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000  and boy am I glad I did. Webcams have come a long way in the last few years. Th  read more »

A week later and lines are being drawn on Kindle. I still want one and think it's a revolutionary product albeit 1.0. Professional critics like John Dvork on TWIT had nothing good to say about it. Michael Arrington on a techcrunch video gave it 2 out 10, up from an earlier 0 out of 10. Robert Scoble has an impassioned critique on his site where he says the designers should be  read more »

Amazon's book reader launched last week to mixed reviews but personally, I agree with others who have said Kindle could be the iPod for books (unfortunately, minus the Apple design touch). In case you missed it, the Kindle which has been in development at Amazon for three years went on sale last week and sold out in less then six hours. Like the new Sony reader, it uses electronic paper that basically only uses power when loading a new page so when wireless networking is turned o  read more »

If I was shopping for a reaonably priced HDTV and wanted to get the best bang for the buck, I would seriously consider passing on "Full HD," or 1080p and go for a 42 or 50 inch LCD or Plasma TV. First of all most people can't even see a difference between 1080p and 720p at distances greater than 8 or 9 feet. Secondly most programming coming over the air on cable or satellite is 720p or 1080i. High definition DVDs are the only reason right now to spend the extra bucks for 1080p. Retrevo's new Value Engine scientifically analyzes thousands of products along with features and prices to produce a Value Map that makes it very clear that 720p LCD and Plasma TV sets offer the most bang for the buck.  read more »

High Tech Extras for College Kids
Now that you've equipped all the students in your life with computers and cell phones you might want to consider one of these useful gadgets to round out the collection.
USB Flash Drive  read more »

An article in EETimes reports that Japan Broadcasting Corporation has being showing what could be the next generation of high resolution broadcasting. They're are calling itSuper Hi-Vision. The new 8K by 4K or 7680 x 4320 resolution is 16 times higher than the current 2K by 1K or 1902 x 1080.  read more »

The iPhone is a truly revolutionary product from a design and usability perspectivebut it's not without its flaws. I didn't buy one and maybe this is a way of rationalizing that decision but I recently ran across a few excellent rundowns of some of iPhone shortcomings from some veryknowledgeable technology observers. The List Highlights Despite reassurances that it just takes some "getting used to," the keyboard appears to be the most often mentioned complaint especially for anyone with man-sized hands.  read more »

Worst of Both Worlds The set-top box deregulation deadline is approaching fast. You would think that forcing the cable operators to "decouple" their boxes from their service would be good for the consumer. Unfortunately this milestone in communications is creating the worst of both worlds. First a tiny bit of history. In 1966 the FCC ruled that AT&T had to allow Carterfone and any other third party manufacturer to attach their products to AT&T's lines. This gave rise to answering machines, fax machines, cordless phones, modems, and more.  read more »

I first became aware of DVB-H at this year's CES show. It's a TV broadcast technology that uses UHF frequencies to beam video to your cell phone. That means the transmitter can just as easily be on the television mastsending out broadcasts of sports, news, or soap operas. The video quality I saw at CES was excellent and the standard includes power saving features to extend battery life. The latest announcementshave centered around the recent 3GSM show in Barcelona.  read more »

With only a few days leftuntil we spring ahead the clocks,the buzz meter is really starting to move. I've been reading a lot of the news and blog postings and they really run the gamut from mini-Y2K to "no big deal." ZDNet just posted something on how much money it's going to cost IT departments and compares that with how much we're going to save in energy costs. They come up with some figures that make it look like a loser for the conservation team.  read more »