The reason this is cool is because it allows you to use Google’s most used features without being online, but what it affords Google is far more comprehensive. Gears technology allows Google to pre-define and work out the kinks on keeping its mess of services synched up correctly with local applications. Sure, for now that’s web browsers and web pages, but there’s no limitation anywhere which states that the sync target isn’t an application instead of a browser. This suggests that its the synching which is more important to Google than the offline usage aspect, though that’s a feature which should not be discounted. It will be some time before everyone is always online, so offline access is critical to Google’s success.

Google’s also got another trick up its sleeve which it hasn’t seen fit to shine a spotlight on. You thought that the Google Phone, T-Mobile’s G1 Android phone, was cool. Wait until you see Grand Central. Grand Central is an access provider which Google bought last year and has not yet publicized significantly. In fact, its still in private beta and there are no signs that it will be coming out of the closet any time soon. What does Grand Central do? Its a single point of contact system which focuses around a phone number. The service gives you a number and you can add any number of phones to that service. Once added, you can control when and how people reach you and when and how the phones connected react. 

Its not clear what Google plans for Grand Central and how it might fit into the grand scheme of things, but it is a compelling additional notch in Google’s already battle-tested belt. Grand Central could very well be a component of an everything or nothing play which leaves all other contenders on the field. Take Picasa, Google Gears, a desktop application compatible with Mac and Windows, Google Sync, and Grand Central and you have an all-in-one data powerhouse which can handle your internet access, search, email, contacts, agenda, images, feeds, voice mail, phone calls, and back it all up while offering you ubiquitous access. Its not hard, then, to imagine a cheap netbook with 3G network access or tethered to a Google/Android phone (more are coming, I assure you) and a Google-specific Linux distro designed to take advantage of all of these features. 

If prices of netbooks aren’t compelling now, wait until you get a deal which includes unlimited wireless internet. My guess is that the sweet spot will be US$99-250 for MIDs to 10-11″ netbooks. Does this mean that Google’s taking over the world as we know it? Yes and no, depending on who you talk to. If you ask the nuts, sure. Google’s been trying to wrest freedom from our already tenuous grasp since day one. If you ask me (and you are reading this), then the answer is no… with concessions. Google is very clever. It will pretty much own the internet in 10 years, but not alone. It will be owned by a largely loosely compiled group of open source advocates who have been eyeing this prize since Steve Ballmer started gloating about Microsoft’s position years ago. 

More specifically, with the way that Google has positioned how it uses and leverages technology, there will be a number of sources for Google’s almost assured dominance, and this is clever because it almost completely bypasses Anti-Trust. Android is Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) so, technically, Google doesn’t own it. Email is ubiquitous, and Google makes no claims that its Gmail or nothing. In fact, Google has been opening Gmail up further and further since it started, making it pretty damned compelling. Docs: There’s no real competition, but Google’s not exactly vying to stop it, either. The same goes for Calendar, Sync, and Picasa. When you buy a WinMo phone, it won’t work with anything but Outlook on Windows. Hmm. Everything from Google works everywhere. If you were Anti-Trust, who’d you look at first?

So, as Sherlock Holmes used to say (despite the fact that he is a fictional character), “The game is afoot.” Google isn’t playing, either. They’re in this to win. They’re already one of the world’s largest companies in what is most assuredly a record breaking time. I can assure you with every fiber of my being that there’s no way in hell (or Los Angeles, if you like) that Google’s going to willingly give up that growth and power position, recession be damned. Mark my words, though. In the next year or so we’ll start hearing about desktop applications, and then you’ll know that I saw the future as clear as day… or at least that I guessed well

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Of course, it turns out the be a check cashing scam and my wife and I can see it coming a mile away, plenty of time to avoid the scam. Of course, not everyone will be able to sniff out the rat. If people had gotten wind of how it works then the scammers around the world, including the notorious Nigerian gangs, wouldn’t still be at it. In case you don’t quite get it yet, this is organized crime, dear readers. Here’s the ad itself:

tutor/teacher

Reply to: xxxxxxxxxxxxx@rocketmail.com ^[?]
Date: 2008-12-12, 1:20PM PST

I posted it here since it will likely be removed sometime very soon. Sadly, removal isn’t enough. There are so many scammers and so many scams that it may be impossible to ever stop it. Of course, there is one way to stop it. Tell your friends and family. Don’t be cordial or kind. Lay it on heavy. If you know someone who is unwilling to educate themselves about who to protect themselves from such scams or are susceptible to coersion, inform them of the level of idiot they are. Bluntly.

If this looks innocent to you, take a look at the reply which my wife received:

Hello,
Thanks for replying back to my online job posting, requiring your tutorial service for my Daughter, I would like to make a tutoring arrangement between you and my Daughter for the month of January 2009, I would like you to tutor him within a period of 1 month, on a schedule basis of 1 hr Daily, 3 times weekly, totaling 12 times in a month. I am willing to pay $50/hr. I would like to use these medium to inform you that my Daughter don’t live in the US, she would be flying from the Philippine to the US, I want you to teach her during her 8 month stay in the US, if there is need to extend your services, an amendment would be made to your salary. she would be dropped off/picked up by his nanny during the hours of teaching at any location you want the Tutoring to take place in your area.
You would be receiving a check drawn from a Bank in the US, from my business associates in the US, since i am from Philippine and right now am in Cuba for a business trip the  payments wont be honored in any bank there in Philippine or here in Cuba , These check would be made out for the cost of the tutorial services you are rendering, and also for the living expense, nanny fees of my Daughter . Regarding this- I hope i can trust you with these payments, as the payment would be made out in excess, so all you have to do is Deposit and cash the payment  at your bank, deduct your tutorial service fee, which should be $50 per hour X 12 Times a Month = $600 i would include an additional $100 for run around fee and any additional text book you might be needing- so $700 is what you deduct from the check you receive , whatever the remaining balance is after deduction of the $700 go ahead and deduct Money Gram or Western union  transfer sending charges for sending out the remainder to the Nanny who would be contacting you with further arrangements and instructions regarding pickup/drop off of my Daughter to the library where you would always teach her. So i hope i can trust you that you will teach my Daughter good academics and some moral respects so that they can be good to their self in the future, i hope i can count on you for the tutorial and the money to be sent to the Nanny. I look forward to read a detailed message from you containing the following information, if you are OK with my arrangements.
Full Name.
Mailing Address including Zip Codes ( no PO Box pls ).
Cell No ( If Available ).
Home No.
Gender.
Best Time to Call.
Email.
N.B  My Daughter  Name is Christine Miller, She is actually coming to the US for sight seeing, but while she is here i want her to study at the same time, she understand English, can write and read fluently i just need her French and English Upgraded.
Thanks for your Understanding.
Collins

Note how there was no mention of the daughter travelling internationally. Miraculously the offer has risen from $45 to $50 and it will be provided in the form of advance payment in check form. Oh! And if there’s extra left over you can have that, too. Just deposit the check and wire the remainder of the money to the “Nanny”. If there’s something inside you which says this could be plausible, you need help. There are so many holes in this story its not even vaguely funny.

This, then, is why Craig’s List is now completely and officially useless. It can’t stop these scams and the system is designed to count on the smarts of strangers to report pages which are questionable. This is what people traded in for local print paper ads?

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Google’s Chrome is clearly the search giant’s first tentative step into designing a WebTop. You can see how they will accomplish this by maximizing the window. The traditional Windows titlebar disappears and is replaced by the tabs of the Chrome browser. Of course, I use Mac OS X pretty much all the time and don’t fire up Fusion all that often, so its been a while since I last fired it up.

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Its not hard, however, to figure out how to make it more complicated. Convergence takes care of that, and what used to be one of the most beloved mobile messaging devices and an indispensable tool for the Federal government, the RIM Blackberry, has lost its way in a fight to remain relevant in a writhing sea of multi-functional nano devices which can play music, watch TV, fetch email from several accounts, browse the web, pick your teeth after a fine meal, and, if you’re lucky, make a call or two. They have cute, cloying names like Bold, Storm, Chocolate, Shine, and Behold, and they all (at least according to the manufacturers) do everything better than the Apple iPhone.

Until now. I introduce to you the one and only Peek. Its not an iPhone. It doesn’t play music. It doesn’t organize your life. Its not designed to make phone calls. Its more like 2G then 3G or 4G. It doesn’t sport a touchscreen, have any number of GBs of storage space, can’t find out where you are because it doesn’t do GPS, and doesn’t even take pictures. What it does do, and quite well, is email. If you can recall back to the mid-90′s when RIM’s Blackberry devices was just becoming hot with its two-way pager service on its neato 850/950 models then you might also recall that they weren’t phones back then. Not until 2001 did RIM add phone support.

The Peek brings back the concept of the old Blackberry and reboots it with a fresh, thin, clean, easy to use new device. For US$79.99 and US$20 a month you get unlimited wireless service which gives you access to up to three email accounts, unlimited SMS, and they’re adding features all the time. In the most recent update they added the SMS feature and the ability to view images attached to emails. My hope is that they add additional file types in the near future. Feature-wise, the interface is very clean. In fact, if you’re familiar with how the Blackberry works, you’ll be instantly at home on the Peek.

Setup of email accounts is very, very easy. The device itself has a number of configurations built into it, such as Gmail, AOL, NetZero, and many others. Just enter in the details and, if it recognizes the email address, it takes care of the rest. If you have your own mail server, just call up the service folk and they’ll set up the account for you. Word from their PR people is that they are working on adding Exchange access, as well. This should make some Crackberry addicts rather happy. I didn’t think to ask if they were also working on Lotus Domino and Novell GroupWise account access, though.

The hardware itself is very well made. The device is nicely this and light. The screen is 320×240 and has excellent backlighting and color. There are some things which could be slightly improved. The thumbwheel could be a moved from the traditional side of the unit to the front middle, which would make it easier to use for lefties like me. The battery cover, which is nice and solid, would benefit from having a strengthened locking mechanism. One odd choice was the placement of the extended characters which are located above the numbers across the top of the keyboard. All of the keys are backlit, but the aforementioned characters are not, so you can see what they are in the dark.

There are also some things which the Peek developers could do to improve the interface. First, there are only three built-in color themes, none of which are particularly attractive, to choose from. There’s also not font control, which I’m assured by my PR contacts they are working on now. One thing which they could fix, however, is the status bar at the top of the screen. Its quite a bit taller than it needs to be. If they could trim it down and modernize the icons and status elements there would be more room on the display for email. It would also be nice if there was user control over the colors.

The Peek is one of the nicest, simplest, cleanest devices to come out in a long time. It fills a hole which used to be filled quite nicely but has become ridiculously overwrought. It also fills the gap which the costly iPhone has created. Some people just want a simple phone to make calls a a nice way to access their email on the go. The Peek has no contracts and it comes in a few colors. The Peek is a very elegantly simple solution to a problem which doesn’t need complex solutions, and I’m happy to have one. It very quickly became one of my most used devices and I don’t foresee a time when I stop using it.

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The people who died that day were not an attacking force. They didn’t have weapons. They weren’t on target to complete a mission. They didn’t have military sanctions to take out militants. They were people. Human beings going about their business and trying to earn a living wage. If you think that everyone in the WTC was rich, you need to rethink that.

Let us also not forget the 411 courageous men and women of New York City’s amazingly brave emergency services departments who braved the flames, dust, and wreckage to save other people from death. Those dedicated emergency response people and those simple, everyday folk were attacked and killed, not as human beings, but as one of the symbols of American wealth and power. Al Quieda looked at those twin towers and didn’t see people. They saw money and justified their attacks on that basis.

It was a cowardly, shameful, godless, selfish, and pointless attack which accomplished nothing but the deaths of thousands of innocent lives. But it didn’t stop there. It went on to cause thousands of more deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, the innocent lives of Afghani and Iraqi people trying to survive life, survive petty, vicious dictatorships. It wasn’t already hard enough for them? Osama Bin Ladin and his cronies are unbelieveably ruthless, unthinking, misguided, destructive people who need to be stopped.

Terrorism is the most destructive and deadly form of bigotry we have on Earth and humankind has practiced various forms of it since time immemorial. When Segregation was rampant in this country, slaves were regularly lynched by members of the Klu Klux Klan. 9/11 is no less horrifying, but on a much larger scale. I truly, deep in my heart, believe that one day we can all live in an easier peace then we do today. Life may never be perfect, but I’d like to think that there will one day be no place that people can go where they feel the threat of death around every corner, especially in their own homes.

One day.

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This doesn’t work with that. That doesn’t sync with the other. The other doesn’t have services for this. Its all quite annoying, really. I used Palm devices for years, but still I was never quite satisfied. I’ve tried WinMo, but have always been unhappy with the Exchange/Outlook relationship and the closed nature of Microsoft’s technology. I don’t think that even the iPhone 2.0′s newly minted iintegration will make it any better. Of course, I’d likely think different if I got an iPhone 2.0. Right now I’m using a PIM-less Nokia N810. Brilliant device with a wide range of connectivity forms, but with no PIM to show off with its potency is a bit dulled. There is a port of a gaggle of GPE-based tools, but its all very un-integrated feeling and there are a slew of mismatched UI foibles. One app has a menu while the others don’t. That sort of thing. Very annoying.

I’ll have more on the Nokia N810 in a formal review soon. Really.

In the end, I multi-task (a misnomer if I’ve ever heard one. Its not possible to perform multiple tasks at the same time, only to organize your thoughts and actions in a distributed manner enough to work on several discreet tasks with enough time devoted to each one where you make progress each hour your work on said projects, but I digress…) and work on the priorities as I see fit. A little triage and I’n generally where I need to be… Except this weekend. I left The Dojo un-updated for three days! Y’all must’ve thought me dead. I had even considered set up some automatic story posting software but then, serendipitously, along came a salesleech asking me to integrate their junk into my stuff. I thought of my readers and decided that it would be unfair to you. It is me, I presume, that you all come to The Dojo for, after all.

Of course, I suspect, like much everything else, your wandering about the net is mostly object driven and I am not the object. That review I wrote about MacDrive 7 remains the top draw on the site, months after I wrote it. My guess would be that, since sales of Macs keep rising strongly, that it will remain a very popular piece. Well, whatever drives you all here is good.

So, not to make excuses and such, but I was very busy over the weekend, shuttling girls to and fro like some kind of taxicab. One friend of my daughter’s even complained that the supple, leathered backseat of my Saab 900 Turbo drophead coupe was “cramped”. The nerve! Its almost 20 years old and still runs like a champion, and the seats are quite comfortable, thank you.

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There are two primary points involved here. One, Apple has added complete Exchange connectivity to the iPhone 2.0 software, making it able to automatically connect to the single most used email server software in the world. They did so by making it work with ActiveSync, so that it meshes with the same technology Microsoft’s own Windows Mobile (and older Pocket PCs) use to syncronize data between desktop and email access provider. Two, people are tired of the phones they have so far been offered, what with their difficult to use and inconsistent interfaces, small displays, pointless PIM applications, and unreliable performance. More and more people have realized that the so-called “free” phones they’ve been offered are just shills for their service providers.

Apple and the iPhone have already made major strides in changing that by directly affecting the product design methodologies of other handset makers, just not always in the right direction. It seems that everyone has latched onto the idea that the iPhone’s sole aspect of success is its touchscreen. What LG and HTC and the others making touchscreen handsets now don’t get is that the touch part is only one small element of everything that makes the iPhone great. Its the best iPod ever made, its a portable media player, its an internet access system which fits nicely in your pocket, its a real PIM, its a messaging center, and, if you didn’t know, its a phone.

Some handset makers have taken notice, notably Nokia and RIM. Sure, they both already had a clear idea about how the mobile handset should also be a PIM and, at least in the case of Nokia, about how the handset could be a media tool, but form factors have long been hideous. Take most Blackberrys until the Pearl, which wasn’t a very good phone until the Curve came out, and Nokia’s Communicator series which is simply monstrous. Now RIM has introduced the very slick and aptly named Bold and Nokia is about to introduce the extremely sexy and functional E71. Neither of these are touchscreen devices, which is smart, because neither of these devices would work well as a touchscreen without a major overhaul.

What Apple has done is force the other makers to focus on their strengths and to address their shortcomings, and I’m sure Apple is aware of this. Its very likely that what Apple has done is knowingly caused the market to re-evaluate itself and its expectations, creating what it hopes will be a market-wide halo effect, driving even more customers to Apple. This, of course, will never be confirmed by Apple since they never confirm anything until they have officially announced it, and they only officially announce products, not strategies. It could also backfire on them. Apple is not the only source of innovation, and that’s not their only Achille’s Heel.

While I can’t claim to share the views of everyone, I do believe that there are some innovative offerings in the technology and mobile world which Apple did not have a hand in. As regular readers of me will know, I’m an IT guy a heart, and Apple has been stuck in IT Kindergarten while companies like HP and Dell have already graduated from college and gotten their Master degrees. Apple also lost its edge in the education market. Apple has never been able to shake the concept that their computers are more expensive, even though they aren’t. Most consumers who have not experienced Apple simply can’t wrap their minds around the idea that equivalent Windows-based systems cost the same, and in some cases more.

In innovation spaces, Google has made enormous strides in online technology. Who knows, maybe Apple’s new MobileMe, the replacement for .Mac, will be its answer to Microsoft’s Outlook and Google’s Gmail, all in one tidy package. Then again, at US$99 a year, its not been as huge a draw as Apple has hoped it would be, though now that they’ve added complete Windows compatibility, that may change. Despite Apple’s early hand in the PDA race, Palm was the most influencial contributor from which came Handspring, the inventor of the Treo, the handset which changed the smartphone industry forever. Oh, and no matter how you slice it, the iPod was not Apple’s idea. They just did it the best.

What Apple has done, however, is create the iPhone Era, which will start soon after July 11th. Be ready for it, for we will all reap the benefits, whether we buy an iPhone or another phone which was made better because of the iPhone’s influence and market impact. Just keep in mind, you don’t need to buy crap just because others are willing to settle.

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mo•nop•o•ly

n. pl. mo·nop·o·lies Exclusive control by one group of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service: “Monopoly frequently … arises from government support or from collusive agreements among individuals” (Milton Friedman). Law A right granted by a government giving exclusive control over a specified commercial activity to a single party. A company or group having exclusive control over a commercial activity. A commodity or service so controlled. Exclusive possession or control: arrogantly claims to have a monopoly on the truth. Something that is exclusively possessed or controlled: showed that scientific achievement is not a male monopoly. Exclusive possession or control: arrogantly claims to have a monopoly on the truth. Something that is exclusively possessed or controlled: showed that scientific achievement is not a male monopoly

Somehow, I just don’t see how Apple’s EULA falls into this definition.Apple doesn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, own the personal computer market. Back in the 80′s and early 90′s it may have been considered to have owned the personal and education markets, but even then Apple didn’t control corporate markets. In fact, estimates both liberal and conservative, peg Apple’s marketshare at around 5-15%. This doesn’t even fall into Microsoft’s radar for threat control.

Apple owns both its hardware designs and its operating system, Mac OS X. Apple even open sourced the core, dubbed Darwin, and the Darwin elements of certain server programs so they could have a significant foot into the FOSS community. They do not, however, open source anything else. It is well known that Apple controls everything which is customer facing in any way. If Apple controls it, they can guarantee quality.

This hasn’t worked out for them in terms of the iPhone, though. Steve Jobs somehow is able to see the writing on the wall and modify how Apple does things before they become issues. Thus, we have the iPhone SDK available which will allow developers (any developers, mind you) to create fully fledged applications for the popular handset. This is a pretty open methodology for a monopoly, is it not?

So, tell me how I’m wrong and how Apple can actually be a monopoly. I’m interested in all arguments, either for or against.

Source material for our definition of the word “Monopoly” came from these kind entities:

American Psychological Association (APA):

monopoly. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved April 16, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/monopoly

Chicago Manual Style (CMS):

monopoly. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/monopoly (accessed: April 16, 2008).

Modern Language Association (MLA):

“monopoly.” The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 16 Apr. 2008. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/monopoly>.

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Now, with the preamble out of the way, what is ImageWell? To keep a long story short, ImageWell allows you to take images from any source, crop,  edit, and resize them, and send them (via FTP and a wide range of other services) to your web server. It then thoughtfully places the URL to that image in your clipboard so you can quickly add an image to a story, much in the way I did for the image of ImageWell you see above. I found it interesting that, despite ImageWell’s integrated screen capture utility, I was required to use Grab.app to capture ImageWell. It can’t capture itself, which is really a feature and not a bug. Really.

ImageWell is, without a doubt, one of the best designed and most utile utilities I’ve used in a very long time. It cleanly and reliably integrates a range of functions for which I would have to normally use an image editor, ftp client, and a watermarking utility to complete. If that wasn’t enough, ImageWell gives access to all of these tools in a fast and functional manner, dramatically cutting the time we need to preparing images to post with our stories. Best of all, its a mere US$20 for the privilege. It can post to a local folder, Apple’s iDisk, FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Flickr, SmugMug, and ImageShack.

In a nutshell, before ImageWell, we didn’t post many images as they just took too much time. Now… well you can see that we post images with just about every story now. Its worth it. If you work on a Mac and post images anywhere or just need a fast way to edit and crop images, you need ImageWell. If you don’t own a Mac, get one. Don’t worry, you can run Windows applications on the Mac using Parallels or VMware’s awesome Fusion for Mac.

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The Feature Set

The Pilot has a number of features. I’ll just run through the list here and then move on to some impressions. First, it can handle a number of media formats such as MP3, WMA, WMA Lossless, WMA DRM, WMA Pro, OGG, WAV, Audible, MPEG4 and WMV at 30 fps, and JPEG. It has an integrated FM radio which can handle RDS, the ability for radio stations to deliver station and song data over the FM radio signal. It has the aforementioned Bluetooth radio, a headphone jack, and even a Mic jack for audio recording. It does not, however, have an integrated mic for simple voice recording.

As indicated in the image above, the device is designed to be used in a horizontal orientation. I don’t really like the lack of being able to use it vertically, but its not that big of a deal. You are, however, able to rotate the screen 180 degrees to use it left handed. I’m left handed, but I’ve adapted to right handed operations for many things in life, so either orientation worked for me. Other, more “Left” lefties should appreciate it, though. The lack of the vertical orientation as an option was irksome, though. I guess it would have made it too iPod-like.

General Operation

I’ve used and reviewed an earlier device based on this software, Napster’s 1GB player from mid-2006 and found that interface to be unpleasant to use. I was surprised when I first fired up the Pilot to find a very similar interface, and I realized that it must have been made by the same company. My concerns were quickly washed away, however, because this more recent version is a damn sight better than the one on the Napster unit. Primarily because that disc you see in the picture, it actually works, ala 1st generation iPod. When I first removed it from the box, never having been touched by another reviewer, the wheel clicks were very hard and sharp, but after a little time, it loosened up nicely.

Interestingly enough, you’re not limited to navigating the much cleaner interface by just rotating the wheel. The wheel also clicks, ala the iPod clickwheel. This helps in a lot of cases where there is a grid of icons and not a list. For physical controls there is the aforementioned scroll wheel which has directional click capabilities, and has a Play/Pause button in the center. There is a separate Menu button in the corner. On the “Top” of the unit is a Power slider which incorporates a lock function. There is also a Voting toggle which allows you to apply ratings to tracks, which is somewhat interesting.

The graphical interface is very clean, has nice icons, and is very functional. In some places its a bit dense and it can be a tad confusing as to which control to use to get where you want to go, but its easy to pick up, even without reading the manual. There is an option to use the default circle-type menu or the easier to use matrix type which arranges the menu icons in a grid. You can also change the background image, but only from a list of included images. The Music Library section is packed with tabs which allow you to view what’s on your Pilot in a wide range of modes. One of the more interesting operational choices is that when you select an item, it doesn’t just play it, it asks if you want to play it or add it to a playlist, add it to what’s playing now, or even delete it. That’s either a feature or an annoyance depending on how you look at it.

Overall, its very easy to get around the interface after only a few minutes of fiddling with it. Not all that much different than the first time you touched an iPod. I’d rather there not be a ratcheting feel under the scroll wheel as they cause scrolling to be a tad inaccurate. One nice touch is the blue LED lights which surround the perimeter stick out slightly and make it very easy for your finger to grip the wheel as you turn it. Similarly, the Play/Pause button sticks up slightly so you can find it without looking. Really, the whole control scheme works well without completely emulating the iPod arrangement.

Bluetooth Nirvana And Sound Quality

Its impossible to miss, the large Bluetooth logo on the front of the unit between the controls and the display, and it clearly indicates that this device can handle A2DP connections to compatible stereo headsets. Configuration with the Insignia headset that Best Buy sent me was very simple and it worked out of the box without much fuss at all, something all Bluetooth devices should aspire to. The Pilot does come with a standard pair of earbud speakers, but they honestly sounded like crap, so my next try was the Bluetooth headset. I wasn’t impressed there, either.

My next test was to plug in a pair of Griffin’s excellent TuneBud headphones, designed for isolation audio and offering a clean and clear sound with excellent bass response. This allowed me to get a real sense of what the Pilot can put out. While not as good as Apple’s high quality sound chips in their iPods and personal computers, it sounds quite good. One thing that really peeved me was the EQ controls, which are just plain confusing. There are a number of presets which are easy to select, but there is also a custom EQ which you can tweak. The problem arises when you want to change the settings and then activate them. I spent a good 15 minutes wrangling with the controls to try and get the EQ to take my changes. Insignia needs to fix that, and quick.

Its A Video Player, Too!

Lest we forget, the Pilot is really a little PMP and not just a DAP. First, I had to install the included ArcSoft MediaConverter for Windows. I could easily manually transfer files to the device, but it was easier to allow MediaConverter to convert video and transfer the copy to the device, thereby ensuring that the video files would work. I copied 20 episodes of Invader Zim from a DVD to the device. Conversion time was very fast on my MacBook Pro in Boot Camp mode running Windows Vista Ultimate. Though I don’t recall the exact time, it took around 1 hour and 40 minutes to convert and copy to the Pilot.

I’m quite impressed with the quality of the display. There is no lag or blur and color is clean, if a tad dull. Oddly, Best Buy doesn’t list display resolution, but it is a 2.4″ display and they claim that it is a widescreen form factor. Its certainly wider than 4:3 ratio, but its nowhere near even 16:10. Its somewhere around 5:3 or 6:3 and I’d say that the resolution is probably in the range of 320×240 or so. I’m very pleased with the display and find it very easy to watch just about anything on it, with exception to 72mm print widescreen films. I haven’t tried encoding anything with subtitles yet, but if its 4:3 ratio (like Love Hina or Naruto) then it should be readable.

The Wrap Up

I can’t say I’m truly disappointed with any of the functions of the Pilot. It integrates with various services like Rhapsody, Rhapsody To Go, and the Best Buy Digital Music Store. The FM radio works with the RDS service for additional channel and track details. Battery life is long and strong and the battery is user replaceable. It works with Macs (as old as Mac OS 8.6) and PCs, so I’m sure it would also work with Linux-based systems. Its super light at only 2.1 oz. It has an SD card slot for adding even more storage.

The one thing I would like included would be either a speaker or bundled powered speaker attachment so I could use it to watch videos without having to use headphones. That would make it supremely usable and cool, as well as markedly cheaper than other PMPs which are larger, heavier, and far more expensive. In case you were wondering, after encoding and copying the 20 Invader Zim episodes, I still have 3GB free and the episodes look clean and clear with none of the mosquitoing you often see in badly compressed video files.

The Insignia Pilot comes in 4GB and 8GB versions. We tested the 4GB version, which sells for US$119. The 8GB version sells for US$149, so there’s no real reason to get the 4GB unless you need the extra $30 for lunch and a cab ride.

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