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Tech help for the holidays: Tips 'n' services

The holidays are a big time for tech support. I do my part with a big grab bag of tech tips, and pointers to tech-help services (including the ever-popular Geek Squad).

A big thank you to those who sent in tech tips. These include Stacy DeBroff, Robin Raskin, BeyondTrust, the Wi-Fi Alliance and the Geek Squad's Robert Stephens.

Also, in my Tech Test Drive column today, I review a free LogMeIn service that lets you log into grandma's computer from afar. The service is now Mac-compatible.

A futile and frustrating quest for HP loaners

I'm really annoyed with HP.

It has a hot new consumer product that I am really excited about. I've been so pumped about it that I did something I rarely do -- mention the gear in print, sight unseen. I figured I could follow up later with a formal test drive for one of my columns.

(This is not unlike what happened with Apple's iPhone -- I did advance news-style pieces, followed by formal review-type write-ups once I had a test loaner in hand. This is what I do; I review tech products.)

Turns out HP was happy to talk my head off about the product, but not send me one to review. My request has been, as far as I can tell, denied (after, strangely, it was initially granted).

Its Porter Novelli PR operative wouldn't tell me why, until I persisted. I was then told that my audience isn't right for this product (absurd since it's for home use). Apparently there aren't enough "early adopters" reading my newspaper, whatever that means.

So which product am I talking about? Nope, I'm not giving it more free publicity -- though the determined among you can probably figure it out.

It's not the first time I've run into this problem with the company. I earlier wanted to review one of its TouchSmart home PCs with touch-sensitive screens, but getting one took an astonishing amount of kicking and screaming (in the metaphoric sense). I did like it, for the most part, and said so in a column.

Now an HP PR rep (this one working for the Edelman agency) wants me to participate in a product briefing as part of the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show. Sure thing, I said, but don't expect a big write-up based solely on what I'm told in the briefing.

I've learned my lesson.

I don't know why this is even a problem. Getting review gear from Apple, Gateway, Sony and other companies isn't that difficult. But HP seems to be a special case. Don't ask me why.

Foxmarks: Fab extension turns train wreck

I'm a big fan of Firefox because of extensions, those bits of add-on software that give the popular browser extra capabilities.

I'm not as extension-crazy as I used to be, though, and have winnowed the list to just a few gotta-haves items.

Foxmarks has been on that short list.

This extension synchronizes bookmarks across multiple computers, transparently and reliably. And, like most other Firefox extensions, it runs in Macintosh versions of Firefox as well as Windows ones.

Ah, but a major Foxmarks upgrade has come with horrific headaches for users (check multiple updates and comments on this blog post). Those problems are abating for some users, if the Foxmarks makers are to be believed, but not for me. I just sent in this:

You may see clouds clearing, but I don't. 

Foxmarks, long on my short list of gotta-have Firefox extensions, is now a train wreck from my vantage point. It syncs on some computers here but not others. Automated syncs works sometimes but not other times. And so on, and so on... 

I got so desperate that I actually tried Google Browser Sync again, but that extension doesn't work the way it should for bookmark syncing -- the way Foxmarks used to work. 

So I basically have no bookmark-syncing capability as of this writing. Bummer.

Related: Beware of Foxmarks' 2.0 Update

Update: With no end in sight for my problems, my bookmarks on my various machines are now officially out of sync.

Update: Are my problems beginning to clear up? Not sure. Maybe. More successful syncs than before. I'll update again.

Stumped for holiday gifts? Here are a couple

Stumped for last-minute Christmas gifts? Here are a couple of way-cool and supercheap (and locally available) options:

Open It! This is the very first thing you should open on Christmas Day.

It's multipurpose package-opening thingie that eats into tough plastic, snips wires, cuts into cardboard, unscrews tiny screws, slices through pesky DVD wrapping, etc. You need this device to deal with all that impossible holiday packaging. And it's only $11.

Find it at Walgreen’s, Home Depot, and Bed, Bath and Beyond.

Hexbugs. These tiny robotic insects are a hoot, and hard to pass up at just $10.

They respond to loud sounds and sense obstacles via their antennae (changing direction, in either case). That's pretty much all they do, but they'll look nifty as decorations on the kids' bookshelves once the novelty value has been exhausted.

Find the bugs at your local Radio Shack.

Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader: sorry, I'll pass

Amazon.com finally got around to sending me a Kindle test loaner, so here's my review of the new e-book reader.

I would have liked the thing much more if its Web-browsing capabilities weren't so primitive. With high-speed EV-DO -- for free -- this thing has great promise as an Internet appliance for e-mail, RSS and the like. Yet Amazon fails to offer decent Web capability while ripping off users with blog "subscriptions" and the like.

*fume*

Book junkies may love this thing, though. You can buy books anywhere, anytime, and have tons of them on a single device. That's pretty sweet. You can even e-mail documents (including free e-books) to yourself, via a special Kindle address, and download the magically converted files to the device over its wireless link.

I give the Sony Reader equal time in my column. It's physical design is vastly superior to the Kindle's, but its selection of books is far leaner, it has no Internet capability, and getting files  onto it in a readable form is more difficult.

Apple pulls out all the stops with Mac-PC ads

This looks to be a big season for Macintosh holiday sales, but Apple is taking no chances: Its Mac ads are in some pretty prominent places.

As Dwight Silverman noted recently, one ingenious Web ad features those wacky PC and Mac guys in a vertical banner to the right of the Web page, along with a (DON'T) GIVE UP ON VISTA banner along the top. How the two banners interact makes for big laughs.

I've seen that ad mainly on the PC Magazine site and other narrowly focused sites until now, so I was surprised to spot it on the New York Times home page today. Wow, Apple is taking no prisoners this holiday season.

In a related development, the PC and Mac guys appear as "Rudolph"-Christmas-special-style characters on Apple's home page (cute).

Street View follow-up: Navel gazing ensues

I followed up on Google's Twin Cities version of Street View today.

My front-page piece riffs on the navel-gazing aspect of looking up your home and workplace (while often also finding your cars, loved ones, friends and pets).

The image below, for instance, is that of Noah Kunin's old warehouse-style apartment, adjacent to the Interstate 35W bridge, before that structure collapsed Aug. 1 and the man had to leave his home forever:

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Here's the actual bridge, before it fell:

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Here's a shot of news crews after the bridge fell:

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At the top of this post is a shot of a woman's boyfriend, captured unexpectedly, to her surprise and delight, per my article.

See local Street View-related blog posts by Aaron Landry, Ed Kohler, Bob Collins, Jon Gordon, Steve Perry and David Erickson.

Google's Street View goes live in Twin Cities

Helloooo, Pioneer Press building. You took all of 20 seconds to find using Google Maps and its new Twin Cities Street View. Very nice.

Here's an embed (these can be customized):

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For comparison, here's what the Pioneer Press building looks like in one of Microsoft's "bird's eye" angled aerial photos that are part of its Virtual Earth service:

Cody Hanson may have spotted one of Google's car-mounted cameras a while back, when the search firm's contractor was apparently hard at work here. You called it, dude.

Aaron Landry has a terrific post today describing some of his Street View meanderings.

Aaron and several blog commenters note how some Street View photos were shot before the August freeway-bridge collapse, and some were shot after the disaster.

Here's Mike Wendland, my Detroit Free Press counterpart, on Street View's debut in his neck of the woods.

Google debuts Street View in the Twin Cities

Google and Microsoft are in a big virtual-city arms race. Each is adding electronic recreations of top U.S. metropolitan areas to its Web-mapping services.

I happen to prefer Microsoft's Virtual Earth, part of its Live Search Maps service. Microsoft's approach includes angled aerial photographs shot from low-flying planes, along with (this is the kicker) computer-recreated cityscapes you can navigate like a video game.

You can even plug an Xbox 360 controller into your PC to buzz buildings in downtown St. Paul -- This is very, very cool.

Google does something similar called Street View, which lets visitors traverse a city's neighborhoods with mouse clicks, essentially navigating urban landscapes that continually morph and shift to simulate a regular car trip.

That's pretty cool, too, but it wasn't available in the Twin Cities -- until this week. The local version of Street View is scheduled to go live tomorrow morning. (See above and below for examples of what St. Paul Street Views should look like.)

My Tuesday piece on this, which is due to appear on the front page of tomorrow's Pioneer Press, also mentions a Massachussetts company called EveryScape that tries to one-up Google with interior as well as exterior cityscapes.

Hey, that's kinda cool, too.

Devilishly clever gadgetry for holiday giving

I love tech gear that is devilishly clever in some way, perhaps by adding an ingenious or extra-useful feature or two, or simply with a design that is a cut above the rest.

I cover several such products in today's Tech Test Drive column. They make dandy holiday gifts.