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PiPress dead-tree edition, meet the e-paper

I have good news for Pioneer Press readers, summarized here in a shameless-plug capacity because it's kinda cool in a tech-y way:

We will soon offer an e-edition of the paper that looks just like the dead-tree version, but is composed of 1s and 0s instead of pulpy material with ink that rubs off on your fingers.

The e-paper, with all the headlines, photos, columns and features just as they appear in print, will officially launch on Monday, Oct. 15. Made available for download at 6 a.m. every day, it will have the absolute-latest news and sports.

I've never perused such an e-paper (there are others) but I'm told it's designed for easy navigation from page to page and section to section. A 30-day search and easy-on-the-eyes features are part of the deal -- which isn't free (sorry).

The e-edition will be available at a special introductory subscription rate, with seven-day delivery over 26 weeks for $26.65, or 52 weeks for $53.30. Beginning Oct. 15, orders can be placed by calling 1-888-862-1452, or by subscribing online at TwinCities.com.

If free is more your speed, try the mobile edition (good for cell phones and mobile Internet gizmos). Go here to punch in your cell number, or point a mobile browser at m.twincities.com. I tried this on an iPod touch and a Motorola Q,  works great.

Update: Aaron Landry writes:

I may not understand their strategy, but my guess is that they’re aiming at a market of people that want the paper version of the Pioneer Press that aren’t comfortable with using the twincities.com website to get their news. If that’s the case, this is not the right solution to the problem, IMHO. Perhaps I’m living in a bubble but I can’t think of anyone that would want to pay for this.

I think the e-paper is right for those who know and like the Pioneer Press and want the actual paper but can't easily get it in a timely fashion. Such people would include snowbirds and folks who have moved away from St. Paul. Instead of getting the paper by mail, way late, they can have at it right away, in a format they recognize and like.

Garrick Van Buren writes:

Every couple of years, the idea of delivering a frozen PDF instead of a living, breathing website hits my radar. This is the first time it hits this close to home. At best, this effort is a distraction from their two other delivery channels - paper, pioneerpress.com. This middle ground is just silly.

I think we should give readers choices, the more the better. One of those choices is, as you put it, a living, breathing Web site. The e-paper (admittedly a more static, less interactive solution) is another option.

Adobe, Apple video-ware: works in progress

When raving about the latest version of Adobe's Photoshop Elements for consumers, I neglected to mention Adobe has also updated its Premiere Elements video editor. Like the photo organizer and editor, the video software adapts a pro-level program with affordability and consumer friendliness in mind.

You can buy the two Elements apps in a bundle.

I was crestfallen to learn, though, that Premiere Elements won't initially be compatible with a newfangled kind of video camera using a technology called AVCHD. I've written about this twice before, pointing to AVCHD camcorders from the likes of Panasonic and Canon, along with AVCHD-compatible editing software from Corel and Apple.

I'd be hard-pressed to recommend Premiere Elements without AVCHD compatibility. Adobe says it's working on this.

Related: PC Mag also hearts Photoshop Elements.

Related: Toshiba camcorders do not do AVCHD.

Related: Apple has just updated its AVCHD-friendly new version of iMovie amid complaints that many of the older version's advanced features had gone missing. Here's a rundown of what's new, direct from Apple:

A Web-based alternative to photo-edit-ware

My last Tech Test Drive column focused on the latest photo-organizing software for all levels of expertise. One option I didn't mention (since it isn't software), since it isn't software and I was out of space, is Picnik.

If you store your photos online via the Facebook service, Yahoo’s Flickr, PhotoBucket or Google’s Picasa Web Albums, you need to know about this oddly named add-on service. It dramatically enhances what you’re able to do with your photos without installing any desktop software nor moving your pictures from their current locations.

Picnik’s image-enhancement features are all Web-based, yet remarkably desktop-like. You can auto-fix shots; rotate, crop and resize them; adjust color, exposure and sharpness; even remove red-eye, right there in your browser. You can also apply effects, such as color boosting, softening, sepia, matte and black and white.

Picnik is available in a free version along with a premium version that adds extra image-enhancement options. The service also includes browser (Firefox and IE) add-ons, a bookmarklet option, and a Yahoo widget.

It is appealing for those who are moving away from desktop-based software and taking common computer tasks (such as photo organizing, along with e-mail and word processing) online. And Picnik is one of the better such Web-based services. I’m very impressed.

Some aghast at today's 'Sex is Fun' package

Hours upon hours of free sex-related advice for people of all conceivable sexual persuasions is available via the Sex is Fun podcast, per my story on the show in today's Pioneer Press.

I also wrote a sidebar on how parents can block such adult online content so their iPod-toting teens can't get at it (easily, at least, kids are nothing if not determined and tech-savvy).

A couple of people were still aghast that we'd run a story like this. For instance, I received the following:

Julio,

I’m not sure which concerns me more:  what SiF's popularity reveals about how "pornified" we've become, or Pioneer Press giving it undeserved respectability with this article, devoid as it is of any moral judgment. If the subject requires a parental warning, maybe it's not suitable for adults either.

What were you thinking?

John Helmberger, CEO
Minnesota Family Council

P.S. I also posted this as a comment online.

Kidder Kaper from Sex is Fun responds:

What is really funny about John Helmberger, is that he and I have the same goal. He wants strong families with bonded parents that guide and teach their children to be safe and responsible. I want the same thing.

He wishes to achieve this through "moral judgment." I prefer to promote loving, intimate marriages that fosters a strong commitment. So we want the same things, we just prefer a different means to the goal.

Oh, and I support gay rights. I suppose that is where the similarities end.

Perhaps he should listen to a show before he makes these judgments. Have him check out this show, where we interview a right-winged conservative, evangelical born-again Christian pastor who told me that God may have called me to do this show.

Update: Here's a reader e-mail (pasted in here exactly as I just received it):

While I appreciate your journalistic freedom in being able to write an article such as the recent podcast expose, I take issue with the Pioneer Press's insistence that my children and the children at schools all across the state have to be exposed to such garbage.  Printing it as you (they) did on the front page of the Daily Life section, while no doubt a literary coup for you, as the writer, is a next-door neighbor to sexual abuse and child endangerment in my book.  Why is it that, while reasonable adults everywhere recognize that having access to porn on an unprotected computer where children have unsupervised access can be the basis for criminal charges of child endangerment, yet your roadmap to such tripe is laying around unsupervised on thousands of home and school countertops today - and we call that freedom of the press?  You, and the Pioneer Press, should not be allowed to lead my children, and the children of those I care about, down the primrose path toward pornographic involvement.  We, as parents and citizens and subscribers, have freedoms, too.  Those include canceling our Pioneer Press subscriptions and asking our children's school to do likewise.

iPod touch: bad batch or inherently flawed?

Is the display on Apple's iPod touch inherently flawed, or are there just a bad batch of the video players out there?

Lots of reviewers (such as the indispensable Christopher Breen of Playlist and Macworld) have noticed what I did: The touch's screen can look just awful compared to the iPhone's display -- especially when displaying dark scenes or colors. Breen notes:

Among my list of concerns only one is a deal-killer—the quality of the video. Yes, the iPhone-like interface is impressive. Yes, being able to surf the Web and purchase music while on the move is incredibly convenient. But the iPod touch was created with video in mind and this is the one area where it can’t shortchange its owner. Let’s hope that, with the next product run (or, better yet, the divine power of a firmware update), the touch will provide the same glorious video as the iPhone.

When I told Apple how my loaner's screen looked, they asked for it back and I FedEx-ed it right off. Now I'm hoping to see a replacement so I can verify what Walt Mossberg claims in his most-recent Wall Street Journal column:

Also, some early iPod Touch units have had defective screens, where images appeared too dark. Apple says this problem affected a small number of units and is being remedied. My two test units displayed beautiful images.

That may be, but I can't recommend the touch on Uncle Walt's say-so. I have to see for myself.

Update: A replacement loaner just came in, and this touch looks pretty good on initial inspection. Dark scenes look about as good as they did on my iPhone loaner. More on this as warranted.

A reader scolds me about jury-duty column

My recent Tech Test Drive column on jury-duty tech triggered a reader scolding via e-mail:

I read with interest your article regarding your efforts to occupy yourself while awaiting assignment on jury duty. I found your solution to the problem however, to be too typical of the young people in today's society.

I have found it very disconcerting to see so many of our young population walking around with something stuck in their ears listening to whatever it is that they listen to these days. It seems that our young people cannot stand to be alone with themselves without having an outside distraction continuously going on in their head.

This is a great distraction and one that when removed for any length of time leads to the depression that we see so rampant these days in the young. You did not help with all of your ways in which to find continuous outside distraction through all of the electronic gadgets that are so prevalent these days. Your apparent inability to deal with free time without electronic gadgetry is a revelation in itself.

I would have thought that you would have suggested that a good book would have been at least one additional way in which one might use time while awaiting a jury assignment. It seems that our society is so obsessed with the electronic gadgets that they do not see the benefit good reading any more.

I would hope that you would address this in another of your columns, and that even you would try it out sometime yourself. Even without a good book people should be able to just sit and reflect, pray, and think without having to have someone else insert outside influences on a continuous basis. Try it sometime, you might like it and find it refreshing.

I replied to this reader as follows:

I'm in agreement with you on the book front, and belatedly realized I should have added this to the end of my article: "Of course, I could have just taken a good book."

Despair not, fanboys: Lotsa Star Wars, Trek

Though no new "Star Wars" movies are on the drawing board and the next "Star Trek" movie isn't due for more than a year, it's still a fairly fun time to be a fanboy:

LucasArts just released a PlayStation Portable version of its "Battlefront" series, which I really like. Also in the "Star Wars" vein, a Wii game is on the way that will let users -- you guessed it, woo-hoo! -- user their Wiimotes as virtual lightsabers. Look for that in the spring.

A major "Star Wars" exhibit is headed for the Science Museum of Minnesota. A wrote a front-page Pioneer Press story about this not long ago.

Then there's "Star Trek." A Bethesda SoftWorks action and strategy title set in the "ST" universe hits in the autumn.

And on Christmas Day 2008, Kirk and crew are reborn with younger actors (including Sylar from "Heroes" in the Spock role; nice one).

The brain-dead-easy way to exchange files

My sister-in-law's husband (my brother-in-law-in-law?) and I got into a jam tonight when trying to move a 60-megabyte file from his faraway computer to mine here in St. Paul.

I initially instructed him to drop it into my .Mac iDisk's public folder via a Web interface. This usually works without a hiccup, which is why it's been my favorite means for receiving extra-large files from friends and relatives (once they digest a few simple instructions). But for some reason this file just wouldn't transmit properly.

Then, like David Pogue, I remembered a tech-P.R. pitch for Pando. This is a handy service for swapping large files with drag-and-drop simplicity after installing a bit of free software on either end -- Windows on the sending side, in this case, and Mac on my end.

This proved to be a no-brainer. I didn't even have to explain it to my relative, who hadn't heard about Pando but figured out what to do right away. The file transfer took a while, but completed successfully.

So I'll definitely be using Pando along with .Mac in the future.

Here's Pogue's own take under similar circumstances:

Finally, in desperation, I remembered a pitch that some PR person had made a year ago. It was for Pando (pando.com), a free, cross-platform, super-simple program designed expressly for idiotproof file transfers, even big ones. I remember having tried it once successfully.

Apple at retail: First Best Buy, next Target?

Apple will claim its Macintosh sales are chugging along quite nicely, thank you, but a New York Times contributor argues the Mac maker could do much better -- by expanding its retail presence, just for starters.

Apple is already pushing into Best Buy stores, as I've noted, and TechBlog's Dwight Silverman says Target stores also might make sense. I second the motion: Both Apple and Target are big on quality and style.

Gratuitous regional plug: Best Buy and Target are both Minnesota-based.

Comparing an iPhone and a new iPod touch

I've just returned my loaner iPhone to Apple (wow, I can't recall when parting with a review gizmo was so painful) and received a loaner iPod touch by return FedEx.

The new player is very nice -- but it would be a mistake to call it a phone-less iPhone. Here's how using the touch compares to my loaner iPhone, based on my first few hours with the new touchscreen iPod:

iTunes. The new mobile version of Apple's iTunes Store is fabulous. It is a breeze to browse. I haven't made any mobile purchases for syncing back to my Mac yet, nor tried the Starbucks features (more on those later) but I'm lovin' this on-the-go music-downloading option so far.

This was not available for iPhone users at the time I returned my loaner handset, but it should be soon. It was preinstalled on my loaner touch.

Screen. Watching movies, TV shows and video podcasts on the widescreen iPhone was bliss. I assumed the iPod touch would offer comparable image quality, but that's not the case. Darker scenes with lots of black are a particular problem for the touch (at least my touch). And, by the way, there are one or two bright-green dead pixels off to one side of my touch's screen.

(Update: Apple says the problem with my touch screen likely isn't normal, and is sending me another touch to check out. It notes, though, that there will be some screen variability from touch to touch.)