May 15, 2006, 11:43 PM PDT
Surf smarter, not harder
Posted by: Rafe Needleman

Is your Web surfing behavior stuck, downtrodden, in a rut? You say you want new Web sites in your life but don't know where to find them? Then you want to use a social bookmarking site. Me, I'm a huge fan of Digg [column], but there's a service officially launching on Tuesday (it's been in beta for months) that should help anybody find sites of interest: StumbleUpon [download].

StumbleUpon is a toolbar extension for Firefox. Its primary button, labeled "Stumble!" takes you to a site you've probably not been to before, in any of the categories you tell the service you're interested in. If you like the new site, you press a thumbs-up button. If you don't, thumbs-down. Every time you vote, the system recalibrates its site selections for you using social filtering; it attempts to find sites for you that it thinks you'll like because other users with similar preferences also like them. So far I haven't stumbled upon anything I couldn't live without, but it's been an entertaining journey.

The site is also a social network, with Web site preferences acting as the major connective tissue. The system recommends friends with similar browsing preferences; it can be enlightening to see the sites they've voted for. I suppose you could also use it to find dates--at least when you first met you'd be able to talk about sites you both like.

If you have time on your hands, StumbleUpon is worth a try.

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May 15, 2006, 9:00 PM PDT
Lenovo hits refresh: ThinkPad R60 and Z61
Posted by: Michelle Thatcher

Lenovo may have made its biggest splash this year by announcing the Lenovo 3000 line of laptops and desktops, but the company has also been busy updating familiar ThinkPad models with newer components and features. Today's announcement: the ThinkPad R60 and Z61 series.

The midsize R60 updates the R52 with newer processor options, faster RAM, discrete graphics chips, and optional WWAN connectivity. The details:

Choice of 14.1-inch or 15.4-inch standard-aspect displays

Celeron, Core Solo, or Core Duo processors

Up to 2GB of fast 667MHz RAM

Choice of integrated Intel or discrete ATI graphics cards

Up to 100GB, 5,400rpm hard drives, with 7,200rpm options

Choice of CD-RW drive or a dual-layer DVD burner

Configurations start as low as $799, but our well-stocked R60 review unit cost $2,099--and that's enough to buy some pretty good performance. Find out more in our review of the ThinkPad R60.

The Z61 series also updates the familiar ThinkPad Z60t and Z60m models. As with its predecessors, the Z61 series will offer the choice of traditional black or titanium covers. The rest of the specs:

Celeron, Core Solo, or Core Duo processors

Up to 2GB of fast 667MHz RAM

Up to 100GB, 5,400rpm hard drives, with a 7,200rpm option

Choice of CD-RW drive or a dual-layer DVD burner

Integrated 0.3-megapixel camera

Optional WWAN radio

The Z61t features 14.1-inch wide-screen display driven by integrated Intel graphics, while the Z61m offers a choice of integrated Intel or discrete ATI graphics cards with its larger 15.4-inch display.

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May 15, 2006, 5:40 PM PDT
Pantech announces touch-wheel music phone
Posted by: Nicole Lee

Pantech released a new slider cell phone in Hong Kong today, and it looks a lot like a very famous portable music player. The PG 3600V features a 260,000-color TFT display, a music player (supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, and WMA file formats), a 1.3-megapixel camera, an MPEG-4 video recorder, a speakerphone, stereo Bluetooth, text and multimedia messaging, e-mail, 512MB of internal memory, and an external memory-card slot for additional storage. Plus, it comes with a built-in video-editing application for on-the-go clip manipulation. Emulating the iPod, it even comes complete with a touch-wheel sensor in the middle for tracking songs, zooming in on images, tracking movies, and navigating the menu. It isn't the first cell phone to copy the aesthetic of the Apple music player, however. The LG 550, which we first showed at the CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas this year, also has a similar Click Wheel design, though the wheel on the 550 isn't touch sensitive.

While we don't know if the PG 3600V will ever make its way stateside, we can still admire it from afar. We'll let you know if our sister site on CNET Asia reviews it.

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May 15, 2006, 5:27 PM PDT
eSnips: Where the cool kids aren't
Posted by: Rafe Needleman

If you're thinking about putting yourself online at a community content site, and you haven't done so yet, you're probably a good candidate for eSnips, a shared content site that appears to cater to the more restrained among us. The unthrottled in our midst are already on MySpace, of course, but there are people who want a platform that offers a bit more structure.

eSnips is clean site that lets you post your content (pictures, video, audio) as well as collect Web snippets (just the URLs or frames of pages themselves) from around the Net. You can also write things about yourself, although the site is clearly not about laying bare your tortured soul, as much as it is a utility for collecting content and other online resources you find interesting.

You can keep your collections private, invite people to view them, or publish them for any and all to see. A neat feature is the capability to turn any collection of content into an RSS feed. So if, for example, you continuously add to your collection of interesting Corvette restoration Web sites, your friends could subscribe to a feed of just those sites. There's a browser toolbar to help you add content.

There's some discussion on the Web [blog post on Mashable] about where this service belongs. On the one hand, it's a handy replacement for a bookmarking tool like Del.icio.us. On the other, it is a community content site like MySpace. It's also a place to store videos and pictures and other multimedia files (although with a 1-gigabyte storage limit). CEO Yael Elish told me she wanted to create a site for people who want to express themselves through content they've already created, not new stuff they write for the site.

eSnips succeeds at all of the above. Yet it is strangely uncompelling. I like what the site does, but it's not a better bookmarking system than Del.icio.us, it's not a better video distribution system than YouTube (not by a long shot), and anybody who really wants to express their professional work online would do better to launch their own branded site or blog. There's also little sense of vitality or community, partly due to the restrained design and a front page that primarily tells you what the site does and puts the people who have done it off to the side.

I'd recommend this site for its utility, if you want an easy place to collect links and content and a quick way to share them. But it's not the kind of wacky community you're going to see written about on T-shirts. If you want to be part of that, stick with the cool kids on MySpace.

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May 15, 2006, 4:17 PM PDT
Can Sony save the UMPC?
Posted by: Justin Jaffe

Throwing its hat into--or at least nearby--the UMPC ring, Sony has announced the VAIO UX180P Micro PC. Taking some of the most innovative elements of the T-Mobile Sidekick and the OQO Model 01, the VAIO UX180P features a a 4.5-inch (diagonal) wide-screen display, which slides up to reveal a QWERTY keypad. We got a sneak preview of this thing a few weeks ago, and our early impression was that it's friggin' cool. But this is Sony, after all, and the VAIO UX180P is also friggin' expensive.

Weighing 1.2 pounds, the little rapscallion has a 1,024x600 native resolution and is equipped with components that will make a Treo user quiver. You get a low-voltage Intel Core Solo U1400 processor, 512MB of RAM, and a 30GB hard drive, as well as a full version of Windows XP Professional. Networking connections include 802.11a/b/g wireless, Bluetooth, and Cingular EDGE WWAN. Remarkably, for such a small device, the UX180P makes room for two cameras--a 1.3 megapixel one that faces out from the back and a 0.3 megapixel one that faces out from the front for Webcamming--as well as a biometric fingerprint scanner, headphone and mic jacks, a USB port, and a Memory Stick slot. It's an impressive lineup of specs that you could expect to find on any number of late-model laptops. And then there's the price...$1,799.

Ahem.

Leaving price aside for the moment, the fact that it has a built-in keyboard is critical, and it gives the VAIO UX180P a better shot at success than other early UMPC designs, including Sony's own VAIO U50. We found the keys to be spaced apart a bit far, but we didn't spend enough time with the VAIO UX180P to get a chance to get used to them. The device has a touch screen, which you can manipulate with your finger or the included stylus, as well as a stick pointer.

We watched some movie clips on the VAIO UX180P, which looked great on its 3.5-inch display, and we surfed around the Web a bit using the stylus to navigate. Sony told us that these systems are getting about 3.5 hours of battery life, less if you're watching a movie or surfing wirelessly, and they'll run up to 4.5 hours if you're being extremely gentle.

Enough about us, though, and our impressions. What do you think? Does the price make the Sony VAIO UX180P DOA.? Or is it the future of the UMPC?

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May 15, 2006, 3:59 PM PDT
Sony's portable HD studio: the VAIO AR190G
Posted by: Justin Jaffe

Laptops used to be the redheaded stepchildren of the computer industry, forced to wait for hand-me-down technology that appeared months earlier on their desktop brethren. Oh, how times have changed. The Sony VAIO AR190G, announced tonight at a Sony event in New York and due out in June, is the first computer we've laid hands on--laptop or desktop PC--to feature an optical drive that can not only read Blu-ray Disc (BD) media, but write and rewrite on it--as opposed to the Toshiba Qosmio G35-AV650, announced earlier this month, which can read HD-DVD media but not write on it.

Being marketed as a portable, end-to-end HD studio, the Sony VAIO AR190G offers a pretty compelling set of A/V features to back up the claim: in addition to the BD drive, a 17-inch wide-screen display (WUXGA), an HDMI output, and a FireWire connection, you get a 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo processor, a midrange Nvidia GeForce Go 7600GT GPU with 256MB of VRAM, a 200GB hard drive, and a TV tuner.

We've been playing with the VAIO AR190G for the past few days. Check out our early impressions in our First Take.

We also shot some photos of it, which you can see in our slide show.

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May 15, 2006, 3:55 PM PDT
Sporty and smart: Nokia 5500
Posted by: Bonnie Cha

Sure, stylish mobiles such as the Motorola Razr and the Samsung SGH-T509 look good, but you really have to wonder about their durability, especially if you lead an active lifestyle. To meet the needs of the athletic minded, Nokia has introduced its Nokia 5500 Sport. Encased in durable stainless steel with rubber grips, this smart phone features three different modes: phone, music, and sports. The triband (GSM 900/1800/1900; GPRS) mobile has a 2-megapixel camera, a Micro SD slot, and text-to-speech functionality. It can also hold up to 750 songs and has an integrated pedometer. The Nokia 5500 is expected to ship in Q3 2006; U.S. availability is still not known. If you can't wait or don't need a smart phone, check out these durable cell phones.

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May 15, 2006, 2:47 PM PDT
Free calling from Skype in the States and Canada
Posted by: Molly Wood

Nothing says "come hither" like "it's free." Skype is hoping to grow its already teeming mass of users by offering free outgoing calls in the United States and Canada through the remainder of 2006. The company hopes that the allure of free SkypeOut service will get users to pay $38 a year for their unlimited incoming-call service, SkypeIn. If it doesn't work, eBay will be out only the $2.6 billion it already paid, plus whatever it costs to pay for all those outgoing calls, plus whatever strange logic was behind its Skype purchase in the first place.

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May 15, 2006, 2:38 PM PDT
WMP 11 has the Urge to unseat iTunes
Posted by: Molly Wood

Oh, sorry, I should have put "bad pun alert" in the headline. Anyway, analysts have been saying for a while that iTunes' time is coming, and Microsoft's Windows Media Player 11, out today in beta, is looking to be the jukebox that gives the iDominance a little what for. It's getting rave reviews for, uh, its iTunes-like interface, coupled with some handy extras such as the ability to reverse-sync devices--that is, take music, photos, or videos that you got from your home computer off a device and onto another computer (say, a work computer, or a new computer) without having to, you know, turn on hidden folders or something. Nice. Very nice.

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May 15, 2006, 12:12 PM PDT
Circuit City research finds drivers are considering tech for summer road trips
Posted by: Kevin Massy

Research commissioned by Circuit City shows that Americans are looking to technology solutions to help them save gas and stay connected throughout the busy travel season. The consumer-electronics retailer commissioned third-party research to poll 1,000 people planning summer road trips and found that 94 percent were concerned about gas prices, 80 percent were worried about traffic jams, and 54 percent were worried about getting lost.

In the time-tested tradition of setting up a problem to sell a solution, Circuit City then asked its respondents whether they thought a GPS navigation device would help them avoid wasting gas; 61 percent said they did (although there are no figures on how many of these were then railroaded into a hard-sell pitch for a TomTom or a Garmin unit).

In a separate study, Circuit City also commissioned online research into which personal technology item--other than a cell phone--that people were most likely to bring on a road trip. Office bosses will be pleased with the findings. According to the survey results, 36 percent of respondents said they would take a notebook computer--more than respondents opting for portable DVD players (23 percent) and personal MP3 players (11 percent) combined. It looks like entertainment takes a backseat to work even when on the open road.

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