Planet Technology

Amazon's Kindle electronic book reader costs $359--but you can't get one until at least February. Sony's PRS-700BC costs $399--also pretty darn costly. But Foxit Software will soon begin shipping an eBook reader that costs only slightly more than half what Sony's reader does.

The eSlick will sell for $229 when it first goes on sale in January from Foxit's site (and eventually in retail stores), then for $259 afterward. It is about the size of a medium paperback, but at 0.4 inches, it's much thinner. Its 6-inch, 600-by-800-pixel "electronic paper" screen is made by the same company that makes the Kindle's; it has the same easy-on-the-eyes, grayscale reflective screen (light is reflected off of words and images on the screen, rather than blasted at you with a backlight). You can resize text, and the device will reflow your document (rather than simply magnifying what's on the screen). Those are all features that make the Kindle such a great device on which to read books, magazines, blogs, etc.

Available in black, gray, or white, the device will have 128MB of internal memory, plus USB and an SD Card slot (it'll come with a 2GB card, too). Because its screen draws very little power, battery life should be extremely long; Foxit says it'll go for 8,000 page turns between recharges; it recharges via either USB or an included AC adapter. It uses an embedded Linux operating system, too.

However, at least in its initial version, the eSlick won't have wireless connectivity, so you won't be able to sync newspapers or blogs unless you convert them first on a PC (using included PDF conversion software, which Foxit is better known for) and copy them over manually. It'll read PDFs and text files, and you can convert any printable document for viewing using the PC-based software. You can download digital books, of course, from online libraries and eBook stores, and transfer them to the eSlick.

You can also play MP3s on the eSlick; it has a headphones port and ships with a set of headphones. Foxit says it anticipates adding wireless, an even better screen, and/or perhaps content syncing in a manner similar to AvantGo at some point in the future.

But until then, the question is whether you'd be okay with firing up your computer in the morning, culling your own content, converting it to a eSlick-readable format, and transferring it yourself. At least that process is free; automatic newspaper delivery to a Kindle costs at least $10 per month--each. Blogs cost $1 to $2 per month--each. At least with the eSlick, you don't have to email your own documents to yourself, as you must with the Kindle.

I like reading electronic books, and doing so on a lightweight device that I don't have to hold open, without eyestrain, would be a great thing. For books and my own documents, it doesn't matter whether the device I use has wireless capability, so if that's your anticipated use, the eSlick might be a great inexpensive alternative to the Kindle.

But I think the Kindle--as expensive as it and its subscriptions are, and as flawed as it is (in its initial version)--set the ground rules for this kind of device. I'm too cheap to pay its multiple monthly subscriptions, but with the way that newspaper outfits are going, we may all be forced into reading the news on Kindle or Kindle-like devices one day very soon.

The scoop: Hava Titanium HD WiFi, by Monsoon Multimedia.

What it is: Like the Slingbox, the Hava Titanium HD WiFi device connects to a video source like a TV or DVD player and your home broadband network. Once connected, you can watch the TV content on a PC or notebook over a LAN via the included Hava Player software, or over the Internet. The device includes an 802.11g wireless USB dongle to connect to your home wireless network, or you can plug in directly via Ethernet. An additional USB port lets you connect a USB hard drive, which can then act as its own digital video recorder (DVR) for recording and saving TV content (you can also save programs on the computer that runs the player software). The system includes composite (RCA), component (high-def) and S-video inputs for different video sources.

Why it's cool: Unlike the Slingbox, which requires an Ethernet or powerline network connection, this Hava model includes the ability to transmit TV content over a wireless (802.11g) network. Monsoon Multimedia says that an 802.11n dongle is coming soon, making it easy to swap out to upgrade the system. The Hava Player software is very sleek, providing an easy way to change channels via a pop-up remote control that looks just like the one you have at home, and the ability to resize the picture window very easily. This model is about $50 cheaper than the Slingbox Pro-HD model, with similar features and functions.

Testing the system over the Internet, I was able to achieve streaming at about 375Kbps, which wasn't bad considering the upload bandwidth from my home is under 1Mbps on a good day. I got a few stops and stutters on the video, and the picture quality was decent.

Some caveats: The worst part of the system was trying to set up the wireless dongle. A convoluted process has you connecting manually to the dongle's SSID via a wireless notebook, then configuring it to conform to your existing wireless network. Jumping between different wireless networks is a hassle, especially if you use third-party wireless LAN configuration software (although the Windows XP configuration tool isn't a party either). An easier way to do this would have been to let you transfer your wireless settings to the USB dongle via the PC's USB port, after which you could then connect the dongle to the Hava system. In addition, I wasn't able to configure the system via my wired PC, although Monsoon says it is working on fixing that problem. I was able to watch the TV content from my wired PC once the wireless dongle was configured correctly.

Firewall settings changes were also needed in order to allow for a USB hard drive to be connected to the system, adding additional difficulty to the setup of the system.

Bottom line: If you really need a wireless transmission of your TV content (not supported by the Slingbox), as well as the ability to store content on an external USB hard drive and burn it to a DVD, this device is worth a look. The wireless configuration process needs a lot of improvement in order for regular users to get up and running quickly. Once configured, the device is nice -- just getting it all working can curb your enthusiasm.

Sling Media, makers of the TV place-shifting Slingbox, will finally release its BlackBerry application for 3G- and Wi-fi -enabled BlackBerry devices on December 30.

The new application, called Slingplayer Mobile, allows you to watch and control your own TV and DVR remotely via the Internet. The application is currently in public beta and only available to customer in the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

When Sling announced the application in early January its projected price was $30, so you should expect a similar price tag once the app comes out of beta.

To use the BlackBerry app, you will need a Slingbox at home enabled for remote viewing, and one of several BlackBerry models with updated software (log on via your BlackBerry browser to http://mobile.slingmedia.com/go/bbcheck to confirm readiness).



If you don't see your model, don't worry; Sling says it is working on expanding Slingplayer Mobile to other devices in the near future. Here's what's available for the trial:

· BlackBerry Bold

· BlackBerry Curve 8900

· BlackBerry 8820

· BlackBerry Curve 8320

· BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220

· BlackBerry Pearl 8120

You can also create and manage a list of favorites with Slingplayer Mobile. To use the feature you also need a Windows PC with Sling Media Player 2.0 or later, and a broadband connection with a minimum upload stream of 256 Kb per second in addition to your mobile device. If you're a Mac or Linux user, you can still view use the application for viewing, but you won't have access to the favorites feature.

Samsung will roll out a mobile phone based on the Google Android operating system by the second quarter of 2009, according to a report from Korean news agency ETNews. While details are sketchy, Samsung will reportedly release the phone via cellular carriers Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile.

The phone will likely be a touchscreen model similar to Samsung's Instinct and Omnia handsets, both of which more closely resemble the Apple iPhone than HTC's less sleek T-Mobile G1, currently the only Google Android phone on the market. Samsung's device will provide all the Google essentials we'd expect, include search, mapping, mail, and instant messaging, the report states, but it's a safe bet that other Google tools will be added as well.

It would appear that Samsung has high hopes for its Google phone. It has reportedly "accelerated" development of the project, adding 30 Linux and Java experts to a design team that now has up to 80 members. It seems likely that Samsung will beat other Open Handset Alliance members to market, including Asus, LG, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson, all of whom have Android-based projects in the works.

The growing interest in the Android OS, as well as the staggering popularity of the iPhone, which now commands over 30 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, is more bad news for Microsoft's Windows Mobile, which is declining in popularity among end users and phone manufacturers alike.

Let's hope the Samsung handset will borrow some of the iPhone's elegance, but a slide-out keyboard would be nice too.

How did Sony's PlayStation 3 solve an astrophysics puzzler? Easy: With a pallet full of sleek sable doppelgangers crunching the interstellar math in tandem.

Put that another way, what do you get when you take not one, not four, not eight, but sixteen PS3s and chain them together like some crazy video game test center configuration for extremely lucky children? Simple: The relatively affordable power to answer the question "At what speed to vibrating black holes stop vibrating?"

Scientists at The University of Alabama in Huntsville and the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, have done just that by harnessing the computing muscle of 16 PS3s running in a homebrew supercluster they've aptly dubbed the "PS3 Gravity Grid." Total cost? Around $6,000.

That's a deal if you speak supercomputerese. According to Dr. Lior Burko, an assistant physics professor at The University of Alabama, using PS3s instead of renting CPU hours at the National Science Foundation's TeraGrid or the Alabama Supercomputing Center was about cost plus run-time flexibility. "If we had rented computing time from a supercomputer center it would have cost us about $5,000 to run our simulation one time," said Burko. "For this project we ran our simulation several dozens of times to test different parameters and circumstances, so you can see how much that would have cost us."

Pairing the 16 PS3s was apparently straightforward enough that University of Massachusetts Dartmouth physics professor Gaurav Khanna, who built the cluster, recently threw together an open source do-it-yourself PS3Cluster Guide for the budding (not to mention profligate) PS3 supercomputing wannabe. What you need: Fedora 8, a USB memory stick, a USB keyboard, and a store that actually has 16 PS3s in stock. An actual scientific purpose helps, too.

Speaking of, what's the deal with black holes vibrating? I thought they just ate stuff, like in the 1979 Disney movie with the pre-Super-Mario Goomba-robot thing.

Turns out they can actually vibrate after forming...or chomping on something.

"Think of a bell," said Burko. "A bell rings, but eventually it gets quiet. The energy that goes out with the sound waves is energy that the bell is losing. A black hole does exactly that in gravitational waves instead of sound waves. A black hole that is wobbling is emitting gravitational waves. When those vibrations die down you get a quiet black hole."

Using the PS3 cluster, the physics-on-a-shoestring science team simulated a black hole, "perturbed" it, then measured the point at which it settled back to its "quiet" state.

(Disclaimer: The chances of a PS3 supercluster spawning a micro black hole that plummets to the center of the planet and slowly devours the earth are probably pretty slim.)