Twelve Black Code Monkeys

XM, the more successful of the two satellite radio companies that began transmitting a couple of years ago, has decided to expand its reach to internet broadcasting. I used to own an XM radio, and while I enjoyed the better-than-FM quality of XM, and the freedom to keep listening to my favorite station no matter where I was (as long as I was outside that is), I eventually decided to get rid of it because I didn’t feel like I was using it enough to justify the $11/month they charge. I can certainly see it being worth that much or more for people who listen to the radio more, but for the most part I tend to listen to audio books or NPR, and XM does not carry NPR (Sirius, XM’s competitor, carries a very limited slate of second-tier NPR shows).

This new method of broadcasting I’m not so sure about. I’ve never really been that into internet radio, believe it or not. Even with a DSL connection at home, streaming audio to where it’s actually somewhat equivalent to FM quality usually slows down everything else. Doing anything else on the computer that requires uploading or downloading large files makes the connection flakey. Aside from this, I live an area that has two NPR stations, and of course a fair variety of musical genres to pick from, although I can see where having a college radio station or a station that played a more eclectic mix of genres (zydeco, Caribbean, African, Brazilian, etc) would be nice. The nice thing about the XM radio I owned, the Delphi SkyFi, was that I could use it in the car, then unplug it and hook it up to a boom box made specifically for it in the office or at home. It was “portable!” Since then Delphi has come out with other modular XM radio devices that don’t even require a proprietary boom box. Maybe once Wimax enables constant 70mbps connections to the internet for any enabled mobile phone the internet radio broadcasts may finally become truly portable (at the huge expense of these phones’ battery life!), but until then it’s simply another way to listen to the radio when one has a higher-speed connection. If XM simply offers this as an added feature to current XM subscribers, great! Then they won’t have to deal with modular devices like the SkyFi. I supposed it’s also a remedy for those who don’t want to spend $100 or more on a satellite radio itself (let alone installation fees for your car, etc.), but still a nice array of channels to listen to at the office. Then again, aren’t there already a whole bunch of completely free internet radio channels???

My wife, who has my old Sidekick, got an email from T-Mobile last night that the Sidekick II $100-off upgrade offer for current Sidekick owners is on hold. Apparently there was such a huge demand from these owners that they had to shut things down while they make plans to get more in stock. I just wonder whether models will be selling to the general public while those trying to get upgrades are waiting for some arbitrary additional surplus to build up so that they can take advantage of the offer again? Who knows, but somehow I doubt T-Mobile will be asking potential new customers to wait while they give their entire inventory to previous owners. That seems like too much of a 180-degree about-face from their previous “let’s worship the new guy at the expense of the loyal customer” attitude. No word on exactly how long this new wait will be. One would think that with Sharp as the new manufacturers for the device, they would be able to churn out new units pretty damn fast!

In the professional Digital “compact” (meaning sensor sizes up to 35mm but not larger) SLR market, Nikon, Cannon, and Fuji have been battling it out for a few years now. Earlier this year, Canon took the lead, some would say, with its EOS-1D Mark II, which matched the 8+ frames per second of Nikon’s D2H, but doubling the resolution to 8 megapixels, plus a CMOS sensor that yields much less noisy images. The highly anticipated Fuji S3 Pro, supposedly coming out next month, will up the anti with a more advanced sensor that alledgedly pushes dynamic range a lot closer to the capability of film. Nikon’s D2H, which came out prior to the Mark II, has been Nikon’s top-of-the-line DSLR for professionals since then, but its 4-megapixel sensor has been superceded by most DSLR’s in the past year, even those costing a fraction of the price, and even most prosumer models as well. The Mark II is a much more expensive camera, but for newsrooms, that’s not much of an issue considering cameras with much less capability were being purchased not very long ago for $25,000 a pop!

So finally, Nikon has come out with the predecessor to its D1H and D2X - the D2H. It now incorporates a 12-megapixel CMOS sensor for less noisy images and three times higher resolution. At the full 12MP, it will only do 5 frames per second, but it has a special 6.8MP mode that pushes the frame rate back up to 8, so in this sense it is both better and worse than the Mark II – able to take higher resolution images, albeit at a slower frame rate, and lower resolution images that the Mark II can take at the same 8 frames/second.. Nikon is also touting a new advanced image processing system that is supposed to enhance white balancing accuracy. Another new feature I haven’t seen in any DSLR yet is a multiple-exposure option. One other neat feature is compatibility with GPS devices, which one can connect via an optional cable and which will encode meta data in the image file that not only says when you took it, but exactly where! Finally, one of the other big features that Nikon is talking about is the D2H’s wireless capabilities, which include support for an older WT-1 wireless transmitter as well as a newer WT-2, which is able to communicate at the higher speeds (54mbps) of 802.11G. Nikon also just announced a new wireless file transfer protocol called Picture Transfer Protocol over Internet Protocol (PTP/IP), which will make these devices much more plug and play, as well as increase their transfer speeds. We’re not quite at USB 2 speeds of 480mbps (let alone firewire 800’s 800mbps), but this is a good deal better than USB 1.0, and is bound to just increase. So far, though, Nikon is leading the way. Hopefully other camera makers will take notice not only for digital SLR’s but prosumer models as well.

According to mytreo.net, PalmOne is now giving away 3 free accessories (valued at $80) with new Treo 600 purchases. In other words they are trying to clear out inventory by enticing new customers to jump on this special offer. They are only available through September 30, so my guess is that the next Treo (the 650 or “Ace”) will be available shortly thereafter. In my opinion, this is not a big incentive to buy the Treo 600 when the 650 is so close at hand. $80 is just not that much when you’re talking about an $800 phone – or even $300 when highly discounted. In order to buy the 600 now instead of having to wait a few weeks or even a couple of months for the 650, I would think Palm would need to give at least a $200 mail-in rebate! Also, although it doesn’t prove anything at this point, the fact that this deal is on accessories and not the phone itself leads me to believe that the rumors of the 650 being incompatible with 600 accessories. After all, in addition to wanting to clear inventory of the old phones, if they need to make new accessories they need to get rid of the old accessories as well!