WorldCard

Now that my transition from Yahoo to Gmail is in full swing, I’ve also taken the opportunity to clean up and expand my address book(s). Google’s contact de-duper has been helpful. But the $6 WorldCard iPhone app has been a massive time saver. It’s not quite perfect, but it’s solid when it comes to analyzing 3GS photographs of CES-acquired business cards. I’d say it got ~95% of contact names, phone numbers, and email addresses correct. And the other fields I care less about. But WorldCard does provide field editing and allows you to match areas of a business card with select fields for additional cleanup. Once satisfied with the results, WorldCard dumps (or merges) the contact details into your iPhone address book. Combined with Gmail’s iPhone Exchange services, any new contacts show up online rather quickly and without intervention. Recommended!

Siri

Siri (free) received a good amount of positive buzz at launch last week. It provides a new spin on information aggregation and operates via decent voice recognition as you carry on a scrolling chat with your “personal assistant.” I doubt I’ll use it regularly as I’m not sure it saves any time over accessing separate apps. But Siri reminds me a bit of Wolfram Alpha’s advanced queries and is quite fun in a Magic 8-Ball sort of way — check out some additional screengrabs of our playful testing.

SlingPlayer

AT&T has finally relented and it appears that the iPhone Slingbox client ($30) will be shedding it’s WiFi-only designation in the near future. But it’s not going 3G without a bit more drama… AT&T says “we’ve worked with Sling Media” to further optimize SlingPlayer for 3G. Something Sling has absolutely no recollection of: “AT&T never discussed any specific requirements with us.” Regardless, the updated app should be available soon. My personal copy of the iPhone SlingPlayer has been active on 3G for several months. Unfortunately, the video quality isn’t great – a combination of AT&T’s overtaxed network, the max output Sling utilizes for their mobile clients, and a reliance on processor-intensive WMV decoding over native H.264. And audio and video isn’t always in sync. Which is why I upgraded to Slacker Radio Plus ($48/yr), my constant and more reliable gym companion, via iPhone over the weekend.

Fortunately, I don’t need to come up with the perfect ‘Ads of Super Bowl 44′ lede as NewTeeVee pretty much nailed it: Beer solves lots of problems, women hold men back from their dreams and this year, pants are optional. But I can’t say there are any commercials we’ll remember beyond this week. My personal fave was the Kia ad (above) – fun, engaging, not crass, and it made me think about their product. (What does Go Daddy do again?) Speaking of crass, the most entertaining pantsless commercial didn’t even make it on the air. And I’m bummed Denny’s Nannerpus nemesis has been replaced by chickens.

In what’s become an annual tradition, TiVo determined the top ads of Super Bowl 44 “using aggregated, anonymous, second-by-second audience measurement data about how 30,000 TiVo subscribers watched the game, and for the first time, determined not just the most viewed commercials, but instead the most engaging ads throughout the game.”

1. Doritos  – “House Rules”
2. Snickers – “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry”
3. Focus on the Family – “The Tebows Celebrate Life”
4. Doritos – “Underdog”
5. 2010 Intel Core Processors – “Jeoffrey the Robot Gets Hurt”
6. E*Trade Financial – “Baby Love Triangle”
7. Bud Light – “Observatory”
8. CareerBuilder – “Casual Fridays”
9. TruTV’s NFL Full Contact – “ Punxsutawney Polamalu”
10. Hyundai Sonata – “Brett Favre MVP, Still Playing at 50”

If you missed any of the commercials, or just want to catch them again, hit Hulu, CBS, or YouTube. What were your favorites?

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I’ve been with Yahoo!, in one form or another, pretty much since the beginning (when they began life as a human-generated index of the then finite and mostly manageable World Wide Web). As a customer, as a blogger, and as a professional. Like most, I long ago moved to Google for modern web search. But I’ve been using Yahoo Mail nearly exclusively since the late 90s (never mind those two years of Hotmail and Mac.com experimentation and despite grabbing a Gmail account 11/04).

As changing homes is quite disruptive and I do quite like the ad-free Yahoo Mail Plus UI ($20/yr), I’ve tried to be patient while Google has run laps around the schizophrenic Yahoo. (Who else would kill the #1 web photo sharing site? And plenty of other initiatives I previously relied on.) But I’ve had enough.

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While Best Buy’s HD Radio may not meet our mobile audio needs, we’ve got two new and solid contenders in the digital streaming space.

As promised at CES, Slacker is now available for webOS and can be downloaded via the App Catalog. And, fortunately, I just so happen to have Kevin Tofel’s Palm Pre on hand (pic above). Of course Slacker rocks. And the app functions much like you’d expect it to. Although, as a webOS n00b, I’ve had to get used to finger swiping in lieu of tapping a back button. Otherwise, it’s quite comparable to their other mobile apps – a wide variety of “radio” stations and the option of upgrading to a paid subscription (~$50/yr) to display song lyrics, provide unlimited skips, and do away with all advertising.

Also new today is the Sirius XM app for Blackberry. I’m still somewhat down on Sirius XM these days (and will probably cancel yet again in the near future). But grandfathered subscribers or those willing to pay the online streaming surcharge ($3/mo), should find this app nicely rounds out satellite radio’s mobile offerings.

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While old school media types insist that content is king, when it comes to viewing said content, format and media player can make a big difference in the quality of the user experience. With new options seeming to crop up every day, let’s take a look at a few of the most popular software media players (and video destinations) to determine which one may be best for consumers. Individual results may vary, but here are the criteria I used to evaluate each:

Format Support
With so many different formats out there, it’s important that your top media player has robust support. Since consumers shouldn’t have to scour the web to add additional functionality, I didn’t include any plugins that consumers could use to expand support. Of all the players listed, the VLC clearly won this category. Whether you’re trying to watch Quicktime movies or play a VOB file, if VLC can’t handle the codec, you probably shouldn’t be trying to play it to begin with. The clear loser in this category was the Netflix Media player. While I have no complaints about the quality of their stream, the DRM restrictions and the requirement for downloading the Silverlight plugin, makes their web player pretty limited.

Ability to Stream Online
When digital movies first arrived, you’d have to wait a couple hours for the video  to download. With the introduction of streaming media, consumers rarely have to wait more than a few seconds in order to access to that content. While most video players are able to support this functionality, I feel that Netflix is the clear winner for this category. Not only do their video streams take into account your bandwidth to reduce buffering issues, but they also seem to have the highest video quality when streaming content. The clear loser in this category was the VLC player. While technically, there are ways to use it to stream torrent files while downloading, for the most part the VLC player is best suited for offline media. Read the rest of this entry »

ZNF reader Larry C recently inquired about the HD Radio reception from Best Buy’s Insignia NS-HD01 portable ($50):

what is the range of reception – hopefully good clear sound within 50-75 mile radius

And I’d glad he brought this up. Because only after writing my mostly positive review did I learn how bad the HD Radio reception is. It appeared that I had excellent coverage at our old place (DC metro, suburban Maryland), yet I have zero coverage at our new place (suburban Virginia). More importantly, I have no HD Radio reception at my gym. Regarding Larry’s specific question, I’m not sure what my actual distance to the transmitters is. But I assume I’m well below even the bottom of his range (50 miles), probably by half. Furthermore, to address a follow-up thought he had, my gym has no large buildings or similar obstructions in the immediate vicinity. So I’m left to conclude this radio just isn’t very good at tuning programming. Coupled with horrible earbuds and a requirement to charge the unit via USB, I can’t recommend an Insignia HD Radio purchase. Even at a low $50.

However, the NS-HD01 might be worth trying out if you could get one for free… Perhaps there’s a firmware update somewhere out there or maybe you can hotwire an external antenna to improve reception. Better yet, maybe you live next door to a transmission tower. Regardless, if you’d like a shot at my HD Radio, simply leave a comment below. (US residents in the lower 48 only, please.) We’ll choose the winner at random in a few days.

As a casual video gamer, sports has always been one of my favorite genres. I like being able to play an entire game from start to finish, without devoting a month of my life to beat the title. My natural love for sports probably also contributes to this preference, but whatever the case, it’s safe to say that they’ve been a staple of my entertainment system for a very long time. Unfortunately, when it comes to innovation in gaming, the sports franchises seem to lag the rest of the field.

I’d argue that this is due to the monopolies surrounding most major professional sports, but it may also have something to do with the temptation to release a new game every single year. After being burned too many times, I did finally cut my upgrade cycle from every year to once every 2 or 3 years. However, even with less frequent purchases, I still notice that there are pieces of each game that seem to be endlessly recycled year after year after year.

Specifically, I’m talking about the commentary in EA Sports games. Whether you’re playing NBA Live or John Madden football, having live commentators lends a certain amount of realism to the experience. Sure, their puns are cheesy and sometimes there are glitches where they’ll tell you how bad you did on a great play, but overall I enjoy having someone critique my every press of a button.

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