Gravitational Pull

Find the best Blu-Ray movies ’cause some don’t look so good

Posted on 26 June 2010 | View Comments

As the super-duper-hyper-amazing home theater plan moves into high-gear, I’m discovering an unfortunate side-effect from high-definition television. Lots and lots of shows and movies don’t look any better in high-def and, in fact, many look worse. We have a couple of sources of HD programming including HD shows on our Verizon Fios cable, HD downloads from the iTunes store and Blu-Ray disks via a Samsung BD-C6500 player.

The other night we were flipping through HD movie channels and hit on a movie we really like, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. But in high-def, there was too much snap to some of the colors and the actors faces frankly looked a little too real. Then again, the Blu-Ray copy of James Cameron’s epic western in space, Avatar, looked stunning and fantastic in HD while the also-included DVD paled in comparison.

This all ties in to a great post Jason Kottke wrote after some people started giving one-star reviews to the Blu-Ray version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy because the included movies were the theater cuts and not the director’s cuts. Some people, particularly people in the content producing business, whined that it wasn’t fair to trash a disk just because a desired version wasn’t yet available. But Jason made the absolutely brilliant point that in this day and age, formats and versions matter, especially when big book publishers and Hollywood studios want you to pay two, three or four times for the same basic content. He concludes:

Newspaper and magazine reviewers pretty much ignore this stuff. There’s little mention of whether a book would be good to read on a Kindle, if you should buy the audiobook version instead of the hardcover because John Hodgman has a delightful voice, if a magazine is good for reading on the toilet, if a movie is watchable on an iPhone or if you need to see it in 1080p on a big TV, if a hardcover is too heavy to read in the bath, whether the trailer is an accurate depiction of what the movie is about, or if the hardcover price is too expensive and you should get the Kindle version or wait for the paperback. Or, as the above reviewers hammer home, if the book is available to read on the Kindle/iPad/Nook or if it’s better to wait until the director’s cut comes out. In the end, people don’t buy content or plots, they buy physical or digital pieces of media for use on specific devices and within certain contexts. That citizen reviewers have keyed into this more quickly than traditional media reviewers is not a surprise.

So at least as far as collecting HD content to own, where is a poor Blu-Ray buyer to turn? Here are a couple of ideas and please — please — add more of your suggestions in the comments.

1. Amazon.com customers have posted zillions of different kinds of lists and in the Blu-Ray area everyone is focused on Kottke’s exact point: which movies are worthy of Blu-ray treatment. To find some of these lists, go to pretty much any product page and scroll down until on the extreme left side of the page you see the box called “listmania” which includes two relevant lists and a search box. Type “blu-ray” into the search box. Some great lists come up including ones I’ve perused by Elizabeth Hinton (“This is a list of Blu Ray films that I have found to be worth spending the extra money for– Even if you already own it on DVD”), Porfie Medina (“Blu-ray Disc movies you can show off on your 1080p HD TV”) and Thivanka Rukshan Perera (“The myth: old movies won’t look good in high-def”).

2. Obviously, movies that have won — or even been nominated for — the Oscar award for best cinematography are likely to be great choices for HD viewing. Sure, you can go to the official Oscars site but that’s not nearly as user friendly as the CinemaSquid site’s search engine. Here, you can find all the winners and nominees for any award that are already out on Blu-Ray in a sortable list with viewer ratings specific to HD features, links to buy in different countries and so on. Check out their best cinematography listings to see what I mean.

3. Ask around. Early adopters have been watching Blu-ray movies for a couple of years now so before you buy a disk, ask a friend. I can tell you that so far, I am 3 for 3. I bought Blu-Ray versions of Avatar, Star Trek (the recent rebooted version with Chris Pine) and Pride and Prejudice (the recent one starring Keira Knightley) and all three look magnificent in high-definition.

Other suggestions for sources of Blu-Ray advice are, as I said, extremely welcome in the comments.

New Doctor Who is a throwback to greatest old Doctor Who

Posted on 24 June 2010 | View Comments

When the BBC revived Doctor Who, one of my TV staples growing up in the 70s, a few years ago I checked it out a couple of times. But I just didn’t click with the actors they’d chosen to play the Doctor, Christopher Eccleston for a year and David Tennant after that. Nothing against those two fine actors but the Doctor I’d always loved was Tom Baker. He brought to the role a certain wackiness and sense of humor that made the whole show such a campy yet watchable scifi classic.

Eccleston and Tennant, by contrast, were too serious, too bookish. If the doctor wasn’t having fun, what was the point of watching? In fact, I’ve been more intrigued by the spin-off aimed at younger kids, the Sarah Jane Adventures, starring the inimitable Elizabeth Sladen. She had played one of the Doctor’s companions back when Baker had the role.

So I’m happy to report that the latest actor to take up the role, Matt Smith, is a throw back to just the kind of brainy yet funny Time Lord I’ve been missing. It doesn’t hurt that his companion played by Karen Gillan is pretty funny, too, or that the plotlines seem to show some influence from the great novel (and mediocre movie) The Time Traveler’s Wife. The current season, which you can watch in the US on BBC America or download from iTunes, is about to run its course but I’m sure will be in repeats until, well, the end of time.

Using a new HDMI Mac Mini with my TV: Early days

Posted on 22 June 2010 | View Comments

This will be the first in a continuing series of posts about using a brand new Mac Mini with an HDMI port (purchased in June 2010) connected to a high-definition television. To read all of our adventures jumping through hoops, losing remotes and forgetting the password to bypass parental controls, see this page with all my DIY home theater posts.

Searching along with my fellow TV and movie junkies for the home theater holy grail, I’ve wandered in the wilderness for many years. We have a pretty typical 21st century entertainment consuming household with adults and kids watching cable TV, DVD movies and stuff from the Internets including Youtube videos, purchased movies, shows and music videos and, increasingly, rented movies. Hardware-wise, we’ve been hooked on Tivo for a few years now, we obviously have many iPods, the occasional iPad and, though our music collection is entirely digital at this point, a gazillion DVDs. For purchased downloadable content, iTunes is our go-to choice though increasingly we rent from Amazon Unbox which can send flicks straight to our Tivo.

When Apple TV hit the scene in 2007, I took a long, hard look. In many ways, it seemed like just what I wanted: an easy to set-up, easy-to-use digital storage box for all our digital photos, videos and music that could be played back via HDTV or stereo. But the limitations were much too limiting — only compatible with a few video formats, — and the tiny storage capacity was even more ridiculous. So I passed.

I also began avidly followed the niche crowd that was trying to use Mac Minis as souped up Apple TVs. The challenges involved get clean digital signals with sound to the TV screen as well as finding a good software interface to manage a multimedia library. It never quite seemed simple enough to be worth all the trouble.

Until now…

When Apple recently unveiled a new, souped-up Mac Mini with an HDMI connection — the exact port needed to send both sound and video to an HDTV set — I jumped. It was time to get off the sidelines and join the experimenters.

The first choice was which Mac Mini to buy. I opted for the server version which has two speedy 500 GB 7200 RPM hard drives (totaling 1 TB) and no DVD drive. Since the plan was to rip all our DVDs to the hard drive, the only physical disks I’d be wanting to play would be Blu-Ray and Apple’s drives aren’t compatible with that higher definition format. The server Mac Mini’s double the storage and faster drives made it the more logical choice.

Once the little guy — and I do mean little — arrived, I hit the next challenge. The server operating system had no iLife programs — no iTunes or iPhoto. Luckily, iTunes is a free download and I own a “family pack” of iLife 2009, so it was easy to load up the new server with those two critical programs. The server mini did come with Apple’s limited if serviceable front-end for playing media on big television sets known as Front Row.

After installing the software, I copied all the media files from my laptop where they currently live to one of the server’s drives and imported them into a brand new iTunes library. That went pretty smoothly, though some audiobooks purchased long ago wanted to be authorized by Audible.com and my account had apparently used up its allotment of authorized computers. A quick email customer service sorted that out.

Then I brought the mini into the family room and connected via an HDMI cable to our Samsung HDTV. The display automatically configured itself to the proper 1080P output although the edges of the screen, including the critical top menu bar, were out of view. But there’s now a simple setting to fix that problem in System Preferences > Displays called Overscan. There’s a slider control you adjust until the invisible outside edges become visible. I believe that was one of the issues that drove folks crazy a few years ago trying to get minis and HDTVs connected. I also had at the ready a Logitech diNovo Edge bluetooth keyboard (Mac edition). This guy has a touchpad built-in so you can sit on the couch and wirelessly operate your TV-connected Mac without a mouse. Very handy. It also has dedicated buttons to bring up Front Row, control the iTunes player etc. (You have to install Logitech’s control center program to get the special buttons working properly).

I called up Front Row and it played everything just fine. Sound initially emanated from the mini’s own tiny speaker until I went to System Preferences > Sound > Output and selected the TV.

I had an old Apple infrared remote, the one that looks like a pack of gum, lying around but it seems unable to make a connection to the 2010 Mac Mini. I verified that the Mini does indeed have an infrared receiver, so that’s just a matter of grabbing the newer Apple remote that’s more tubular in shape at some point. UPDATE: No — as commenter Mikeo below points out, the server mini just has communication with the remote turned off by default. To turn it back on, head to System Preferences > Security and unclick the check next to “Disable remote control infrared receiver.”

Alright — well, that’s as far as I’ve gotten in the first couple of days. Future plans include ripping a whole bunch of DVDs, experimenting with other user interfaces like Plex, seeking out some streaming web video and using an iPhone or ipad as a remote control. Check back later…

What Steve Jobs actually said about iBooks market share

Posted on 8 June 2010 | View Comments

There’s been a bit of controversy about what Steve Jobs said yesterday (video here) in regard to the market share of the new iBookstore. To recall, Apple opened a new front in the electronic book wars when it introduced iBooks alongside the iPad two months ago. iBooks, sold in a proprietary DRM-locked format only at Apple’s iBookstore, can be read only on iPads right now with an app for iPhones and iPod Touches coming soon. Here’s what Jobs’ said yesterday in San Francisco:

I’ve got a few stats today for you. In the first 65 days, users have downloaded over 5 million books and that is about two and  half books per iPad which is terrific. The other interesting thing is the five of the six biggest publishers in the US who have their books on the iBookstore tell us that the share of ebooks now that are going through the iBookstore now is about 22 percent. So iBooks market share now of ebooks from five of these six major publishers is up to 22 percent in just about 8 weeks. And, as we ship more iPads, that number is just going to keep going up and up and up and we’re really thrilled with it.

So, Jobs did properly limit his description of iBooks “market share” as being just about US sales of ebooks by the five big publishers participating in Apple’s offering. With one biggie opting out so far (Random House) and no global sales included, the 22% figure obviously wildly overstates Apple’s real market share in ebooks.

So why were some people confused? I’d say it’s all Apple’s fault. First for not streaming Jobs’ keynote live to everybody and, second, for including the slide pictured at the top of this post which simply says “Share of total eBook sales.” That’s not accurate.

True report: AT&T just doubled mobile data prices

Posted on 2 June 2010 | View Comments

(Updated 6/3) As I’m sure you’ve read all over today, AT&T announced major changes to its wireless data plans. But, I think because AT&T’s iPhone plan differed from other plans it offered, the reporting of these changes has been a little wacky. AT&T may have eliminated its “unlimited” data plan for the iPhone but it did not have unlimited plans for other devices. Those with non-iPhone devices and phones faced a cap of 5 gigabytes a month, similar to limits imposed by Sprint and Verizon on virtually all of their customers.

Under the new plan, which applies to the iPhone and all other AT&T phones, the maximum offering is 2 gigabytes for $25 a month with $10 charged for each extra gigabyte of data. Compared to the typical 5 GB offering, the price would be $25 plus $30 or $55 a month. iPad customers really get the shaft, as they were getting 5 GB per month for $30 and now that much data is $55.

The other option is $15 for 200 megabytes with $15 charged for each additional 200 MB. I checked my iPhone data usage over the past six months and darn it if the average wasn’t 221 MB. Right back to $30 a month. Hmm.

Among other implication for heavy data users or people with both an iPhone and an iPad, the strategy of Internet smarty Rex Hammock to pair a mobile wifi hot spot like Sprint’s Overdrive with other portable devices looks a little smarter.

One of the few sharp analysis pieces I read on today’s move was Dan Frommer’s observation: AT&T Just Put A Bullet In Mobile TV. I suspect that the future of mobile broadband-delivered video will be a return to the wireless carrier’s anti-innovation, walled garden strategy. Verizon already offers its V-CAST 10-channel/$15 a month service. AT&T’s less advanced (or maybe just less publicized) service called Mobile TV costs $10/month for a smattering of shows from seven networks.

Just a couple of week ago, the Federal Communications Commission in its annual assessment of wireless phone industry reported a decline in competition due to consolidation. Now we can test the accuracy of that verdict. Will Verizon and Sprint cut back 5 GB plans to 2 GB? Let’s hope not.

Addendum: Speaking the night before the price hike was announced, Apple CEO Steve Jobs cryptically said he expected the problem of congestion on AT&T’s wireless network would get worse before it got better. Maybe he was implying that the new 2 GB limit will only last until AT&T gets its network in order. Fourth generation wireless broadband is already available in some places from Sprint and coming “real soon now” from AT&T and Verizon. Hopefully, data allowances will rise again.

UPDATE: Uber Mac blogger John Gruber offers his own analysis and he is particularly peeved about the new $20 charge for tethering (which lets you use your iPhone as a 3G modem for your laptop). The extra 20 bucks doesn’t come with any extra data — you’re still stuck using up the same 2 gigabytes.

There’s a small blind spot in Gruber’s analysis of the Hammock Mifi/iPad strategy, however. With a 3G iPad, you’re stuck with AT&T’s generally horrific network. With a Mifi, you can get online via Verizon. So the trade-off of longer login time and shorter battery life may be more than offset for many folks who can’t rely on AT&T’s network.

Out, damn’d spot – Reviewing iPad’s great Shakespeare app

Posted on 6 May 2010 | View Comments

There are already a lot of very nifty iPad apps, from Entertainment Weekly‘s cool, interactive “Must List” to the show-me-the-radar greatness of Weatherbug to Amazon’s simple yet invaluable Kindle app. But so far, only one app has blown my mind: Shakespeare Pro (iTunes web link). It cost $19.99 but it’s probably worth $199.99 if you are a big fan of the bard.

Obviously, the app includes everything Shakespeare wrote from Macbeth and Hamlet to All’s Well That Ends Well plus all his sonnets and other poetry. There’s also a Charles & Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare synopsizing the plays for younger readers as fairy tales.

The user interface is simple and self-evident. Tap a play, go to the text. At the bottom of the text screen you can navigate between acts and scenes. Press the dictionary icon at the top right and all Shakespearean vocab gets a dotted underline. Tap any underlined word and get a pop-up definition. Insanely useful. A searchable concordance is also handy.

There’s a bunch of additional content, as well, ranging from biographical info to reproductions of a dozen or so famous paintings of the author. You can choose from among seven basic fonts and seven font sizes. You can also get white text on a black background or choose from among a couple of other color schemes.

The most fun feature is of course the quotations section. Open it and get a random famous quote — Frailty, thy name is woman! just popped in. There’s a direct link to the quote’s place in its text. Shake your iPad or hit the refresh button to get a new quote.

Overall, a model of what an iPad app should be. Highly recommended.

p.s. I notice Shakespeare Pro developer Readdle has simple collected works apps for Aristotle and Plato. I hope more enhanced “Pro” apps are on the way.

Insane eBook rip-offs — I tried to warn you

Posted on 2 May 2010 | View Comments

Back when the major book publishers joined with Apple to go to war against Amazon and ebook consumers, there was some serious p.r. spin coming from the publishers’ camp and their toadies. In this bizzaro world, Amazon was hurting consumers by “forcing” an inflexible maximum ebook price of $9.99. If only publishers could get control of pricing — something that was likely illegal before an ill-conceived 2007 Supreme Court decision that Consumer Affairs called “legalized price fixing” — why consumers would surely win.

Almost none of the spin was remotely true — there was no maximum price and many ebooks were sold for more. But if you did fall for it, the big publishers have now dropped a ton of insane ebook price increases on your head like a pile of bricks to demonstrate what they’re really up to.

Today’s example: I was reading some various and sundry recommendations on Seth Godin’s blog including a 10-year-old novel by Chip Kidd called the Cheese Monkeys. Sounds good – clicked over to Amazon where I find that this books sells for $11.19 in paperback or $16.99 (!!!) as a Kindle ebook. That price, under the big publishers’ new agency model, was set not by Amazon but by “Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc.” Please, anyone, explain how this makes any sense? Really, seriously? Anyone?

There is only one explanation. I tried to warn you. And then I tried again. The big publishers don’t like ebooks and they want to kill off the market, plain and simple.

p.s. This is hardly the only example. I recently saw a recommendation for Stefanie Pintoff’s historical thriller “In the Shadow of Gotham.” Already out in paperback for $10.19, the Kindle ebook is $11.99. Thank you, Macmillen.

Sexting, your lack of privacy and the iPad: a perfect storm?

Posted on 23 April 2010 | View Comments

Stick with me as I circle around widely on this one…I’ll start with a Supreme Court case that should be of interest to everyone in techdom (SEXTING reaches the high court for the first time!) including a brief digression defending the chief justice from charges of gadget ignorance. Then I will ramble on about why you really ought to separate your work and personal spheres. And I’ll end at the Apple iPad — not as link bait but simply to illustrate a great way to make the split.

So first stop: SCOTUS. The Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments on Monday in a fascinating case for those interested in the intersection of constitutional law and technological change. The case, City of Ontario, California v Jeff Quon, considers just how much privacy protection under the Fourth Amendment a government employee should be entitled to when using a work-supplied pager for personal messaging.

About 10 years ago, Police Sergeant Quon and other members of the city’s SWAT team were issued pagers. The city didn’t want to pay them extra to be on-call 24 hours a day. The pagers were a way to let the SWAT team members go about their own lives while off-duty and still be reachable in an emergency. The city had an acceptable use policy that said it had the right to monitor and review any employee’s email or Internet browsing on city equipment but it didn’t mention texting. The policy also banned obscene or inappropriate language in email.

None the less, the good sergeant apparently spent a lot of time sending and receiving sexy messages¹ with his wife and his mistress, even while he was on duty. A routine audit discovered the sexts and he got a reprimand. The question for the court is whether the city had the right to review the sexting messages in the first place.

<DIGRESSION> As an aside, the oral argument resulted in several Supreme Court justices being, in my opinion, unfairly mocked for asking simple questions about pagers, texting and email. If you actually take the time to read through the whole 70-page transcript (here in PDF form), however, you’ll see that the justices were doing what they always do — posing simple questions to try to get to the heart of the case. The case also relates to events that occurred 8 to 10 years ago, so clarification was needed about the capabilities of the technologies in question.

For example, as mentioned above, Ontario’s policy covered Internet browsing and email but did not mention pagers or texting. A good bit of the case will turn on whether Sergeant Quon’s sexting should be considered the same as email and thus covered by the policy. Justice Roberts question asking about the difference between texting and email was to get at that issue. </DIGRESSION>

The oral argument did not appear to go at all well for Sergeant Quon, but regardless of how the court rules, one thing is crystal clear — employees have very little right to privacy when using employer-owned devices. The Supreme Court has had no problem sanctioning extensive employer invasions based on written policies. The only real twist in the Quon case is the fact that his employer is part of the government and thus covered by the Fourth Amendment.²

And had Ontario’s written policy included texting, I don’t think there would even be a dispute in this case. Despite what you may read in some accounts, the Supreme Court is not deciding whether you have the right to keep text messages on a work-owned device private from your employer. You don’t. Any employer with an up-to-date acceptable usage policy is likely going to claim the right to see all your sexy texts. And everything else.

Think about that for a sec.

And this brings me to my second point: If you use your work Blackberry or work laptop for all your personal email and phone calls and so forth, your employer can search through your messages, cancel your service, intercept email coming to your email address, and more. That may not matter to you much today but what about if you leave your job, get stuck with a crazy boss or even see your employer go out of business? How are you even backing up personal stuff like digital photos you might be keeping on a work laptop? You could lose access to much of your entire digital history. It’s not a good way to live.

There are a couple of possible solutions. One is to use cloud-based services. Keep your email, contacts and calendar on Google or Apple’s MobileMe or Microsoft’s Hotmail. Use Picassaweb or Zenfolio or Flickr for photos. Store files with Dropbox or Sugarsync.

A new idea we are going to try out around here is to add a lightweight personal computing device to the mix. We’re going to get an iPad to separate digital personal stuff from work-owned devices. It’s plenty capable for the tasks required and portable enough to go on a business trip or daily commute even if you have to schlep your work laptop around too. The 3G version even gives you network access almost anywhere without needing to cross an employer’s infrastructure.

It’s time to take back some privacy and some control over your digital life. Do it today.

FOOTNOTES
¹Despite my best efforts, i have not successfully located a transcript of aforementioned sexy messages. Feel free to link in the comments if you have more luck.
²For lots more on the case, including a great brief about the ramifications for all the rest of us submitted jointly by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Center for Democracy & Technology, American Civil Liberties Union, and Public Citizen, see here.

Early impressions and mini-review of Sprint’s 4G Overdrive hotspot

Posted on 25 March 2010 | View Comments

In my continuing quest to keep up with the latest and greatest mobile Internet stuff, I’m trying out the new Sprint 3G/4G Overdrive, pictured above. Made by Sierra Wireless and slightly more portly than first generation mobile hotspots like my Verizon Mifi 2200, the Overdrive retains the same basic yet great feature set of its predecessors. It’s a mobile broadband modem combined with a wifi router. So you can take it almost anywhere, link up to the mobile network and then up to five devices can get online via wifi — laptops, iPhones, Nintendo DS’s, whatever. Sprint is even advertising it as a way to get your iPhone online at 4G speed!

This post isn’t a full-blown review as I’ve just had the Overdrive for a few days. But I can tell you already that the Overdrive provides several improvements over the Mifi and its peers — at least in theory. It can connect not just to 3G wireless broadband but also to Sprint’s newly rolling out and faster 4G service. Sprint says download speeds at 2 to 10 times faster than 3G while upload speeds are up to 3 times faster. The Overdrive also has a built-in GPS sensor that can be accessed via your web browser. And, although it’s much chubbier than the mifi, it has a small screen that displays a variety of useful information.

It costs $99 after rebate and with a 2-year contract. Broadband service is the same price and terms as Verizon — $60/month for 5 GB of 3G service, though 4G service has no usage caps. That’s actually kind of irrelevant for me so far because Sprint hasn’t extended its 4G service to the Boston area yet. It’s promised real soon now, or at least by the end of the year.

It seems like the Overdrive gets a stronger signal in several places where the Verizon Mifi had problems, like the neighborhood around my office in Boston. That could because of the device or the Sprint/Verizon difference. I’m not sure.

Here’s a couple of comparison pictures of the Overdrive and the Mifi:

I am also impressed with the little status display screen on the top of the Overdrive. It shows signal and battery strength, number of connections via wifi, length of online session and amount of data transferred, among other indicators. With the Mifi, you were always left guessing about how much time was left on your battery and whether a poor a connection was due to weak 3G signals or some other reason.

And that’s all I’ve got so far. I’ll post a more in-depth review at some point but if you have any questions, fire away in the comments.

Recommending the Vers 1.5R clock/radio for iPod

Posted on 20 March 2010 | View Comments

Just a quick entry today. We’ve been looking for new something or other to put on the bedside table that’s iPod-compatible, nice looking and includes an alarm clock and AM/FM radio. Turns out, that’s a tougher slate of requirements to fill than expected. Most of the iPod-compatible clock/radios are either on the ugly side or don’t have AM/FM radios.

Then I discovered a cool offering from Vers Audio. It’s called the 1.5R radio/alarm clock for iPod. It’s small and comes in a couple good looking wood finishes like cherry, walnut and bamboo or a white glossy look. The front is very plain, with the black cloth speaker grill, small bluish clock/radio display and two friendly dials (which control volume and tuning). Most of the controls, including the incredibly important and easily reached “snooze” button are on top.

Feature-wise, the 1.5R has two alarms, an iPod dock that fits all the usual dock adaptors, a backlit LCD display and so on. It has plugs on the bottom for audio in and audio out (3.5 mm). The dimensions of the whole unit are 8.2″ long by 6.7″ deep by 5.6″ high.

The sound quality is superb for such a small device, which I’m sure relates to the design but I’m not enough of an audiophile to explain why. Bass seems to emanate from a separate speaker bit in the back. Vers offers quite a bit of explanation but I have no idea if what they’re saying is accurate.

There are a few extras. The remote control is, well, fine. Not much need for it so far. There are also external AM and FM antennas which can be attached if the internal antennas aren’t adequate for reception in your local area.

For what it’s worth, when I plugged my iPhone into the dock, the iPhone beeped and told me it might interfere with the reception of my device and did I want it to go into “airplane” mode. Handy. Not sure I noticed any difference in radio reception with all the iPhone’s various wireless bits running, bit glad to know someone is watching out for me.

And that’s about it. A handsome, full-featured clock/radio that’s iPod compatible. Check.

p.s. Changed my header image today with a Spring update. Taken with the awesome new pocket cam, Canon’s S90. More on the camera here for now — blog review coming soon.

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