Download language lessons, maps, tours

Brad Frenette
Province

The iPod is fast becoming a popular accessory among leisure travellers. No wonder. It can store itineraries and reminders, and act as a storage system for digital photos.

But it can do much more than that. From displaying subway maps to acting as a potential power supply, the iPod has become an essential carry-on item. Here are some of its uses on the road:

– For the wide-eyed tourist arriving in new surroundings, early mastery of the transit system is crucial. At ipodsubwaymaps.com, you can download iPod-ready transit information, from the easily navigated (Salt Lake City) to the baffling (Tokyo). And between station stops, you can brush up on a few local phrases by downloading language podcasts such as japanesepod101.com and frenchpodclass.com.

– In addition to changing the way many people listen to radio, podcasts have emerged as a way of obtaining travel information. Travel podcasts provide destination overviews, often narrated by locals or expert travellers.

Lonely Planet offers a number of free travelcasts, with more being added all the time (lonelyplanet. com/podcasts). At about 20 minutes each, they won’t give you a full education on areas as diverse as Krakow and the Yucatan, but they do pack in the kind of off-trail tips the company has made it’s name on.

Virgin Atlantic airline has also got into the business of podcasting (virginatlantic.loudish.com), offering information on destinations it services, including Cape Town, Shanghai, New York and London.

– Then there’s touring. Many tourists looking for a more intimate look at a new place join a walking tour, hop on a sightseeing bus or rent an audioguide at a museum. But you can sidestep the crowds and save some hard-exchanged currency by visiting one of the many free websites that offer MP3 tours.

The Dublin tourism board, for example, provides self-guided audio walking tours, dubbed iWalks. At podguides.net, free photo-enhanced podcasts describe a small but interesting range of locales. The site also offers detailed tutorials.

For a wider assortment, turn to paid downloads from sites like antennaaudio.com, which specializes in audio tours of world museums, and ijourneys.com, which focuses on Old World Europe.

Perhaps the most impressively produced of the paid download sites is soundwalk.com, which provides “audiotours for people who normally don’t take audio tours.” As far as audio tours go, these are the big-budget blockbusters. Set to an atmospheric soundtrack, actors, writers and other experts take you through cities and neighbourhoods. Their selection is eclectic, varying from a Hasidic walk of Brooklyn to a PhD-guided stroll through Varanasi, India’s City of Lights. And for the active traveller, Soundwalk has paired with Puma to offer guided running tours of famous green spaces, including Central Park in New York, London’s Hyde Park and the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, among others.

– Now that your iPod has guided you through the sights and splendours on your trek, what more could you expect from it? How about a cure for those knapsack-wrinkled clothes? With the iRon, U.S. company Gear4 has created a portable iron that attaches to your iPod, using its battery as a power source. It comes equipped with a bonus feature: The iRon lets off steam blasts to the beat of the MP3s being played on the iPod.

Look for content to expand and become more interactive as iPod use continues to boom among travellers. According to MacWorld.co.uk, Apple has been in talks with in-flight entertainment providers to make their iTunes service available at 35,000 feet.

The sky, it would seem, is not the limit.

© The Vancouver Province 2006

Project sees cellphones ‘as part of your entertainment system’

Bruce Constantineau
Sun

To Leora Kornfeld, a cellphone is a remote control, and Greater Vancouver is an integrated entertainment system.

The co-founder of Vancouver-based Ubiquity Interactive envisions a day when city tourists will visit an attraction like the Gassy Jack statue or Stanley Park totem poles, call a local number, and receive an entertaining, thought-provoking commentary.

The vision already exists on a smaller scale, with Ubiquity providing that service — called MetroCode — for more than 20 sculptures currently on exhibit as part of the 18-month Vancouver Sculpture Biennale. Callers using the service can also vote for their favourite sculpture and leave their own voice comments.

“A cellphone is usually a device that’s only used to make calls, or dodge calls. But our project re-imagines the cellphone as a part of your entertainment system,” Kornfeld said in an interview. “We see a cellphone as being like a mouse or a remote control that allows you to click on things around you and get the information you want.”

Vancouver personalities Ellie Harvie and Richard Side provide the voices for MetroCode, giving information about the artists’ inspiration, along with their background and technique — essentially providing the tools for people to experience self-guided tours. Callers simply dial 604-638-2661, and then a combination of digits provided at particular locations to access the commentary.

The MetroCode pilot project is being funded with federal money as part of a Vancouver-based, industry-driven research initiative called Mobile MUSE (Media-rich Urban Shared Experience), which has a pool of about $2 million in seed money. The calls themselves are free, for now, although local charges still apply according to various cellphone plans.

Kornfeld, a former CBC radio host who founded Ubiquity in 2002 with Lars Meyer, plans to expand the service in the fall by signing up commercial clients who want to use MetroCode as a marketing and advertising vehicle.

“We want to place [number] codes on attractions like posters, public art, restaurants and various other businesses,” she said. “People will phone and get text messaged back with more information or even have video clips sent to their phone.”

Kornfeld said the long-term vision is to develop MetroCode as a tourist product for the entire city by 2010.

“People who visit Vancouver for a few days might want to take a tour of Gastown or Queen Elizabeth Park or whatever, and they’ll be able to buy the tours in an a-la-carte fashion,” she said.

Ubiquity Interactive created a personal-digital-assistant product last year called VUEguide — launched at the University of B.C. Museum of Anthropology — that allows users to carry a handheld multimedia guide to obtain information about museum exhibits at their own pace while on self-guided tours.

The self-guided-tour concept is expected to be expanded throughout Greater Vancouver this summer when SkyTrain introduces headsets that tourists will be able to rent so they can hear a guided commentary about the history of certain parts of the Lower Mainland — including New Westminster and Gastown.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

Lowell Conn
Province

Talk about a hot piece of CARgo.

Samsung’s new Ultra Mobile PC — enigmatically named the Origami — completely sold out at Best Buys across North America on its first day of release.

A mobile PC, the Origami operates off the Microsoft Windows platform and features full computing

power capable of playing music, checking e-mail and viewing video while on the go.

The device can be mounted in the vehicle and features GPS and WiFi capabilities. Sporting a seven-inch (17.78- centimetre) screen alongside the 900-mhz Intel Celeron M processor, it arrives with 512 megabytes of memory.

Outrageously good initial sales aside, the Origami has launched to a bit of a collective yawn from critics.

But it’s very cool and very mobile.

Unfortunately, hoity-toity critics sometimes lose sight of how important the cool factor can be.

It list for about $1,210.

Visit www.bestbuy.com

© The Vancouver Province 2006

 

$25 gizmo fits any sliding door or window

Gillian Shaw
Sun

Robert Allen was working on his two jobs as a journeyman carpenter and a deputy fire chief when he stumbled across a home security idea that has catapulted his company’s flagship product onto the shelves of Wal-Mart.

Driving away from work on a housing development, Allen could easily see which patio windows were unlocked. Since sliding windows and doors are a favoured entry point for thieves, he decided to come up with a new twist on the old trick of protecting homes with a stick jammed in a door’s sliding tracks

The result is the Window Stick, a $25 gizmo that can be made to fit any size sliding door or window even allowing them to be left open a few inches. It jams the door and scares off intruders who try to dislodge it by emitting a piercing alarm.

It has proven its worth.

A Chilliwack couple Joanne and Robert Field woke up to the alarm one night and found a thief trying to get into their bedroom through the sliding glass door.

The thief had already reached a hand in to turn off the security light that was supposed to warn away intruders and was preparing to push the door open enough to slip in when the noise scared him off.

The Fields like to leave the sliding door slightly open when they are sleeping and when they saw the Window Stick at the home show, they decided to try it out. It was barely three months later when the Stick was put to the test.

Police tried to track the would-be thief with a dog but he escaped. A neighbor’s SUV was broken into the same night.

Allen has given up his day job as a firefighter in Errington, just west of Parksville on Vancouver Island, sold his carpentry business and mortgaged his Vancouver Island home to pursue his venture.

A recent test market with Wal-Mart was so successful that the retail giant is selling the Window Stick across Canada. The first order went out the week before last and Allen has high hopes for sales.

“We did a five store test market on Vancouver Island and sales were a lot higher than projected,” he said.

With the vast majority of windows in North America of the slider type, Allen expects demand will only climb. The Window Stick is adjustable and doesn’t require any tools for installation. It operates on a mini-12-volt battery, the same type used in garage door openers and Allen recommends they be tested annually, just as you would test smoke alarms.

So far his three-person company — that includes his wife Jackie and a business partner Ray Therrien — have 10,000 Window Sticks in their inventory. Manufacturing now takes place in China.

“We tried for a year-and-a-half to manufacture in North America but we couldn’t get the cost down,” said Allen. “We tried locally, we tried the U.S., we tried Mexico.

“We just could not compete. It would have been at least double the cost; it would have been a $56 product in Canada.”

The Window Stick comes in two sizes, at the same price of $29.95 on the www.windowstick.com Web site which includes shipping, for both sizes. In Wal-Mart stores, the price is $24.78.

Like any business start up, it’s a bit of a gamble and while the future is looking rosy for the Window Stick, Allen isn’t taking it for granted.

“So far it has been great, the support and response has been just fantastic. Now we just have to get it out there so people will have the opportunity to protect their homes and their families.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Motorola Q due out May 31

Bloomberg
Province

Motorola Inc., the world’s second-largest maker of mobile phones, said it will release May 31 its Q phone and e-mail device designed to challenge the BlackBerry.

Verizon Wireless will sell the Q for $199.99 after a $100 rebate with a two-year wireless agreement, Motorola said.

The Q phone, being released two months behind schedule, represents Chief Executive Officer Ed Zander’s effort to crack the dominance of Waterloo, Ont.-based Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry and tap burgeoning demand for phones that also act as e-mail devices and day planners. That market may grow ninefold to 52 million users by 2010, according to FTN Midwest analyst Ben Bollin.

“The Q packs a lot of wallop and we expect to sell a lot of them,” said Zander, refusing to provide sales targets.

Research In Motion plans to add cameras and music players to the BlackBerry to counter competition from Motorola and larger rival Nokia Oyj. Research In Motion last month said it has almost five million subscribers and expects to add 675,000 by June 3.

The Q will run on Windows Mobile 5.0, an operating system from Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software company.

Zander, 59, aims to appeal to both business clients and professional people.

“You have to go with the software that has volume, and for the enterprise market today, that’s Microsoft,” he said.

Motorola was scheduled to release the Q before the end of March. On April 18, Zander said they were “very close” to the release. He didn’t give reasons for the delay.

The company now plans to further develop the phone and add more versions within the next two years, he said.

Research In Motion last year had 75 percent of the so-called smartphone market, compared with Motorola’s one per cent, said Bollin, a Boston-based analyst. By 2010, Motorola may increase its share to 15 percent and Research In Motion might fall to 52 percent, said the firm.

Zander is relying on sales of new higher-priced phones, including the Q, to help reach his goal of increasing operating margins.

© The Vancouver Province 2006

 

Joanne Blain
Sun

Think you’ll get the jump on other home buyers by checking the Internet for new listings a couple of times a day?

Not likely.

In the Lower Mainland’s overheated real-estate market, it’s not unheard-of for choice properties to be snapped up even before they hit public real-estate search sites.

But a new web-based service lets buyers get detailed information on new listings at the same time agents see it — up to two days before it shows up on other search sites.

For prospective buyers like Elizabeth Armour, that’s an “exponential” advantage. She was frustrated in her search for a condo because “every time I found something suitable, there were three or four offers on it.”

But she now has a deal pending on a Whalley condo she found through the service, called Virtual Office Websites or VOW.

The service is free to browsers, but they have to sign up for it through one of the more than 200 real-estate agents in the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley who currently subscribe to it.

“It basically allows the public access to market information that traditionally only realtors have had access to,” says Ray Giesbrecht of MyRealPage.com, which markets the service. “This is democratizing the process, for lack of a better word.”

Before it was introduced in the Lower Mainland about six months ago, buyers who were not working with an agent were limited to surfing on mls.ca or realtylink.org, the public sites run by the Canadian Real Estate Association and the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.

Both those sites post new listings about 48 hours after agents see them — a time lag created to give buyers an incentive to work with an agent, which varies in length from one real-estate board to another. And the information they provide is far more limited than agents receive — it doesn’t list things like room dimensions, for example, or the number of days the home has been on the market.

But buyers who sign up on a Virtual Office Website — which they will find on an individual agent’s site by clicking on a “for clients only” or “become a new client” tab — can get virtually all the information that an agent sees on a new listing, with no built-in delay. And they don’t even have to directly contact the agent to use the service.

Of course, that’s not the goal for agents, who pay a $145 set-up fee for the service, plus $45 a month. They hope browsers who sign up for the service will eventually become clients.

Leslie Titus of HomeLife Benchmark Titus Realty in Cloverdale has been using the service for about two months and says she has already signed up new clients as a direct result.

Armour is one of them. She wasn’t quite sure what the service was when she stumbled across it on Titus’s website, but she was pleased to discover it would let her search for very specific things — only top-floor condos with a master bedroom large enough to accommodate her furniture.

She was happy to be able to shop for prospects on her own and called Titus only when she found what she was looking for. “I found it, I called her and I said ‘I want to see it ASAP.’ “

Marion Patrick of Re/Max Crest Realty Westside says it’s particularly useful for people “who are just putting their toe in the water” of the real-estate market and aren’t yet ready to contact an agent.

Signing up for the service does give agents a prospective buyer’s contact information. But both Patrick and Titus say they’re happy to let lookie-loos browse away, with the hope that would-be buyers will turn to them when they get serious about finding a property.

But aren’t some real-estate agents worried that buyers won’t even need an agent if they can get immediate access to virtually all relevant information on a new listing?

Titus says she didn’t have qualms about that. Most buyers still want an agent to represent them when they are negotiating a home purchase. “They still need us to set up appointments and take them around.”

Rick Valouche, president of the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, agrees that most buyers will at some point want to work directly with an agent. “Nothing is ever going to replace that face-to-face interaction.”

Valouche also points out that buyers who work directly with a real-estate agent have long been able to get many of the advantages the Virtual Office Website offers.

Agents have the option of registering their clients on the realtor-only MLS website, so that prospective buyers can receive immediate notification of properties that meet their search criteria, and with the same detailed information agents receive. They cannot, however, search the site on their own.

Giesbrecht says Virtual Office Websites have been somewhat controversial because they give buyers information they used to be able to get only from agents.

But agents like Patrick say fears about the new service are just as unwarranted as initial concerns about public search sites like mls.ca and realtylink.org.

“I remember when properties were first available online, some agents said ‘oh, they’ll never use us now,’ ” she says. “They use us more now.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

Kevin Maney
USA Today

DULLES, Va. — AOL is close to unveiling a voice-over-Internet service, based on its AIM instant messenger, that would give any AIM user a local phone number for free.

Dubbed AIM Phoneline, the free number would only allow for incoming calls from any phone.

Still, it’s the first offer of a free number. To get a number that can be called on Skype costs about $4 a month.

An upgraded version, AIM Phoneline Unlimited, will cost $14.95 a month for calls to all local and long-distance numbers and 30 foreign countries. Calls must be made with a headset plugged into a computer and logged onto AIM through a broadband connection. AOL plans to launch the service in the top 50 U.S markets in late May.

“We think this is a pretty disruptive offering,” says John McKinley, AOL’s president, digital services. AOL believes it can get a younger generation of AIM’s 80 million users to consider only having a cellphone and an AIM phone, instead of paying for a traditional phone.

But success is far from assured. AIM use declined 13% to 47.6 million users from March 2005 to March 2006, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. And AIM Phoneline joins a number of voice-over-Internet (VoIP) offerings trying to win customers, including Skype and cable companies. Comcast’s phone offering costs $40 a month, and CEO Brian Roberts says Comcast has signed up 1.5 million customers.

Talk features on instant messagers have been around on AIM, Yahoo, MSN and Google Talk. But McKinley says AIM’s is more robust, with a phone number, 911 service and other features:

• It will be integrated with AIM and AOL e-mail. A dial-pad will drop down at the bottom of the AIM Buddy List. Voice mail, also free, will show up as an e-mail with a link to click to hear the message.

• AIM callers will get a reputation score. Users can click to tell the system if a caller is, say, an annoying telemarketer. That telemarketer will get a bad rep, which will show up whenever that caller dials. You can then choose to ignore the call.

Analyst Charlene Li at market tracker Forrester Research thinks the young AIM crowd will be very receptive. “Who wouldn’t want a free phone number?” she says.

The service is part of a big bet AOL is making on AIM. Also this month, it will roll out AIM Pages — a direct broadside on MySpace. If someone on your AIM Buddy List has an AIM Page you’ll get an alert whenever that person adds something to it. One click takes you to it.

Byron Acohido
USA Today

SEATTLE — Look out Google  and Yahoo, Microsoft  is getting very serious about search.

The software giant rented Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners, Thursday night to fete 700 online advertisers. The party capped two days of hard-sell pitches, including celebrity testimonials from hip-hop impresario Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter and British advertising mogul Martin Sorrell.

The pitch: Buy more MSN Search ads. Yet Microsoft’s search engine drives just 13.2% of online searches, trailing Yahoo’s 28% and Google’s 43%, according to ComScore Media Metrix. What MSN Search lacks in eyeballs, it intends to make up in cool tech tools — and an ambitious strategy to extend search and search ads into free e-mail, instant messaging and online video games.

“It’s a pretty holistic strategy,” says Kevin Lee, chairman of search marketing firm Did-it. “They understand all those locations can stimulate new search activity.”

The company officially launched AdCenter, a system that lets advertisers bid to have their ads displayed alongside search results. AdCenter is modeled after Google’s highly successful AdSense and a similar system used by Yahoo.

Microsoft knows it has to do more than merely match its rivals. So it has dispatched hundreds of researchers to redefine search and online advertising. One project seeks to give PC users the ability to click on an image of a celebrity’s dress and get whisked to a website that sells the dress.

Other projects are investigating ways to deliver extensive demographic profiles to online advertisers.

“Search is truly in its infancy, and we have so many plans to innovate for consumers and advertisers,” says Karen Redetzki, an MSN product manager.

Microsoft is loath to let Google and Yahoo dominate an online advertising market that Forrester Research projects will grow from $11.9 billion this year to $18.9 billion by 2010.

As that market gels, and as online advertising prices rise, “Then some of the neat things that Microsoft is in a unique position to offer may make a difference,” says Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Watch.

Still, scores of past Microsoft initiatives to diversify have fizzled. And getting consumers and advertisers to break their Google and Yahoo habits won’t be easy.

“Why switch if what you’re currently using isn’t broken?” says tech reviewer Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome. “I’m not going to switch to another advertising network unless I know my returns will be greater than what they currently are.”

USA Today

NEW YORK (Reuters) — Microsoft  has held discussions to buy a stake in Internet media company Yahoo  to compete against Google, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Although talks over an equity stake do not appear to be active, Microsoft’s top management remains open to a deal with Yahoo as pressure grows from shareholders to perform better against Google, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the situation.

Microsoft and Yahoo have discussed possible options over the past year, the newspaper said. Microsoft could sell its MSN online network to Yahoo and take a minority stake in the Internet portal, it said.

Microsoft declined to comment on the report and a representative from Yahoo could not immediately be reached.

Last year, Microsoft had been negotiating to strike a partnership with Time Warner’s AOL Internet unit, but was shut out when Google agreed to invest in a 5% stake in the AOL. Microsoft had been in talks with AOL to use its search technology, which would have given the software giant’s fledgling paid-search business a big boost.

Microsoft’s earnings outlook last week fell well short of Wall Street expectations, as the company signaled more investments for its software services business.

Analysts said Microsoft planned to spend an additional $2 billion in the coming fiscal year starting July 1, speculating that much of that investment would go toward building an ad-supported online service business.

Shares of Microsoft were down 33 cents, or 1.4%, at $23.66 on the Nasdaq while Yahoo was up $1.01, or 3.2%, at $32.86.

Municipal Wi-Fi would allow you to read e-mail from a park bench or download a tune in your car

Roberto Rocha
Sun

MONTREAL – After years of development and debate, wireless networks in major cities are here to stay.

Like the 911 emergency phone service a generation ago, the new it-thing for cities is wireless Internet access that blankets large parts of town.

Picture denizens blithely reading e-mail, downloading music and doing online banking from park benches or the passenger seat of a car, snatching their Internet connections from radio waves in the air.

Though municipal Wi-Fi (short for Wireless Fidelity) has existed for some years in small scales, its popularity is now higher than ever. The number of U.S. cities and counties with wide-scale networks is 193 and rising, according to the Wi-Fi news site muniwireless.com.

Today, cities are dreaming big — some, like San Francisco, want free access for all within city limits.

The rush to go wireless is part populism, part cost-cutting, depending on the model. While some cities ballyhoo Wi-Fi blankets as the miracle cure to the digital divide — the lack of access to information technology in the lower classes — others simply want to make city government more efficient.

Both models are right, says Ellen Daley — an analyst with Forrester Research, a technology research firm — but few have struck the right balance.

“City-wide Wi-Fi networks aren’t well-proven yet,” she said. “We’re seeing some hype now, but next year we’ll see the reality. It may not be a good idea for all cities after all.”

Municipal Wi-Fi makes sense if a city wants to reduce its communication costs. Workers can talk on voice-over Internet phones and save on cellular bills. Police can file their reports remotely rather than having to return to their stations all the time.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006