The Pipeline: Pogue on the Samsung MM-A800, Forbes on bots
Welcome to the Pipeline, where we check in on the mainstream media and see what they're up to. This week, David Pogue on the Samsung MM-A800, Walt Mossberg on digital photo viewers and Forbes on robots.
In The New York Times, David Pogue takes on Sprint's Samsung MM-A800, and finds that, despite — or, really, because of — a range of features that include the first 2-megapixel cameraphone in the U.S., a business card scanner, text-to-speech support and an MP3 player, the phone doesn't quite get it right. Pogue points to software and UI problems, as well as glitches that render some features less than useful: "That business-card scanning business sounds pretty sharp, too. You carefully position the camera over the card, frame the writing in brackets, and then press the shutter button. Now, using the phone's arrow keys, you highlight each info-morsel that the phone intends to store in your address book: Name, Mobile, Work, Fax and E-mail. ... Unfortunately, as the manual puts it, 'Phone may not recognize the biz card due to certain circumstances: letter type, letter color, background color, the focal distance, etc.' Evidently, that "etc." also includes 'hopelessly inaccurate recognition software and overzealous marketing types'; it's a rare feat indeed for the A800 to scan a card with 100 percent accuracy. And on a phone with no alphabet keyboard, correcting typos is no picnic." Pogue does give Samsung kudos for trying, but still concludes with a less than charitable piece of advice: "The real shame is that it would have been so easy to make the A800 a world-beating smash hit. All Samsung would have had to do is make the voice- and card-recognition features 100 percent accurate, eliminate 450 menu commands, make the screen bigger and the phone smaller, and fill in all of the nation's cellular dead spots." Somehow, we don't think we're going to be rushing out to get one of these just yet.
The Cellphone That Does Everything Imaginable, at Least Sort Of
We?re not quite sure why
The Wall Street Journal?s Walt Mossberg chose to review the iPod Camera Connector and Kodak?s EasyShare Picture Viewer in tandem. While both will let you view photos when you?re away from your computer or camera, they serve fairly different purposes, with the former providing a relatively convenient way to offload pics from memory cards and the latter acting as a sort of digital brag book for people who want to carry around a lot of digital pics and review them on a large LCD without having to spring for a full-fledged portable media player. Mossberg gives both the thumbs up, though he points out some limitations of the Picture Viewer, including its limited internal memory and slow loading of files stored on SD cards. Still, as Mossberg points out, ?if you can?t afford an iPod Photo and you?d like a way to bring your digital memories with you on the go, the Picture Viewer is a less expensive, lightweight option.?
New Ways to Store and View Digital Pictures
This week, Forbes? Leah Hoffmann
asks a question we?ve been pondering for ages: Where?s My Robotic Maid? Hoffman paid a visit to the annual RoboBusiness conference in Cambridge, MA, and discovered that, while the image of a household robot as a walking, talking humanoid device is one that?s almost hardwired into our psyche, the reality is that household robots are likely to continue to be more like iRobot?s Roomba: ?[T]hroughout the conference, low-tech, low-cost consumer robots were hailed as lessons in success. IRobot?s Roomba robot vacuum cleaners, which sell for $300 or less, have sold more than 1 million units in the past two and a half years. Roboticists gripe about Roomba?s less than sophisticated technology, but as Joe Engelman, the retired roboticist who is generally credited as the father of the field, puts it, ?You can?t argue about their success.?? Hoffman also sat in on a panel where a wag from Procter & Gamble commented that, while consumers would love to have robots helping them out around the house, the most they?d pay for one would be about $20. Sorry, P&G; that pricing strategy may be valid for the Swiffer mop, but we?d gladly pay a lot more for a Roomba-type device that would also mop our kitchen, wax our hardwood floors and do our windows.
The Washington Post ran one of those advertiser-friendly seasonal tech guides this week, and managed to cover a lot of ground, from DVRs to digital photography. While there?s nothing earth-shattering about most of the articles, the cover story is definitely worth a read: In a sort of ?geek eye for the Luddite guy? makeover, the Post sent a team of techies in to remake the lives of a Washington power couple. Not surprisingly, they started with the household PC, wiping spyware and installing Firefox, before moving on to showing them how to use a digital camera and iTunes. The overwhelmed recipient of the tech aid was grateful, but still asked: ?Is there a little guide, ?Things you?d love to know but nobody ever told you about technology????
Upgrade: Spring 2005 Guide to Personal Technology
Also:
Walt Mossberg - Yahoo, RealNetworks Offer New Alternatives To Apple iTunes Model
Stephen Wildstrom - Bring Your CDs Into The iPod Age
John Dvorak - The Onerous ?Broadcast Flag?
Edward Baig - Edward C. Baig: Personal Tech - Going wireless gets easier with new Vaio notebook
