Tweet URLs may be tiny, but they can also be dangerous

With tweets on Twitter limited to only 140 characters, many Twitterers economize by shrinking lengthy URLs for embedded links, with help from Web sites that specialize in such shrinkage. Now, at least one such site has been hacked.

URL-shortening site Cligs last month sent more than 2 million Web addresses to an entirely different destination. Phishers are also taking advantage of the trust users have in TinyURL Web addresses by using them to mask malicious destinations.

But easy solutions are available, PC Magazine points out. You can easily decode those cryptic URLs by pasting them into—what else—a URL lengthener. One such tool: Untiny. Just cut and paste the shortened URL into the box, and you’ll get the original address. Make sure it’s legit, click, and you’re good to go.

In other Twitter news, the site announced it was suspending accounts infected with a form of the Koobface virus. The suspended sites were sending out “bogus tweets” when the user logged in. The tweets included TinyURLs that sent users to Koobface malware sites. —Donna Tapellini

Getting a charge: Tips on keeping gear juiced on air trips

Powering high powered electronic devices on the go can be a headache. How do you handle it?

Summer travel season can easily create power struggles in airport terminals, as the gaggle of geeks seeking to recharge laptops, cell phones, and other gear outstrips the supply of working outlets.

I had first-hand experience of this last week when I was waylaid in Terminal C at Logan International Airport in Boston after a flight was canceled. Over four or so hours, in a terminal choked with travelers, I saw (and, I confess, perpetrated myself) some quasi-military tactics to take and hold functional, well-located outlets.

But I also witnessed some random acts of power-sharing kindness, and had time — plenty of time — to gather the following tips for energy-seeking air travelers:

Gather intelligence. During my delay, I was blessed by the company of many friendly Coloradans (we were all waiting for flights to Denver). They shared their knowledge about where outlets were and which actually worked (only about half, it seemed). There’s also the AirPower Wiki, which details outlet availability airport by airport – even terminal by terminal, in some cases.

Several devices to charge? Bring a multi-outlet wall adapter. Packing an adapter that allows you to plug several devices into a single outlet increases the chance of getting the power you need, and frees up extra outlets for others. A single outlet should have no problem handling the power demands of two portable-electronic devices. If you’re traveling abroad, you’ll likely need another adapter to handle differing voltage, plug design, or both. Sites like the World Electric Guide can be helpful.

Amazon cuts price of its smaller Kindle

Today, Amazon lowered the price of its Kindle 2 e-Book reader by $60.
[ Photo courtesy of Amazon.com ]

Amazon has moved to address what we've cited in the past as the biggest drawback to the company's family of Kindle e-book readers: Their high prices. The company has dropped the $359 price of its flagship Kindle 2 by $60. However, the price of the newest and biggest Kindle, the DX, remains unchanged at $489.

At its new price of $299, the Kindle 2 now competes in price with the least-expensive e-book reader from Sony, Kindle's closest rival. The Sony Reader 505 lists at $299, but is currently available for $279.99 from Sony and $268 from Amazon.

The Kindle 2 is now significantly less expensive than the newest Sony, the 700C, which is $349. This top-of-the-line Sony has a touchscreen and night LED lights, both features that the Kindles lack. However, the Kindles can receive content wirelessly, using the Sprint data network — and the price of the units in part reflect the cost of that access, which is free for the lifetime of the device. The Sonys require connection to a PC to receive content.—Paul Reynolds.

First impressions: T-Mobile's myTouch 3G smart phone

The new T-Mobile myTouch 3G smart phone, the second phone to use Google’s Android operating system, is promising in some ways. Yet my demo of the phone at press preview yesterday also revealed some drawbacks – some of them possible pre-release flaws that its manufacturer, HTC, is still troubleshooting.

Available in early August, and priced at $200 with a 2-year contract, the myTouch is noticeably smaller and lighter than its predecessor, the T-Mobile G1 – which will continue to be available from T-Mobile and is recommended in our Ratings, available to subscribers.

Here are my first impressions, based on the demo:

The Netbook Net Widens

The netbook market continues to get a boost from a variety of sources, not least of which was Google’s announcement that it will launch an operating system on netbooks in the second half of 2010. Google Chrome OS, says Google, will be a speedy and lightweight operating system, with little user interface, that will get people on the Web “in a few seconds.”

Meanwhile, Sony released its first family of netbooks, further swelling the number of brands. The W series’ pricing starts at $500, a premium price for a netbook, but typical of Sony’s laptop pricing. The 10.1-inch netbook uses an Atom 280 processor, and has 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive. To see how Sony laptops fare compared to others, see our laptop Ratings (available to subscribers).

Is $500 out of your budget range? How about a 99-cent netbook? Sprint and Best Buy have announced that they’ll offer the Compaq Mini 110c-1040DX netbook to consumers, normally sold at Best Buy for $389, for that little. Of course, there’s a catch: You must sign up for a 2-year Sprint mobile broadband contract, the latest in a line of contract netbook offers. In our most recent Ratings of cell-phone providers (subscribers only), Sprint was among the lowest ranked in cell-phone service and among the worst for customer service.

Adobe Flash to your TV: Let's get interactive!

Not content to remain tethered to the computer, Adobe’s Flash technology is about to make the jump to televisions and other consumer-electronics devices this fall, promising to deliver high-def video and other web-based content seamlessly to TV viewers. The technology, called Flash for the Digital Home, is an optimized version of Flash Lite—designed for mobile products—that can run on TVs, Blu-ray DVD players, and settop boxes.

As far as we know, Vizio is the only TV brand that's announced support for the specialized version of Flash, which will be available later this summer in XVT-series TVs that feature Vizio Internet Apps (VIA), the company's online TV platform. But Flash for the Digital Home has already garnered the support of some major players, including Atlantic Records, Comcast, Disney Interactive, Intel, Netflix, and The New York Times, among others.

This is part of the Open Screen Project, Adobe's plan to let you access Internet content from almost any kind of device without going through a computer or web browser. Flash for the Digital Home will give users the ability to combine traditional TV viewing with access to new types of Internet-delivered content, including streaming HD video and music, along with interaction with social-networking communities. Flash Lite is currently used to deliver multimedia content to mobile devices, including cell phones.

We'll be looking for additional product announcements from TV and Blu-ray player manufacturers to see how broadly this new technology will be adopted—and of course testing models when they become available to see if the technology lives up to its promise. —Will Dilella

iPhone 3G S: Too hot for its own good

This message appears when an iPhone 3G or 3GS becomes too hot.
[ Photo courtesy of Apple ]

PC World, Wired, and other media outlets have reported that the new iPhone 3G S models have been running a little hot—hot enough to turn their white plastic cases brown, according to Wired  .
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Apple Support has acknowledged an overheating problem with both the 3G S and 3G phones, when they "run certain applications in hot conditions or direct sunlight for long periods of time, such as GPS tracking in a car on a sunny day or listening to music while in direct sunlight."

This problem may be limited to specific lots of phones, as such problems have not turned up during our tests, which are still ongoing.

Besides feeling hot, symptoms of an iPhone suffering from heat exhaustion may include a dimming display and a weak cellular signal. The most-obvious sign is an on-screen message "iPhone needs to cool before you can use it" (see image at right).

We'll keep you posted as the story unfolds. In the meantime, please let us know if you've experienced an overheating problem with your phone. —Mike Gikas

iPhone 3G S tops new smart phone Ratings, edging out Palm Pre

The iPhone 3G S tops our new smart-phone Ratings (available to subscribers), with strong performance in everything but voice quality, an area in which few phones score well. It's not a runaway winner, though. A number of other phones ranked close to the iPhone, including the Palm Pre, which turned in a fine performance, as we expected from our head-to-head review of these two highly publicized rivals.

The phones vary significantly in how they achieve their high scores. The iPhone 3G S edged out high-scoring competitors such as the Palm Pre and BlackBerry Storm thanks to a superior display, reinforced by top-notch multimedia, navigation, Web browsing, and battery life. However, the Pre, the Storm, and other BlackBerry models bested the iPhone in messaging, and the Pre, with its new deck-of-cards handling of multiple applications, is a superior multitasker.

To better display those differences, we recently added more attributes to our Ratings and put more emphasis on the display, ease of navigation, and multimedia and messaging prowess. In turn, we've somewhat reduced the contribution of talk time (as reflected in our battery life results) and voice quality, in part to reflect the growing importance of non-voice use of smart phones.

Pentax's Optio W80: An underwater camera with HD video and long zoom

Pentax claims its Optio W80 point-and-shoot digital camera is waterproof to depths of 16-feet and survives falls from a height of 3-feet. The camera will be available in July. Click to enlarge.
[ Photo courtesy of Pentax. ]

The burgeoning waterproof camera market has yet to cool off this summer. Pentax has just announced a new model, the 12 megapixel Optio W80, $300, which records HD video (720p at 30 frames per second). It's not the first with this feature—Panasonic has made that claim. But the W80 is $100 cheaper than the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS1. (Digital camera model Ratings information is available to Consumer Reports subscribers only.)

The new Pentax will include a 5x zoom, more than most other waterproof models. Like the TS1 and a couple of other waterproof cameras, the W80 also has wide-angle capability, letting you fit more fish, or mermaids, in your shot.

Pentax claims the W80 will be shockproof, able to withstand a 3-foot fall, and operable at a depth of 16 feet. Both exceed the specs for a number of waterproof cameras, although the Olympus Stylus Tough 8000 (available to subscribers) is supposed to be able to withstand a drop of 6 feet and operate at a depth of 33 feet. (For more information, see: Abuse this camera? We test the Olympus Stylus Tough 6000, available to subscribers, from the July 2009 issue.)

The Optio W80 will be available in July, in red, blue and gray. —Terry Sullivan

iPhone 3G S vs. Palm Pre: A video shootout

They're the two hottest smartphones of the year. The iPhone 3G S and the Palm Pre emphasize multimedia capabilities and are centered on versatile touchscreens that are among the best we've ever tested. Both even cost the same: $199 with a two-year contract (though there's a more capacious iPhone that costs $299.)

Both are also fine performers that we expect to formally recommend next week, once we've fully completed our tests and added them to our smart phone Ratings. (Both Consumer Reports Ratings and Recommendations are available to subscribers.)

Meantime, here's a Western-themed video shootout, in which phone-slingers Mike Gikas (at the iPhone end of the saloon) and Paul Eng (representing the Palm Gang) settle their differences.

Mike fires with the iPhone's new Voice Control feature, which allows you to dial numbers and even search for music by speaking to the phone. He also singles out the camera on the 3G S, which offers features lacking from past iPhones, like auto-focus and the ability to shoot videos, and adds nice video-editing and tap-to-focus capabilities.