Lost in Manhattan: One Library and One Post Office

NYPL Battery Park City Branch
Text and photos Copyright © 2011 Stadium Circle Features

How do you lose an entire library? What happens when the postal service can't find its own post office? Just call them lost in cyberspace.

Blocks from each other in lower Manhattan is a New York Public Library (NYPL) branch that the library system's new smartphone app didn't know about and a U.S. Postal Service location that the USPS website can't find.

The NYPL recently released iPhone and Android smartphone apps that allow library users to manage their accounts, reserve books, check on fines and otherwise make good use of the library's many online resources. To use the new apps NYPL users need to register with the library's new online catalog.

The apps also provide listings of the NYPL's branches, which are spread out over Manhattan, The Bronx and Staten Island. However if you were one of the first to download the new Android NYPL app and wanted to locate the Battery Park City Library, guess what? It wasn't listed.

The listing jumped from "Allerton" to "Baychester" with nary a mention of the airy Battery Park City branch, which opened last year. 

The temporary oversight was ironic since the Battery Park City branch is one of the most cyber-friendly public libraries in the city. The branch, located at 175 North End Ave. at Murray St., offers free Wi-Fi across its two floors, 36 public computers and plenty of desks with top-mounted AC outlets for laptops.

Fortunately an update which appeared in the Android Market Wednesday addressed a number of bugs, including the branch listing, which now includes every branch, including Battery Park City.

While the updated NYPL app was able to locate its library, the recently freshened-up U.S. Postal Service website doesn't seem to know about a small, but useful Automated Postal Center (APC) site located just south of the World Trade Center site.

Nestled in a small storefront at 88 Greenwich St. is an APC location with lots of tabletop space for preparing packages and a single APC kiosk providing self-service postal services. There are many post-office-based and standalone APCs, which look like bank ATMS, scattered around the city. However, while the APC locator on the USPS.com website can locate most of them, this one is invisible.

Even if you enter "88 Greenwich St." in the box that pops up after using the "Find USPS Locations" link on the USPS website--making sure to change "Post Office Locations" to "Automated Postal Centers"--the USPS website directs you across Manhattan to a post office at One Peck Slip more than half a mile away. Other suggestions listed by the locator included an APC site across the Hudson River in Jersey City, New Jersey and another across the East River in Brooklyn. Rowboat anyone?

Will the USPS website ever deliver the 88 Greenwich St. APC? Stay tuned: I have an e-mail in to the USPS media relations office.

Text and photos Copyright 2011 

Robert S. Anthony, Stadium Circle Features

USPS.com website image Copyright 2011 USPS

World's Largest QR Code? Maybe Not, But...

Video screen above Times Square American Eagle Outfitters store.

It may not be the world's largest QR code, but it may be one of the most effective. While there are plenty of bright and flashy video screens in New York's Times Square, there aren't many that will prompt people to put aside their high-quality still and video cameras in favor of their little cameraphones.

Why? So they can snap an image of the huge QR (quick response) code which appears at regular intervals on the massive video screen of the American Eagle Outfitters store at 1551 Broadway.

These QR codes, which usually appear in somewhat smaller form in magazines, newspapers and sometimes the sides of bus stops, provide instant access to discount coupons or other assets like digital music clips, movie trailers or printed articles. As long as your smartphone has a bar code/QR code reading application--and there are many available for iPhone, Android and Blackberry phone users--you can scan the code, send it over the Internet for processing and download whatever goodie is attached to the code.

When snapped on Nov. 16, the Times Square American Eagle Outfitters QR code lead to a coupon good for 15% off its merchandise.

The L-shaped video screen section which includes the code in the photo measures roughly 79 feet wide by 44 feet tall, making it hard to miss even in the visual cacophony of Times Square. And there are 11 other sign sections in the massive structure above the store.

It was indeed amusing to watch tourists and hardened New Yorkers alike snatch their smartphones from their pockets as if they were Old West gunslingers in an effort to start their phones' code-reading apps and scan the code before it disappeared.

So what's your favorite bar code/QR code  reading app? This inquiring mind would like to know.

Photo and text Copyright 2010 Stadium Circle Features

Samsung Continuum: Tick, Tick, Tick

The ticker at the bottom can be configured to show
the date and time, the weather or other infornation.

So you're in that big meeting and you're bored stiff. You want to keep track of the calls you're missing, your e-mail and the price of that stock you just invested in, but you don't want to get caught poking at your cell phone every  other minute. For you there's the Samsung Continuum, an Android smartphone billed as the first with its own customizable "ticker."

The Continuum, the newest in the Samsung Galaxy S family of handsets with Samsung's bright, sharp Super AMOLED display, arrives at Verizon Wireless stores Nov.18 but orders will be taken starting Nov. 11. The handset will sell for $200 with a two-year service plan after a $100 rebate. The Galaxy S family has already sold three million unit since its introduction this summer, according to Kim Titus, director of public relations for Samsung Telecommunications America.

Samsung Continuum ticker in music player mode with album art

Below the Continuum's 3.4-inch main screen and four touch-sensitive Android keys (menu, home, return and search) is a thin piece of screen real estate at the very bottom set aside for a scrollable ticker. You can customize this 1.8-inch ticker so that it shows missed calls, incoming e-mail, stock prices, the weather or other bits of continuously updated information. And all you need to do get the ticker to reveal itself is to grip the handset at the bottom. Only the ticker section will come to life--the rest of the screen will remain dark, thus making it less likely that the chairman of the board will catch you checking your e-mail while the big meeting is still in progress.

Nick DiCarlo, Samsung

At a press conference in New York on Monday, Nick DiCarlo, director of product planning at Samsung Telecommunications America, said the Continuum was an example of "innovating on Android ... in a way you've never seen till now."

The point of the ticker is to allow you to get information without interrupting what you're doing on the main part of the screen. For example, if you're using your calendar app on the main screen, you can see the contents of an incoming text message in the ticker as it comes in without having to leave the calendar.

Thanks to the lightweight nature of the Super AMOLED screen technology, the Continuum is thin and light like the other handsets in the Galaxy S-family handsets. The Continuum will ship with Android 2.1, however, which means it won't be able to handle Web videos and other features built with Adobe Flash 10.1 until it receives the Android 2.2 upgrade.

The unit can function as a Wi-Fi hotspot, allowing you to link up to five other devices to the Internet through the phone. Also included is a five-megapixel digital camera with HD video capabilities, stereo Bluetooth support for wireless accessories, a standard 3.5mm headphone jack and an eight-gigabyte removable memory card--which can be swapped for media with capacities up to 32 gigabytes.

Also preinstalled is Swype, a utility which lets you spell words on the on-screen keyboard by sliding your finger from key to key without lifting your finger from the screen.

On balance, the Continuum seems to be an admirable addition to the Samsung Galaxy S family, but it remains to be seen if the ticker feature will catapult it to the head of the pack.



Text and photos Copyright 2010, Stadium Circle Features

HP Photosmart eStation: Take One ‘Tablet’ and Call Me When My Boarding Pass is Ready

All-in-one inkjet printer has a detachable Android-based color control panel which looks and acts like a tablet, but isn’t.

So what can you get in a $399 all-in-one printer in 2010? Answer: The HP Photosmart eStation, a unit with a detachable, wireless Android-based control panel. The seven-inch color touch screen offers a full Web browser and a selection of HP Web apps, including an airline app that will print your boarding pass in four clicks.

At the HP Imaging and Printing Group Innovation Summit in New York Monday, HP showed how the eStation’s panel can surf the Web without a PC and can download and print out online documents. Like other printers announced this year, the Photosmart eStation supports HP’s ePrint feature, which allows you to e-mail print jobs to the printer from any Web-connected device.

The control panel is similar in size and shape to many of the new Android-based tablets like Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, but even though it’s based on the Android 2.1 operating system, it’s not configured to act an independent tablet. 

While it does have a solid Web browser, supports multi-touch image resizing and rotates the image from portrait to landscape orientation as needed, it doesn’t have a memory card slot and it doesn’t have access to the apps in Android Market. It does, however, function as an ebook reader and to that end has access to the Barnes & Noble eBookstore. The control panel has a little more heft than some of the newer tablets but has a solid feel and proved very responsive.

Already installed in the control panel are apps for Facebook, Yahoo, the Snapfish online photo service and other websites. Also installed is a Delta Airlines app, the first of what HP representatives said would be a handful of links to airline ticketing systems. The app will allow users to print out their board passes in four clicks, HP said. The control panel will evolve over time and more apps may be added in the future, HP representatives said.

The eStation can send faxes over the Internet, thus negating the need for a telephone line, and supports two-sided printing. According to HP, the unit can generate up to 33 black and white pages or 32 color pages per minute, its scanner tops out at 1,200 by 2,400 dots per inch and the unit supports the 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi standards.

Video, photo and text Copyright 2010 Stadium Circle Features

Samsung Galaxy Tab Does Adobe Flash

During a press conference last week for the newly announced Samsung Galaxy Tab, Kevin Lynch, chief technology officer at Adobe, showed off how the Android-based tablet can do something Apple's iPad can't: Play videos, games, web tools and other online content created with Adobe Flash.

The Galaxy Tab comes with the Android 2.2 operating system--the same used on popular Android smartphones--and comes with support for Adobe Flash 10.1.

During the Samsung press event in New York, Lynch showed how the tablet handled the video-heavy Major League Baseball website and a couple of Harry Potter online games.

The Galaxy Tab will debut with AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon and a Wi-Fi-only version will be available later. The unit weighs well under a pound, has a 1GHz Hummingbird processor, 16GB of internal memory (expandable with memory cards), and a 7-inch screen.

Want to see more? My video of the Galaxy Tab in action is available at PC World.

Video and text Copyright 2010 Stadium Circle Features

PayPal App Pops Up on Droid X: You're Welcome

The PayPal mobile app showed up on Motorola's Droid X last week. And I think I might be responsible.

For months I had been wondering why PayPal's mobile application could be installed on all of the Android phones I've tested so far except Motorola's popular Droid X for Verizon Wireless. It was easy enough to find the PayPal app in the Android Market with other Android handsets, including the original Droid (left in photo), but it wouldn't show up if you searched for "PayPal" in the Android Market with the larger Droid X.

Last week PayPal held a nifty press event in New York to show off its close integration with the StubHub online ticket exchange and other sports-related services. I asked a couple PayPal representatives about the Droid X but no one knew why the PayPal app wouldn't show up on it. I followed up the next day with an e-mail and was told the matter would be looked into.

The next morning I searched for PayPal on the Droid X and, much to my surprise, it was there. It installed without a problem and is very easy to navigate on the Droid X's large, 4.3-inch display.

Kudos to PayPal for the quick action. And for those of you who may also have had the same problem: You're welcome. (I also blogged about this on PC World.)

Copyright 2010 Stadium Circle Features

Motorola Droid Lands at Verizon Wireless

You've seen the dark and stormy TV commercial teasing us about the device that's going to do all sorts of nifty things that Apple's iPhone can't. Now it's here--almost.

Motorola's Droid smartphone , the first with version 2.0 of Google's Android operating system, won't arrive at Verizon Wireless stores until November 6, but the press received a preview this week at special events in New York and elsewhere.

My first look and complete review of the Droid are up at PC World .

Let me know what you think.

Text Copyright 2009 Stadium Circle Features. Photo courtesy of Verizon Wireless.

T-Mobile myTouch 3G: Google Android Take 2

Make it work, make it mine, make it easy: Those are the three customer wishes T-Mobile aims to fulfill with its new flagship smartphone: the myTouch 3G .
The touchscreen smartphone, manufactured by HTC and based on the same Google Android operating system software as the T-Mobile G1, offers a slimmer profile than the G1 thanks to its lack of a slide-out keyboard.
Highlights of the new unit include its large library of Android applications and the multitude of ways in which it can be personalized.
"It's a very sleek device," said T-Mobile Chief Marketing Officer Denny Marie Post (above, left), who readily admitted that her 15-year-old son was instrumental in helping her set up her phone. "You feel very bold to experiment with it.... It becomes 100% you."
"This is our first, and our real big bet for 2009," said Cole Brodman, T-Mobile's chief technology and innovation officer (above, right) at the July 8 press event in New York. "The myTouch 3G is unique through and through."

Brodman said there were already 5,000 Android applications available for the myTouch 3G and the G1, including many location-aware utilities that take advantage of the GPS receivers built into the phones.

For example, Sherpa, from Geodelic Systems, can locate points of interest close to you as you move around. Clicking a restaurant button will generate icons for the closest eateries, complete with the addresses and the distances from where you are. Click on an icon and the phone searches for relevant information on the restaurant, such as menus, travel directions, cuisine and reviews.

Rahul Sonnad, founder and CEO of Geodelic, said Sherpa was first developed for PCs, but was ported to Android as the software platform gained traction.

Brodman described Sherpa as a "really unique recommendation and discovery engine. He noted that it remembers the user's preferences as it processes requests. "The more you use it, the smarter it becomes," he said.

Brodman said T-Mobile's sales force had been trained to help users set up and personalize their myTouch 3G phones. "Make it work, make it mine and make it easy," said Brodman, taking the role of a prospective customer.

Current T-Mobile customers can pre-order the myTouch 3G for $199 with a 2-year service plan. Those who order by July 28 will receive their units by Aug. 3. The unit will be available in T-Mobile stores Aug. 5. The myTouch 3G offers a 3.2-inch touchscreen, aWi-Fi adapter, a 3.2-megapixel digital camera, a digital music player with a preinstalled four-gigabyte microSD memory card and support for T-Mobile's fast 3G data network.

After few minutes of testing, the phone worked well. The touchscreen was responsive and the Web browser rendered pages fairly quickly. The on-screen keyboard, which can be set up to give tactile feedback when a key is touched, flips over to the side when the phone is held in landscape orientation.

Post said the myTouch 3G was poised to be a viable challenger to Apple's iPhone to date. Time will tell.

Text and photos Copyright 2009 Stadium Circle Features

Palm Pre: Preview to a Palm comeback?

The 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show is in full swing in Las Vegas right now (I'm not there this year) and so is the inescapable blizzard of press releases, Twitter tweets and other flashes from the show floor.

While there are plenty of nifty new devices that make good use of today's technologies, there are not many product announcements that have made a major ripple so far.

One notable exception, however, is Palm Inc.'s new Palm Pre smartphone. Like Apple's iPhone, the Pre has a touchscreen, but unlike the iPhone, it also has a slide-down QWERTY keyboard.

Palm has authored a new operating system for the new phone: Palm webOS. Like the Android software developed by Google for T-Mobile's G1 smartphone, webOS is an open platform, which bodes well for seeing nifty applications for the Pre from independent software developers.

The Pre has a 3.1-inch touchscreen, a 3-megapixel digital camera, GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a Web browser, e-mail and instant-messaging software, eight gigabytes of data space and some preinstalled applications. It will be available from Sprint later this year and support the carrier's 3G high-speed data network. No pricing has been announced yet, however.

Like any Palm device, a lot of time has been put into developing the unit's calendar and contact list applications. The phone merges data from different sources to make it easier to manage. For example, if you have the same person listed in the contact list on your computer and on your Gmail contact list, the phone will detect that it's the same person and provide just one listing for that person on the phone. The Pre can run multiple applications at once and allows you to flip quickly between them.

It's been a while since Palm has created this much buzz for a new product. The announcement of the Pre sparked a boost in Palm's stock price. It remains to be seen if this unit will have the necessary level of user-friendliness and reliability to make a dent in a market dominated by Research in Motion's Blackberry devices.

Is the Pre for you? Why or why not?

Text Copyright 2008 Stadium Circle Features

Images courtesy of Palm Inc.

T-Mobile G1: A promising disappointment

Apple's iPhone has nothing to worry about from T-Mobile's new G1. At least not at the moment.

After a week with the T-Mobile G1, the first with Google's new Android operating system, I find myself both elated and disappointed. The G1 offers some nifty features and some of the first Android applications are impressive, but the unit has enough glitches and bugs to make me think twice about using it as my primary phone -- for the moment.

A major irritation was the POP3 e-mail client, the one which allows you to add e-mail services other than Google's own Gmail, which is handled separately -- and smoothly. The e-mail software couldn't open common attachments like Microsoft Word files (the Gmail client can) and it also pulled an irritating disappearing act. 

Three times I carefully entered the details of my Prodigy/Yahoo, AOL and AT&T e-mail accounts and three times the phone ate them all, leaving me with nothing but a friendly invitation to start the e-mail setup wizard again.

Fortunately the phone defaults to a setting in which mail is never actually deleted from the server, thus allowing you to download it again later. Word to the wise: Don't change this setting. At the moment I've entered only two e-mail accounts and the G1's memory seem to be holding for the moment.

Speaking of disappearing acts: While the keyboard on the brown version (white and black are also available) of the G1 is very easy to read in bright light or in low light (thanks to backlighting), in moderate light the letters actually disappear into the silver keys as the backlighting kicks in, forcing you to tilt the phone until you can read the characters.

The contacts list is very clear and readable, but sorts entries on a person's first name. If you have a contact entry with a company name and a phone number, but no person, the entry shows up as a phone number. If your entry just has a company and an e-mail address, it shows up as "unknown." 

To be fair, the phone handles the basics well. Sound quality is good, the touch screen is responsive, the Web browser is nice, and most menus are clear and easy to activate. With Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth wireless adapters built in, the phone could be a very productive tool for a busy traveler. 

For example, the GPS, when combined with the preinstalled Google Maps Web link, makes for a handy companion for walkers. On a recent trip to a New York suburb that I was not familiar with, I was able to map my location and find a local public library -- where I wrote this blog post.

The G1's link to Amazon's digital music site was smooth and the link to YouTube worked well, except that the videos appear blocky and murky at times. The connection to T-Mobile's new 3G high-speed data network worked well when it was available, but the phone frequently reported back with "connection error" when trying to download e-mail.

The good news is that many of the phone's glitches could be resolved with software upgrades; which I hope are forthcoming. History will note that the iPhone endured a number of software updates before all of its functions stabilized.

With both a touch screen and a keyboard, the T-Mobile G1 is an impressive phone with the potential to be a true iPhone competitor. The potential is in the Android software, so keep an eye on new Android-compatible applications and tools and on how swiftly the phone's software issues are addressed with updates.

The G1 will arrive at T-Mobile stores Oct. 22. The phone will be $179 with a two-year T-Mobile contract, and of course the phone is locked to the T-Mobile service for now.

So what do you think? Let me know.

Copyright 2008 Stadium Circle Features

Photo courtesy of T-Mobile

T-Mobile G1: Android Alert!

So what's the big deal about the new T-Mobile G1 cell phone with the touch screen and flip-open keyboard? Yes it supports 3G and GPS and has a nifty flip-open, five-row keyboard, a usable trackball and a responsive touch screen, but we've seen all of this before, right?

Right. But that's OK. It wasn't the phone that was the star of Tuesday morning's well-attended T-Mobile/Google press conference in New York, it was Google's new Android phone operating system, a software platform destined to make major ripples in the smartphone market.

The difference between Android and other platforms like Microsoft's Windows Mobile, is that Android's code and software development kits (SDKs) are available free to software developers, thus allowing them to create innovative applications at a lower cost.

As the first phone to use Android, the T-Mobile G1 is temporarily in a class by itself, the only phone able to use the dozens of applications already written for Android.

Tuesday's press event was held under the Queensborough Bridge at Gustavino's, a high-ceilinged restaurant located about as far east as one can go in Manhattan without getting wet, but that didn't stop dozens of journalists from piling in for a first look at the new phone and operating system.

The phone features a 3.2-inch display, a 3.2-megapixel camera, a microSD card slot (a one-gigabyte card is included) and Bluetooth 2.0 wireless networking support.

One nifty Android application is ShopSavvy, a utility that allows you to scan product barcodes with the G1's camera, send the data over the Internet, and get a list of stores that sell that product. Thus you could walk into Store A, check the price of a product on the shelf, scan the bar code and have the phone report back with prices for the same product at other stores.

Of course Google applications and services such as Gmail, Google Calendar, YouTube and Google Maps are fully supported by the T-Mobile G1.

The phone, while offering a partially iPhone-like experience, does not aim to be a direct competitor in all aspects. It has no headphone jack and can't handle protected iTunes files, although it can play MP3s and other music formats.

As the last big cell phone carrier in the U.S. to build out a third-generation (3G) data network, T-Mobile now has a trendy phone that makes good use of it. It supports T-Mobile's HSDPA and EDGE data networks and has Wi-Fi support as well. It can even switch between Wi-Fi and the data networks depending on where the better throughput is.

The T-Mobile G1 costs $179 with a two-year service agreement. An unlimited data plan with 400 free messages is $25 per month. For $35 per month, both Web access and messaging are unlimited. The G1 will be available Oct. 22, but can be preordered now.

For more information, see the T-Mobile G1 Web site.

Text and last photo Copyright 2008 Stadium Circle Features

Other graphics courtesy of T-Mobile and Google.