Apple and Sony, like peas in an iPod
Thursday, October 25, 2007
LCDs: Hands on Samsung's LED Backlit HDTV LCD (Verdict: LN-T4681F Best Ever)
I tested using an HDMI splitter from Gefen, Blu-ray and HD DVD titles like 300, Batman Beyond, and Xbox games like Halo 3, Halo 3, and Halo 3. I don't think that motion handling was improved over the last generation LCD, and plasma still has the advantage here. But the picture is as life-like as I've seen on a TV like this generation. It is a big jump. But not perfect. Although Sound and Vision and CNet liked this TV's predecessor a lot, and are bound to love this one, a quick standard def HQV test disc test showed that the TV is running the same level of upscaling performance as the 65f. PC mag didn't love that about this TV and to my eye, it was a middling performer at best. Color seemed even to me, uncalibrated, when viewing a simple color bar pattern. Like all the glossy screened Samsung TVs, it kicks up a lot of glare, and the case itself is a dust magnet. It has an 8ms response time, which is twice that of the 65f series, but that didn't bother me a bit; I've never been able to directly qualify 120hz or sub 8ms response times as something I could notice. (Unlike the contrast of this TV.)
The LED count behind the screen is in the hundreds, and there are dozens of sections that can be individually controlled. The dimming occurs in many degrees, and because LEDs can be turned down with a greater degree of control than CCFLs, its easy to get lighting to be pretty close to zero without dropping to complete black. That helps gray detail. The controls are pretty bad-ass, too: Full touch controls for everything, and the power switch is the round semi circle under the logo. Very slick.
The TV itself isn't cheap: For a 46-inch set, you'll pay $4000 at Crutchfield, but like anything, they'll drop in price soon enough.
So far, this is the best LCD I've seen yet. Highly recommended. I'll either match this up against a Pioneer Kuro or a Olevia LCD next. [Stats at Samsung]
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Lifehacker Top 10: Top 10 Google Products You Forgot All About
Living in the shadow of Gmail, Reader and Calendar's got to be tough, but that's what a slew of useful Google products do every day. We give Google's front-running applications a lot of ink (or pixels, as it were), and the rest a passing mention in the fast-flowing river of news. Today's top 10 pays homage to the little brother and sister Google products that you forgot all about.
10. Google Code Search
lang: operator to limit your results to a certain language, and search by developer name, file name, or comments. Here's a search for the words "nasty hack" in PHP code—lang:PHP nasty hack—and here's a search for Javascript authored by Gmail Macros developer Mihai Parparita.
9. Google Base
Easily publish and find recipes, classifieds, vacation rentals and job listings at Google Base, a no-web site way to get data online and into Google's search results. What's great about Base is that it offers data type-specific search operators. For example, you can search recipes by ingredient, or vacation rentals by location and features like how many bedrooms, and what type of property it is (cabin, cottage, hotel, villa, house, etc.)
8. Google Trends
Compare the "world's interest" in certain words and topics at Google Trends, which charts the number of times a word or phrase appeared on the web over time. Great for checking out the history of popular neologisms and brand names (like iPhone or lifehacker), you can also pit terms against one another. You can see from the image above that the phrase "getting things done" has been around a lot longer than the word "lifehacker." (Pit GTD vs lifehacker at Google Trends.)
7. Google Alerts
Make your web search results come to you with Google Alerts, email notifications of new web pages search terms pop up on as the Googlebot discovers them. Google Alerts automatically hands me Lifehacker story ideas every morning, and it's also great to ego search your own name, web site title or product name, too. To get results for several term searches in one alert, separate them with a pipe (|) or combine terms with AND, like wildfire AND "San Diego".
6. Google Book Search
Remember those rectangular objects that you used to read by turning a page from one side to the other? Ah, those were the days. You can still get your books online at Google Book Search, whose book-scanning elves add to the digital library all the time. Flip through pages of the books scanned into Book Search, and add books to your personal virtual library as well. Along those same lines, academics won't want to forget about Google Scholar for searching papers, theses, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. 5. Google Page Creator
When Aunt Martha and Uncle Skip ask how to set up a web page? Point 'em to Google Page Creator, a totally web-based, WYSIWYG web site creation tool that hosts up to 100MB of files for free. 4. Google Notebook
We all find snippets of web pages, quotes, and images all over the web we want to copy to a personal library, and Google Notebook is a powerful way to do just that. Whether you're researching a particular project, capturing ideas as you come across them online, or Getting Things Done, Notebook (especially coupled with its companion Firefox extension) is a powerful, useful tool.
3. Flight Simulator in Google Earth
Ok, so Google doesn't make a flight simulator, but they do hide one in the latest version of Google Earth. Download Google Earth 4.2 , and to enter flight sim mode, hit Ctrl+Alt+A (Mac users: Cmd+Opt+A), choose your plane, airport and runway. Google Earth's flight simulator isn't a walk in the park for newbs, so here's more info on how to take off and navigate the friendly, virtual skies . 2. Keyboard Shortcuts Experimental Web Search
Hidden deep in the bowels of Google Labs is the Keyboard Shortcuts flavor of web search, which takes your mouse out of web search entirely. Once you're using Keyboard Shortcuts search (just add "&esrch=BetaShortcuts" to your Google URLs), use J and K to move up and down a search results list. Open a link using O or the Enter key; bring your cursor to the search box using / (forward slash), and Esc to get out of the search box. Here, install the keyboard shortcuts version of Google search into Firefox or IE7's built-in search box for easy access. 1. SketchUp
Free 3-D modeling program Google SketchUp lets anyone virtually architect their dream house, remodeled kitchen, office, spaceship or skyscraper. Download Google SketchUp for free, for Mac or PC. This was a tough list to winnow down, as Google's full product list is long and prodigious. In fact, we're still having regrets about leaving Patent Search, Google Moon, and Google Mars off the list. What's your top lower-profile Google app? Shout it out in the comments.
HDTV: Wired Names Olevia 747i Best LCD in 38- to 49-inch Category
It's smarter, with a killer video-processing chip that helped it ace all our tests, syncing up and smoothing out the noisiest screwball video we threw its way.The reviewer also liked the set's pretty appearance, called its built-in speakers the best he tested, and even liked Olevia's 3Dish menus and remote control. The nine out of ten rating bestowed upon this $2499 HDTV constitutes quite an endorsement. Might be one to examine come Black Friday. [Wired]
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