World66

TIP OF THE DAY

World66

http://www.world66.com

Before you decide to travel to a certain destination, you'll probably ask for more information from someone you know who has already been there. Other travelers are usually the best source of information about a location. Following this line of thought, World66 is the travel guide that is for travelers, by travelers.  It contains 50,000 articles on 10,000 destinations. All of the information on the locations can be edited directly by you. This is helpful because you get a collection of resources and locations from a variety of different standpoints. If there's a cool restaurant that you enjoyed eating at, recommend it to other travelers. The content is incredibly easy to edit. Just click the [edit this] links that are scattered throughout the site, and feel free to either add new information, or edit what's already there. If you're relatively new to traveling, take a look at the travel tips. World66 also has city and country guides that you can purchase for your Palm.

IE patches block PDF viewing

TIP OF THE DAY

IE patches block PDF viewing

IE patches block PDF viewing

There was a recent Microsoft patch, Explorer patch Q832894, that effectively disabled Version 5.0 of the Adobe Acrobat Reader (and maybe older versions). The solution is to update to Version 6 of Acrobat Reader. You can also lower security restrictions for a particular Web site by changing that site from the Internet zone to the Trusted Zone. (From IE: select Tools, select Internet Options, select Security, select Trusted Sites, select Add site).

Businesses Help Organize Photos

TIP OF THE DAY

 

Businesses Help Organize Photos

 

 

Businesses Help Organize Photos

By BOB TEDESCHI

CAN'T get anyone to peruse the 50 family photos from your new digital camera? Internet companies would love to see them.

As digital cameras continue their sales boom, Web sites have found an increasingly attractive business helping consumers share their photos with friends and family.

Earlier this month, two online photo-sharing services were bought within a 24-hour period. The technology publisher CNET Networks will pay $70 million for a longtime market leader, Webshots, and Google paid an undisclosed amount for a relative newcomer, Picasa.

The announcements came on the heels of a series of improvements from Yahoo Photos that have helped it leapfrog Webshots as the Internet leader in photo sharing.

Why all the activity? Analysts said a resurgence in the online advertising market had helped, along with a seemingly insatiable consumer appetite for digital photography.

"The digital camera adoption rate continues to defy expectations," said Chris Chute, an analyst with the research and consulting firm IDC, who predicted digital camera sales would reach 25 million this year. Including the 27 million camera phones that are expected to sell this year, at least a third of American households will be able to take digital photos by year's end.

Mr. Chute said that 28 percent of digital-camera owners share their pictures over the Internet and that cellphones and devices connected to home networks, for instance, would facilitate photo sharing.

Some online photo sites have had a surge in visitors in the last year, according to comScore Media Metrix, an Internet measurement firm, while others have leveled off. Yahoo and Webshots have had marginal declines in visitors, while Kodak's Ofoto.com, District Photo's Snapfish.com and Shutterfly.com, based in Redwood City, Calif., attracted 25 percent to 30 percent more visitors.

What is more, the value of those visitors has increased as the demand for online advertising has intensified.

Executives said those audience sizes are enticing enough for marketers to open their checkbooks. Narendra Rocherolle, co-chief executive of Webshots, said one reason Webshots chose CNET over other suitors was that it could help the company reach more well-known advertisers, because it already has long-term relationships with advertisers like Canon and Sony. Webshots said it was profitable and expected to generate $12 million to $13 million in revenue this year, half from advertising and the remainder from selling premium online services and photo prints. CNET said it expected overall revenues for Webshots to grow by at least a third next year.

Webshots, like several other photo-sharing sites, lets consumers upload their digital photos to a Web page on the site, free of charge. From there, users create albums, then e-mail invitations for others to look.

Unlike some other sites, Webshots allows users to post their albums publicly, for others to download if they wish. The site's 30 million users have posted more than 60 million photos for others to see. "So if you want to go on vacation, you can find very detailed photos that you wouldn't see at other travel Web sites," Mr. Rocherolle said. (Several Webshots employees scan the site for inappropriate content.)

This is actually the second time that Webshots' owners have sold the company. In 1999, Excite@Home bought it for $82.5 million in stock, only to sell it back to the three co-founders in early 2002 for $2.4 million. The latest deal is another sign that good ideas that were simply premature during the dot-com boom are winning favor now that the Internet economy is strengthening.

Shelby Bonnie, chairman and chief executive of CNET Networks, said most of the Webshots audience had not yet visited CNET's sites, which include GameSpot.com, MP3.com and CNET.com, among others. With Webshots visitors viewing 20 million pages daily, Mr. Bonnie said: "That's a lot of additional ad inventory for us."

Webshots has faced increasingly stiff competition from Yahoo, which has in recent months rolled out a number of new features to enable users to share their photos more easily and decreased the number of places where advertisements appear.

Late last year, Yahoo began a service that allows users to view their photos on wireless phones. "So instead of dad pulling out his wallet for pictures, you can do it all electronically," Jeff Stoddard, director of Yahoo Photos, said.

Even so, the smaller competitors have some advantages. Ofoto.com and Sony's Imagestation.com, for instance, have considerable muscle behind them, while Snapfish.com can rely on marketing support from District Photo, one of the biggest mail-order film processors.

Ofoto, Snapfish and Shutterfly.com have for years helped customers convert conventional photos into digital images they could e-mail to others. Now they, too, enable digital camera users to swap photos, or print them professionally for less than 20 cents an image.

Raj Kapoor, president of Snapfish, said the company recently allowed camera phone users to e-mail images directly to their albums on the Snapfish site. This week the company will vastly expand the merchandise people can order decorated with their photos. The new items include dog leashes, baby bibs and neckties.

In this competitive market, Google's purchase of Picasa is particularly intriguing. Unlike most other services, Picasa is a peer-to-peer sharing application. Users open a window similar to that of instant messaging applications to swap photos.

Google declined to comment on its acquisition, citing the required "quiet period" for companies selling shares to the public. But because Picasa's technology is a cousin of instant messaging software, the acquisition could signal Google's entry into that category, as much as in photo sharing. Google, which has extended its lucrative text advertising service to Gmail, its new e-mail service, could conceivably distribute ads alongside instant messages as well.

Peer-to-peer photo sharing, in itself, could prove a profitable market, in the view of John Mathon, chief executive of such a service, ShareALot, based in San Mateo, Calif. Users of the service need only drag their photos to an icon on the computer's desktop for instant transmission to selected friends. ShareALot displays ads with the photos.

Thanks to the ease of use, Mr. Mathon said, "tens of thousands of people have shared more than a million photos with us" since the company's debut in March.

E-Mail in Your Hand, No Matter Where You Go

TIP OF THE DAY

E-Mail in Your Hand, No Matter Where You Go

E-Mail in Your Hand, No Matter Where You Go

By THOMAS J. FITZGERALD

S the palmtop computer and the cellphone invade each other's turf, giving rise to devices like the Treo 600 and the BlackBerry 7230 that serve as both communicators and organizers, access to e-mail anytime anyplace seems to go without saying. But suppose you're not ready for convergence.

If you are intrigued by the idea of having mobile access to your e-mail but are not ready for the leap into the world of smart phones, there are other options to consider. Several of the big palmtop computer makers have strengthened their product lineups, integrating wireless connectivity into higher-priced devices and making it easier to use them for e-mail on the go.

Such palmtops come with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built in, and they can provide access to e-mail using several different methods. What's more, they offer powerful processors, good-size screens, expandability and various shapes that may add to their appeal for business and personal use.

One of the newest is the Axim X30 from Dell. Introduced in May, the X30 comes in three versions, two of which have built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. With Wi-Fi, e-mail can be received or sent from anywhere within range of a wireless network, whether at work, at home or at one of the growing number of hot spots, or points of access, in places like restaurants and cafes, airports and hotels.

One advantage of Wi-Fi over smart phones can be faster connection speeds. Wi-Fi access points are typically linked to high-speed Internet lines, while cellular carriers often provide data transmission speeds that are closer to dial-up. Faster connection speeds are especially helpful when sending and receiving many messages at once and when working with large attachments.

One disadvantage of Wi-Fi is that connecting to a wireless access point is not always seamless. Extra tapping around on a palmtop may be necessary to establish connections to wireless networks in areas densely packed with access points, for example, and that can take some time. And there is a cost factor. Service plans from T-Mobile, for example, can range from $30 a month for unlimited access to $6 an hour for a metered option, with access provided at Starbucks, Borders and Kinko's locations.

Pocket Outlook is the default e-mail program on the X30 and other Pocket PC devices. The program is easy to use and can provide access to personal e-mail accounts as well as corporate mail systems (using the POP3 or IMAP4 protocols). Web-based e-mail applications designed for the smaller screens of mobile devices, like those from Yahoo (wap.oa.yahoo.com) and MSN (mobile.msn.com), can be opened by using the devices' Web browsers, another e-mail alternative for travelers.

Like other new Pocket PC devices, the X30 models come with new processors from Intel and the latest version of Microsoft's mobile operating system. The processors offer speeds of 312 megahertz ($280) or 624 megahertz ($350) and power management features designed to extend battery life. The operating system, Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition, adds new features like landscape mode and the stronger Wi-Fi encryption known as WPA.

Hand-held devices with built-in connectivity exist in the Palm OS world as well. One that has Wi-Fi is PalmOne's Tungsten C ($400). The Tungsten C is slightly thicker than the X30 and its screen is smaller, but it comes with a built-in qwerty keyboard, which some users prefer to using the stylus and on-screen keyboard. It has a 400-megahertz processor and a three-inch screen. The default e-mail program on Tungsten devices, VersaMail, is easy to learn, and it also works with personal accounts and corporate systems.

Another PalmOne unit with wireless connectivity, the Tungsten T3 ($400), has a unique design. The bottom third of the unit slides open to reveal additional screen space. This boosts the screen size to 3.9 inches from 3.3 inches. The T3 takes advantage of the additional screen space by offering either landscape or portrait mode.

The T3, however, uses Bluetooth rather than Wi-Fi to connect to wireless networks. One way to use Bluetooth for e-mail is in combination with a Bluetooth-enabled cellphone. Such cellphones can be used as modems, allowing a palmtop to dial an Internet service provider like EarthLink or Verizon. Once a connection is established, the user can send and receive e-mail, browse the Web and use other Internet applications. Enlisting a cellphone for those tasks usually requires you to add a data service plan to your cellular account at an extra cost of $15 to $20 per month, depending upon the carrier and level of usage.

One drawback of this strategy is that not many cellphones have Bluetooth. Taking advantage of a Bluetooth-enabled palmtop in this way may require buying a new phone or switching to another carrier, which could bring about early termination fees. Another drawback is the shorter range of Bluetooth, which would mean keeping the palmtop within about 30 feet of the cellphone.

A new cordless 56-kilobit-per-second modem from Socket Communications (www.socketcom.com) offers an alternative way for Bluetooth-enabled palmtops to connect to the Internet. It plugs into a phone jack and can be used with such a palmtop to connect wirelessly with an Internet service provider. The compact $120 device, which has a rechargeable battery, is smaller than the palmtop itself and can easily be carried along on a trip for use in a hotel room or between home and office.

Another option is a Bluetooth access point like the F8T030 from Belkin ($120) or the Axis 9010 from Axis Communications ($320). Such devices plug into a network by way of Ethernet, and make network resources like Internet access and local servers available to Bluetooth-enabled devices within range.

Current iPAQ models from Hewlett-Packard offer significant connectivity and other features as well. Next week the company is scheduled to announce new iPAQ units with additional features but so far it has declined to discuss the details. Among the current iPAQ models, the h4155, a Pocket PC, comes with both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

An important feature of the h4155 ($400) is its svelte size. The device is compact considering its built-in connectivity, 400-megahertz processor and relatively large 3.5-inch screen. The bottom corners of the unit are rounded, making it feel light and small in your pocket. At 4.5 inches long and 2.8 inches wide, it is slightly smaller than the Axim X30, which measures 4.8 inches by 3 inches and has a 3.5-inch screen. The iPAQ h4355 ($450), a close relative of the h4155, offers many of the same features plus a built-in qwerty keyboard.

The iPAQ h5555 ($650) also has built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and a biometric fingerprint reader for added security, a 3.8-inch screen and 128 megabytes of RAM.

Even with all these wireless options, it's a good idea to have a backup plan for those times when you're beyond the range of an access point. Cables that allow you to connect a palmtop to a cellphone and use it as a modem are available from companies like Gomadic (www.gomadic.com) and SupplyNet (www.thesupplynet.com). It took me only a few minutes to configure a setup using one of these cables with an iPAQ h4155 and a Samsung N400 cellphone. Prices for these cables generally range from $40 to $80.

Finally, if this is your first foray into the world of palmtops, one of your first decisions will be to choose a platform. The two dominant ones, the Palm OS and the Pocket PC, offer similar ease of use for classic palmtop functions like the address book, calendar and to-do lists. It's a tough choice because both are good at handling the basics. A good strategy is to spend a few weeks experimenting with various units at electronics stores, talking to longtime users and researching which platform will provide the software, expandability and third-party accessories that you may want further down the road.

And if your primary goal is mobile e-mail, it is worth keeping an eye on smart phones, which are also being augmented with new features. As more hybrid devices that combine voice and data services are introduced, the line between cellphones and hand-held computers is becoming blurred. And in a signal that growth in the palmtop market is slowing, Sony announced in June that it would stop selling its Clié units in the United States.

Still, devout legions of hand-held aficionados are perfectly happy to keep their cellphones in one pocket and their organizers in another, said John Jackson, an analyst for the Yankee Group, a telecommunications research company. For that reason, the hand-held market is unlikely to disappear anytime soon.

"It's still too early to call it a day for the hand-held space," Mr. Jackson said. "But momentum is certainly swinging toward the smart-phone segment."

Paperless Office?

TIP OF THE DAY

Paperless Office?

Scanning a Paperless Horizon

By DAVID POGUE

Published: July 15, 2004

MYTHOLOGY can be hours of fun for the whole family. Remember the one about the guy who flew too close to the sun with his waxen wings? Or the one about the loving couple that Zeus changed into intertwined trees? How about the one about the lady who tried to dry off her little dog by sticking him in the microwave?

But myths don't begin life as myths; in the beginning, people actually believe them. As recently as a few decades ago, for example, you could still hear predictions that computers would one day create a paperless office. Of course, that turned out to be total bunk; the amount of paper consumed in the e-mail age has exploded.

We may never eliminate our file cabinets completely, but it's too soon to give up on that dream altogether. New scanners from Hewlett-Packard, Fujitsu and Xerox/Visioneer can scan stacks of paper, unattended, with marching-band precision - both sides at once, in fact - and convert them into PDF files on your computer, ready for searching, sorting or sending.

(PDF stands for Portable Document Format. It's also known as an Adobe Acrobat format, which you may have encountered in the form of CD-based user manuals or downloadable white papers. Like a photograph, a PDF file maintains the original paper document's fonts, page layout and even pictures, yet you can search for text inside it and copy text out of it. And, of course, you can print it. Maybe Adobe ought to adopt a slogan like "PDF files: The Official Format of the Paperless-Office Myth.")

People in law offices and other paper-heavy enterprises worship the PDF format because it lets them call up a specific page in a specific contract on their hard drive in seconds without having to comb through file cabinets and get paper cuts. Now the same perk is available to anyone.

The Fujitsu ScanSnap FI-5110EOX (about $400 online, or $300 after a rebate that's available through September), for example, sits on your desk looking for all the world like a tiny inkjet printer (it's only 5.9 by 11.2 by 5.7 inches). Yet its closest ancestor wasn't a printer but a shredder: you just shove stacks of paper, 50 pages at a time, into the top slot. The machine instantly turns on and begins slurping in pages with astonishing speed. (Fujitsu claims the scanner can process 15 pages per minute, but it lies. You actually get 16 pages per minute.) It spits the pages out the bottom, where, if you're really going for paperless nirvana, you've positioned a wastebasket.

This speed is all the more amazing considering that the Windows software automatically omits blank pages, corrects upside-down ones and even straightens out pages as necessary. The ScanSnap can even scan both sides of the pages simultaneously.

When it's all over, there's a new PDF document - a single icon containing all the scanned pages, in proper order - in your My Pictures folder, bearing a cheerful name like 2004-07-15-17-12-04.pdf. You can change the settings to something that looks a little less like computer programming (like "Scan 001"), but it's too bad the software can't ask you for a title after each scan.

As a handy bonus, you can also feed this scanner a pile of business cards. It ingeniously scans them, translates each card's image into actual text (name, phone number and so on), and sends that contact information into whatever address-book program you use. This feature almost makes it fun to come home from a conference with a pocket full of business cards.

Note, however, that the resulting PDF documents are not, at first, searchable as real PDF documents are, and you can't select text inside them to copy as an excerpt. But Fujitsu provides a full copy of Adobe Acrobat (the expensive program that lets you create and edit PDF files, not just the freebie Acrobat Reader program that everyone has). You can use its Paper Capture command to convert the scanned picture of text into a smart one that can search for the words inside. (The important thing is to find the PDF user's guide on the ScanSnap CD; otherwise, you'll never know how to scan business cards or convert PDF's into searchable ones. Neither the printed Getting Started leaflet nor the scanning software's electronic help even mentions these topics.)

The Xerox DocuMate 252, sold and serviced by Visioneer, is the same idea - a toasterish thing (13.3 by 6 by 12.3 inches) that sits on your desk, always at the ready to accept sheets or 50-page stacks of paper - but twice as expensive ($865), twice as fast and twice as good.

The speed is absolutely amazing: how does 50 two-sided pages a minute strike you? A digital display on the scanner lets you dial up customizable presets, numbered 1 through 9. Preset 2 might mean "color, double-sided, legal size; send as an e-mail attachment after scanning," and preset 4 can auto-print each scan, effectively turning the machine into a copier. And the documentation is, in a word, spectacular: well illustrated, loaded with tips and troubleshooting and, if you can believe it, all printed up into a nice paperback book.

Every resulting PDF document is searchable and excerptable from the moment it's born - no post-conversion necessary. A bonus program for Windows called PaperPort presents a virtual desktop that collects all of your scans and lets you search your entire PDF collection - a year's worth, say - at once.

Note, however, that both of these compact scanners are designed expressly for scarfing down loose pages. Before scanning, you must first remove staples, clips and all other forms of metal; your documents will feel as if they're going through airport security. You can't scan books or magazines without first tearing out the pages, either. And these document scanners aren't intended to scan photos, although Visioneer says that its machine handles them just fine.

The HP ScanJet 5590 (about $380), however, has no such limitations. It's much bigger, heavier and uglier - in fact, it looks like a part that fell off an airplane. But good heavens, is it versatile! It includes a glass flatbed (for books and photos), a document feeder (for double-sided scans of loose pages), and even an adapter for transparencies and slides. (Several other companies, including Microtek and Xerox, also sell flatbed scanners with hunchback document feeders grafted onto the lid.)

The advantage here is that you have to buy only one machine for all your scanning needs. The drawback is that this machine is much slower and balkier when it comes to scanning documents, managing only eight pages a minute at best. For double-sided scans, the machine actually runs each paper through the document feeder twice, as though the little elves inside didn't bother to look on the back the first time through.

Unlike the Fujitsu or the Xerox, the HP model provides its software for both Mac and Windows computers. It can turn your pages into searchable PDF's (or Word files, or e-mail messages) without any conversion step on your part. But for some reason, each PDF document shows up with a dingy gray background instead of white. HP says that there's no fix, at least in the current software version.

HP is another company that has tried to shave costs by eliminating a user manual - and American tech-support workers, at that. (When I couldn't get the document feeder to work at first, my call for help was answered by a someone in India who admirably simulated one side of a "Saturday Night Live" skit. Me: "I can't scan using the document feeder." She: "Can you scan from the flatbed?" Me: "Yes." She: "All right, let's try placing a document on the flatbed." Me: "But I already told you, that works. It's the document feeder that doesn't work." She: "Are you saying that the document feeder does not work?")

All three companies, moreover, have cobbled together a software suite from too many separate pieces - one program for scanning, one for converting to PDF, one for business cards and so on. Not only do you have to install three different pieces of software on your computer (in Xerox's case, on two different CD's), but each program has its own online help, a different software design and a separate entry in your Programs menu. It's a confusing, poorly designed strategy, to say the least.

The machines themselves are a marvel. For the average consumer, you can't beat the speed, value and amazing simplicity of the Fujitsu SnapScan; if you have a small business or you plan to scan daily, the more professional Xerox device is well worth the higher price. Neither machine will fulfill the Vision of the Paperless Office. But maybe it's time to embrace a more realistic vision of the future, one that's actually attainable by scanners like these: the Vision of the Office Without Little Piles of Unfiled Paper on Every Horizontal Surface.