Video business-news bulletin including story about Google’s TV / Web search
My comments on this technology
Google has become a byword for searching for information on the Internet in a similar manner to the way the word “Walkman” became a byword for personal stereo equipment or “Hoover” became one for vacuum cleaning. Their presence is now strong on the computer screen and the mobile screen, but the territory that they haven’t conquered yet is the television screen.
Now they are working with DISH Network (one of two major satellite-TV services in the USA) to develop a TV-show / Web search user interface for use on the set-top boxes that DISH Network provide to their satellite-TV customers. Could this mean that we could be able to find RF-broadcast content as well as content on the Web like YouTube clips or Web sites such as online episode guides. They reckoned that this may need the use of a QWERTY keyboard near the TV.
But I have observed an increasing furtherance towards text entry from the couch, which would be important with Google’s TV/Web search. For example, some remote controls are implementing text entry on a 12-key keypad similar to how those teenagers type out text messages on their mobiles and others, including TiVo are issuing remote controls that have a slide-to-expose QWERTY keyboard for text entry. On the other hand. there have been manufacturers who offered small wireless or USB keyboards being pitched at “lounge-room” use.
This is even though I have seen situations where teenagers have brought laptops in to the lounge area so they can IM or Facebook friends while watching their favourite TV shows, or where I have used Google or the Internet Movie Database from my mobile phone to search for information relating to a show that I am watching.
So it definitely shows that the Internet is becoming part of the regular TV-viewing life rather than a separate activity.
Mother’s Day is usually the day not just to give a small gift to Mum, but some families may see this day and Father’s Day as opportunities to “pool resources” and purchase a higher-value gift. So I am writing blog posts that appear on these days to provide guidance in purchasing and setting up consumer-electronics and IT-related gifts for your parents.
The kind of gifts that may appeal to Mum include:
Electronic picture frames
Internet radios and similar network-based media devices
A computer that is suited to Mum’s needs and
Internet service (if there isn’t any at the place she lives at)
Electronic picture frames
You may think of picking up that cheap digital picture frame at a “big-box” discount store for use as a gift, but there can be some nasty limitations concerning its use. For example, a lot of cheap frames may only source their pictures from a memory card or USB thumb-drive plugged in to the side of the frame. This can cause the frame to be useless if you or someone in your family need to remove the media to revise the pictures held on the frame. This is a very typical situation because you might place a small collection of pictures on an SD card or thumb-drive just to “get it going”, then remove that card or thumbdrive to fill it with pictures derived from various household photo collections.
I would suggest keeping an eye out for frames that either have a large integrated memory or can work with two or more memory devices at the same time. Better off, I would keep an eye out for Wi-Fi picture frames that can work with a home network and bring content in from an Internet service. The service should support “email-to-frame” functionality so you can send a picture from your computer or smartphone directly to the frame. This functionality would be very important when there are the family events like a wedding or the arrival of a new baby.
A Wi-Fi frame with UPnP AV / DLNA functionality can work with a network-attached-storage device that is used as a primary image library. This can be of benefit if you keep adding pictures from different household collections as each family occasion passes through; or as you scan more regular pictures out of the family photo collections.
Internet radios
If your mum likes radio content from a favourite country, you may wish to provide here with an Internet radio. These units offer access to the kind of radio listened to by locals of a favoured country, or other radio programming through the use of Internet audio streams. In some cases, there are channels which play a lot of the “old-time” radio serials like “The Goons”.
These sets are very flexible in the way that they work because of the provision of an auxiliary-input jack and / or an iPod dock. Most of these sets can work with a DLNA-compliant network-attached storage and turn this device into a multimedia jukebox.
The more-expensive sets can work as a primary audio system for a studio or other small apartment due to them having high-quality sound. It may also be worth looking out for Internet-radio “tuners” like the Revo Mondo RadioStation or the Sangean WFT-1 Series, that connect to an existing stereo system so your parents can have Internet radio through their favourite stereo system.
An upgradeable DLNA-compliant network-attached storage device can work well alongside a compatible Wi-Fi electronic picture frame or Internet radio as a media library. These units don’t necessarily need to have a computer on the scene at all times. It then means that you can transfer media from a laptop computer that you bring around to one of these devices, which can be of benefit if the only reason for the home network is to provide media to these devices.
Getting Mum who isn’t tech-literate set up at home
A modest laptop with a built-in Webcam and running Windows 7 Home Premium or MacOS X Snow Leopard could work well as an email terminal for your parents. This could be connected to the Internet through an entry-level wireless router on the network-Internet edge and a modest Internet plan. You may gain best value with an Internet service provided by the Internet arm of the retail telephony carrier that they use. The email should be provided through an entry-level desktop client like Windows Live Mail, Mozilla Thunderbird or Apple Mail in conjunction with the POP3 / IMAP email system provided by the ISP.
If they like to be able to type mementos and similar things, you could deploy OpenOffice, Apple iWork (Mac OS X) or Microsoft Office Home And Student Edition (Windows, MacOS X). These suites can give you an adequate word processor, spreadsheet and presentation creator for a cheap price.
You may have to pre-configure the computer to suit the Internet service and email arrangements that your parents use, and may have to set them up for Skype. As well, you will have to teach them how to use the computer for these basic tasks and, perhaps, point them to services run by the local council or other community groups to help with computer familiarisation.
You might consider buying Mum one of those “tablet” computing devices like the Apple iPad, but most of these devices may be very expensive and some of them may lock you in to their platform tightly. For example, you may have to pay dearly if you want to use a keyboard. Another more affordable alternative may be to get a “convertible” notebook which has the screen on a “swivel” head and the screen is able to work as a touch screen or as a stylus-operated tablet screen. This can cater for people who still can type but like the idea of the touchscreen.
Conclusion
Once you know how to go about choosing and setting up that consumer-electronics or IT-related high-value gift for Mum, you can be sure that she will enjoy using it fully for a long time.
Note:
This post will appear in March, to cater for UK and European readers who celebrate Mother’s Day in March; and again at the end of April to cater for US, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand readers who celebrate it on the first Sunday of May.
There is still some disquiet in the European Union regarding the Browser Choice Screen that Microsoft launched in that market on 1 March 2010 to satisfy the European Commission’s anti-trust issue concerning their delivery of Internet Explorer 8 as the standard browser for the Windows platform.
The main issue was that the only browsers that were immediately visible to the user were the “top 5” desktop browsers – Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Opera. The user had to “pan” the menu rightwards to see the other browsers like Maxthon, GreenBrowser, K-Meleon and Flock. This had annoyed the developers of these alternative browsers, some of which were “super-browsers” built on either the Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer codebases and were endowed with extra features.
These browser developers want the European Commission to mandate an easily-identifiable visual cue as part of the Browser Choice Screen user-interface to indicate more browsers available. This is even though there is a scroll-bar of variable width under the browser list that can be dragged left and right to reveal the other browsers.
Personally, I would also look into the idea of an alternative user-interface layout in the form of a 6 x 2 grid for the browser-selection part rather than the current “ribbon” menu. This can cater for more browsers to be shown to the user, but the downside would be that it requires more screen real-estate which limits its utility on smaller screens like netbooks. It may also make the user-interface more cluttered and intimidating.
It is certainly a situation that reminds me of many council planning-permission fights that I have read about in various local newspapers whenever one of the big American fast-food chains like KFC or McDonalds wants to set up shop in a neighbourhood. A very constant argument that I read of in these reports is that the fast-food chain’s logo and colour scheme stands out like a sore thumb against all the other small cafés that had existed previously in that area. The alternative browser developers like Maxthon see themselves as the small café who is put out of business by the “big boys” (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer & co) who are seen in a similar light to McDonalds, KFC & co.
I am reviewing one of Revo’s latest Internet radios – the Domino FM/DAB+/Internet table radio which one of many of the radios appearing in this class.
This set comes in a charcoal-grey rubber-textured housing, with a joystick on the front as the main selection control. It also has a knob for selecting between operation modes and another knob to turn the volume up and down. As well, you turn the radio on and off by pressing this knob in a similar manner to most car radios.
The display is in the left “porthole” on the front of the set and is a small OLED display with a similar “off-white” colour to the vacuum-fluorescent displays on most consumer electronics made by Sony and Panasonic.
There is an integrated iPod dock that is covered by a removable panel and the set came with Apple-style iPod inserts that work with whichever iPod or iPhone you have.
It also comes with a card-style remote control which, like its stablemate, allows for operation from a distance and allows for direct access to the locally-preset stations.
Setup
This process is similar to most Frontier-platform Internet radios like the Kogan and the Revo iBlik. The set is capable of supporting “quick-setup” with WPS “push-button-setup” routers and is the first one that I have reviewed to offer this method/ But this option isn’t made as part of the Network Setup Wizard, rather you have to go to System Settings – Network menu and select “PBC setup” to instigate this kind of setup.
It is also the first Internet radio that I have reviewed that supports multiple wireless-network profiles (SSID and security-parameter combinations). Here, this set can remember the profiles for the four last-used wireless networks but the user can delete a particular network profile from the list.
Operation
It works in a manner similar to the other Internet radios that I have tried, with a “mode selector” and heavy use of menus. The unit also supports FM radio with RDS and DAB/DAB+ digital radio for regular RF-based radio service. The aerial for this is a telescopic rod one that is clipped vertically on the back of the unit so you don’t have to unclip it when you just need to extend it upwards.
The set stores 10 preset stations for each “band” – FM, DAB and Internet radio; and you select them by pressing the star button and highlighting the station with the joystick then pressing the joystick to hear it. To set a station as a preset, you press the star button to show preset list, then hold joystick button in until “Preset saved” comes up on display. For Internet radio, this is in addition to the favourite stations that you have identified at the wifiradio-frontier.com Website.
The set works properly with a UPnP AV / DLNA home media network and the transport controls on top of the set allow you to move across the music collection that you are playing.
The set can work as a replacement for the old clock radio in the bedroom. The Alarm button on the front of the set is for enabling different previously-set alarm times when the set is off or to set the alarm times when the set is on. You can set two different alarm times and determine what to wake to – buzzer, FM station, DAB station, Internet station or iPod for each alarm time. Like the iBlik that I reviewed previously, you can set an alarm event to occur on a particular date, every day, every weekday or every weekend. When the alarm sounds. all the buttons on the unit reset the alarm. The joystick works as “snooze button” and repeated pressing of it allows you to extend the snooze time. There is a sleep-off timer that causes the set to stop playing after a known time. but you have to go through the menus to start the sleep timer, something you wouldn’t do if you are very tired and just want to drift off to music.
There is inherent support for the last.fm “personal-music” service which can “learn” your music tastes from music played from your iPod, last.fm’s Internet radio service or a UPnP AV media server.
Sound quality
The Revo Domino is the first Internet radio that I have reviewed to have tone controls. These are found under “Equaliser” option in “System Settings” menu. There are 5 preset tone settings plus a user-determined tone setup – bass, treble and loudness-compensation.
The NXT “dual-radiator” speaker allows for some “punch” in the sound without suffocating the vocals when music is played. It also reproduces speech very clearly and the set can put up a significantly loud volume without distorting. This can be of benefit if you need to use it in noisy environments.
This unit has the similar output level to most radios of its kind, enough to fill a reasonably-size room with easily–identifiable music and can compete with the noise emitted by typical kitchen appliances.
Points for improvement
There are a few places where the Revo Domino could be improved.
One is that the OLED display could be made a bit larger. This could improve its useability, especially if the user doesn’t have good eyesight, which may be common with senior citizens.
It also could benefit from having a headphone jack installed, which can cater for late-night listening or for playing it through an active speaker system.
Conclusion and placement notes
Beyond the above-mentioned limitations associated with a small display and the lack of a headphone jack, there isn’t anything much else that I could fault this set on.
Here, I would recommend that the Revo Domino be best sold as a “step-up” Internet radio / iPod-dock combination for use in the kitchen, office, workshop, or small shop. It can also work well as a clock radio even though you have to go in to the Main Menu to set the alarm or enable the sleep timer.
There have been steps taken in the UK to “get broadband to the farm gate” but there are still a lot of questions concerning how this is going on. The main issue being raised regarding rural broadband in the UK is lack of “proper access”. IMHO, this would mean “at the door” access speeds that match service-package “headline speeds” for mid-tier ADSL packages.
Previously, I had blogged about rural broadband not just being about planting a DSLAM in to a rural telephone exchange and providing a backhaul to one or more Internet services. There is a lot more that needs to be looked at in this context, such as the quality of the telephone wiring from the exchanges to the properties. The act of planting a DSLAM in the telephone exchange may provide close to headline-speed DSL to every one of those fixed telephone lines in the built-up area such as a hamlet or village. Then you have the issue of “clapped-out” telephone lines servicing the rural properties that limits DSL performance to these properties. Other factors also include a failure to use the options that are part of the ADSL2 standard to “push out” the signal over long distances.
I would therefore recommend a gradual but prompt process of renewing and reorganising telephone lines for particular geographic areas as users register interest in broadband Internet in their areas of residence. This may also include investigating the use of ADSL repeater setups and similar “push-out” hardware setups. I would also look at the idea of deploying fibre-based Internet like Vitesse did in Birch Green, Bramfield, Hertingfordbury and Stapleford in Hertfordshird (UK), whether directly “to the door” or as part of a backbone to copper-based runs.
Most of the news concerning Android is focused on smartphones that are pitched as cellular mobile phones. But this phone is an intent to take Android to a new territory – the home cordless phone which is used as a household’s “common phone”.
Here, it uses VoIP technology through a Wi-Fi network (which nearly all home networks are based around) but can work as a DECT-based cordless phone. But it can work with a home network by providing DLNA functionality, access to home automation, consumer-electronics control; as well as being a hand-held Internet terminal. Telephony service providers like Telstra can customise the phone to suit their needs such as providing a branded customer experience like they do with mobile phones. This can also extend to hosted-PBX providers providing this phone as part of an IP-based business phone system for a small business.
This has been achieved through the use of Google Android as the phone’s operating environment and the phone being able to gain access to applications provided for the Google Android MarketPlace. This can open up this home phone for all sorts of innovative applications. I would also extend this to business-related applications including order-entry for restaurants or tourist information for the hospitality industry.
This phone has become the first reference design for an in-home / in-premises cordless phone to have an interface and level of functionality that puts it on a par with today’s smartphones. It will also definitely appeal to the competitive “triple-play” marketplace that is being built out in different countries around the world and could herald the beginning of a new age of “in-premises” telephony.
Alpine, who has been considered the status symbol as far as car audio is concerned, have been one of the first car-audio manufacturers to provide phone integration for a phone platform other than the Apple iPhone, nowadays considered the status symbol for mobile phones. What they had done is to allow the Symbian-based Nokia phones similar to my N85 to work with the car stereos by providing access to Ovi Maps navigation, the music playlist, weather applets and more alongside the usual calling and phonebook functions.
They have achieved this through “Terminal Mode” which uses a “gateway app” installed on the phone and the phone linked to the system through a USB cable or a Bluetooth link. The phone’s apps can benefit from the larger display found in high-end car-audio installations.
The reasons I am pleased about this technology is that
a) the mobile phone that links with a car stereo for full functionality doesn’t have to be the Apple iPhone
b) there is an incentive for vehicle builders, car-audio manufacturers and handset manufacturers to establish a level playing field for achieving full functionality for mobile phones from the dashboard.
This can also lead to further functionality like Pandora, Last.fm, Internet radio, location-based services and extended navigation becoming available at the dashboard without needing to use multiple applications installed in a phone platform that you don’t have or on your car’s infotatiment platform.
I have been following the idea of using a common large screen TV with Skype and similar videoconferencing software on a common PC as a cost-effective method to achieve family and small-business group videoconferencing. This was since Channel 7 Australia had run a news item about it being part of linking older people who were confined to a nursing home with their younger family and also myself seeing it in action with some friends establishing a video-conference with relatives in Italy using this tool on their laptop.
When Skype announced that LG and Panasonic were integrating this technology in to their newer large-screen TV models at CES 2010, I was excited about this idea becoming closer for most people. Now, Samsung had announced this week that they were integrating Skype in the LED-backlit 7000 and 8000 series TVs. This has meant that another TV manufacturer has stepped up to the plate as far as Skype integration is concerned.
These implementations typically require a compatible Webcam (which has an integrated microphone) to be connected to the TV’s USB port and the TV to be connected to the home network via its Ethernet port. The user can then associate their Skype account with these TV sets to start videoconferencing.
The only limitation I see about the action so far is that manufacturers who supply TV peripheral devices like PVRs and games consoles aren’t providing the full Skype-based video-conferencing setup as an add-on to their devices. If this happened, especially in the form of a software download for the likes of the TiVo or the PS3, this could please people who own these devices to set themselves up for large-screen group videoconferencing.
It is also worth knowing that all of these implementations can yield a high-resolution picture but only if the computer on the other end is running Skype 4.2 or newer or if the device on the other end supports Skype HD functionality. Also the Internet service must support sufficiently-high bandwidth for the high-quality pictures.
At least this is a step closer to ubiquitous cost-effective group videoconferencing for home and small business. As well, it is one step taken to bring the videoconferencing practice out of the science-fiction novel and 1970s “future tech” book in to common reality.
I have been talking by e-mail to Mika Kouhia from Ekahau about the use of their WiFi-based real-time location technology in the typical home or small-business network. The applications that may come to mind here will typically cover an emergency-response / nurse-call system that is an integral part of the at-home care of elderly, infirm or convalescing people; or small businesses, especially those who are partners to large business, who need to track assets in a similar manner to what is done by large organisations.
What is the main complication that concerns the Ekahau Real-Time Location System
The main complication that limits this technology is the fact that most of the wireless networks deployed in this space only have one access point, typically the one that is integrated in to a wireless router. You may be lucky to use this technology on a wireless network that has an extra access point such as a wireless router that is repurposed as an extension access point and connected to the main router via a HomePlug powerline link or one of those access points that work with a HomePlug powerline backbone. On the other hand, you would have to deploy “infrared beacons” around the premises and rely on the Wi-Fi wireless link provided by the router as primarily a communications link.
The infrared beacons work on a similar infrared frequency to the remote controls used to control the majority of TV sets and other consumer-electronics devices in circulation. Thus they won’t interfere with the passive-infrared sensors used in most security systems or automatic “sensor-light” setups because these sensors are tuned to an infrared frequency emitted as part of body heat.
The primary reason for implementing the technology in the home
The primary implementation that I was talking about with Mika was to use their T301BD Wi-Fi Pager Tag which hangs around the neck of a person. This tag has an integrated display and two function buttons that also work as emergency-call buttons. As well, if the tag is pulled on the neckstrap, it can initiate an emergency response. The tag supports direct paging with push-button response, which can allow it to work with a “response-check” setup where if the user doesn’t respond within a certain time to a call, the system initiates emergency action. The display could come in handy by showing the person’s name, which would be a good help with people who have memory-loss disorders.
In this implementation, there may be the need to establish Internet access to the pager tag in order to permit this device to work as part of a solution provided by an external service provider. This may involve use of hardware or software on the network that provides at least dynamic DNS functionality and integration with UPnP IGD-enabled routers to provide access to the tag. The functionality could be extended to provide local nurse-call functionality with in-house location display through a local screen and / or Web page available through the home network.
Similarly, the pager tag could work with other technology to assist people who have memory-loss disorders by enabling the use of electronically-generated “reminder screens” for particular tasks. This is relevant to an article that I wrote about in my blog concerning technology that is to assist the elderly in their daily lives. Here, I had talked about a kitchen equipped with various technologies like pico-projection systems, RFID and Wii-style motion sensors to provide reminders through different food-preparation tasks.
How this could be taken further
Ekahau should then consider studying this application as a technology that suits the current home-driven health-care direction.
Here, we are dealing with an older population as people of the baby boom move in to the later years of life and more people live longer. As well, there is more emphasis on home-based health-care so as to provide patients with the dignity of being looked after in their own home environment. This also includes an emphasis on independent living for elderly people, including having younger relatives be part of the older person’s life in a support role.
Similarly, there are disabled or chronically-ill people who want to be in the familiarity of their own home and family and these people can be able to work as carers, whether alone or alongside paid staff members who work on a rostered system.
The supporting software could be integrated in to computing devices that work on any of the common desktop-computing, handheld-computing, set-top box or embedded-device platforms in order to establish an assistive-technology ecosystem in the home.
Previously, I had talked in this blog about the idea of Internet radio in the car and the way this goal would be achieved. Now BMW have integrated Internet radio functionality of the kind that the Kogan Wi-Fi Internet Radio, the Revo iBlik RadioStation and the Pure Evoke Flow provide in to the Mini Countryman as part of the Mini Connected infotainment pack.
The article had described some of the gaps about how this goal would be achieved, but I would reckon that the technology would be based on a user-supplied 3G USB dongle or tethered 3G phone; or an integrated 3G modem working with a user-supplied USIM card. They talked of the idea of choosing a few stations from a directory akin to the vTuner / Frontier Silicon or Reciva Internet-radio directories and allocating them to presets so you can “switch around” your favourite streams. The author had suggested that there may be a reduced station list and that, for example, his favourite “speed-metal” Internet station may not be in the list. But if the software works in a manner similar to Frontier’s “wifiradio-frontier” or Pure’s “Lounge” portals, he could be able to add the “speed-metal” Internet station.
There is a strong likelihood of this feature being available as part of the“connected” infotainment packs supplied by vehicle builders to high-end vehicles at the moment but it could be made available to the aftermarket car-audio scene soon.
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