Back to the Genius Bar. I made my maiden voyage with some trepidation, after upgrading my iPod Touch to Version 3.0 and encountering troubles. I brought my shhh…HP Pavilion along to show that I buy my music, most often from iTunes, and that while my podcasts, movies, and photos all made the upgrade, my music was still stuck in my PC’s library.

Quick Observations On the Bar

If I were a single woman looking to meet really smart, gangly, slightly geeky men, I would keep trouncing my Macs and heading back to the store. My visit gave Apple lust a new meaning.

Second, I felt as if I’d walked into some Lake Wobegone where all the shoppers were above average. The crowd was the same crowd that I see at NPR fundraisers and indie movies (with a strong pinch of foreign visitors tossed in for good measure). These were happy people and really smart looking–two things usually in short supply in any store in NYC.

Third, I had no idea you had to BOOK an appointment with a Genius. I thought it was spontaneous sort of thing, like the deli counter where you take a ticket number. So, I watched the LCD display behind the Bar for a few moments. It showed people’s rank on the waiting list, interspersed with did-ya-knows for Genius-wannabes. Finally, a competent young woman spotted me to ask if I needed anything.

“Help,” I said meekly.

“Did you make your appointment online,” she asked.

“Sorry,” I said, “I thought they ran it like a bar, not a doctor’s office.”

Sizing me up as a virgin, she somehow worked some magic and got me in as the last appointment of the Genius Bar’s day.

I stood, waited, and watched. (Stood because the two small benches in the Bar area barely held five size 6 bodies apiece.) I pulled out a hard copy of my New Yorker to read (definitely the only piece of hard copy in the store).

One guy was turned away from help because he’d bought his phone from an ASAP (Apple Authorized Service Provider), hence that needed to be his first stop. I’d be pissed. He was Hakuna matata.

Another guy did get a little testy when he explained he drove in from Brooklyn, paid for parking, and had to get his girlfriend’s Mac fixed. They gave him a place without an appointment, too.

Despite the fact that the woman estimated a 15-minute wait for my turn and I waited something more like 45 minutes, I, too, was happy (well, I would have been happier with a Starbuck’s franchise in the store).

Then came my turn. Displaying my Touch was no problem; maybe it was my paranoia, but I saw a bunch of raised eyeballs when I pulled out my HP Pavilion to show the synch stats. My Genius was clearly uncomfortable and uninterested. (Not helped by the fact that my battery was nearly dead, I had a few dozen Windows open as the machine awoke, and Vista was even slower than usual.) I was living confirmation of everything wrong with PCs even though it was my Touch that was not working.

First, he turned the cover of my HP notebook so that it faced the back of the Bar. Then he told me I should drive the PC. (Not my job, man.) The old Mars/Venus thing reared its ugly head and I know he was thinking that if I’d had a Mac I wouldn’t need a genius. And that I’d never be a genius because I didn’t have the sense to buy a Mac.

Ultimately, he did not fix the problem, but gave me enough information so that I could do a tedious restore and then manual synch myself.

I sent out a quick Facebook note asking others to share their Genius Bar war stories with me. I know a lot of people who like to complain. But all of them reported visiting the Genius Bar was more like visiting the spa than the dentist and were thankful for the help they received. As one friend so aptly nailed it, “I wonder what the lines would be like if the PC mfrs offered a Genius Bar for Windows products?”

My bets on some of the hottest trends at the show:

eBook Wars: You’ll have seen most of them before the opening day of CES, but you’re going to begin to see a features war over book readers. Color readers, readers with two screens, readers with backlit screens, pocket readers, multimedia readers, and so on. The good news? All this talk about reading may resuscitate the printed word. If you’re at CES, visit the eReader exhibit on the CES floor and the HigherEd Tech Summit.* Both will be discussing how ebooks will replace those high-priced printed versions.

3D: James Cameron may be getting all the 3D glory on the big screen this season, but there are plenty of folks at CES leaving their 3D mark. Look for notebooks and netbooks from the likes of Acer (3D glasses required). SONY, Mitsubishi, and Panasonic will be showing the next variant of 3D TV (glasses required on most, not all). Even the gamemakers (keep an eye on PlayStation) will be supporting 3D output. ASUS has just announced a 3D gaming notebook, the G51 J 3D. My favorite? Fujifilm has a new camera that shoots photos and videos in 3D and requires no glasses. The trick? Two sensors built into the camera.

Mobile Phones and Their Apps: There are now over 100,000 iPhone apps; that’s a pretty big business. But the iPhone is being challenged by Android, RIM Blackberry, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Palm, and Nokia’s Symbian environments. As consumers, we want to know what apps are worth paying for; as a developer, you’ll want to know what apps to create for. These topics will be visited in multiple places on the show floor, but the Mobile Apps Showdown should be a nice culmination of an app-ified world.

Mind and Body: Take a motion sensor, add some software and a cloud computing app, and you’ve got the recipe for a healthier body. Look for everything from digital pedometers with online recordkeeping to elaborate systems that measure your energy output and give you enough readout to put the Challenger’s dashboard to shame. Watch for biofeedback, relaxation, remote medical data collection, and more.

Telepresence: Yes, it’s a Trekian buzzword, but get used to it. Simply (probably too simply) put, telepresence creates the illusion that something is near you, even though it is not. Video conferencing, distance learning, remote medical diagnoses–all of these rely on telepresence. Look for Cisco to take the lead, but IBM, Microsoft, and others will express their violent interest in this topic.

Augmented Reality: A close cousin of telepresence, augmented reality was beginning to seep into our collective consciousness at the last CES. It’s back, and in general it describes a technology that adds a level of information on top of your physical reality. Point your phone at a person and it might automatically recognize them and offer the person’s vital stats for you. Point a digital camera at an object (say, a museum) and have entries about that object appear on your screen. Making augmented reality more real are manufacturers like NVIDIA. Its new Tegra chip packs the power of a PC onto a single, small chip.

* Disclosure: My company, Living in Digital Times, produces the Mobile Apps Showdown and the HigherEd Tech Summit at CES.

HP's Mini-clutch was designed by fashion celeb, Vivienne Tam.

At Microsoft's Open House in NYC, a tweetie bird answered tweets from her perch below a treehouse.

Now that all PCs cost about the same and run about the same at any given price point, they’ve become commodities. All except the Mac, that is. The Mac is like the mythical siren, designed to lure us with gorgeous work from bevel to the box, and expecting a premium to be paid for its good looks. PC vendors now are trying (almost too hard) to compete on design and that hip elegance that’s never quite been the PC’s style.

To anchor the new fashion parade, there’s Windows 7, noticeably more attractive and thankfully speedier. If you’re interested in the main new features of Win 7, read this introduction by Ars Technica.

Commensurate with the launch of Win 7 come a bevy of beautiful machines with all sorts of radical designs. First to show off this fall was the HP Vivienne Tam clutch bag PC  (pictured above).  There is no Mac equivalent and women drool when they see it. The guts of this clutch bag sized PC are similar to HP Mini-Notes, the company’s netbook offering. Not much detail yet, but just having HP play a big part in Fashion Week was a novelty.

There was an audible gulp when Dell unveiled its Adamo XPS, an ultra-thin notebook computer that’s under a centimeter in width. That’s a pencil near the photo to give you some idea about how thin is thin.

It’s lovely to look at; more so if you’re a fan of modern minimalist anodized aluminum (it’s available, appropriately, in onyx (black) or pearl (white)). The glass screen (13.5 inches) has no framing. Edge-to-edge, it’s glass, creating a beauty of its own. After the blush was off the rose, the tech folks weighed in, pointing out that the PC felt heavier than it looked, was expensive ($1,499), and lacked an SD slot. I guess being thin has its price…both on the pocketbook and perf

ormance. For a fun read see, the Dell Adamo/MacBook Air deathmatch in PC World.

Of course, Dell had to have an “It” machine worthy of the new Adamo name. That would be the Dell Domo 13, a special collector’s version decorated with Swarovski crystals that form an intricate bejeweled snake on the laptop cover. (Word to the wise: Do not try to put this Dell in your laptop bag.) Available at Bergdorf Goodman only, my guess is that Dell contracted this one long before the recession took hold.

Dell joins OPI brand nail polish to come up with the finishes for Dell PCs available from Dell's Design Studio. No chipping, I hope.

Much more on price point, but equally decadent, is a partnership Dell announced with OPI (a nail polish brand used in most garden variety salons, whose colors I love but whose ability to stay on my hands for more than a day without chipping is lacking). Guys feeling left out? The MLB (Major League Baseball Association) announced a number of favorite team covers. (I’d think twice if I were a NY salesman going to see that client in Boston with my Yankee studded laptop.) The cases are available for Mini, Inspiron, and Studio laptops and will cost somewhere between $65 and $85 extra.

More like a netbook, but with SONY's incredible lightness of being and gorgeous styling.

Sony has built a brand on its elegant design. This year, at a crowded NYC party amidst the work of Thomas Pendelton, tattoo artists, and Cirque Berzerk (an LA based, cabaret style Cirque du Soleil), Sony announced three new VAIOs running Windows 7. Actress Mischa Barton showed up to herald three new VAIOs running Windows 7. One of the systems, the new Sony VAIO X, nudged out the Dell by a little more than an ounce to claim the title of lightest PC, but it has a 2” smaller screen so they’re not really comparable. The Sony has integrated Verizon wireless and a much heftier price tag; many observed that it’s more like a netbook than a notebook ($1,200).

Not to be outdone on color palette, Sony CW series notebooks can be outfitted with some lovely two-tone colors, and these 14-inch screen laptops start as low as $800. For more, see PC World reviews.

A pocket video recorder is the 21^st century version of pen and paper. You can whip it out, document, and then share the moments of your day. The top contenders in the pocket video space are the Flip camera and the Kodak Xi8. Flip’s got the catchier name and it captured high definition video first. But the new Kodak Xi8 has some impressive technology that gives pocket video cams a hefty sized infusion of respect and gives Kodak the momentary lead in this two-horse race. The camera will be available in September and will retail for $179, which is about $50 less expensive than the Flip Mino HD.

Kodak’s video is now full HD, which is great for playing your family movies back on high definition TV sets. But one of the features I like best is the ability to switch quickly (before you even hit record) between HD and lower resolutions like 720p or even XVGA so you can take pictures that are more appropriately sized for web or email viewing.

Other giant leaps forward include blur reduction and a special internal sensor that compensates for a shaky hand by stabilizing the image. I tested the camera in low light and the image was still sharp. The built-in microphone is improved but you can also add an external stereo microphone through the USB. Once you’ve captured the shots, a flexible USB arm pops out of the camera to transfer your video to the computer. And the camera can upload directly to YouTube, Facebook and, of course, Kodak Gallery.

A bit clunkier than the demure Flip camera, the Kodak has a larger 2.5-inch color LCD with a healthy antireflective coating so that shooting in daylight is pretty reasonable. It’s not quite as simple to use, nor as ergonomically elegant as the Flip’s, but you can watch my Carnegie Deli Pickle Eating contest (taken on the streets of NYC live) and judge for yourself.

Finds your best waking moment.

I have become my Grandmother. She was the one that spent  a bulk of each day pleasantly sleeping in front of the television. The instant she’d wake she’d fret about the fact  that she never slept.  As we age sleep problems do increase, but so does fretting about them. While I’m not my Grandma yet,  I’m now a card carrying member of the generation who can’t sleep at night. Just one more thing that technology proposes to remedy for me.

My first foray into managing sleeplessness was the SleepTracker,  a plastic, oversized, digital stopwatch type device that sells for around $170. The watch tracks your sleep patterns and serves as your alarm clock (both vibration and ringing), but with a high tech twist.

The watch can track small body movements and determine whether you are in REM sleep (the deepeet of the sleep cycles) or a lighter sleep. Because REM sleep is the deepest, most restful sleep, you’ll feel better if you’re awakened during the lighter part of your sleep cycle. When you set the SleepTracker alarm you set it for a window of wake-up opportunity. The alarm will wake you at a time during that window when you are in a lighter sleep. Theoretically you’ll wake more refreshed. 
After trying it for a week I learned that wearing a big plastic watch on my wrist at bedtime drove me nuts. I also found that monitoring obscure terms and obscure push buttons for Data 1 and Data 2 was too much to think about. Finally my sleep patterns were irregular, too irregular to provide much of a baseline. Ultimately I found myself worrying  about the  gadget enough to be losing sleep over it. 

Next up is Pzizz, a software for power napping (or getting a restful night’s sleep). According to its creators, Pzizz combines Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), music, sound effects and a binaural beat that puts you into a relaxed state of mind. Very new-agey. I really did feel more awake and energized after listening to a pzizz session, but I’m not sure I wouldn’t have felt  equally as rested if I’d just allowed myself a quick catnap minus the pzzizz and I’m to my mind computers and resting are a bit of an oxymoronic mix. The good thing about pzizz is that it gently wakes you after a specified nap time. Try the free download of pzizz soundtracks at http://pzizz.com 

The emWave Personal Stress Reliever  from HeartMath can help you sleep more restfully or do just about anything else that calls for lowering stress levels. Based on biofeedback principles that monitor your pulse, breath rate and other autonomic body indicators, , the unit sense your stress level and then you concentrate on lowering it.  It costs $199.

Light has also been known to play a big part in sleep. Back in the pre-electricity days, people went to sleep when it got dark and woke up when it wasn’t. These circadian rhythms create a natural pattern for sleeping and waking.  Most lightning solutions try to mimic circadian rhythms. There are many lighting devices designed to gently wake you by simulating daylight, but the Lamborghini of sleep devices is The Starry Night Bed  http://www.starrynightbed.com/ . This bed would feel right at home in the honeymoon suite at a hotel. It adjusts lighting and positioning depending on whether you want to read, romance or just get some shut-eye. You can program the bed’s temperature, monitor your sleeping and breathing patterns, or just entertain yourself with the bed’s  built-in  iPod docking station and Microsoft Media Center.  The bed sells for upwards of $20k; the price of a  good night’s sleep?  Priceless.

Late Breaking Update:  Here I am playing around with stopwatches while David Pogue played with his Zeo Alarm Clock as reviewed in the New York Times. His clock sits on his nightable (not his wrist) and the monitor gets stuck to his head where it measures brainwaves as he sleeps.  $400 — and lots of data to analyze if you’re really sleep obsessed.

Held in NYC this week, CEALineShows/Digital Downtown a June preview event focused on innovation and a sneak peak at the holiday season drew its share of news. Here’s what some attendees had to say.

The Geek in Chief Addresses the Crowd

Does it take to long to renew your driver’s liscense?  Is high speed bandwidth a problem in your neighborhood? Do you want to feel more secure about your privacy?  You’ve got a friend in The Whitehouse in  Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra.  He addressed the gadget-loving crowd at CEALineshows by stressing that “digitalness” of the Obama admininistration and his focus on innovation and efficiency in government.

Chopra drew accolodades from the crowd as he described technology as pivotal to much of our policy and job creation in the coming years. He covered the success of the DTV transition, the need for public/private partnerships and the proliferation of applications for a mobile world.

The nation’s first Chief Technology Officer, the audiencec reaction was something approaching the geek equivalent of American Idol.

To find out more about Mr. Chopra.

To lend your voice to the discussion of why America is falling behind in the technology infrastructure race.

Amazon announced two major partnerships: one for students and one for newspaper readers. In a partnership with three of the top five textbook publishers, trials are being held at five well-known college campuses including Princeton, Case-Western, Reed College, University of Virginia, and Arizona State. Expensive textbooks—obsolete almost before the ink dries—will be available for the Kindle. Even the most heavily formatted calculus and anatomy books look quite lovely on the Kindle display. Students will have lighter loads and clearly save money over the course of four years at over $1,000 a year in textbooks.

Not a moment too soon, three ailing newspapers—The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe—will be offering their readers special discounts on a Kindle DX when they sign up for newspaper delivery. While details haven’t been announced, it’s clear we’re talking about saving trees as well as money.

The new Kindle DX is also a more open system. It’ll read PDF files, play music, and even convert the written word into speech. It’s got enough storage to house 3,500 books and uses the same 3G wireless network to download a book in less than 60 seconds with no subscription fees or service charges.

In terms of new technology, the Kindle is only a modest upgrade—a jumbo-sized version of its former self. In terms of creating a new e-book market that serves students and newspaper readers, Amazon strikes gold. When you can purchase content and have the Kindle discounted we all win.

For more:
A website for all things Kindle: http://ireaderreview.com/2009/05/06/kindle-dx-review/

For history buffs, Stephen Levy saw it all coming in this 2007 Newsweek article http://www.newsweek.com/id/70983

:

In the Air

My first safe haven to go was the airplane. A flight was a place to read a book or watch a movie without guilt. It was a forced vacation from email and calls. Lately, I’ve been flying Virgin America, where one of the many perks is an in-flight wireless connection to the Internet. Even worse, Internet-connected flights come with an electrical outlet (and USB port) at your seat, whether it’s in first class or coach. That means you’ll never run out of juice.

Virgin Air announced its in-flight Wi-Fi in 2008. By June, it will be available on the entire Virgin fleet. The planes are outfitted with antennae that pick up the wireless signals from specially equipped cell towers as they jet across the country. Gogo-connected in-flight Internet will set you back about $12 to stay connected. For penny pinchers like me, there’s an added incentive to make every minute count and stay connected.

On my first Virgin America cross-country flight, I fought the temptation to fire up Gogo. For two hours of the five-hour flight I eyed the Gogo instructions but refused to succumb. Somewhere past Chicago and this side of the Rockies, my willpower gave out. For $12, I checked my email (mostly junk) and filed a few posts. Since the rest of the flight experience is so lacking these days, logging in is probably the best thing you can do to transport yourself out of your thirsty, hungry, and cramped self. American uses Gogo on certain of its planes. The big holdout is Continental, who, according to the Houston Chronicle, is betting that folks would rather be unconnected for a few hours.

On the Road

With connectivity in the air accomplished, I turned my sights to the road. At the New York Auto Show I drove around Manhattan in a Cadillac limousine tricked out with a Wi-Fi router in its trunk. The product/service was created by AutoNet Mobile.

You install a wireless router in the trunk of your car (a docking station lets you remove the router if you wish). Since it’s hard to maintain a good Wi-Fi connection while you’re in motion, the technology involves making sure that the signal is not dropped.

Sterling Pratz, the company’s CEO, sat in the backseat watching YouTube videos and checking out Facebook profiles. In the front seat we were listening to Pandora radio over the Caddy’s built-in HD Radio. You can connect your phone, iPod, or anything else with a Wi-Fi connection.

Car connectivity comes at a price. The router is $500 and the service starts at $29 a month. Will the kids fight in the backseat over which YouTube video to watch? Will they revert into their own Wi-Fi in-car bubble and not even look up to see the scenery? Will that precious family car time disappear, turning the car into just one more boob tube experience?

We all need to set boundaries to our connectedness, but each time I think I’ve got it under control, a new technology appears that lets me log in from some previously impenetrable space. Over-connecting may be the cyber equivalent of overeating. With overeating, one of the cures is to limit access to food. What do we do for over-connectedness?

To laptop or not to laptop, that is the question many schools are asking. Parents should take heed. More and more schools have begun to require a laptop and at younger and younger ages.

The big obstacles to schools providing one laptop per student are not trivial. Laptops cost a lot of money and can be fragile. Using laptops in school requires a commitment from the school to support the machines. They are also back-breakingly heavy for young students. (Combine most laptops with a bag full of textbooks and you’ve got a recipe for curvature of the spine.) The Hewlett-Packard 2133 Mini-Note PC is the fourth entry into a new category of sub-sized PCs made with students in mind. It isn’t Kermit-green like the OLPC XO Computer (7.3-inch screen and 3 pounds) and it’s not made of ruggedized rubber like the Intel Classmate. (The newest Classmate specifications are for a 9-inch screen, 3.3 pounds, and somewhere around $350 when it ships.) HP’s Mini-Note is about the same size as the popular ASUS Eee PC (which was never really designed for the school market). What makes the Mini-Note notable is the spit and polish that makes it a nice choice of PC for lugging to and from the classroom.

High Resolution: It’s one of the only mini-notebooks with a high-resolution screen, important for viewing graphics and multimedia.

Screen Size: The Mini-Note has an 8.9-inch screen. That’s huge in the sub-notebook world. ASUS, in contrast, has a 7-inch screen.

Full-Sized Keyboard: Despite the tiny size of the machine, it’s got a nearly full-sized keyboard. Great for small hands but not impossible for adult hands.

The Price: Starts at under $500; higher depending on configuration.

Weight: At under 2 ½ pounds, it weighs less than many textbooks and is one of the lightest in its class.

Wireless: Can connect easily in and out of school.

Rugged: An anodized aluminum case makes it less fragile.

Built to Resist Wear and Tear: Display screens are coated so they won’t scratch; the keyboard is coated so that the letters don’t rub off; the hard drive gets parked in the event of a sudden jolt.

Conferencing and Messaging: A built-in webcam (parents take heed). For more information see visit HP’s website.

With Debby Brand, a young filmmaker at my side, we set out on Manhattan’s Upper West Side to find out about people and their gadgets. Play the movie.