September 18, 2006, 11:00 PM PDT
Microsoft Soapbox is no threat to YouTube, yet
Posted by: Rafe Needleman

Microsoft's YouTube competitor, Soapbox on MSN Video, is in private beta [news story]. We wheedled our way on to the invite list and gave it a spin. The beta program will expand shortly.

Soapbox is Microsoft's user-generated video site, not to be confused with the company's professional video site, MSN Video. For its part, Soapbox is a solid video-sharing service, incorporating all the Web 2.0 features a modern site should have. You can tag videos and comment on them, and you can easily find videos based on tags or popularity. You can also browse the video catalog without stopping the video you're watching, which is a nice user interface development. Uploading is easy; a neat trick lets you upload videos in the background on your PC without requiring a standalone uploader application. Videos can be of any length as long as they're less than 100MB. Of course Soapbox uses Windows Media Player technology to display videos in Internet Explorer. But when run on Firefox or a Mac, it uses Flash.

The Soapbox page rarely scrolls, so using Soapbox feels more like using a PC application than a typical Web site. But, in the beta anyway, the browser's back button doesn't work--it takes you back to the last site you were on and loses your place on the Soapbox site.

I found nothing in the Soapbox product itself to propel it past other video-sharing sites. It will live or die based on its content and its community. Microsoft will have to turn the people on its successful blogging network, Windows Live Spaces, into Soapbox users. That could make a difference, but the site's features won't.

In sum, Soapbox is disappointing. It's a slightly better sharing service than YouTube in some small technical ways, but it doesn't help users make money from their content like Revver does; it doesn't have granular privacy controls like Vox; it won't post directly into blogs for you like VideoEgg; and it won't show videos from other networks like Yahoo Video. Given Microsoft's position in the video-sharing market (dead last), I expected a more aggressive product.

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September 18, 2006, 9:02 PM PDT
ViewScore reads reviews so you don't have to
Posted by: Rafe Needleman

I like to think that CNET's reviews are authoritative, but even I read more than the CNET review before I buy a gadget or a new computer. There are a lot of good reviews sources out there, and if I'm going to spend my own money, you can bet that I'm going to read everything I can find.

ViewScore aims to make that process a bit easier. The service "reads" the reviews from several sources, including CNET, and presents a table of the reviews' bottom lines, in the form of 0-to-100 scores for each review. The clever part is this: For the sites that don't award numerical ratings, the system parses the text and figures out what the numerical rating for the review should be.

Also, if you're trying to decide among products, there's a nice product selector that helps you narrow down what you're looking for by price and feature set; for each product that fits your criteria, it'll show you the average score from all the reviews sources it's tracking. The site has several gadget categories so far, and more categories may be added in the near future.

Shoppers should note that while ViewScore is a specialized search engine, it is far from comprehensive. It does not track every blog that covers products, just the largest and most serious reviews sites. That's a benefit, although I would like to at least see which blogs are covering products I care about. Also, ViewScore neither reports what consumer reviews sites are saying about a product, nor covers user reviews on the sites that it does track.

ViewScore presents a very limited--but potentially very useful--view of product reviews. I don't think a single number is ever enough to base a purchase decision on, but numerical ratings do help you compare products to each other. By normalizing scores, ViewScore helps you compare the reviews to each other, too.

(If you want a ViewScore for media, see Metacritic.)

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September 18, 2006, 12:38 PM PDT
Blish: The content wrecking yard
Posted by: Rafe Needleman

After a book or a magazine goes out of print, it may happen that the content within it--the articles and photographs--can be worth more as pieces and parts than as a finished work. Blish is a service that will part out content and sell it in little pieces. It is the perfect example of a long-tail marketplace--it sells a lot of content that will be of great interest to a small number of people.

Blish is also a more general content market. You can take anything that can be transmitted over the Net and sell it on the service. Blish handles the mechanics of each transaction. There are, of course, plenty of other content marketplaces, such as Lulu, which will custom-publish books (on actual paper), and Digital Railroad, a new site for professional photographers. Smart content creators will use any and all storefronts available. With digital content, there's no real harm in distributing content to multiple markets.

Blish's angle, though, is interesting. If you feed the company your content archives (usually, a collection of PDFs), the company will deconstruct the data for you and sell it in parts. The strategy is working for some publishers already. Twenty percent of Blish's sales are woodworking plans that previously ran in magazines.

What's missing right now is the capability to create private-label versions of Blish so that publishers can incorporate Blish stores into their own sites, or at least direct their readers to Blish ministores that carry their branding.

If you're looking to acquire content--a legal form, a deck plan, a photo or a drawing, or a royalty-free music clip or a video--well, honestly, there are already markets for what you need. But also check out Blish. If the company can help publishers take finished works and turn each of them into thousands of microproducts, it could become a great junkyard of content. And I mean that in a good way.

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September 18, 2006, 12:04 PM PDT
2008 Lexus LS 600hL: at the boundaries of technoluxury
Posted by: Kevin Massy

Last Friday we sneaked past the guards at an event hosted by Lexus in honor of owners of its hybrid cars in the San Francisco Bay Area. While we own neither a Lexus RX 400h nor a Lexus GS 450h, we figured that we had spent enough time behind the wheel of both to justify a free ticket to the complementary mojitos and hors d'oeuvres on offer. The biggest treat for us, however, was an up-close look at the next member of Lexus's hybrid lineup: the 2008 LS 600hL, the long-wheel-base version of the LS 600h.

As the hybrid version of the 2007 LS 460, the LS 600h won't be officially unveiled until the L.A. auto show later this year, and the car on show last week was not a finished production model. Nevertheless, most of the interior tech features and appointments for the final car were installed, and we spent a giddy half-hour playing with what has to be the most technically advanced production car we have ever seen.

Externally, the LS 600hL has the same body and form factor as the 2007 LS 460L, which we test-drove a couple of weeks ago. While the official performance specs for the LS 600h have not been released yet, a Lexus rep told us that the car would feature three high-powered electric motors (one more than the startlingly swift GS 450h) to go with its 4.6-liter V-8, which can manage 380 horsepower without any electrical assistance. In place of the LS 460's 8-speed automatic transmission, the LS 600h will feature a dual-stage continuously variable transmission arrangement--we're not sure how this will work in practice, but we're looking forward to finding out. It will also be the first ever production car to feature LED headlights.

Inside, the LS 600h is as sumptuously equipped as the LS 460, with a few extra tech features. A touch-screen navigation system with integrated real-time traffic information enables drivers to see local congestion data at a glance and to get more information on particular areas by touching different warning icons. An addition to the LS 600h is the presence of a camera mounted on the steering column, focused on the driver's face: if the camera detects from the orientation of the driver's face that he or she is not looking directly ahead at the same time the car's radar system senses an obstacle in the road, the car will act to regain attention by sounding an alert and flashing a warning signal. If this has no effect, the car will begin braking on its own, while reprogramming the steering ratio (to make the wheel more responsive for when the driver finally regains interest in the road), activating the seat belt pretensioner, and preparing the brake system for impact. We are not making this up. For those who are not satisfied with this level of big brotherliness, the LS 600h features Lexus's Advanced Parking Guidance System, which means that, with a little help on the brakes from the driver, the car can park itself.

From the backseats, the view is much the same as that in the LS 460: a reclining ottoman-style rear right-hand seat in the long-wheel-base version comes equipped with built-in massage (we found the Shiatsu setting to be very much to our liking); a ceiling-mounted 3.0 VGA 9-inch wide-screen LCD for showing movies and a 19-speaker Mark Levinson audio system, are among the fabulous frippery.

Look for more info on the LS 600hL in our coverage of the Paris Auto Show starting next week.

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September 18, 2006, 12:02 PM PDT
Price drop: Creative Zen V and Zen V Plus
Posted by: Jasmine France

Creative recently lowered the pricing on its newest flash MP3 players, the Zen V and the Zen V Plus. This is likely a strategic move to better compete with the 2G iPod Shuffle, and price drops are always welcome! The 1GB Zen V is marked at $89, the 2GB is $119, and the 4GB is $159. For the Zen V Plus, pricing is $99, $139, and $179 for the 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB versions respectively.

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September 18, 2006, 10:36 AM PDT
Sansa + Rhapsody = a seamless experience?
Posted by: Jasmine France

Only time will tell. This morning, RealNetworks launched its new Rhapsody DNA platform and announced a related partnership with SanDisk. Rhapsody DNA will be integrated with Sansa MP3 players this fall, starting with the e200 series. So what is Rhapsody DNA? It's hard to visualize precisely what the new platform will offer, but the gist is that it will provide a seamless experience (such as with the iPod + iTunes relationship, I would think) between Rhapsody and the Sansa e200. Here are some of the details from the press release:

• The RealNetworks/SanDisk partnership will feature groundbreaking new features embedded in a line of SanDisk's Sansa e200 series of portable players. The collaboration will allow consumers to personalize their devices and take full advantage of both Rhapsody's subscription model and SanDisk's flash-based MP3 player capabilities and capacity.
• The e200s with the special Rhapsody DNA platform will come equipped with nearly 32 hours of preloaded music from hundreds of the world's most popular artists on EMI Recorded Music, SonyBMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group, as well as leading independent labels.
• The players also include unique capabilities, such as automatically updating with new music based on a consumer's personal tastes and historical music preferences.
• Rhapsody DNA gives OEMs and device partners such as SanDisk a world-class platform they can use to compete on a one-to-one basis with other end-to-end music experiences. Although Rhapsody DNA can operate on devices that are compatible with--and include--Microsoft's PlaysForSure platform, Rhapsody DNA does not depend on Microsoft technology in any way.
• The Rhapsody DNA platform is based on Real's Helix digital rights management and includes a number of enabling and optimizing technologies that allow partners to take full advantage of Rhapsody's unlimited access model. With Rhapsody DNA, users can access their music across different types of devices. Real and SanDisk cooperated closely to optimize SanDisk's Sansa e200 players to work seamlessly in the new Rhapsody DNA environment.
• In addition to SanDisk, Real is currently working with several other device manufacturers to integrate support for the Rhapsody DNA platform.

Sounds like a pretty good idea to me, especially since SanDisk ranks second in the U.S. MP3 player market, and Rhapsody--which currently has 1.625 million subscribers--is the leader in the subscription music service space. However, the success will depend on how well the relationship works in practice. Personally, I can't wait to get some hands-on experience with the new platform. Stay tuned for a review.

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September 18, 2006, 8:27 AM PDT
ThinkPad purportedly flames out at LAX
Posted by: Dan Ackerman

We know some passengers can get a little heated up waiting at the airport, but this is ridiculous. According to several online reports, accompanied by incriminating photos, a ThinkPad laptop burst into flames at LAX over the weekend, causing considerable panic. Originally reported on the popular somethingawful.com forums, an eyewitness posted this account:

"So we're waiting for a flight in the United lounge at LAX. The flight next to ours was heading to London and in the middle of final boarding when suddenly this guy comes running the wrong way up the jetway, pushing other boarding passengers out of the way, he quickly drops his laptop on the floor and the thing immediately flares up like a giant firework for about 15 seconds, then catches fire."

The story has since been picked up by tech bloggers from Engadget, Gizmodo, Gearlog and CNET Asia. Unlike Dell and Apple, there is no recall of ThinkPad batteries (also, some reports claim the system that flamed out was an older IBM model, not a newer Lenovo one), so we'll have to wait and see if this is an isolated case or a new problem.

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September 18, 2006, 8:00 AM PDT
Cambridge SoundWorks unveils four new tabletop radios
Posted by: John P. Falcone

Cambridge SoundWorks has revealed four new tabletop radios, including the company's first model that receives HD Radio. Here's a round-up of the new products:

Cambridge SoundWorks Radio CD 745 ($400, October): This is an upgrade to the Radio CD 740, which received a CNET Editors' Choice when it was originally reviewed in December 2003. In addition to its AM and FM radio, the Radio CD 745 is the only new model with a built-in CD player (it can play standard audio CDs and home-burned MP3 CDs). The only apparent change from the 740 is the inclusion of an iPod dock; the 745's included remote control also controls the iPod navigation functions.

Cambridge SoundWorks Radio 735 ($300, October): For $100, the 735 loses the disc player found in its big brother, but it's otherwise identical. Similarly, this is an upgrade of the Radio 730, with the addition of an included iPod dock.

Cambridge SoundsWorks Radio 820HD ($300, November): The 820HD is a totally new product to Cambridge's line. Like the 735, the 820HD lacks a CD player, but it's the first Cambridge model to offer reception of digital HD Radio in addition to AM and FM. It will double as a clock radio.

Cambridge SoundWorks Radio 705 ($120, October): This retro radio looks to be Cambridge's answer to the Tivoli Model One. It trades in an LCD for a deliberately old-fashion look and feel, straight down to the large tuning dial.

There are some additional details that apply across the new line of products:

• All of the above models will be available in black or white, with the possibility of additional colors for the Radio 705 appearing in the months ahead.
• Each model has at least one free auxiliary (line-in) jack, so they can all double as a speaker for any portable music player. Moreover, control docks that offer compatibility with the Creative Zen line of portables will be available separately for the 735 and 745; they should provide remote control navigation of the Zens, just as the iPod docks do for compatible Apple portables.
• The 730 and 740 will remain available in the short term, but Creative says that "may change" in the future.

We'll have hands-on reviews of the 745 and the 820HD as soon as they're available. In the meantime, our expectations of these newly announced products are high, but our impressions are mixed. The Radio CD 740 boasted better overall sound quality than that of the competition including Bose and Boston Acoustics when we tested it a few years ago (thus the EC award), so one would expect the nearly identical 735 and 745 to perform just as well. The inclusion of an iPod dock is a nice touch, but from a features perspective, the need for a separate HD Radio-capable model--the 820HD--seems like overkill to us. Why not just bundle HD reception into the 745 and 735 instead, or offer an all-inclusive model--the "755," say,--that did so as a step-up? Likewise, none of these new models are XM-ready or DVD-capable, as the $600 Polk Audio I-Sonic is.

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