Manifest Tech Blog

Icky-poo! Smudges and smears, fingers and grime on our beautiful touchscreen devices.

What to do? You don't want to just wipe them with your shirtsleeve, or put them in the washer.

There are nice microfiber cloths for cleaning lenses, but the Toddy Gear Smart Cloth line goes a couple steps further.

One side is a more coarse plush microfiber material to attack the grime, and the other is a smooth patterned silk microfiber for the final buffing.

Plus, the Toddy cloths have an antimicrobial coating to protect you and the cloth from the spread of those icky germs and bacteria. They're also machine washable.

These are available in a variety of vibrant designs and patterns, with 5x7" cloths for $9.99, and 9x9 for $14.99.

See my article on Portable Accessories 2012 for more on portable audio, portable power, and cases.

Find the Toddy Gear Smart Cloth on Amazon.com

Small speakers were quite visible at CES (see earlier post), with mini boxes and cylinders that can come along in your bag to boost the sound of your smartphone or tablet. At a couple inches in size, however, while these do better than built-in speakers, they really aren't particularly powerful.

One nice way of getting more sound from small speakers comes from vibrating designs that have you position the speaker on a flat surface so the sound can resonate to give you 360 degree omni-directional sound (see earlier post). You can get amazing sound from surfaces like wood, glass, metal, walls, mirrors, and cardboard, especially if they have an enclosed air gap like a desk or even a simple cardboard box.

The Mighty Dwarf 5W Vibration Speaker is a nice example of this kind of approach, with some very interesting bonus features. It's a small cylinder, 2.25 inches tall by 2 inches in diameter, and chunky at 11 1/2 ounces so it makes strong contact with the surface.

For even better resonating action, the Mighty Dwarf has a sticky gel pad on the base to temporarily adhere to the surface. It also has has a screw mount on the base that can attach to accessories for a more permanent connection, including a glass mount (suction cup) or wood mount (woods screws).

To hook up to your portable player, the Mighty Dwarf comes with a dual-purpose cable with a miniUSB connector at one end to plug into the speaker, and the other end split into both a 3.5mm stereo audio jack and a USB jack. Plug the audio jack into your device to play music, or plug in the USB jack to recharge the internal battery. There's also a LED to warn when the battery is low.

But there's more -- The Mighty Dwarf also has a microSD slot, so you can insert a memory card with MP3 music files, and use the speaker as a stand-alone media player. The final addition is the play controller -- push to stop/start play, flick to skip forward/back to the next song, and press and hold to adjust the volume.

The Mighty Dwarf 5W speaker is available for around $49. There's also the Mighty Dwarf 26W model with external amplifier, and a Bluetooth speaker coming.

See my article on Portable Accessories 2012 for more on portable audio, portable power, and cases.

Find the Mighty Dwarf 5W Vibration Speaker on Amazon.com

The tenth edition of Adobe's best-selling consumer video and photo editing products, Premiere Elements 10 and Photoshop Elements 10, continues Adobe's focus on providing deep technical power to create impressive results, but packaged behind a friendly interface and extensive automated assists (see post on previous version).

Both Premiere Elements and Photoshop Elements include a separate common Organizer tool, used to import media files from various devices and then organize and tag them. You can also apply basic photo fixes and create photo albums, and share photos and videos directly online. Then you can launch the individual applications for more extensive photo or video editing.

The applications prove a consumer-friendly interface with tabs for different processing steps, plus how-tos and Guided Edit support. Plus, they apply enhanced technology from professional editing, including People Recognition in photos and the Three Way Color Corrector for video.

However, these Elements applications are not for the casual user. They are designed for photo and video enthusiasts interested in investing effort to organize and manage your media with the assistance of automated analysis. This investment then pays off as you can leverage the media information to do a better job of finding the right clips and enhancing your productions.

See my full article in Videomaker Magazine - Adobe Premiere/ Photoshop Elements 10 Editing Software Review

See summaries of video applications and versions in my Video Editing Software Gallery.

    Find Adobe Premiere Elements 10
    and bundle with Photoshop Elements 10 on Amazon.com

Premiere Elements 10 - Autotone effect

Baby it's cold outside -- But when you're wearing your mittens you can't control your iPhone or even answer a call. Today's touchscreens use capacitive screens, which detect your finger because your body is an electrical conductor.

But mittens and gloves are insulators, so the screen does not respond when you're wearing them. The answer, then, is to weave conductive tread into the fingers of your gloves.

For example, the Newer Tech NuTouch Gloves have conductive fiber woven into all ten fingertips -- and all around the finger, not just for the finger pad.

You then can freely use your touch screen devices in the cold, and tap, swipe, scroll, and type with the tip or side of any finger.

The NuTouch gloves are made from a soft cotton mix (52% cotton), and are relatively thin, so you also can use as liners with heavier gloves.

They're available in a charcoal color for $19.99 ($13 street), sized from small to extra large.

See my article on Portable Accessories 2012 for more on portable audio, portable power, and cases.

Find the Newer Tech NuTouch Gloves on Amazon.com

The 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was huge this year, bringing some 153,000 attendees to Las Vegas -- a jump of around 14,000 over last year. The Vegas infrastructure survived the onslaught, with long lines for food and taxis and buses, but the traffic still moved through the streets.

The exhibit halls were crowded, but you could still move around, see the displays, and even talk to the exhibitors. Of course, it helped that the crowd was spread out among 3100 exhibitors in 1.86 million net square feet of exhibit space (both new records for CES). That includes the entire Las Vegas Convention Center, plus ballrooms and suites in the adjoining Hilton (just renamed to the LVH) and the Venetian.

It may help to visualize the magnitude of this area as larger than 35 (American) football fields, with booths set up along the yard lines.

(CEA photo of the crowd of attendees in the hallway outside the Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Note that this is not the exhibition -- It's just part of the hallway that runs along one side of one hall of the convention center.)

The big topics this year at CES included:

• Ultrabooks: Small and light and stylish laptops (the PC industry's answer to Apple's MacBook Air). Remember netbooks, which were too underpowered and sluggish? Ultrabooks promise to remove the compromises, with power and capacity to be a useful laptop. (Expect a big marketing push from Intel and its partners.)


• Thin TV: Flat-screen TVs, with thickness and surrounding bezels measures in millimeters instead of inches. These look like a sheet of glass from the side, and the minimization of the surrounding frame can make them appear to float in the air .


• Smart TV: Connected TVs and Blu-ray players that integrate with the Internet to provide browsing and apps like smartphones and tablets, and which provide deeper interaction with you though voice and gesture control, and even face recognition to personalize for your preferences. (Yes, your TV now has a camera and microphone to watch and listen to you.)


• Digital Health: A profusion of devices to monitor your health and exercise, and connect to smartphone apps for analysis and coaching. (Your digital scale will post your daily weigh-in to your Twitter feed.)


• UltraViolet: A Hollywood-approved "digital locker" for your purchased movies and TV shows, so you can buy once and then view across a wide variety of devices, from desktop to set-top to mobile. This is just starting to roll out, but holds the promise of being sensible and useful.

See my 2012 International CES Summary article for information on the show, facilities, Las Vegas, exhibits, conference program, and press events -- plus links to more information and press / blog coverage.

Bluetooth is great for voice when talking on your mobile phone with headsets like the Plantronics Voyager PRO HD (see earlier post), and works nicely for wireless peripherals to use a mouse or keyboard with your laptop or tablet.

But more and more Bluetooth is for music. At home you can go wireless with products like the Logitech Wireless Boombox (see post) or Logitech Wireless Headset (see post).

So when you find yourself using your smartphone more as a music player than as a phone, then there's an obvious flaw with using a tiny Bluetooth headset in one ear to listen to two-channel stereo music.

You can plug in wired earphones to enjoy your music when you're travelling or exercising, but they're clumsy to juggle between music and calls.

Instead, check out the Jabra SPORT Bluetooth stereo headset, with a pair of earpieces that fit comfortably behind the ear, especially while you're in motion and sweating.

The two earpieces are connected by a cord that runs behind your head, but the connection to your smartphone (or other media player) is Bluetooth wireless, so you can play music, with volume and skip controls, and switch over to pick up phone calls.

For playing streaming music, the SPORT features bass boost and Virtual Surround Sound audio enhancement. It also includes a built-in FM radio with auto-search, although you'll probably want to set it to one favorite station since skipping manually through stations without any visual feedback can be painful.

And the SPORT is designed for workouts, with U.S. military grade rain, dust and shock protection and a wind-shielded microphone.

It also includes a free download of the Endomondo Sports Tracker app that work with iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry smartphones as a motivational tool for running, updating your speed, distance, and times with GPS tracking.

The Jabra SPORT Bluetooth stereo headset is available for around $99, and the companion non-wireless SPORT-CORDED stereo headset is around $69. No sweat.

See my Audio Accessories Gallery for details and related products.

And see my Holiday Gadgets 2011: Portable and Wireless feature for more on Bluetooth headsets and other holiday goodies.

Find the Jabra SPORT headset on Amazon.com

It's the new year, so the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is back for 2012, returning to Las Vegas from Tuesday, January 10 through Friday, January 13, 2012, for an extravaganza of electronic devices, from smartphones and tablets, to big-screen TV and gaming, to smart homes and even autos.

The show is produced by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), which reports that CES continues to be the world's largest consumer technology tradeshow, and the largest tradeshow of any kind in North America.

Last year's CES expanded to almost 150,000 attendees, growing from the low of 113,000 in the crash of 2009 to exceed the peak of over 140,000 in 2007 - 2008. With another 140,000-some people expected again this year, the show is seriously stressing the facilities in Vegas, and transportation is a significant challenge.

The number of exhibitors also is holding strong, increasing slightly in 2011 to around 2,700, with growing presence from non-U.S. companies (although Microsoft has announced that it will not be returning after this year, which opens up a very attractive location on the exhibit floor). The result is a lot of walking, as the show floor is spread out over an area larger than 35 (American) football fields.

There also will be over 20 TechZones grouping new technology markets, including a new Eureka Park for start-ups. The fastest growing TechZone is the iLounge Pavilion, with third-party accessories and software for the Apple iPod, iPhone, iPad and Macintosh.

CES 2011: Attendees in the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center (CEA)

As in previous years, the gadget blogs and tech publications will be out in force at CES, with teams live blogging the new announcements for hot-off-the-press coverage. I'll update my annual summary document with links to these sources and other coverage of the show.

See my 2012 International CES Summary article for information on the show, facilities, Las Vegas, exhibits, conference program, and press events -- plus links to more information and press / blog coverage.

It's inexorable -- computing power is cramming into smaller and smaller devices, as our tools become more and more intelligent and connected. We now expect smartphones to deliver serious computing power and capacity for running rather interesting apps. And now the same kinds of features and even programmability are coming to Bluetooth headsets.

For example, the Plantronics Voyager PRO HD Bluetooth headset has voice prompts, automatically picks up a call when it senses it is put on your ear, and supports the Plantronics MyHeadset apps to update and customize its functions.

The Voyager PRO HD is the latest iteration of this well-established over-the-ear design (see earlier post). It rests comfortably on your ear, so it's particularly good for extended use, whether moving around at the office or in the car.

The new "HD" designation refers to support for high-quality streaming audio -- With a Bluetooth wireless connection to today's smartphones, you may find yourself spending much more time listening to audio playback then you do talking on the phone.

Bluetooth also provides control signals between the headset and the phone, so you can press the buttons to play or mute the music, answer a call, transfer the call between the phone and the headset, and even activate voice dialing (or the Siri intelligent personal assistant on the iPhone 4S). The Voyager also displays a battery meter on the iPhone or Android 3.0+ display.

The addition of voice prompts is also quite helpful -- they are much better than trying to count beeps or track tones in order to check the headset power level / talk time, or to confirm the volume level or Bluetooth connection.

But the coolest intelligence in the Voyager PRO HD is the Smart Sensor technology that senses if the headset is being worn, or has been placed on your ear or taken off the ear. For phone calls, it can answer a call when you put on your ear, and send the voice back to the phone if you take it off. Or when you're playing streaming audio, it can pause the music when taken off, and restart when you put it back on your ear. This is impressive stuff -- it doesn't always work, but it works well enough to be quite useful.

Finally, apps are coming to Bluetooth headsets. Instead of having to load a new ROM to add new features, or tap secret button sequences to change settings, you can simply download new apps to modify the built-in functionality.

The Plantronics MyHeadset apps are available for Andoid, iPhone, and Blackberry. You can change settings including the language, sensors, or streaming audio. And you can download apps including InstantMeeting for one-touch connection to conference calls from your calendar and the Plantronics Vocalyst service for voice-controlled actions and information (something like Apple's Siri).

So the Plantronics Voyager PRO HD is a welcome update to this venerable product. It's available for under $99 for more comfortable use when talking -- and listening.

See my Audio Accessories Gallery for details and related products.

And see my Holiday Gadgets 2011: Portable and Wireless feature for more on Bluetooth headsets and other holiday goodies.

Find the Plantronics Voyager PRO HD headset on Amazon.com

Amazon has released an upgrade to the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet, Update 6.2.1, saying it "enhances fluidity and performance, improves touch navigation responsiveness, gives you the option to choose which items display on the carousel, and adds the ability to add a password lock on Wi-Fi access."

There have been a variety of complaints about the Kindle, highlighted in particular by a recent article in the NY Times: As Kindle Fire Faces Critics, Remedies Are Promised (12/11/11) -- note the URL reflects the apparent original title, "amazons-fire-some-say-may-become-the-edsel-of-tablets.html", which is seriously overblown.

The listed complaints include: "there is no external volume control. The off switch [on the bottom] is easy to hit by accident. Web pages take a long time to load. There is no privacy on the device; a spouse or child who picks it up will instantly know everything you have been doing [especially in the home screen Carousel]. The touch screen is frequently hesitant and sometimes downright balky."

On the other hand, the Fire is an impressively adequate tablet for its $199 price (see earlier post) ...

Yes, the Fire was a tad sluggish in responding to touch input, and the new update does make it snappier. David Pogue in the Times applauds the improvements, and lists his remaining key issues.

And, yes, it would be nice to have a whole bunch of additional features at the same price -- including physical volume controls (to shush it when you get a phone call), Bluetooth, GPS, and camera / microphone.

But some of these complaints are a tad silly. For example, if you don't like the power button on the bottom, just flip the Kindle upside down -- the screen flips around to match whatever orientation you choose, and the design is a blank slate with no other buttons or controls that require a particular orientation. (Note, for example, that the iPhone doesn't do this -- the home screen and Settings are locked into portrait mode with the physical button below, and while Mail will flip into landscape orientation it will not flip upside down.)

And the new update addresses the "privacy" complaint by allowing you to remove items in the home screen Carousel display of your most recently used apps (and media and web pages) -- just press and hold, then select Remove so others can't see what you were recently doing.

But note that the home screen is the least of your problems if you're seriously concerned with privacy, since your Fire is tightly linked to your Amazon account (just as your iPad is linked to your Apple account). Looking at your phone or tablet exposes a lot more about your personal purchases and collections of books, music, video, apps, documents, and Web bookmarks -- plus other customized settings in your apps, including stored logins to various sites like Facebook. Loaning a personalized tablet or smartphone is like loaning a laptop -- you're going to expose a lot of personal data, especially with links to on-line accounts and storage.

Another concern about the Fire is that it has limited storage (8 GB, with only around 1 GB for user data). The Fire is instead designed to off-load the need for local storage by accessing content via the on-line cloud.

Others may object to the limited selection of apps, which are officially available only though the Amazon Android store, so many of the Google apps are not available, including Google Maps and syncing with online Gmail, Calendar, and Contacts.

Interestingly, however, there is a work-around for this, described by a PC Mag article on How To Run Almost Any Android App On the Kindle Fire. You can back up Android apps on other devices using apps like Astro File Manager, transfer the resulting APK files by USB to your computer and then to the Fire, and then restore and install them on the Fire with the Easy Installer app. This seems to work with a variety of apps, although not those requiring a Google login. For example, you can run Google Maps on the Android, and even cache files (download map regions for off-line use), but you can't log in to save preferences.

A final perspective on the Fire comes from usability expert Jakob Nielsen's Kindle Fire Usability Findings, which is focused on the importance of updating and optimizing applications for the new 7-inch screen size (compared to smaller 3.5" phones and larger 9.7" full-size tablets). His summary is that "Mobile web sites work best on the 7-inch tablet. Users had great trouble touching the correct items on full sites, where UI elements are too small on the Fire screen."

The bottom line is that the Fire is targeted to casual users interested in keeping in touch with Web and email, and in enjoying media content -- especially for accessing Amazon content across PCs, the Fire, and other portable devices. It's not an iPad, nor is it priced in that category, but it's a tremendously attractive device for its intended use.

• See my full article exploring the Fire: Walkthrough: Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet
• See my Holiday Gadgets 2011: Portable and Wireless coverage for more on today's portable devices
• See my Handheld Devices Gallery for more on handheld E-Readers and tablets

Find the Amazon Kindle Fire on Amazon.com

Continue reading "Updating Kindle Fire Complaints" »

Do you cover your portable devices, from smartphones to tablets to portable hard drives? These devices are getting tougher, with more scratch-resistant (and fingerprint-resistant) screens. And Apple has the cool Smart Cover for the iPad that snaps on magnetically to protect the screen.

But there are still good reasons for using a protective case, from soft rubberized covers to provide some help when knocking around in a pocket or bag (and to provide a more secure grip), to hard shells for added security with rougher use.

There are zillions of cases out there, but Speck has a particularly nice variety of smart and playful designs.

The Speck PixelSkin is a soft protective silicon case with a pixilated raised grid design for a good grip (see earlier post). It's joined by the more rigid PixelSkin HD with a higher contrast texture.

The PixelSkin for the iPhone 4 / 4s is $24.95, the PixelSkin HD $29.95 for the iPhone 4 / 4s and the PixelSkin HD Wrap for the iPad 2 is $49.95.

The Speck CandyShell is a hard case with extra protection from rubberized corners and inner rubbery lining (see earlier post).

The CandyShell Wrap for iPad 2 ($54.95) provided hard-shell protection, with a removable cover. The case is co-molded with the hard polycarbonate plastic shell and soft rubber insides. It protects the back and sides, including rubberized covers over the buttons. And it has a flip-out panel on the bottom for use with dock or keyboard.

The front cover stays closed with micro-suction, and folds to serve as a multi-position viewing and typing stand -- or you can remove the cover by sliding it out for intensive use.

For more cases from the last CES show, see iPad Cases for 2011

Find the Speck PixelSkin HD for iPhone and
CandyShell Wrap for iPad on Amazon.com