Yesterday, we took a look back at 2006 and concluded high definition reaching a critical mass was the story of the year. For 2007, instead of forecasting the obvious (everyone gets HDTV - for less, digital media is everywhere) or making a bunch of wild predictions (Comcast buys TiVo), Dave and I wanted to focus on two notable dates.

Seven-Oh-Seven

If you’re not in the business of broadband or consumer electronics, you’re probably not focused on the upcoming July 1st (7/07) CableCARD deadline. The CableCARD issue is sort of a subtopic in the larger story around the analog-to-digital TV transition. Nonetheless, the de-coupling of embedded security from set-top boxes has its own interesting history, and is worth a quick rundown:

Cable Companies and CableCARD - Once Upon a Time
The difficult thing about making set-tops has traditionally been the embedded security features, called Conditional Access (CA). Two companies - Motorola and Scientific Atlanta - cornered the market on CA, and thus became the primary set-top manufacturers for cable operators large and small. The operators decided they wanted more vendor choices and so supported the idea of separating CA from set-top hardware. Separable security, i.e. the CableCARD was born. (more…)

Part 3 begins with the coveted eStarling photo frame. (Click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2.)

eStarling Wireless Digital Photo Frame
Paying for the Hype

The $250 eStarling frame has gotten so much good hype, I suppose it’s only karmic-ly justified that everything went to hell when the product finally shipped again this year.

First the bad news — While eStarling shipped its back-ordered frames in time for Christmas, they managed to ship them with the wrong power adapters. (They’re shipping new ones…) Hence the reason we had to set up the frame I bought for my parents within a foot or two of the wireless router. Also, as Gizmodo points out, the resolution ain’t what it should be.

Now the good stuff. When it’s working, the eStarling frame kicks ass. Even with less-than-optimal resolution. I haven’t played with the much-touted, Flickr-feed feature yet, but I’ve had great fun emailing photos to the frame. (You can set up the account to authorize only specific email senders.) Hint: It’s a great gift for grandparents.

Here’s the top of the frame with buttons for the slide-show feature, static display, etc.

And here’s the side of the frame with power and USB ports, and memory card slots.

More photos and detailed coverage here. Someone (maybe eStarling) will certainly come out with something better in the future, but for now, it’s better to have a flawed, wireless photo frame than no wireless photo frame at all.

DigiMemo
Doesn’t Tell You Everything

The DigiMemo purports to allow you to write on a special notepad and then sync your handwritten notes to a PC. (Great gift idea from my dad to my mom…) I’d love to tell you I had a chance to try it out, but unfortunately the product doesn’t come packaged with OCR software. Great. So I get to import my notes, but they’re in the form of an image. Not very helpful.

We also discovered that the DigiMemo does not appear to work on an Apple running Parallels. Yes, my family is that geeky.

And that’s it for the Gadget-Giving Post-Mortem. Happy New Year, Everyone! Here’s to great gadgets in 2007.

If you missed Post-Mortem Part 1, I covered the Christmas gadget insanity in my house with the Wii, Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick and iRecord. Part 2 starts with the Dash.

The Dash
Way to Ruin the Surprise

I should have listened to my own advice. I knew it was a bad idea to buy a cell phone for a present strictly on the basis of having to commit to a service agreement. What I didn’t realize was how impossible it would be to keep a cell phone gift a surprise. It used to be you could buy a phone from T-Mobile without having it attached to an account. Perfect for gift shopping because you just switched the SIM card and activated the account after giving the present to your intended recipient. Now, however, you have to list a T-Mobile account when you buy the phone. I spent quite a while on a call with customer service making sure that everything would be more or less hidden from my husband until after Christmas, despite the fact that I was accessing his mobile account. Everything seemed to be well-arranged, and then the next day hubby got a text message on his current phone.

This is a free message from T-Mobile! Thank you for purchasing a service upgrade from T-Mobile! (i.e. locking you in for 2 more years…) If you didn’t make this purchase, please let us know! Thanks!

Arrgh.

At least the Dash has proven a worthy present if not a surprise one. Maybe a comparison later to the Blackjack?

Squeezebox
Ask and Ye Shall Receive

My new Squeezebox is not yet out of the box, but only because I just arrived back home after the holidays. I have a space cleared and ready for it. It’s nice to get what you wish for.

Stay tuned for Part 3: The eStarling WiFi photo frame and the DigiMemo.

I realize that even among the people that celebrate Christmas, few celebrate it the way my family does. We have a particular gene in our DNA that leads to obscene levels of spending on Christmas presents. Yes, you could view it as rampant commercialism, but we prefer to think of it as extreme generosity.

Below is Part 1 of a list of gadgets that made it under our tree and the current status of each one:

Wheee… The Wii!

Verdict - Thumbs Up

A family friend kindly stood in line till 3 AM so my parents could provide my brother with a Nintendo Wii for Christmas. It didn’t get set up till the 26th, but it has since provided non-stop entertainment. (Too bad we don’t have a Roomba…) I’ll limit my comments to saying how much I like the feature that lets you create an avatar in your own image for Wii Sports. Here’s a thankfully-not-true-to-life rendering of my brother’s girlfriend:

Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick

Survived the Set-Up

I’ll admit, the set-up for the Pro Stick took a very long time. This was a Woot daily special and I think they were giving away old ones because the device needed several software updates. Nonetheless, the Pro Stick is awesome. I don’t have an HDTV, but I can now get free, over-the-air HD on my laptop. Plus DVR functionality. Way cool. Look for a full product review in a future post.

iRecord

Still in the Box

The iRecord was a present for my husband. Think we’re into video this year? The idea here is that the iRecord will transfer video from your set-top to a portable device, like a Neuros. According to iRecord’s site, the gadget is the “world’s first H.264/AVC recorder for iPod & PSP.” I’ll let you know how it works when we get it back home.

Stay tuned for Part 2… highlighting the Dash, Squeezebox, eStarling digital photo frame, and DigiMemo.

Another quick note about Pandora as the next-generation MySpace… They’re taking a very social-networking approach to marketing. A musician friend of mine attended an event back in November hosted by Pandora at UPenn. The event was not directed at press, but instead consisted of founder Tim Westergren talking to students and gathering feedback and suggestions for the Pandora service. (According the Philly City Paper, the student audience members were complemented by “marketing-minded men in blazers and Web geeks.”)

While every company should be doing grass roots marketing, it’s interesting to see Pandora targeting the college crowd. These are the folks that fill the MySpace and Facebook realms. Given another alternative, will this fickle crowd migrate elsewhere? Or at least the music-minded ones among them?

(Thanks, Matt!)

I’m not an expert Pandora user. I only discovered it this year, and I haven’t remotely finished plumbing the feature set. Mostly I just create new stations when I remember a particular artist or song I love and leave it at that. That’s one of the great things about Pandora. You can be a casual user and still thoroughly enjoy the service.

Last week, however, Michael Arrington and I got an email from the Pandora folks: Seems they’ve gone and made the service more Web 2.0′ish. Now you can find shared stations within the Pandora community, see who is listening to what, and search for songs, stations and listener profiles by keyword.

The original, innovative idea behind Pandora is music discovery, and the fact that you can do things like seed stations with specific music to discover similar works is a great one. While the latest features still clearly fall under that concept, there is also something else going on here. Check out this quote from Pandora’s blog:

Find other Pandora listeners that share your musical tastes, hometown, school, or place of work. Explore their favorite songs and artists, listen to their stations, and leave them comments. Even bookmark them so you can check what they’re into later.

Once you add in elements like “hometown” and “school,” Pandora suddenly starts to sound a lot more like MySpace or Facebook to me. And indeed, I’ve heard from a lot of companies lately suggesting that the next wave of social networking sites will be based around specific interests. Vertical social networks.

So is Pandora the new, cooler MySpace?

(more…)

While we (the writers and readers of blogs like ZNF) tend to think the universe of consumer electronics revolves around us, the truth is big brands are after a much larger and more lucrative market: the soccer mom and her family. Hence the new trend toward lifestyle marketing. Apple stores sell a “digital experience;” Comcast has created an “electronics spa” in a retail experiment with Circuit City; Sony Style stores have popped up all over the US.

This is a real shift in approach: the idea of architecting a digital home instead of selling gadgets. And at a Sony Style store over the weekend, I was somewhat amazed at how many dads, moms and tots were being drawn in by the lifestyle lure.

(more…)

Wonder what’s become of the life-transforming, human-transporting Segway? Apparently it’s all the rage among cops at the King of Prussia mall this season. My question is, do the cops stay on their Segways during an actual criminal pursuit? Also, since everyone was giving this guy a wide berth, what are the odds he’s going to see a criminal in action?

Dave had this to say (with Jamaican accent):

Bad boys, bad boys
Whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do
When the Segway come for you?

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