The Mossberg Solution » smartphone

Palm Pixi Needs a Dusting of Speed

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:52:55 +0000

Since the debut of the Palm Pre in June, Palm has talked about the value of the device’s webOS operating system, which offers fast responsiveness, multitasking, universal search and smart synchronization. These features are accessed using delightful multitouch gestures like swiping with a fingertip. So it makes perfect sense that Palm would want to expand its family of products running this great mobile operating system.

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This week, Palm (PALM) introduced a second device with webOS: the Palm Pixi (palm.com/pixi). This is a stripped-down version of the Pre and it costs $100 (after a $50 instant rebate and a $100 mail-in rebate and with a two-year service contract) compared with the $150 Pre. Walmart.com is currently selling the Pixi for even less—$50 (http://3.ly/oSE). Both the Pixi and the Pre run on Sprint’s (S) network.

I’ve been testing the Pixi and I’ve found that the physical differences from the Pre are acceptable variations that most people won’t mind and may not even detect. These include a smaller, lower-resolution screen, a two-megapixel camera rather than the Pre’s three-megapixel camera and stationary keyboard instead of one that slides out. The Pixi isn’t as pebble-shaped as the Pre, but its back cover is rounded to fit comfortably in a hand. And like the Pre, it has an eight-gigabyte storage capacity and it’s thin and light enough to forget in a jeans pocket or to comfortably hold up to your ear during phone calls.

The Pixi’s internal changes are much tougher to accept. It lacks Wi-Fi capability and so must rely solely on Sprint’s 3G network for its connection, which I found to be frustratingly slow at times. This littler phone also runs on a weaker processor than the Pre, a decision that Palm says helped cut costs and make the Pixi small. But this processor’s speed is slow enough to notice immediately and it robs webOS of its lightning-fast speed. The Pixi’s progress indicator—a spinning, white circle—appeared on my screen too often.

The $100 Palm Pixi is like a mini version of the Pre. A $70 Touchstone accessory (right) magnetically holds the Pixi as it charges.

Like its super-smartphone competitors, including Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, Research in Motion’s (RIMM) newer BlackBerrys and Google’s (GOOG) Android phones, the Palm Pixi taps into a virtual store from which users can download apps for the device. But Palm’s App Catalog currently holds fewer than 400 apps and roughly 80 of those aren’t yet configured for the Pixi. This means that people who buy the $100 Pixi can choose from just around 300 apps for download, compared with the 100,000 apps available for Apple’s $100 iPhone 3G.

Some apps come preloaded on the Pixi, like Facebook and NFL Mobile Live. I downloaded others, including Pandora radio, Tweed for Twitter and a game called Word Whirl Lite. I logged into my Pandora account and played songs from one of my personalized radio stations while reading through email. A tiny “P” icon at the bottom of the Pixi’s screen notified me that Pandora was running. Other notifiers, like new emails or instant messages, appear at the bottom as well.

If you aren’t familiar with webOS, it’s easy to learn. Functions are designed to be more people-centric rather than program-centric. For example, I can look at a name in Contacts and see how I’m linked to that person—like through Facebook or Google Talk. If I want to start an instant-messaging conversation with that person, I can do so right there rather than opening AIM or Google Talk first to find a person’s name and then initiate conversation. I logged onto the Pixi with a Google account and the device was smart enough to also synchronize data from my Google Talk, Google Calendar and Gmail contacts.

The Card View, a display of all the programs that are simultaneously running at any given time, can be exposed with a simple, upward finger swipe starting below the screen. To close a program, simply touch it with a finger and toss it upward, as if throwing it away. This is one of the most satisfying gestures in webOS. And it’s a good thing, too, because Pixi users will need to use it more often than they did with the Pre. Palm suggests running only seven programs at once for the best performance, rather than the 10 you can leave opened on the Pre.

But my Pixi stuttered with just five programs—sometimes fewer—opened. Simple tasks like opening an email or searching for an app in the App Catalog were painfully slow. I received an email containing one digital photo, and the process of opening just the email—not even the photo—took about 10 seconds. When I finally opened the email and its photo, I saved it to my Pixi and tapped on a menu option to upload it to Facebook. But five minutes later, the spinning progress indicator was still on my Pixi’s screen and I gave up. I tried again and the same thing happened. Finally, on the third try, my photo posted to Facebook.

As was the case for the Palm Pre, the Pixi can be charged by plugging into a normal AC adaptor or by resting it on the Touchstone, a $70 accessory that, with the help of a special back cover that snaps onto the Pixi, magnetically holds this device as it charges. A handful of stylish “Artist Series” back covers will sell on Palm.com for $50 each and will ship in early December.

The Pixi’s 2.6-inch screen has a 320×400 resolution, which is a step down from the Pre’s 3.1-inch, 320×480-resolution screen. Palm estimates the Pixi’s battery lasts for five hours of talk time, the same as the Pre, but for 350 hours of standby time—or 50 more hours than the Pre.

The Palm Pixi’s keyboard is tiny but sufficient. People who are used to BlackBerry or even iPhone keyboards might be irked that the Pixi keyboard doesn’t have built-in shortcuts like holding down a key to capitalize it or pressing the space bar twice to add a period to the end of a sentence.

Like its predecessor, the Pixi has a designated Gesture Area just beneath its screen where users can swipe a fingertip for quickly navigating through screens, like swiping right-to-left to go back a screen. Unlike the Pre, the Pixi doesn’t have a silver button below its screen that immediately takes users to Card View, but I didn’t miss this button.

Though the Palm Pixi is $50 less than the Palm Pre, its downgraded performance doesn’t make that dollar savings worth it.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Netbooks That Are Easier on the Eye

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:07:40 +0000

Like clockwork, retailers were ready for Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Windows 7 release last week with new desktops, laptops and netbooks, those inexpensive, smaller laptops that have become popular in the past year. Included in this selection of netbooks are some that improved the poor screen resolutions that have plagued these tiny PCs.

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Screen resolution isn’t the same as the size of the screen itself. Rather, it is related to the number of pixels—or distinct dots—on a display, and an indication of how much material can be seen on the screen without scrolling. A higher-resolution screen allows you to see more of a Web page, spreadsheet or list of emails than a lower-resolution screen, even if both are the same physical size.

Because higher-resolution screens cost more, most netbooks come with low-resolution screens to keep prices down. But poor resolution combined with a small netbook screen results in frustrating visuals, like Web pages that display just a small portion of their contents, forcing you to scroll down or horizontally to see the rest of the page.

This week, I tested two Windows 7 netbooks with unusually high-res screens: Hewlett-Packard Co.’s (HPQ) HP Mini 311 with an 11.6-inch screen and a resolution of 1,366-by-768 pixels, and Nokia Corp.’s (NOK) Booklet 3G with a 10.1-inch screen and a resolution of 1,280-by-720-pixels. Both these small computers display the bulk of most Web pages without any scrolling necessary—a big relief on a netbook.

Though high-resolution screens make these netbooks easier on the eyes than others, I still had trouble adjusting to their shrunken features. I liked typing on the HP Mini’s generous keyboard, which H-P says is 92 percent of full size. But its touchpad buttons felt stiff and uncomfortably located at the edge of the computer. The Nokia Booklet had the opposite problem: Its touchpad and buttons worked fine, but its tiny keys made me feel like I was typing on a kiddie computer.

Nokia’s Booklet 3G has a long battery life and sleek design.

Nokia is a bit more of a newsmaker here, because when the Booklet 3G (nokiausa.com) comes out in mid-November, it will be the first foray by the Finnish mobile-device company into the laptop space. Best Buy (BBY) began taking advance orders for them this week. It costs $300 if purchased with AT&T Inc.’s (T) two-year Data Connect plan, which costs $60 a month for five gigabytes of data and allows users to toggle back and forth between two kinds of wireless connections, cellular 3G and Wi-Fi. If purchased without the AT&T plan, the Booklet 3G costs $600—a lot for a netbook—including only Windows 7 Starter, the low-end version of the new OS, and one gigabyte of memory.

The thing most people will notice right away about Nokia’s netbook is that it seems to take its design cues directly from Apple Inc. (AAPL) Like the MacBook Pro, the Nokia Booklet 3G is made from a single piece of aluminum, and its keyboard is made of black Chiclet-style keys. Its edges are rounded and smooth. I used one with a glossy black lid, but it will also come in shades of ice white or azure blue.

Nokia boasts that this netbook’s battery will last for 12 hours; after running it through a harsh test with its screen cranked up to the brightest setting, Wi-Fi on, music playing on a continuous loop and all power-saving features turned off, it ran for almost eight hours straight. This means that under normal circumstances, the battery might last for a remarkable 10 hours.

The Booklet 3G that I used differs from Nokia’s final release version in a few ways: Mine wasn’t loaded with AT&T’s Connection Manager software, which enables switching between Wi-Fi and 3G; it lacked the Nokia Social Hub software, which the company says allows users to track social-media feeds and text messages; and the GPS wasn’t yet connected to the U.S. map data server. My Booklet 3G included Ovi Suite, a Nokia-designed software program to bridge the connection between some Nokia smartphones and the Booklet 3G, like iTunes for the iPhone or BlackBerry’s Desktop Manager. But the software I had wasn’t the final version.

Unlike Nokia, H-P is no stranger to netbooks, having released nine of its Mini models in the past year. The HP Mini 311 (hp.com/go/mini) costs $400 when purchased with Windows XP and costs an additional $50 when loaded with Windows 7 Home Premium. The Mini that I tested costs $474 because it also had two gigabytes of memory rather than one gigabyte.

The H-P model is a little bigger all around compared with the Nokia, with an inch-larger screen; it weighs 3.22 pounds compared with 2.76 pounds for the Nokia. Both felt relatively thin and light, and I carried them home together from my office with ease. The HP Mini 311 had H-P’s subtle Black Swirl pattern on its lid—a faint pattern of silver swirls noticeable only at certain angles. It also comes in White Swirl.

I ran the same battery test on the HP as I did with the Nokia, and it lasted four hours and 15 minutes, giving it roughly six hours of juice under normal circumstances. H-P estimates that the Mini 311’s battery will last for six hours and 25 minutes.

I didn’t run into any problems while installing and using several programs on each of these netbooks, including Windows Live Essentials, Mozilla’s Firefox browser, Picasa 3, TweetDeck, Adobe (ADBE) Reader and iTunes. The HP Mini felt more responsive and, in fact, loaded some programs a little faster, but it had twice the memory.

Both netbooks have slots for memory cards, HDMI ports for connecting to HD screens and three USB ports. And they come with built-in Web cams, a common feature on netbooks.

A cold start on both the Mini 311 and Booklet 3G required roughly the same amount of time: one minute and eight seconds for the H-P, and a minute and 12 seconds for the Nokia. But restarting was a different story. While playing a song in iTunes, running three Web pages in Firefox and using TweetDeck, I selected Restart. The HP Mini 311 took a minute and 20 seconds while the Nokia took nearly two minutes.

Even without the AT&T discount, the Nokia Booklet 3G’s extra-long battery life and sleek design will be worth the extra money for some people—just beware its tiny keyboard. The HP Mini 311 is a good all-around netbook with a comfortable keyboard for typing. No one will be disappointed by the terrific screen resolutions.

-Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

A BlackBerry Priced Right For Newcomers

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:52:03 +0000

Web browsing and email have comfortably migrated to mobile handhelds like the iPhone, BlackBerry and Palm (PALM) Pre. But many of these gadgets still cost a lot compared with cellphones that come free with renewed two-year contracts.

This week, I tested a new BlackBerry that costs less than any other BlackBerry did at launch—that is, if you buy it at the right place. Research in Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry Curve 8520 costs just $49 at Wal-Mart (WMT)—or $130 if you buy it at T-Mobile. Both prices are with two-year T-Mobile contracts.

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The BlackBerry Curve has been one of the company’s most popular models. All iterations of the Curve combine a full QWERTY keyboard with a sleeker, more stylish look than bigger BlackBerry models like the Bold. And Curves typically cost less than their larger counterparts. In February, RIM refreshed its Curve brand for the first time in over two years with the 8900. This model was a real upgrade for Curve users, thanks to a brighter screen, faster performance and flatter keys that were easier to press. But six months later, it still costs as much as $199 (after rebate)—a steep asking price considering how some older 8300-series Curves are offered for around $50 with two-year contracts.

This newest $49 Curve 8520 lowers that price barrier. Its monthly T-Mobile service plans are also relatively inexpensive, starting at $55 for voice and data (not including MMS or SMS messaging).

It has two features never before seen on a BlackBerry. First, in place of a trackball or scroll wheel, this Curve uses a trackpad—a mini version of those used for mouse navigation on laptops.

Second, it has designated physical buttons for playing, pausing and skipping ahead or back within media like videos and music. These rubbery buttons are built into the top edge of the BlackBerry.

I like the look of the Curve 8520—especially how the surface covering its screen extends down to the trackpad and its four surrounding buttons, giving it a smooth facade. It comes in two colors, black and frost (I used the black). Its low price, alone, will be enough to draw customers.

But something about the way its keyboard and navigational keys worked felt cheap. Letter keys felt light and hollow while the Send, Menu, Escape and End keys around the trackpad clicked as I touched them.

The specifications of this BlackBerry tell the tale more specifically. Its 320×240 pixel screen looks faded next to that of the Curve 8900, which is 480×360. The blinking red indicator light at the top front corner of all BlackBerrys is a barely noticeable dot on this device.

And its camera is only two megapixels, not 3.2 megapixels like on the 8900, and is the first on a BlackBerry not to have a built-in flash. Also, it doesn’t run on the fast 3G network, though it uses Wi-Fi and automatically connects to trusted networks when in range of them.

First-time smartphone owners may not notice or care about these small details, but veteran BlackBerry users will pick up on them right away.

The Curve 8520 incorporates useful physical features found on previous models like right- and left-side convenience keys that work as handy shortcuts. It comes with a 1-gigabyte microSD memory card so users don’t have to buy their own before loading this device with photos, music and videos.

A strip of rubber runs around the Curve’s edge, covering up and smoothing over its convenience keys and volume buttons. This rugged addition isn’t visible from the front of the BlackBerry and it will probably go a long way in preventing nicks and dings. The word “Curve” is imprinted on the back of the BlackBerry, proudly branding this model.

The navigational trackpad is a cinch to use and moves the cursor up, down, right and left with very little effort. To select, one needs only to press in on the trackpad just as with the trackball. Unlike the trackball, which rolls in place and can get stuck once in a great while, the trackpad doesn’t have any moving parts.

The physical media keys on the Curve 8520’s top edge work to instantly start playing media from any screen, like a music video that I watched. If you were to use your BlackBerry as your sole portable media player, these would be more valuable. And their position on the top of the Curve makes them easy to reach if the device is in a pocket or purse.

In my everyday usage scenarios, I usually forgot about these shortcut buttons and just used the trackpad to find and select a track or video for playing.

BlackBerry’s App World store for applications that users can load onto the device still only offers 2,000 apps, compared to Apple’s (AAPL) 65,000. This means that for now, this new Curve can’t be enhanced with as many outside programs, which is a real downside. And if you do download a lot of apps, or music or videos or photos, you may have to get a bigger memory card.

The Curve 8520 isn’t made for BlackBerry fanatics. But it’s a good entry-level BlackBerry for users who still haven’t let go of their basic cellphones. At Wal-Mart’s $49 price, it’s hard to beat.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Mining Email for Contacts

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 01:00:02 +0000

If you’re feeling guilty about how rarely you update your email contacts, you’re not alone. There are loads of people just like you who would rather not waste time cutting and pasting contact information from emails into digital address books. Instead, they search through email messages for the most up-to-date information, like phone numbers or addresses.

But it’s easy to delete or lose emails. Contacts in a digital address book are more permanent, and they synchronize with smartphones.

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This week I tested Gwabbit (Gwabbit.com), a tool that automatically hunts through your emails as you receive them, finding contact information that can be captured — “gwabbed” — and saved in your contacts. It starts on its own without prompting and uses pop-up notifications to tell you that a message has contact information you might want stored in your address book.

Gwabbit comes from Technicopia LLC and uses a pink Gwabbit Wabbit as its mascot, which adds a little whimsy to the dull task of saving contact information. Currently, it works only as a Microsoft Outlook plug-in, but Technicopia is working on a BlackBerry application that will come out at the end of May. Down the line, the company is planning products for the Mac and Web-based email services.

I started with the free version of Gwabbit, which lasts for 14 days or 20 Gwabbit uses, then upgraded to the paid version, which costs $20. Gwabbit’s accuracy — its ability to find the right information in an email and put it in the right field in an Outlook contact card — was usually reliable. The product works by looking for symbols, like “@” to designate email addresses or parentheses to indicate phone numbers, as well as where information appears in a signature.

In most cases, Gwabbit took only a few seconds to work, per contact. It wasn’t always perfect, but worked well enough to make me start saving a substantially larger number of Outlook contacts — and it updated my contacts that had old, outdated information.

Gwabbit installs with a few annoying features turned on. If you’re like me and you get a lot of emails from people you don’t know, Gwabbit’s notifications will pop up often, which could be irritating. If you turn the notifications off, you may not remember to use Gwabbit.

I found it irksome that Gwabbit installs its own promotion in every contact that it creates for you. If you used Gwabbit to make a contact card in Outlook, the notes field will be filled with an announcement that you used Gwabbit, including a Web link for the product — even in the paid version. Technicopia says that it will eliminate this in the next paid version of Gwabbit, which is due out in about three weeks.

Competitors to Gwabbit include the built-in contact grab tools in email clients like Microsoft Outlook (MSFT) and Apple Mail (AAPL). But these programs don’t automatically extract information from all email addresses the way Gwabbit does. Other third-party programs like Signature2Contacts don’t pop up automatically when an email contains information that you don’t have; instead, you must initiate extracting information.

When Gwabbit is downloaded and installed, it adds to Outlook its own toolbar, which can be hidden at will.

When Gwabbit’s auto-grab feature is turned on, a small bubble appears in Outlook when any highlighted email has contact information that isn’t saved in your address book — including people whose signatures have changed since the last time you saved them. The Gwabbit bubble takes a few seconds to appear, which Technicopia says allows enough time for you to read an email. But if you’re scrolling down a list of emails, this bubble will keep popping up for many different emails and can slightly slow down your ability to arrow down through the list.

When Gwabbit can’t find signature information in an email, it creates a bare-bones contact card for the person, and then gives you the option of highlighting the person’s signature block, from which to extract information for the contact card. In my experience, this problem occurred only a handful of times — usually when looking at a recent email in a string of messages back and forth, because Gwabbit couldn’t find someone’s signature buried within the correspondence.

If a Gwabbit notification pops up and you don’t want to save the contact information for the person who sent that email, you can hit an “Ignore this Contact” option in the notification. This sets Gwabbit so it never tries to save that person’s information again. If you want to save information but you’re in the middle of doing something else when the notification pops up, you can hit the “X” button in the notification bubble. This closes the notification but doesn’t ignore the contact in the future.

Gwabbit seems like a simple tool, but its ability to find contact information that you don’t already have — or that differs from what you already have — is a task that you aren’t likely doing regularly. So stop feeling guilty about your contacts and just gwab them.

Edited By Walter S. Mossberg

Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://solution.allthingsd.com

Birds of a Feather Twitter Together

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:20:02 +0000

If you’ve heard of Twitter but don’t exactly know what it is or how it works, you’re in good company. In the past two months a bunch of my friends, ranging in age from early 20s to late 30s, have asked me about Twitter — or Tweeter, as one person accidentally called it.

To clear things up, I’ve put together a basic Twitter guide that explains how to use it, Twitter lingo, privacy options, mobile applications that can be used with the service and problems that it has. Let’s get started.

Twitter limits social-networking updates to 140 characters or less. The service is surprisingly useful, but leaves room for improvement.

What is it? In short, Twitter is a free social-networking tool that keeps people connected with one another and with sources of information. Twitter users submit updates about whatever they’re currently doing, and these updates cannot exceed 140 text-based characters.

Lingo: Twitter is the name of the service. The term twittering describes the activity of updating a Twitter account. A tweet is an individual Twitter update. Twitterers are people who use the service.

Followers, not Friends: Social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace use the term “friend” to refer to people who are connected with one another, but Twitterers can simply follow one another’s messages by finding a person’s username and selecting a “Follow” option. This alerts the person that you’re following them, and they can reciprocally choose to follow you, or not.

Why use it? While some people primarily use Twitter to post updates about their activities or comments on the news, I use the service more as a follower, allowing me to see quick snippets of news as it occurs. Most tweets are written by real people, while others, such as updates from news organizations that you’ve selected, are automatically generated. Many tweets include the addresses of Web sites with relevant articles that tell readers more on a topic.

Where is it? Twitter works on your Web browser at Twitter.com, where user updates appear in a simple list form as they are submitted. After you’ve signed up and started following other people, those people’s updates, or tweets, will appear when you log onto Twitter.com using a username and password.

Twitter also works on mobile phones, where the 140-character limit allows messages to be sent and received via SMS text messaging. Tweets can also be sent and received via email. Users with smartphones like BlackBerrys or iPhones can use one of the many popular mobile applications for accessing Twitter, which offer much richer options than simple SMS does; I’ll get into these later.

Privacy: Unlike other social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter isn’t focused on holding and sharing personal information about its members. Indeed, the service operates with a majority (80%, according to the company) of users opting to keep their updates public, that is, follow-able by anyone, without permission. This openness encourages people to follow one another or to see who others are already following, and then follow the same people.

However, users can opt to protect their updates, meaning they must grant permission for others to follow them. If you’d like to sign up for Twitter, but aren’t comfortable putting your first and/or last name on the site, you don’t have to; instead, just tell others your username.

Twitter Page Personalization: Each user has a Twitter page showing all of his or her updates, or tweets. (Mine is twitter.com/kabster728, and you can follow me.) This page also shows the number of people a user follows, how many people follow her and how many total updates she has posted.

Twitterers can customize their Twitter page by uploading a photo to be used as the background. The icon representing each user can also be personalized, and this is important because it appears beside that person’s tweets on Twitter.com, where followers recognize and appreciate its familiarity. Some people, including me, use pictures of themselves as their icons, while others use random shots.

Apps/Clients: Twitter works on any browser, and will also work on a mobile browser. If you have a mobile device like the BlackBerry or iPhone, you can jazz up the experience by downloading a third-party app like TwitterFon, TwitterBerry, Tweetie or Twitteriffic. Twittervision, another mobile app, plots points on maps to show where tweets originated. Desktop clients also abound, including Twhirl and TweetDeck. Twitterfeed will set your blog to automatically post content to Twitter.

@Replies, Direct Messages: Each tweet that appears in your Twitter feed can be replied to using a shortcut arrow that appears beside the tweet, and these responses to tweets are called @Replies. So if JoeSchmo tweets to say he saw the new James Bond movie and hated it, you can reply to this with a tweet of your own that says, “@JoeSchmo I still adore Daniel Craig.” These @Replies appear for everyone to see, and must start with @ plus the username of whomever you’re responding to.

Direct Messages differ from @Replies because they can be sent only between people who are following one another. These messages aren’t posted publicly. They appear on your Twitter.com page in a right-side section labeled Direct Messages and will also be sent to your mobile device if you have one registered with Twitter.

Favorites: If you read a tweet that you really like, you can save it as a favorite by selecting a small star beside the tweet, thus adding it to a Favorites section on your homepage. Anyone can see anyone else’s Favorites, regardless of whether or not they’re following one another.

Problems: Twitter’s bare-bones approach gets to the point quickly, displaying tweets in a simple, quick-read format. But the site is lacking in many areas. It used to enable searching for people on Twitter, but that capability is currently down. Now, to search for friends on Twitter, you must upload your email contacts from a Web-based mail service. The company says it plans to have people-search working again by the end of the year. Meanwhile, search.twitter.com enables keyword or location searches.

Twitter lacks the ability to sort tweets according to what the user wants. If I just want to see tweets from real people and not those that are automatically generated, I’m out of luck. Same goes if I want to keep certain friends’ tweets in a prominent place on my homepage; Twitter has no way of doing this.

Twitter users aren’t notified when someone responds to their tweet with an @Reply. I recently happened to look at @Replies on my Twitter homepage and found three from people who follow me (I don’t follow them).

If you’re adding a Web address to a tweet and the characters in the URL take up too much space, Twitter will automatically use TinyURL behind the scenes to shrink your long link into a shorter one when you post your tweet. But this works only if you have enough remaining characters in your tweet to fit the long version of your link. A built-in TinyURL converter on the page would help immensely.

Twitter says it’s working to make @Replies more effective. It also says it plans to do more with filtering and sorting, so that the Twitter interface is more useful. In the meantime, Twitter does a good job of giving people simplified news about others and the world around them. If you’re often in a rush, Twitter can be a great resource for fast information.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

New BlackBerry Offers Versatility in Flip Form

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:18:02 +0000

Smartphones are masters of multitasking. They email, browse the Web, instant message, take pictures, run applications or play videos and music. So it’s easy to forget how uncomfortable they are to use as phones. Most are rectangular slabs that are awkward to hold against the ear, causing many smartphone users to also carry a basic cellphone just for calls.

At least one smartphone manufacturer is doing something about this. This week, Research In Motion (RIMM) introduced the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220, available for $150 with a two-year contract from T-Mobile (DT). This device is the first BlackBerry in a flip phone, or clamshell, form. Like RIM’s mainstream, candy-bar-shaped BlackBerry Pearl, the Flip uses a SureType keyboard, which has condensed keys and relies on predictive text software.

The Pearl Flip uses a SureType keyboard, which takes up less space.

After using the Pearl Flip for a week, I’ve found it to be a stylish messaging device that works well as a comfortable phone. I really liked its exterior screen, which is designed to show previews of incoming messages, saving people the trouble of flipping open the device. It runs on T-Mobile’s slow EDGE network, but has built-in Wi-Fi and the ability to automatically connect to saved, nearby wireless networks.

First-time smartphone buyers will likely find the Pearl Flip to be a good fit. When it flips open, a special hinge drops the top half of the device slightly behind the bottom half, and a handy trackball makes navigation easy. The Flip’s Web browser enables streaming videos that look sharp on its interior screen, and a microSD card slot supports up to 16 gigabytes of memory.

But current BlackBerry owners who want to switch to a device with a more comfortable phone may have trouble adjusting to the Pearl Flip’s SureType keyboard — especially if they’re used to a device with a full QWERTY keyboard. Though the Pearl Flip’s keyboard is a generous size and its keys are flat and easy to press, its SureType design assigns two letters to almost every key, which can be frustrating to use when predictive text guesses a different word than that which is intended.

The Pearl Flip 8220 is RIM’s first flip phone BlackBerry.

The Pearl Flip supports T-Mobile’s Unlimited HotSpot Calling, a service that doesn’t use any minutes on phone calls begun in Wi-Fi zones. Even if a user leaves the Wi-Fi zone in which he or she started a phone conversation, the call passes over to the T-Mobile cellular network without dropping out. This service costs $10 monthly in addition to regular service charges.

When I made calls on the Pearl Flip, friends on the other line noted how crisp and clear our connection sounded. And best of all, the Pearl Flip’s long, clamshell profile was easy to hold and fit snugly and comfortably between my ear and shoulder when I needed two hands to carry things.

BlackBerry’s signature red light blinks in this device’s top corner to indicate new messages. The 1.6-inch exterior screen displays about 25 words (give or take) from newly received emails, instant messages, SMS, MMS, calendar notifications and task reminders. If a message is received from a contact to whom a photo is assigned, that photo also shows up on the external screen to identify the sender. Side buttons let users scroll up or down through these previews.

This display is designed so that the same message being previewed externally will appear on the internal screen as soon as the Pearl Flip is opened. This makes sense because people will want to reply to some emails or read their entire contents after seeing a short preview. But my device didn’t do this at first; instead, the internal screen seemed completely unrelated to the external screen. I finally got this feature to work after my external screen froze and I rebooted the Pearl Flip. RIM said it hadn’t seen this behavior before, and wasn’t sure what had caused it.

The interior screen measures 2.4 inches diagonally and has a resolution of 240×320 pixels, which is a larger, higher resolution screen than most basic cellphones. While using Wi-Fi, I pulled up YouTube.com and watched a video. It played without skipping or stopping while streaming directly from the Web. A higher-resolution video, which was saved to my device, automatically played in horizontal mode so as to take up the entire screen; YouTube videos play vertically, without using the full screen.

Up to 10 email accounts can be set up on the Pearl Flip; I had no problems using Hotmail, .Mac and Gmail accounts. I also signed into AOL Instant Messenger and Google Talk on the Pearl Flip. Along with these messaging programs, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and BlackBerry Messenger also come pre-installed and ready to use.

If my Pearl Flip was closed and I remained signed into an instant-messaging client, notifications appeared on the external screen telling me who was sending an IM and what it said. When I opened the device, I was automatically directed to the screen where I could reply to the instant message.

I tested the T-Mobile Unlimited HotSpot Calling feature by starting calls using a Wi-Fi network and then leaving the network’s range. The calls remained steady without dropping or fading, and if I were a paying customer, I wouldn’t have been charged minutes for those calls. Calls that start out of Wi-Fi zones and end in Wi-Fi zones do deduct minutes. My Pearl Flip had no trouble automatically moving from the cellular network to a Wi-Fi network.

All T-Mobile Wi-Fi hotspots, such as at airports or in Starbucks (SBUX), automatically work with the Pearl Flip if you’re registered for the $10 monthly Unlimited Hotspot Calling.

If you’re considering taking the plunge into the always-connected world of smartphones, or if you want a more comfortable phone in your smartphone and don’t mind the quirks of SureType, the Pearl Flip 8220 may be the BlackBerry for you.

– Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

Phone Headset Curbs Sounds of the City

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:30:02 +0000

Wireless headsets can be a real boon to mobile-phone users, especially for chatty folks who often have their hands full. In recent years, these headsets have bolstered their noise-canceling technology, making it easier to conduct conversations even while walking on noisy city streets.

Today, Motorola (MOT) is unveiling its $100 Motopure H15 Universal Bluetooth Headset. It’s available from Verizon’s (VZ) stores and Web site, and I’ve been testing it.

While focusing on the new Motopure H15, I also took another look at two noise-canceling headsets we reviewed in May — the $130 Jawbone from Aliph Inc. and the $120 Plantronics (PLT) Discovery 925. I made calls on the three headsets while standing beside a construction crew’s loud generator in busy downtown Washington, D.C., and, in a separate test, running my hairdryer on high in the background.

In both of these loud scenarios, the results favored the Motopure over the Jawbone and Plantronics Discovery. Of the three, the Plantronics headset allowed the most background noise through and made it difficult for people to hear my voice. The Jawbone was much better than the Plantronics headset, but not as good as the Motopure, which dimmed loud background noise to a faint hum and seemed to amp up the volume of my own voice. I called various people and even left myself voicemails so I could hear the differences.

More Microphones

The Motopure H15 uses two microphones, while the Jawbone uses two microphones and one modified microphone that works as a voice-activity sensor. The Plantronics headset uses one microphone. Motorola says one of its microphones hears the user’s voice, the other picks up background noise and a technology called CrystalTalk works to filter that noise out.

In my Motopure testing, I saw at work technology that Motorola says is meant to automatically adjust the headset volume as noises increase or decrease in the background. And at no point during my tests with the headset did friends on the other end of the line notice any odd echoing or fading volume in my voice, as with some headsets.

Snug Fit

Unlike the Jawbone, which — as its name reflects — works by touching bones in the face to eliminate excess noise, the Motopure H15 never touches one’s face. In fact, Motorola cites this as an advantage over the Jawbone because it doesn’t need to touch a user’s face to work. Motorola’s headset fits using a loop of clear plastic that wraps snuggly around the ear, along with an in-ear piece, though it took me a little while to figure out which of its five earbuds fit best.

And unlike the Plantronics headset, which has a larger, triangular-shaped boom, the Motopure has a tiny boom that folds away when not in use. Users receive calls by simply folding the boom down, which instantly turns the headset on and connects to calls. When the boom is closed, the headset turns off to save battery. I liked the finality of closing the boom and knowing my headset was definitely off whenever I put it in my purse. And in its tucked-in position, the Motopure H15 is petite and portable.

But if you’re wearing this headset on your ear, opening and closing the boom is almost impossible. Motorola recommends using the boom as you would a clamshell cellphone: Answer calls by opening the boom before donning the earpiece and end calls by removing the earpiece and closing the boom.

Of course, many users will want to keep the device in their ear for an extended period, rather than fishing for it when a call comes in. For them, the awkwardness of the boom switch may be a problem. They can still keep the Motopure on with the boom opened, receiving and ending calls at any time by simply pressing the large Call button. In this state, the handset is in standby mode rather than off — the same as most Bluetooth headsets waiting for calls.

One Headset, Two Phones

A plus of the Motopure is its ability to simultaneously pair with two phones, such as a personal cellphone and a work smartphone. Incoming calls to both lines are represented by different colored lights on the headset. But as soon as a call with one phone begins, the Bluetooth link to the second phone is disconnected.

The Plantronics headset also has dual-phone pairing capability, but the Jawbone doesn’t.

According to Motorola, the Motopure’s battery lasts for about 4.5 hours of talk time. The Jawbone’s battery lasts four hours; the Plantronics headset, five hours. In standby, Motopure and the Plantronics Discovery last for about seven days; Jawbone lasts for eight. Pressing and holding the Motopure’s up and down volume buttons spurs an indicator light to glow red, yellow or green to represent battery strength.

I liked the Motopure’s sturdy charging stand, which doubles as a holder for the headset. Though this desktop charger isn’t available today from Verizon, it will be available later this month from other carriers and retailers in a $130 bundle with the headset.

More Colors Later

Today, the Motopure is available in a slate color, but it will be available in black later this month and other colors are tentatively planned for November. The Jawbone and the Plantronics headset are each available in three colors, and Jawbone will release blue and pink headsets later this month.

Overall, the Motopure H15’s noise cancellation worked the best out of these three headsets, and its tiny build and fold-up boom make it a helpful tool for consumers who want quiet conversations no matter where they are.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Where Your Old Gadgets Find a Second Life

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:32:45 +0000

It’s a fact of life and one of the reasons I have a job: digital electronics will eventually break or get replaced. But it’s hard to know just what to do with the gadgets that get left behind. Some people stuff them in junk drawers. Others want to donate or recycle their old electronics, but worry about compromising private data. And plenty of people want some monetary compensation.

This week I took a look at some options for people who want to get rid of old electronics, one way or another. The good news is that there are a handful of Web sites that make it easy to do this — and some of them may even pay you for your old products. The bad news is that you’ll likely receive only a fraction of what you originally paid, especially if you waited a while to get rid of it.

Some sites, like Gazelle.com and VenJuvo.com, offer cash for your items and/or will recycle products. Another site, TechForward.com, lets people pay a fee to “lock in” a value for how much the site promises to pay for the product in the future. MyBoneYard.com accepts only laptops, desktop PCs, cellphones and flat-panel monitors, and gives Visa (V) gift cards rather than cash.

I was surprised to receive significantly different value offers from Gazelle and VenJuvo when trying to sell the exact same products on each site. In one instance, VenJuvo offered me $30 more than Gazelle for a digital camera; another time, I got $15 more from Gazelle for an old Apple (AAPL) iPod. It’s worth the extra step to shop around at more than one of these sites before getting rid of something.

Both ask a few questions about the item, including its condition and whether or not it still has the accessories that originally came with it. Gazelle determines a product’s value using retail — think Amazon (AMZN) and eBay (EBAY) — and wholesale channels; VenJuvo uses similar criteria and also looks at competitors’ prices.

If you worry about someone stealing your digital data, you’ll likely not feel comfortable dropping something in the mail that’s chock full of personal information, especially if it no longer powers on to allow the owner to wipe this information.

Both Gazelle and VenJuvo accept at least some types of digital cameras, laptops, MP3 players, GPS devices, camcorders and gaming consoles. Gazelle also accepts cellphones. But they don’t take everything. Gazelle doesn’t take LCD TVs and VenJuvo doesn’t accept satellite radios and portable hard drives or any smartphones or cellphones other than the iPhone; neither accepts desktop PCs.

I took the closest look at newly released Gazelle, owned by Second Rotation Inc., and walked through the simple start-to-finish process of selling a gadget and receiving money from the site. After pulling up the site, people can find their product and its value by choosing from a list of nine categories or by typing some part of the product’s name into a search box.

I sold Gazelle a first-generation iPod Mini with four gigabytes of memory for which my boss paid $249 in 2004. I answered a few questions about the product: Yes, it still powered on; no, I didn’t have the original AC adapter, manuals or software installation CD, and it was in “excellent” condition, according to my assessment. Gazelle placed its value at $25.

At this step, I opted to add the iPod to my box and check out, but users can also add other items to a box, including electronics for recycling. Gazelle’s policy is that it pays 100% of shipping costs for any box shipped to the company, so long as there’s at least one item in the box worth $1. Eighty percent of transactions qualify for a free box; the rest can be sent with printed-out prepaid shipping labels, but you must find packaging.

Gazelle lets users receive payments via a mailed, paper check or using PayPal; money is received either way within five business days. People can also donate their money to one of 23 causes, including the American Red Cross and World Vision. I opted for PayPal, and the $25 amount was deposited shortly after Gazelle received the iPod.

I sent the old iPod to Gazelle in a brightly colored, empty box that arrives at a customer’s door a few days after he or she sells the device to Gazelle. I secured the old iPod in the box using balled up paper, and sealed it with packing tape. A prepaid shipping label was already stuck to it, and I needed only drop it off at UPS.

If Gazelle receives a product and decides that it isn’t worth what you said it was — either more or less — and you’d rather not sell, the company will ship the product back, free of charge. But while Gazelle’s site guarantees users that they’ll receive their money, and that personal data are safe with the company, no money-back guarantee is offered.

Gazelle hopes to calm nerves by posting detailed instructions on the site about how to wipe a device of all private information. But the company hasn’t yet done this, and numerous users will remain skeptical even with such instructions.

I also poked around on VenJuvo Inc.’s Web site of the same name, www.VenJuvo.com, which is derived from two Greek words meaning “support, assist and delight sellers,” according to the company. This site, too, buys products back from people, though it pays via check, PayPal or Kmart (SHLD) gift card. Users fill out similarly simple questionnaires on each product to help assess value. Unlike Gazelle’s style of mailing boxes to users, VenJuvo gives users only prepaid shipping labels to print out and stick on a box that the customer must supply.

One notable difference between the sites is Gazelle’s broader range of products. In the case of digital cameras, for example, Gazelle accepts 80 brands while VenJuvo takes only Canon (CAJ), Sony (SNE), Olympus and Kodak (EK). Unlike with Gazelle, if you send VenJuvo a product that isn’t worth what you said it was, the company won’t return the product free-of-charge; instead, it will charge you for shipping.

If users choose to receive a gift card, they get a 10% added value. While VenJuvo doesn’t let people donate a product’s value to a cause, it will add this feature next week and will include different causes (like Ronald McDonald House and Big Brothers Big Sisters) than those found on Gazelle.

Unlike Gazelle, VenJuvo will always take items for recycling and will pay for the shipping, regardless of whether you traded something in for a value.

A useful resource for general electronics recycling is the Consumer Electronics Association Web site, www.MyGreenElectronics.org, which locates nearby electronics-recycling centers according to ZIP Code. And almost every computer manufacturer has a recycling program in place; some will even recycle computers that aren’t their own brand.

One way or another, it’s time to clean out the old junk drawer. Just be sure to do some comparison shopping if you want money for your old products.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com