Intel Reader: A device that turns any book into an e-book

The Intel Reader (Click to enlarge.)
[PHOTO: Intel]

Today, Intel launches a mobile reading device that converts printed text to digital text and then reads it aloud. The device weighs a little more than one pound, has a 4.3 inch screen and a 5 mega-pixel camera with a flash. Similar to netbook computers, the Intel Reader is powered by an Atom processor and promises long battery life: more than 4 hours of book "reading" or the ability to remain in standby mode for up to 5 days.

This small, portable device will allow blind or dyslexic users to gain freedom and independence by being able to read everything from menus to tax forms without waiting for assistance.

Last week, I got a chance to try out the device and was impressed by its ease of use and versatility. For starters, it is significantly smaller than previous reading assistance devices that were often confined to a desk at a local library. Capturing text from a book or magazine with the Intel Reader was made easy by the fact that the camera faces downward, perpendicular to the screen, allowing the user to hold the device comfortably in front of them. This innovation may spread to cell phones and shopping devices as it is currently very awkward to photograph text or bar codes with the rear facing camera on most cell phones.

Photoediting software for your iPhone or iPod Touch

The Perfectly Clear iPhone app from Athentech, allows you to adjust the contrast, brightness, tint and other aspects of the digital photos and images stored on your Apple iPhone. (Click to enlarge.)
[PHOTO: Consumer Reports]

Cameras and accessories have been the major focus at this year’s PhotoPlus Expo in New York, but products for other devices with camera capability are getting attention, such as photoediting software for the iPhone.

At an industry event last night, Adobe, which makes Photoshop and Photoshop Elements image-editing software, announced that its free Photoshop.com Mobile for iPhone application has been downloaded over 1 million times from Apple's App Store, a milestone reached in less than one week of availability. Additionally, Adobe said, the application has held the No. 1 position for all ‘Top Free’ applications for 10 consecutive days. The app lets you edit, upload, view and share photos directly on an iPhone or iPod Touch and crop or rotate, as well as transform photos with filters and effects.

Another company, called Athentech, has been doing demos of its iPhone app called Perfectly Clear, for $2.99, on the trade-show floor. The app corrects a picture’s contrast, exposure, and tint. It can also tweak saturation and sharpen images.

Canon also recently introduced a free iPhone app called Canon Easy Photo-Print App, which they claim enables you to wirelessly print photos from your iPhone or iPod touch on compatible Canon PIXMA printers via a wireless network with a few simple taps.

All three applications are available at the iTunes App Store. —Terry Sullivan

Extra Extra: Consumer Reports Electronics Buying Guide is on sale

(Click to enlarge.)

It may be a tad early to start your holiday shopping, but there’s a good chance you’ve at least been thinking about it. Maybe you’ve had a big-ticket gift—like a new TV or home theater—in mind for a while now, but are putting off the purchase till November or December. If it’s sales you’re waiting for, you probably know what you want and how much you’re willing to pay. On the other hand, you might just a teeny bit leery of throwing so much cash at something you know very little about. Which is better: a plasma or LCD TV? Should you upgrade to a Blu-ray player or stick with standard-def DVDs?

If you find yourself in need of expert advice, consider the newest edition of the Consumer Reports Electronics Buying Guide. Inside you’ll find a wealth of information on everything from televisions and computers to smart phones, GPS units, and much more. For each product, the Consumer Reports editors walk you through the basics, explaining what’s available, which features matter, brand profiles, and offering tried-and-true shopping tips.

In addition to product information, the guide offers advice on how to shop smarter, including:

• Netting the best deals online, and protecting yourself when you shop on the Web


• When to repair and when to replace a broken item


• How to haggle effectively


• Finding the best electronics retailer based on our comprehensive annual survey


• How to save—and what to be wary of—with refurbished or open-box products on store shelves


• Where to get free office software, free computer security programs, and more useful freeware

T-Mobile Sidekicks lose data, with lessons for phone carriers and users

Phones need to make it relatively easy to back up the data they carry, preferably locally to your computer, and cell phone owners should take advantage of those methods.

Those are among the lessons of the past weekend's T-Mobile sidekick incident, in which Microsoft irreparably wiped out the contacts, call history, and other data for an specified number of Sidekick owners.

Yesterday, T-Mobile said that Microsoft—whose operating system, with the now-ironic name of "Danger," developed a glitch that caused the mishap—was still working to retrieve data from affected Sidekicks. Meanwhile, sales of the popular smart phone have seemingly been halted. (T-Mobile's Web site was this morning listing Sidekick models as "temporarily out of stock.") T-Mobile also said those whose data proved irretrievable would receive a $100 gift certificate to apply against their monthly service charges or any other T-Mobile expense.

The company has also posted tips on how at least some Sidekick owners might be able to recover some of their data, even as the T-Mobile/Microsoft data-recovery efforts continue. The tips include ways you might be able to retrieve old messages containing contacts or obtain contact information that was sent via vCards, electronics business cards that are sometimes attached to e-mails.

T-Mobile has also warned Sidekick owners not to allow their phone to lose power as Microsoft struggles to retrieve data.

Movie streaming: Vudu can do HD

A comparison of HDX (left) and SD (right) streaming video quality, provided by Vudu, for the movie "Chronicles of Riddick." One might argue the quality of the picture exceeds the quality of the film. (Click to enlarge.)
[ PHOTO: Courtesy of Vudu ]

We recently had a chance to try out some of the newer streaming movies services that are available to owners of newer Internet-enabled TVs (as well as some Blu-ray players). What we've found, as we did several month ago when we tested a number of standalone streaming players supporting services such as Blockbuster OnDemand, Netflix and Amazon Video On Demand, is that all of the services are capable of sending decent-looking, DVD-quality video streams. However, none lived up their their HD billing.

The sole exception was Vudu's HDX-format video. When we tested it previously, it did look like real HD but was available only as a download, which could take several hours to process before it was stored on the playback device's internal hard drive. More recently, however, HDX video has become available as a stream on TVs from LG and Mitsubishi, as well as on LG's BD390 Blu-ray player. So naturally we were curious to see if the streaming version of HDX could match the picture quality we saw as a download.

Much to our—well, at least my—surprise, our preliminary tests showed the Vudu HDX movie streams continue to be head-and-shoulders above the other streaming offerings in terms of picture quality. They also include the Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 soundtracks that were available on the downloads. During our preliminary testing of streaming HDX, performed on LG's 60-inch 60PS80 plasma TV, the HDX version of "Lord of War" started up quickly, and image quality was impressive. We were able to pause, rewind, and fast-forward with no buffering delays, just as you do on a disc player or DVR, and return to the movie at the point we left off.

Hands on: Nikon Coolpix S1000pj—the first projection camera

Nikon Coolpix S1000pj digital camera.
(Click to enlarge.) [ Photo: Courtesy of Nikon ]

The 12-megapixel Nikon Coolpix S1000pj is the first camera that lets you beam images or video clips onto any surface. Like any pioneering product, it's pricey at $430, twice the price of most subcompact cameras. Here's what we found in our preliminary tests:

• Decent by dim projections. Projected images, of VGA quality (640 x 480), are acceptable in quality but less crisp than the same images viewed on a computer, HDTV, digital photo frame or camera LCD. When we projected the Nikon's LED (rated at just 10 lumens) at a distance of 6¾ feet from a white surface, the farthest Nikon recommends, the 40-inch (diagonal) images were bright enough to view only if the room was dark. With the lighting merely dimmed, we had to reduce the projection distance to create an image of no more than about 20 inches, barely enough for five people to comfortably view.


• Passable sound and battery life. Sound volume for videos is a bit low. For louder sound, you must connect your own external speaker via the camera's AV out jack. And a fully charged battery will be spent after about one hour in projector mode; we recommend spending $25 on an extra battery. (You can also buy an AC adapter for $20.)

Cut your printing costs in half

Consumer Reports lab techs recently ran tests on several printers from different brands to see whether we could appreciably save ink, paper, and time by tinkering with the printers’ settings. The answer is “Yes,” especially for black-and-white documents. Our tests showed that you can cut the cost of printing a page in half by following the suggestions below.

Print in draft mode. Try printing out a page of text on the printer’s “draft” setting (sometimes also called “fast” or “quick print” modes). The print quality will be reduced, but if you don’t need the document for any professional use, chances are that the lower quality will suffice for everyday tasks. Not only will your ink cartridges last longer, in this mode pages usually print faster.

Get the most out of each sheet. Many printers have a setting letting you print double-sided pages. The printer will print the odd pages first, then prompt you to return the printed stack, blank side up, into the paper feed to print the even pages. Some printers now even flip the page automatically. It’s a great technique for printing longer docs.

If you can handle reading slightly smaller text, you can also adjust your setting to print two pages side by side on a piece of horizontally oriented paper. —Nick K. Mandle

Apple’s Mighty Mouse to get an upgrade?

The Mighty Mouse.
[PHOTO: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]

Here it comes to save the day. The Mighty Mouse is on its way—out. That’s the word from AppleInsider, which says it has learned that Apple is planning an upgrade of its plain white mouse. The new version will supposedly feature touch-sensitive controls and do away with the current model’s often nonfunctioning scroll ball.

I use a Mac at work and I’ve found the Mighty Mouse, on the whole, to be a clever little device. With it, I visually sift through the many windows on my desktop, call up my indispensable widgets (like Dictionary.com’s dictionary and thesaurus), and right-click without having to hold down “Control” as you did with old Apple mice.

On the other hand, the scroll ball has always been a groan-inducing issue, with bits of gunk and natural hand oil mucking up the mechanism and rendering it useless. Too often I’m forced to use a pencil eraser or alcohol swab to clean out the debris from under the mouse’s impregnable plastic casing.

(As I am typing this, the trackball refuses to scroll up. Yes, my hands are clean.)

When it does work, the 360-degree scrolling is an inspired feature that I miss when using the Logitech mouse on my home PC. Touch controls on the new, improved version would ostensibly preserve that attribute.

Apple Insider believes the company might move from a white plastic casing to an aluminum finish to complement the silver sheen on Apple’s newest computers. Also good news. Having a white mouse on a desk cluttered with inky newspapers, graphite pencils, and, for some of us, nacho-cheese Doritos is like laying down white carpet in a hunting lodge. —Nick K. Mandle

New iPod Nano: Video, radio, and features galore

Here's a First Look at Apple’s new, fifth-generation iPod Nano, the first iPod with an FM radio and the ability to take videos. It’s the same size and weight as the old Nano, though the display has been enlarged slightly, to 2.2 inches. Claimed playback time is five hours for video, 24 hours for music. The 8GB Nano costs only $149; the 16GB version costs $179.

"Smile, you're on Nanocam." Taking videos on the Nano is fun and fairly easy, as the video first look (at right) shows. The wide-angle lens gets in lots of background, convenient if you're in a tight space with lots of people. After synching with iTunes on your computer, you can easily e-mail your videos to friends, post them on Facebook and Youtube, or edit them in iPhoto.

You don't need to have iTunes running to see your videos. The Nano shows up as an additional drive on your computer, so you can just drag them off the Nano. However you manage content, you’ll need to ensure you leave sufficient capacity for shooting video after loading music and other content; as with other iPods, when you’re away from the computer, you can’t delete songs from the Nano to free up space for more video recordings.

In terms of quality, we found the Nano cam comparable to standard-definition pocket camcorders such as the Flip Ultra. That is, they’re fine for casual viewing and posting online but fall short of the quality you’ll get from a full-sized standard-def camcorder. Also like pocket camcorders, the Nano records only in mono. At normal sound levels, such as conversations, the sound quality was decent. But as our subject got louder, as in laughing and screaming, the audio became noticeably distorted.

Smart radio. The Nano is a latecomer to FM on MP3 players, but its Live Pause feature, also shown in the video, records the station you're listening to slightly ahead of the live broadcast, so when you hit the pause button, the program pauses. Hit play and it picks up from where you left off, or you can rewind up to 15 minutes, or fast-forward to catch up to the live broadcast. Another plus—you can see the name of the current song and artist on the display. On the downside, when in Live Pause mode, it’s nearly impossible to switch to another channel.

Tag, you're it. Another convenient feature is iTunes tagging, which allows you to tag a song that’s playing on the radio so you can order it later from iTunes. Great idea, but the station has to support iTunes tagging for the feature to work. And in our tests, we were only able to find one station that did—a local "lite FM” station.

Not-so-smart DJ. Music player updates include Genius Mixes, which scours your collection according to genre and makes up play lists that . Nice idea, but some mixes we ordered up weren’t that smart, as we also cover in the video. —Mike Gikas

Fall Cleaning: Back Up Your Computer

USB flash drives are small tools that can help back-up the data on your computer.
[PHOTO: Consumer Reports]

Any computer clean-up plan should also include a backup strategy. In fact, backing up your computer is probably one of the most important things you can do, and it won’t cost you much at all.

We recommend three ways to back up your data. You can either buy an external hard drive, use a high-capacity flash drive, or set up a subscription with a low-cost online storage site. Here’s a quick look at each option. For more details, take a look at our Computer Backup System Buying Guide (available to subscribers).

External hard drive. Easy to install, an external hard drive usually requires a simple USB connection to your computer. With some, you may not even need software to get the backups running. They also don’t cost much, so you should be able to get a drive that meets your needs for $150 or less. Get a drive that’s at least the size of your current hard drive. If you get one smaller than that, make sure you weigh your future needs as well. Homes with more than one computer will need a networkable hard drive, which costs a bit more and is harder to set up, but a convenient way to share files across all your systems. The downside of an external drive: Most are not very portable.

USB flash drives. Tiny and convenient, USB flash drives have gotten large enough to serve as backup devices. Like external drives, they’re easy to set up, and may run backups without requiring extra software. A 32GB backup drive should cost between $150 and $200. Best of all, you can carry the drive around with you. But that portability can also be a danger, since flash drives are easy to lose or steal.

Online services. One worry with storing backups at home is the potential for theft, fire, or other catastrophic loss. Online storage provides an option outside your house, adding an extra layer of protection by storing your data in multiple locations. We looked at a few sites, and found that they’re easy to use but slow, especially during the initial backup. But you don’t have to worry about setting up any hardware, and you can access your data from any Internet connection. Costs vary, but two of those we reviewed were about $50 a year for unlimited backup.

Subscribers can check out our Guide to computer backup products for reviews on various data storage solutions. —Donna Tapellini