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

Sprint Echo: One Phone, Two Screens, But Just 3G

The Echo by Kyocera for Sprint is exactly what it looks like: An Android smartphone with two screens instead of one. Does the extra screen improve your productivity or does it just suck battery power? Yes. But that's OK: Batteries (two of them) are included.

Sprint Echo by Kyocera

The Echo was unveiled Monday at a glitzy event in New York which featured the magic of David Blaine. While the phone lacks smoke or mirrors, it does feature a specially designed hinge that allows it to snap quickly from single- to dual-screen mode.

The Kyocera unit's dual 3.5-inch touch displays can be used in tandem or separately in either portrait or landscape orientation. The phone will sell for $199 after a $100 rebate with a two-year plan.

The unit is only a 3G phone, however, and can't use Sprint's ultra-fast 4G network. It can, however, serve as a Wi-Fi hotspot for a notebook or other wireless networking device.

During the press event Sprint representatives demonstrated how the Echo's screens can be used to run separate applications in each screen or run a single app that spans both screens. When reading e-mail, for example, you can read the e-mail summary in one window and read the full e-mail text in the other. You could also, for example, open your Twitter account in one window and peek at Facebook in the other.

The phone can also run games, as Sprint representatives demonstrated as they showed off a version of The Sims that took advantage of both screens (see video below).

As for the specs, the phone comes with Android version 2.2, a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, an 8GB removable memory card (up to 32GB cards supported), Bluetooth 2.1 support for wireless headsets and other devices, and a five-megapixel camera with support for 720p HD video.

Due to the power demands of the dual 800-by-480-pixel screens, the phone comes with two 1,370 mAh batteries and an external battery charger that can connect to the phone, thus allowing you to charge both batteries at once. As for battery life, neither Sprint nor Kyocera mention this prominently on their product pages, so you'd be advised to keep the batteries charged and the charger handy.

At 6.8 ounces and two-thirds of an inch thick, the unit is both thicker and heavier than the original Motorola Droid with the slide-out keyboard (6 ounces, half-inch thick). In other words, the unit has a bit of heft to it and will definitely fill out a shirt pocket.

Like Acer's Iconia dual-screened notebook, it remains to be seen if two screens are better than one or if they just make the folks at Con Edison smile.



Text and video Copyright 2011 Stadium Circle Features

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

The Lost Smartphone: An ID Thief's Dream

Where's your smartphone? Did it fall out of your pocket or did you leave in that rental car?

If you did those cameraphone photos from the bachelor party might be the least of your worries. With a wealth of personal information and possible application links to things like your bank accounts and your personal schedule, today's smartphones offer lots of data that would be valuable to an ID thief.

So what can you do to protect your data? Add-on applications like tenCube's WaveSecure can protect your phone even when it's out of your hands. Take a look at my latest piece in PC World for more information. And let me know what you think.

Copyright 2010 Stadium Circle Features

Samsung Galaxy S: Shining Star on Smartphone Horizon

With the introduction of the Samsung Galaxy S smartphone at a lavish launch event in New York this week, Samsung claims the lead in smartphone display technology. So how nice is the 4-inch, Super AMOLED display? Very nice indeed, even in bright sunlight.

Not only is the display bright and rich, but video playback is more than impressive, rendering even action movies with a jitter. Combined with a 1GHz processor, the Galaxy S handles high-definition videos very well. Take a look at how nice the movie "Avatar" comes across on the small screen. The entire movie comes with the phone on a removable memory card.

The Galaxy S is known as the T-Mobile Vibrant, the Verizon Wireless Fascinate, the AT&T Captivate and the Sprint Epic 4G, which, unlike the other three, has a slide-out QWERTY keypad.

What else do I think? See my first impressions at 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.

Smartphones for gift-giving

Looking for a new smartphone? Take a look at my latest piece in the New York Daily News for some guidance. And let me know what you think!