MegaPixels-DataMind Blog

Android 3.0 'Honeycombe' - Coming to an Archos or Tablet soon!

2011-02-04T14:54:00.001Z

View the Android 3.0 launch video (53 minutes)

USB B - Mini or Micro?

2010-12-24T11:48:00.000Z

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#Physical_appearance

Note: USB logo is on the bottom of the 2 micro-USB plugs but on the top of the other plugs (as shown above)

Anoto partner XMS Penvision signs agreement with Magicturk to sell Formidable Pen & Paper

2010-11-18T12:49:00.001Z

Anoto Group AB - Company Announcement Anoto Group AB receives order worth EUR 300,000 to 500,000

Lund, November 18, 2010 - Anoto partner XMS Penvision, a leading digital pen & paper platform provider, has signed a framework agreement with Magicturk, which is estimated to bring Anoto EUR 1.5 million in revenue the next twelve months.

XMS Penvision has placed an initial order for Anoto digital pens worth between EUR 300,000 and 500,000 depending on the final outcome of the framework agreement. This initial order will be delivered to XMS Penvision within the next three months.

"We are very pleased with the collaboration with our partner XMS Penvision. This agreement could turn out to be one of the largest pen orders Anoto has received so far, and it further strengthens the future of Anoto technology within forms processing," says Torgny Hellström, CEO, Anoto group AB (publ).

The digital pens will be used primarily within banking, maintenance and healthcare, and will be distributed by XMS Penvision's partner Magicturk, the exclusive distributor of XMS Penvision's awarded platform "Formidable" in Turkey.

"We are very excited about this order. It once again shows that Anoto Digital Pen technology, together with our platform "Formidable", creates a solid platform to build successful business on," says Mats Beijer-Olsen, CEO, XMS Penvision.

About XMS Penvision XMS Penvision is an experienced digital pen & paper platform provider working through a dedicated worldwide partner network. The main product is an enterprise digital pen & paper platform called Formidable with built in technology from Anoto. The Formidable platform was awarded with the Most Innovative Solution Golden Pen Award at the Anoto Annual Partner Conference 2009 and is considered by many as the best digital pen & paper platform on the market.

C-Pen translates WHOLE paragraphs to many languages

2010-11-02T14:06:00.000Z

C-Pen 3.0 & C-Pen 3.5 has a new Add-on called Google Translate. Run the C-Pen over text in a book, newspaper or magazine and immediately get the translation of the whole paragraph. Google Translate extends the power of C-Pen because until now the only translations available were word by word translations using C-Dictionary.

Megapixels Ltd and DataMind have been waiting for this whole paragraph translation feature for C-Pen since 1999!

C-Pen is available for sale from DataMind on the website here.

Example: I scanned some text from The Independent front page today and got the translation into Polish & Arabic.

Supported languages (both directions):

Afrikaans, Albanian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian and Welsh.

In addition to the supported languages above, it is also possible to translate text to the following languages:

Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Filipino, Georgian, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Thai, Urdu, Vietnamese and Yiddish.

(Note: These languages can not be used as scan language.)

Acer BeTouch E130 - due end November

2010-09-21T13:59:00.002+01:00

Archos fans know Charbax for his enthusiastic Archos videos. Here he reviews the Acer BeTouch E130 at Computex 2010. The Acer E130 has Android 1.6 OS and looks a lot like a Blackberry.

Acer BeTouch E130 Smartphone is available from DataMind.

Compare Video play: Samsung Galaxy S v Acer Stream

2010-08-27T11:34:00.007+01:00

Differences in playing Video between Samsung Galaxy S v Acer Stream via techboyarena who says:-

'I find that the Super AMOLED display on the Samsung Galaxy S is much much better than the AMOLED display on the Acer Stream'

View the first video below. What do you think? I'd say only marginal differences between the two phones when playing videos although maybe the Samsung looks a 'sharper', better contrast image. I'm not so sure if its significantly so.

via AndroidHDblog.it who says:-

'Galaxy S v Acer Stream in two tests: 55 v 40 and 26 v 10 frames per second, Acer Stream phone is a good phone but the Acer Stream User Interface (UI) is not as good as Google Android 2.1 Eclair UI'

DataMind sell Acer Stream & Samsung Android Smartphones.

Google Android overtakes iPhone

2010-08-13T13:31:00.003+01:00

source: Marketing Week & Fortune
Global sales of phones using the Google Android mobile operating platform have overtaken iPhone sales, according to new figures.

Figures from analyst Gartner reveal that Google Android’s market share has overtaken Apple’s iPhone.

Android’s share of the smartphone market has leapt to 17.2% from 1.8% a year ago while Apple’s share is 14.2%.

Smartphone sales: What the pie charts don't show, however, is that these are shares of a rapidly expanding universe. Mobile phone sales to end users grew 13.8% year over year according to Gartner, and smartphone sales accounted for 19% of them, a 50.5% increase.

Full Gartner report. I've included some excerpts here:-

Gartner, Egham, UK, August 12, 2010 — Worldwide mobile device sales to end users totaled 325.6 million units in the second quarter of 2010, a 13.8 percent increase from the same period in 2009, according to Gartner, Inc. Smartphone sales to end users accounted for 19 percent of worldwide mobile device sales, an increase of 50.5 percent from the second quarter of 2009.

“Crucially the sudden growth in media tablets, such as the Apple iPad, did not appear to hold back smartphone sales. We believe that most tablet users still feel the need for a truly pocketable, yet highly capable, device for those situations when it's inconvenient to carry a device with a larger form factor,”

Apple’s mobile device sales reached 8.7 million units or a 2.7 percent share of the overall mobile device market, but a 14.2 percent of the smartphone market. Apple maintained its No. 7 position in the worldwide mobile device market and held the No. 3 position in the worldwide smartphone market.

Advantages of Android over iPhone4

2010-08-07T15:58:00.000+01:00

main source: Smartphone Essentials, issue 103 & other sources (see links)

On June 24th 2010 iPhone4 went on sale. What are the advantages of Android over iPhone 4?

"It is Google's Android OS (not that of Nokia, Blackberry or Palm) that is shaping up to be iPhone's biggest rival when it comes to setting the agenda in smartphones" Smartphone Essentials, issue 103.

Screen Resolution

http://theiphonefever.blogspot.com/2010/05/iphone-4g-screen-multimedia-flop.html

Since 2004 the French company Archos have developed portable multimedia players. Now on their 6th Generation, Archos 5 Internet Tablet player has 800 x 480 pixels screen (~16:10 ratio) in a 4.8'' diagonal (L x H: 4.07" x 2.54") TFT LCD. This display has (by my calculations) ~192 pixels per inch (ppi).

The Acer Liquid (3.5" diagonal screen) and Stream (3.7" diagonal) smartphones have WVGA (wide VGA) screens at 800 x 480 pixels. They have the same ~16:10 ratio as Archos 5 but because the screens are smaller they pack in more pixels. The Acer Liquid has 266 ppi in the L x H 3" x 1.8" screen whilst the Acer Stream has 252 ppi (3.17" x 1.9" screen).

The iPhone 3 screen has a 480 x 320 pixels (3:2 ratio) in a 3.5" diagonal (L x H: 2.913"x1.942") display which has 165 ppi.

The iPhone4 screen has 960 x 460 pixels (~17:8 ratio by my calcs) in a 3.5" diagonal (L x H: ~3"x1.4" by my calcs) display which has 326 ppi (Apple's spec)

So the iPhone4 (326 ppi) has double the pixels per inch of iPhone3 (165ppi), 70% more than the Archos 5 display, 29% more than Acer Stream and 22% more than Acer Liquid.

In excess of the 'Retina Display' 300ppi, the retina ceases to make out individual pixels on the screen, claims Apple. Samsung says (Smartphone Essentials issue 103) that the increase from 250ppi to 300+ppi gives a 3 to 5% improvement in readability but at the cost of a 30% greater power consumption. The picture (from Apple's website) shown above, comparing iPhone3 v iPhone4 screen suggests that it would have been nigh-on impossible to read text on the iPhone3. But how many iPhone3 or Archos 5 users have said screen resolution was a problem?

Is iPhone4 stuffed with unnecessary pixels (hence reducing battery power without a noticeable benefit to readability or has Apple stolen a march over Archos 5 and the Acer Smartphones?

Update 7th August 2010: The Register 'Bryan Jones a retinal neuroscientist says that Apple's claim that the "Retina display's pixel density is so high, your eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels" is true.

Processor
The iPhone4 has a faster Apple A4 processor (the one used in the iPad) but Apple don't say in their technical specs page whether it will actually run at 1 Gigahertz (1Gz) as on the iPad. Which probably means that it doesn't.

Camera
The iPhone4 camera has been upgraded from iPhone3 three megapixels (MP) to 5 megapixels which will allow good quality A4 prints (at 300ppi) rather than just A5 prints from a 3MP camera. That is an improvement but many Android Smartphones already have a 5MP camera eg Acer Stream. The iPhone has a x5 digital (not optical zoom as in SLR cameras). Used at maximum zoom this will give pictures that cannot be printed to A5 size due to noticeable pixelation. The built in LED flash is useful under certain lighting conditions - but I prefer using natural lighting whenever possible. The iPhone4 has a VGA quality front camera (800 x 600 pixels) or 0.5 megapixels adequate only to print 3"x2" passport size quality (at 300ppi) prints.

HD Video Recording

The iPhone4 now supports HD video recording which means 1,280 × 720 pixels (720p) up to 30 frames per second (fps) with audio. This compares with SD (Standard Definition) 704 pixels × 480 (480p) which is the usual 16:9 aspect ratio of SD television in the UK. The iPhone3 had VGA video recording.

External Antennae issues
The iPhone 4 has a steel casing which doubles up as an external antennae with cellular on one half of the phone and WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS on the other. Unfortunately complaints about the iPhone 4's reception surfaced within hours of its debut, as buyers complained that touching the external antenna -- embedded in a steel band that encircles the case - often resulted in dropped calls or caused the signal strength indicator to plummet. Apple acknowledged that holding the iPhone 4 a certain way could weaken the signal, but told consumers to hold their phones differently or buy a case. Later Apple offered iPhone4 customes a free bumper case. The public relations black eye caused by the reception problems was compared, by a Microsoft executive, to the launch of Windows Vista (says Smartphone Essentials, issue 103).

'The iPhone hardware is still among the best, but the software still lags behind' Smartphone Essentials, issue 103.

More about the hardware features iPhone4 doesn't have at iphonefever.

More about the software soon in my next blog....

Acer Stream Reviewed

2010-08-07T13:41:00.002+01:00

Acer Stream was reviewed by GSMArena on 3rd August 2010. With regard to multimedia performance of the Acer Stream they comment:-

Acer Stream competes with HTC Desire
stronger multimedia features than Google Nexus One
MicroHDMI video out port with 720 pixels (720p) support delivers HD video to compatible external displays
3.7" capacitive touchscreen of WVGA (800 x 480) resolution; multi-touch support
Videos are captured in 1280 x 720 pixel resolution (720p) video recording at 24 fps

amount of resolved detail is below 720p standards, closer to WVGA (800 x 480) standard.

clips have high noise levels

Continuous auto-focus is flawed leading to bad focus lock in most videos.

magenta tint
videos stored in 3GP format with heavy compression and lots of visible artifacts.
some dropped or doubled frames
videos can appear choppy

download a full untouched 720p video sample by the Acer Stream.

XviD video support up to 720p
Dolby Mobile; dedicated multimedia keys
Two video players to watch videos

nemoPlayer
stock Android player - DivX videos cannot run to 720p, XviD had no problem.

Competitors

Motorola MILESTONE XT720

8 megapixel camera with xenon flash, 720p video recording at 24 fps, HDMI port.

Google Nexus One & HTC Desire - 5 megapixel cameras and Froyo (Android 2.2) upgrades enable 720p video recording.

Amazon says eBooks outsell hardback books for the first time

2010-08-05T20:50:00.004+01:00

Amazon report that in the second quarter 2010 it sold 143 ebooks for every 100 hardback books. Amazon Kindle ebook reader price fell from £200 to £149 (3G+Wifi) or £109 (Wifi) in June 2010 and concommitantly sales of ebooks have risen threefold. But less than 10% of US population own an ebook reader so it will be several years before ebooks outgrow sales of paperbacks and hardbacks. source: Computer Shopper (October 2010).

What size can the photos be printed up to after using a Plustek 35mm film scanner?

2010-08-05T12:48:00.007+01:00

What size can the photos be printed up to for good quality after using a Plustek 35mm film scanner? asked Claire. In short you need a 3600dpi film scanner for A4 or A3 size prints and a 7200dpi film scanner for A3 size prints when the film is cropped. Here are my calculations:

35mm film is 36mm (1.41") horizontal x 24mm (0.94") vertical.

For high quality prints you need to print out typically using 300 pixels per inch.

An A4 print (11.7" x 8.3") needs:-

11.7" x 300 pixels = 3510 pixels horizontal
8.3" x 300 pixels = 1692 pixels vertical

An A3 print (16.5" x 11.7") needs:-

16.5" x 300 pixels = 4950 pixels horizontal
11.7" x 300 pixels vertical = 3510 pixels vertical.

The optical resolution dpi (dots per inch) of film scanners varies. Both horizontal and vertical pixels must be sufficient to give high quality prints.

1800dpi film scanner

1800 x 1.41" = 2538 pixels horizontal (insufficient pixels to print to A3 or A4 size)
1800 x 0.94" = 1692 pixels vertical (sufficient pixels to print to A4 size, insufficient for A3 size)

3600dpi film scanner

3600 x 1.41" = 5076 pixels horizontal (sufficient pixels to print to A3 or A4 size)
3600 x 0.94" = 3384 pixels vertical (sufficient pixels to print to A3 or A4 size)

Rarely do you want to print to larger than A3 size so why are some film scanners 7200dpi optical resolution? The reason is that if you crop your film you will have less film to be scanned and therefore need the 7200dpi resolution. For example, if you crop your film by 50% then:-

7200dpi film scanner

7200 x 1.41"/2 = 5076 pixels horizontal (sufficient pixels to print to A3 or A4 size)
7200 x 0.94"/2 = 3384 pixels vertical (sufficient pixels to print to A3 or A4 size)

3600dpi film scanner

3600 x 1.41"/2 = 2538 pixels horizontal (insufficient pixels to print to A3 or A4 size)
3600 x 0.94"/2 = 1692 pixels vertical (sufficient pixels to print to A4 size, insufficient for A3 size)

Download the Excel spreadsheet Scanning Calculator by Denis Curtin at shortcourses.com for:-

pixels required per inch of print (as above)
file sizes (depends on colour or bit depth of the scan eg 24 or 36 bit depth)

Amazon Kindle - Amazons' vision is to have every book written all available in under 60 seconds'

2010-08-02T09:28:00.002+01:00

What is a smartphone?

2010-07-29T12:47:00.008+01:00

Share of 2010 Q1 smartphone sales
to end users by operating system,
according to Gartner.

A smartphone is a mobile phone that offers more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary basic 'feature phone'. Smartphones and feature phones may be thought of as handheld computers integrated within a mobile telephone, but while most feature phones are able to run applications based on platforms such as Java, a smartphone allows the user to install and run more advanced software applications ('Apps' eg Android Market) based on a complete operating system such as Google Android, Symbian, Blackberry RIM, Apple iOS, Microsoft Windows mobile or Linux.

Simon - the first
Smartphone in 1992

The very first smartphone was designed by IBM in 1992. This phone called 'Simon' contained a calendar, address book, calculator, note pad, e-mail world clock, games and fax with a touch screen instead of buttons.

So what can be called a smartphone? A smartphone can be defined as:

“a mobile phone that provides additional information accessing features. Any mobile telephone that combines voice services with e-mail, fax, pager or Internet access is called a smart phone” (by CEVA).
or

"Electronic handheld device that integrates the functionality of a mobile phone, personal digital assistant (PDA) or other information appliance".
or

"a mobile phone offering advanced capabilities, often with PC-like functionality. There is no industry standard definition of a smartphone. ..."

Acer Stream
runs on Android

Today’s smartphones have Internet access, high speed downloads & uploads (High-Speed Downlink & Uplink Packet Access - HSDPA & HSUPA) and Bluetooth connectivity. They also enable you to edit your information on-the-go including presentations. An Adobe Acrobat Reader is installed so you can view PDFs. That is just the tip of the iceberg, with many note taking & recording applications also available.

Archos 5 Internet Tablet
runs Android OS also
used in Smartphones

Current smartphones also go beyond simple information access, and into the realms of entertainment; some of the larger-screened phones are almost akin to dedicated portable media players such as the Archos 5. Many smartphones also include games pre-installed on the device, or available through an application market after sale. Video and audio playing applications are present on most phones these days, so you can have your phone, mp3 player and work documents all on one handy device.

Smartphones are, in essence just super mobile phones. You can call and text just as you can on a normal mobile phone, but there is so much more available. With the added functionality and the dedicated operating system also comes customisability which is just not possible on a conventional phone – the look and feel can be changed completely, as seen in our blog ‘What is Android?’

Sound good? Have a look at the range of smartphones available from Datamind.

What is Android?

2010-07-20T12:39:00.010+01:00

Android is an open-source mobile platform based on the operation system Linux, developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance. The world's first Android-powered phone was announced by T-Mobile on September 23^rd, 2008 with the G1 available to consumers on October 22^nd. The Android source code was made available on 21^st September 2008. Obviously, Android is a fairly new operating system (Windows Mobile appeared in 2003, and Symbian OS 6 was released in 2001) however this does not mean it is inferior. Quite the opposite, as the platform has been built from scratch to work with the newest touch screen devices.

Android Inc. says “it was built to be truly open”, allowing developers to create their own applications and make them available on the Android Market and which can be downloaded direct to the phone. Since there are more than 70,000 apps currently available on Android Market; with Android you are spoilt for choice. Also, being created partly by Google means that Android integrates easily with all of Google’s own products, such as Gmail and Maps.

In addition to the huge array of apps, the open-source nature of the platform means that new technologies and features can quickly be added to the system and taken advantage of. The newest version of Android is V2.2, called Froyo, and from the improvements we can see just how useful this open-source platform is. Announced updates include:

Up to 5x faster than Android 2.1 (Éclair)
Dedicated shortcuts on the home screen
Multiple keyboard languages
Portable Wi-Fi hotspot capability

So you have a mobile platform which is getting better all the time, with more apps than you could ever need. What else? Well, one of the problems with conventional mobile platforms is that everyone’s looks the same. You can change the colour, maybe change the desktop wallpaper. However, with Android’s open-source system if you’re not happy with something then chances are someone, somewhere, has come up with a fix. A quick search reveals that you can completely change the feel of your system, get new themes or even down to getting a new style of clock on the home screen.

Android say on their website:

“With devices built on the Android Platform, users are able to fully tailor the phone to their interests. They can swap out the phone's homescreen, the style of the dialler, or any of the applications. They can even instruct their phones to use their favourite photo viewing application to handle the viewing of all photos”.

As you saw in our previous blog, Android is expected to rapidly increase their market share and with the features, apps and advances of Android it is not all that surprising!

Acer Android Smartphones & Archos Android Tablets

Acer Smartphones with Android | Archos 5 Internet Tablet & Archos 7 & 8 Home Tablets | Compare specs Android Acer v HTC Smartphones v Archos Tablets (xls file)

Portions of this page are reproduced from work created and shared by Google and used according to terms described in the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License.

Archos 7 Home Tablet and the Android Market

2010-07-09T17:28:00.000+01:00

Android Summary

Android is Google's operating system for mobile devices based on ARM architecture. Android is a competitor to the Nokia Symbian platform, Apple's iOS for the iPhone and Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Windows Phone for mobile devices all based on ARM architecture.

Android Market Share

Smartphone Market Share for Android (wikipedia):- By Q2 2009, Android had 2.8% market share of the worldwide smartphone market rising to 3.5% in Q3 2009, 5.2% in November 2009, 9% in February 2010 and 13% in May 2010, only 0.2% behind Microsoft. Android's Q1 2010 US was 28% share surpassing the 21% iPhone share. In June 2010 Android was getting 160,000 new users per day up from 100,000 per day in May 2010.

In October, 2009, Gartner Inc. predicted that by 2012, Android would become the world's second most popular smartphone platform, behind Nokia's Symbian OS, BlackBerry would fall from 2nd to 5th place, iPhone would remain in 3rd place and Microsoft's Windows Mobile would remain in 4th place.

Android also competes with Blackberry for use in smartphones, tablets, portable media players and book e-readers.

Archos 7 Home Tablet (now in stock at DataMind.co.uk) has an Android 1.5 (Cupcake) operating system - released by Google in April 2009. Android 2.1 (Eclair) released January 2010 has support for more screen sizes and resolutions.

Richard asked DataMind.co.uk today "Do you know if Archos 7 Home Tablet 8gb can be upgraded to android 2.1 or if there's a way of getting marketplace onto it?"

Android 2.1 Eclair

Android 1.5 Cupcake

The Android Market is an online software store developed by Google for Android devices (wikipedia). An application program ("app") called "Market" is preinstalled on some Android devices and allows users to browse and download apps published by third-party developers, hosted on Android Market. Android market emphasis is on smartphones. Minimal hardware requirements for submissions include : GPS, compass, 2-MP autofocus camera, 3-axis accelerometer and 9 physical buttons.

Android devices are listed in Wikipedia including Smartphones (Acer, HTC etc), Tablet Computers incl. PMP (Archos 5 IT, Archos 7 Home Tablet etc) & E-Reader devices.

AppsLib is for Archos devices and tablets that are running Android. AppsLib has Social, Games, Multimedia etc applications.

ArchosFans post Operation Unbrickable: The quest for Google Apps has information about running Android apps on Archos 7 Home Tablet (A7HT) including Android Market, Gmail, GMaps, Google Talk and Google Calendar but Abobe Flash will not work.

Archos 8 Home Tablet

2010-03-06T14:54:00.000Z

www.Data-Mind.co.uk are taking pre-orders (no credit card details required now) for Archos 8 Home Tablet 4gb.

A pre Cebit show German Archos press release states that the Archos 8 Home Tablet 4gb is for sale in May at 149 Euros:-

"ARCHOS 8 Home Tablet

With a large 8-inch touch screen makes the "ARCHOS 8 Home Tablet" primarily for surfing the Internet for web services and video playback. The Home Tablet can also be used as a digital picture frame.

With only 12 mm in height and less than 400 grams of weight, is the "ARCHOS 8" a product that can be used as a digital picture frame and as a mobile video player or Internet browser.

The "ARCHOS 8 Home Tablet" will be available from May 2010 with 4 GB to a suggested retail price of 149 euros."

ARCHOS Home Slate - A70HB

2010-03-06T10:31:00.000Z

Archos press release at cebit show - ARCHOS Home Slate - A70HB

Pre-order at www.Data-Mind.co.uk

Archos 5 Internet Tablet - press release at Cebit show

2010-03-06T10:24:00.001Z

Archos 5 Internet Tablet - press release at Cebit show. Android OS - 5" screen.

Archos 5 IT available in stock at www.Data-Mind.co.uk from £199.

Archos 9 Internet Tablet - press release at Cebit

2010-03-06T10:20:00.001Z

Archos 9 Press Release. Runs Windows 7 with a 9" screen

Archos 9 Internet Tablet available in stock now at www.Data-Mind.co.uk here for £429.

Archos 7 Android born - named as Archos 7 Home Tablet at Cebit show

2010-03-06T09:49:00.012Z

Pre-Order Now the Archos 7 Home Tablet for shipment worldwide during April or May!

DataMind inadvertently released news of the 'foetal' Archos 7 Android (codename A70K) on January 27th 2010. The previous day DataMind had received a Powerpoint file from an Archos distributor. The distributor had been given the file by an unnamed person who had failed to explain to the distributor that the Archos 7 Android Powerpoint was in fact under embargo until Cebit.

The Powerpoint slide as reported by Archosfans

On the 28th January Archos UK phoned DataMind and requested we pull the news from our site because, as DataMind then learnt, the information was under embargo. DataMind immediately acceded to their request. But by this time the Archos 7 Android news, via ArchosFans, was in the Blogosphere and reported by Stuff.tv, Crunchgear, Carrypad, Wirefresh, T3, Engadget, Gizmodo, i4u, imp3.net (japanese) and cnetfrance (french) amongst other bloggers.

Entirely coincidently and perhaps fortuitously on 27th February Apple iPad was announced worldwide by Steve Jobs. As people were discussing the WiFi iPad specs they were also comparing it to the less expensive Archos 7 Android that was 'leaked' the same day! The iPad 16gb has a 9.7" diagonal screen with 1GHz, WiFi & Bluetooth and a slated £350 - over twice the price of Archos 7 Home Tablet.

Originally DataMind posted the news on ArchosFans.com on 27 January but the Archos 7 Android news spread like wildfire on the internet so we had hundreds of links to "DataMind "Archos 7 Android"" within a week and 19,000 links to the officially unannounced "Archos 7 Android". If a leak was to occur any Archos PR machine couldn't have paid for a better timing of Archos 7 Android 'leaked news'!

Now 6 weeks later Archos shows the device at the huge Cebit Germany show - the Archos 7 Home Tablet was 'born' on 2nd March 2010. The Archos UK site also features the product.

Archos 7 Home Tablet image courtesy of Archos via cnet.com

image: aving.net

Archos 7 Home Tablet is available to Pre-Order Now for £129.99 incl.vat (no credit card details are taken when you pre-order) at www.Data-Mind.co.uk

Why is Archos 7 Home Tablet such great value?

At 2 minutes Charbax (probably the worlds greatest exponent of Archos devices!) does a great job of explaining why the Archos 7 Home Tablet 2gb at £130 inc.vat ($179/Euro 149) is 20% less expensive than the equivalent Archos 5 Internet Tablet Android.

DataMind sells the 8gb Archos 5 Internet Tablet for £200 inc.vat. Assuming a gb costs an extra £6 you'd expect a 2gb model to sell for £165. The Archos 7 Home Tablet uses a slower 600 mhz processor (ARM 9 Rockchip 2808 processor running at 600 mhz) than the faster 800mhz processor used in the Archos 5 Internet Tablet (OMAP 3440 ARM Cortex A8 800mhz).

DataMind sell the Archos 7 Home Tablet for £130 - thats 20% (£35) less than an equivalent Archos 5 Internet Tablet but with a screen size increased from 5" to 7" diagonal.

JKK Mobile reviews Archos 7 Home Tablet from Cebit too:-

Pre-Order Now the Archos 7 Home Tablet for shipment worldwide during April or May!

Chat with Charbax about Archos 7 Home Tablet on the ArchosFans Forum and spec.

Archos 9 - more stock available at Data-Mind.co.uk

2009-12-15T17:46:00.002Z

DataMind will be getting further stock of Archos 9 at Data-Mind.co.uk (£470 inc.vat) on Wednesday 16th December for shipment to arrive to UK customers on Thursday 17 December 2009. Just in time for Xmas!

Archos 9 runs on Windows 7 with a 60gb hard disk and 9" screen and plays multimedia including HD video.

Archos 1 budget mp3 player

2009-11-23T20:19:00.004Z

Following on from the Archos Clipper, Vision 2 and Vision 3 is the £30 Archos Vision 1. The 1.5-inch LCD screen lack video support but does support MP3, WAV, WMA, APE, FLAC, music files and plays continuously for 20 hours at a single charge. 4gb device available end November 2009.

The cheapest 4GB 1.5" (128×128 resolution) Mp3 player in the world, positioned at 4x cheaper than the ipod nano and weighing 28g.

Whats the difference between Archos 2 and Archos 2 vision?

2009-10-07T10:33:00.005+01:00

Archos 2 vision

Archos 2

Availability: Archos 2 is no longer available whilst Archos 2 vision is in stock at DataMind now!
Spec: with Archos 2 vision view and store images. You can't view images on Archos 2

only the 8gb is available not 16gb

Colour: Archos 2 vision available in red and chocolate brown, Archos 2 in white, black and purple

Feature Differences	Archos 2 vision	Archos 2
Plays WAV	Yes	No
Tactile slider	browse lists, control volume by caressing screen	buttons
Screen	2" - 220 x 176 pixels	1.8" - 128 x 160 pixels
Weight	38g	50g
Size	95x52x9 mm (35% larger)	82mmx44mmx9mm

Archos Android Phone Tablet

2009-09-26T13:41:00.001+01:00

Archos has an Android Phone Tablet via PMPToday

Available from Data-Mind.co.uk probably Q1 2010

Sat, Sep 26, 2009Archos, Mobile Phone
As PMPToday advise today: a very, very interesting announcement today from Archos. No official name for the Phone Tablet yet but it’s touchscreen, shiny and equipped with a 1GHz ARM Cortex processor. It will be official unveiled with features and everything at the next CES. Other known features include 3.5G connectivity and a big 4.3-inch screen supporting an 854 x 480 resolution, also a 10mm slimness.

Archos - Android Smartphone - introduced by Mr Rochas - to be launched at CES in Las Vegas, January 2010

PenPower mini scaneye 11 - a pen scanner which reads words out aloud

2009-09-22T13:47:00.001+01:00

The PenPower mini scaneye 11 sample has been sitting on my desk for ages. Today I got around to testing this Korean designed usb pen scanner. Once sentences are scanned the words appear instantly on your laptop or PC. You can edit these words to incorporate into your essay. As you scan the words they can be read out aloud - a great feature for dyslexics or foreign language students.

PenPower mini scaneye 11 has a couple of features which its nearest competitor, C-Pen 20 does not have; namely reading words out aloud and scanning images such as logos. This latter feature was available with JNotes on the older C-Pen 600c/800c models but C-Pen 20 did away with scanning images, which is a pity.

Students get Windows 7 for £30 via Microsoft

2009-09-18T08:03:00.001+01:00

Microsoft are offering students the opportunity to buy Windows 7 for an amazing discounted price, £30 for either Windows 7 Home Premium or Windows 7 Professional.

You can take advantage of this offer from October 1st but you will need to be quick as it is for a limited time only and is only eligible to college and university students with a valid .EDU email address (an email address given by the college or university, for example: Suzanne@leeds.ac.uk ), a PC that is currently running a genuine copy of Windows Vista or Windows XP and can run Windows 7.

This offer will be available from 1st October so please check back then for details on how to take advantage of this great offer.

Why Windows 7?

We have designed and refined Windows 7 based on your input. You’ve essentially asked for a PC that’s simple to use-one that’s faster, easier, and works the way you want. So we made hundreds of basic improvements, and a few you might not have imagined. From switching between programs to recording TV, Windows 7 simplifies the way you use your PC-and the way your PC connects with the world.

Click here for the £30 Windows 7 offer from Microsoft.

For more information on these features and more that we think you'll really like, click here

News via ElectricPig.

Archos 5 Android Internet Tablet hands-on [Video]

2009-09-16T15:21:00.002+01:00

SlashGear stopped by the Archos launch event last night for the company’s new Android-powered Internet Tablet, the Archos 5. The idea is straightforward: all of Archos’ usual media-centric abilities are there, including broad codec support and the ability to play local and network-based content, but rather than their home-grown Linux-based OS the French company has turned to Android and a custom UI shell.

Stand-out specifications include WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth (with straightforward pairing to your cellphone, for mobile internet access), a 4.8-inch 800 x 480 touchscreen (using a resistive, not capacitive, panel) and an 800MHz OPAP3440 processor. ...

As you can see from our hands-on images, the QWERTY is well-spaced (especially when you compare it to what’s on offer from the HTC Hero) though we wouldn’t want to do document creation on the PMP; incidentally, while at release the Archos 5 will only support viewing Office documents and PDFs, editing is expected to be added before the end of the year.

As you’d expect from a media-centric company, the Archos 5 concentrates its efforts on audio, video and picture playback. As well as being capable of 720p output via HDMI, there are various docks on offer including a DVR Station which allows you to record VGA-quality TV and other video directly onto the PMP’s internal storage. Alternatively you can surf the web at 1,280 x 720 resolution on your HDTV, with either the optional ultra-thin QWERTY keyboard, Archos’ existing mini-keyboard remote, or the on-screen ‘board (or indeed any Bluetooth keyboard and mouse).

Still, since this is Android there are apps to be had, though Archos would prefer you to source those through their own AppsLib store (which features software fettled for the larger display). ... Archos have also cherry-picked a selection of apps to preinstall, including Twidroid and a new MP3 download store.

All in all, it’s a tempting machine, though we’re holding off final judgement until we see exactly how well the Archos 5 manages web browsing. While there’s Flash support, it’s not in-browser (videos open up in a separate window rather than running in-page) but the speedy CPU has us anticipating a slicker, more desktop-like experience than on most Android mobiles.

Archos Phone Tablet tipped: 1GHz Android 4.3-inch smartphone

2009-09-16T15:15:00.001+01:00

via Slashgear via usarchos
While Archos’ event this week was predominantly about their Archos 5 Android-based Internet Tablet, they couldn’t help but tease with another upcoming device building on Google’s open-source platform. The Archos Phone Tablet is, as the name suggests, a 3.5G-enabled version of the Archos 5, adding HSDPA/HSUPA connectivity to the PMP’s existing WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth.

Full specifications of the smartphone are unclear, but Archos did confirm that it would have a 4.3-inch 854 x 480 touchscreen (slightly smaller, but slightly higher resolution, than the Archos 5) together with using a faster, 1GHz ARM Cortex processor. It also keeps its PMP-sibling’s slender build, measuring just 10mm thick, and a brief rear glimpse showed a camera lens.

No word on what sort of internal memory we can expect – though we’d like to think that Archos will offer the same 16GB, 32GB and 64GB flash versions as the Archos 5 – nor when the Archos Phone Tablet will drop. Still, it certainly has potential as a MID/smartphone crossover device.

Megapixels Ltd on Twitter

2009-09-08T04:17:00.003+01:00

Megapixels Ltd is on Twitter: twitter.com/MegapixelsLtd

I'll twitter on topics from all of Megapixels Ltd divisions: Data-Mind.co.uk; MegapixelsTrade.co.uk; BeSeenPromotions.co.uk and BeSeenOnABike.co.uk and other work related stuff.

Canon Selphy CP710 portable printer £59.99 incl.vat

2009-07-08T10:49:00.000+01:00

in stock at www.DataMind.co.uk on 8 July 2009

Canon Selphy CP710
Portable direct photo printing from compatible digital still cameras, digital video cameras, mobile phones and PDAs, without the need for a PC. Ultra-compact, one-minute photolab dye-sublimation direct printer with memory card slots, full PictBridge support and a 1.5-inch LCD monitor.

Evernote funding story - never ignor Swedes emails!

2009-06-20T13:00:00.005+01:00

source: http://blog.clove.co.uk/2009/06/20/evernote-software/
Website: What is Evernote?

CEO explains the ups and downs of funding for Evernote.

Selling successfully online - Over 120 top tips for running an ecommerce web site by Chris Barling and Bruce Townsend of Actinic.co.uk

2009-06-20T12:24:00.001+01:00

Megapixels Ltd have been sellling online since 1999. We are always learning how to give our customers better service & value for money. Since September 2008 we have used Actinic software for www.DataMind.co.uk and www.MegaPixelsTrade.co.uk sites. I've selected some top tips from Chris Barling and Bruce Townsend Book.

download the entire pdf book (free).

27 Ask the question, what’s working? It’s a sad fact that when it comes to marketing, the anoraks are in the driving seat. Although being creative is crucial, the way to success is to measure the results and put the next round of money where you got the most results last time. So measure everything you do, and try to find out where all your leads and customers come from. When visitors buy from your site, make sure you post a question there asking how they heard about you, or use technology that tracks this automatically. Google supplies a free online service called Google Analytics to help analyse your traffic.

28 Find sites that are complementary to yours and offer mutual links. If you can, find specialist sites that cater for your particular niche, and get them to either link to you or put you in their search results. In return, put a link back to them. This can offer added value to your visitors as well as boosting your traffic - it’s a win-win situation. It should give you more traffic through the link, and also raise your listing in the search engines, giving more traffic that way as well. You could also set up your own referral scheme so that the linking site receives a share of the sales that they generate. The downside of this is that you need to buy some software or a service to do this.

29 Use a commercial referral scheme. There are also a number of referral schemes run commercially that you can join for a fee, and then pay a reward for clickthroughs or sales. Some sites report that this is their most cost-effective method of acquiring sales, but it will depend on what industry you are in.

31 Learn from the success of others. Keep an eye on your competitors, and on successful sites in other market sectors. Don’t just copy them; but do learn from what they are doing, and think about how you can adapt good ideas in appropriate ways. Trawl magazines and ecommerce suppliers’ web sites for case studies, and find out what other sites attribute their success to.

36 Market offline. It’s true that all of your prospects are online (if they are not online, they can’t buy from your store!) But it’s sometimes forgotten that 100% of these prospects also have a life offline. You need to ask whether traditional marketing methods such as direct mail may drive traffic costeffectively to your site.

Marketing your website: Top tips for good search engine results There are two ways of getting people to visit your site from search engines. ‘Natural’ or ‘organic’ listings are the results which the search engine itself has determined are most relevant to the search. ‘Pay per click’ or ‘sponsored’ listings are advertisements which appear when certain specified words have been searched for. The merchant pays each time a searcher clicks on an advert. The good news is that everyone who comes to your site by either method is probably searching for the stuff that you sell. Eighty percent of users do not look beyond the first page of search engine results. That means if your site is not on the first page, you will hardly be noticed. So make sure at least one page on your site - preferably your home page - is set up as described here, to give yourself the best possible chance of getting noticed.

37 Choose two or three key phrases that you think customers will use to search for a product or service like yours. Avoid single words like ‘shoes’ or very broad terms like ‘ironmongery’. There will be so many sites in these kinds of category that you will be very unlikely to get ranked on the first or second pages. Don’t try to cover too many phrases on a single page. If you need to target more phrases, set up another page

38 Test the phrases you choose. Use a keyword research tool such as Wordtracker (http:// freekeywords.wordtracker.com) to check how many people are actually searching for the phrases you selected. Search the newsgroups for these terms, and see what alternative phrases are used there to describe the same thing. These steps will also help you identify any phrases you have missed.

39 Try a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising programme. Google Adwords, MSN Adcenter and Yahoo! Search Marketing are the best-known schemes. PPC ads can be useful and cost-effective traffic generators in their own right, and you should at least test them. But they attract fewer clicks than natural or ‘organic’ listings and are generally much more expensive than optimizing your site for those. However, you can get a “double whammy” by using PPC as you both test whether PPC is cost-effective and also test out how good various key words are. You can subsequently optimize for the natural listings using the best-performing key phrases.

41 Repeat the key phrases at least four times near the top of your web page. If your page is based on a table, this will mean placing them near the top of the left-hand column. Add a Meta Description tag (as shown in the previous tip), but don’t worry about Meta Keywords tags unless you know you will be targeting a search engine that uses them. Most don’t. Also, work your key phrases into text that describes your site, so it reads well for visitors.

42 Get as many links to your pages as possible from other relevant sites. This will affect your ranking in some major search engines. The text of the link should ideally include one or more of your key phrases.

45 Manually submit your pages to your target search engines. Make sure you include the major search providers listed below (note some require payment). Don’t worry about the hundreds of others, and don’t believe any pitch that emphasises them. The key ones are: Google Yahoo! (web sites and directory) MSN Open Directory (dmoz.org)

46Consider concentrating on smaller search engines. If you operate in a market where there is a lot of traffic through search engines and a lot of competition, consider concentrating your effort on smaller search engines. You may get better results for the same expenditure, and the overall market volume means that there are still good pickings, even from the smallest engines.

47 Avoid the scam where a supplier offers you “guaranteed top rankings”. No-one can guarantee top rankings except for phrases that aren’t important and will generate hardly any traffic. So that’s what you will get.

48 Do not ask them to log in or supply any details before they can look at your products. There will be plenty of time to get their name and address once they have decided to buy something. It is nice to offer regular customers some form of recognition, like showing their name, but if you ask for it too early, it’s like an over-familiar salesman. Most buyers will leave your site rather than fill in a form. Your job is to eliminate everything that gets in the way of making a sale.

49Do not use Flash, large images, front doors or other gimmicks. If you really need a short introduction, then at least have the grace to offer a ‘Skip intro’ link. Otherwise, 80-90% of your visitors will leave without opening the door. The rest will watch the animation and then leave. Ask yourself - do I need to impress, or to sell something?

50 Do make it easy to find your products and services. If you have a home page, have a clear link such as ‘Shop Here’ in large letters. Do not rely on clever graphics or animations. Do not make it flash or blink - everyone will assume that the rest of the site will give them migraines! Even better, use your home page as part of the store and start selling straight away.

51 Make it easy to recognise what it is that you sell. Have pictures of the sort of products that you sell in each category - some of your buyers may not speak your language, but they know what they want to buy. If you sell branded goods, use the brand logos (get permission) to reinforce your credibility and to speed people through. Link logos to the relevant sales section.

52 Keep it simple. Make sure it is obvious how to add something to the shopping basket, and use common metaphors. If they cannot see how to buy, they won’t - there is always another store to go to.

56 Offer to keep the name and address of buyers - you can use a cookie on their browser to avoid security issues. This will allow your customers to checkout without having to type all their details in again. They will appreciate it, and it’s an incentive to shop again. But do make it clear that a cookie is being used, and give them the option not to store it - after all, they might be in an internet café.

57 Make your promises and guarantees clear and unequivocal. Include them within the checkout process, even if they appear elsewhere on the web site. You need to inspire confidence in buyers who have never met you. If you ever have an issue, just make the refund - unhappy customers tell many more people than happy ones do, and will also waste lots of your time.

Marketing your website: Top tips to avoid abandoned shopping carts Abandoned shopping carts aren’t necessarily negative. Visitors quit their carts for many reasons. They may be competitors checking out your site, or consumers comparing prices and finding out your trading policies. Equally, customers may use your site and then place the order by telephone. On the other hand, shoppers may quit because they find your checkout too complicated, or because they can’t find a next-day delivery option. The following tips will help you minimize unnecessary abandonment,

60Most importantly, build trust and more trust. Provide your contact details throughout the site, including a telephone number and physical address. Promote confidence, respond quickly to emails, and answer the telephone professionally.

62 Communicate your shipping costs early in the transaction. Everyone hates surprises on cost. If the customer proceeds to checkout and decides the postage is too expensive, you have lost the sale. However, to justify a single postage charge, a customer may buy more than one product.

65 Explain your security and encryption process. Offer customers the visible security of the ‘golden padlock’ that comes with using a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) on your site. Your ISP or web host can advise you how to set this up - or you can use a secure payment service like the one offered by Actinic.

66Categorise your site content into attractors (what people like) and detractors. Try to minimize detractors (ad pop-ups, need to register before buying and so on) and at worst balance them with attractors.

67 Experiment. Different site layouts and options can have a dramatic and unexpected impact on sales. For instance, one site reported a 20% increase in revenue after they added Paypal as a payment option. Another reported a 50% reduction after they prominently added the ability to input a voucher during checkout. People who did not have vouchers were obviously put off. Experimenting is important because each site will have slightly different visitor demographics - meaning that the people who visit different sites will behave differently. So you need to do your own trials.

68 Remember customer service is key. Encourage repeat business by going out of your way to meet customer needs. A happy customer will tell his friends, but an unhappy one will tell anybody who will listen.

69Be available. If customers cannot find out what they want to know from your site, they may try to get in touch with you. If they are unsuccessful, they will expect the same difficulty if they ever have a problem with an order - and they will go elsewhere.

Marketing your website: Top tips for pricing and promotion

70 Always offer more for slightly more money. Never discount something that a lot of people will buy anyway, it will cost you much more. Offer them a great deal if they buy something else at the same time. This will please them and encourage them to come back, and it will increase the value of each sale that you make.

72 Use vouchers or coupons. A person with a voucher or coupon feels that they have a special deal. It also ties them in to buying from you, because they cannot redeem your vouchers anywhere else.

73 Email electronic coupons. That way they are exclusive to your email group, and you reward your loyal customers without losing out on potential revenue from one-time buyers.

74 Understand how customers behave in your market. That will determine which tactics will work. Watch the trends in pricing and promotions among your competitors and in related markets. Learn from them, try things out, and see what works.

75 Try to find ways of reducing price for those who are very price conscious, at a cost to them. Airlines do this by discounting seats booked way in advance and sometimes at the very last minute, both of which are less convenient and popular than booking a few weeks in advance. You might do this by discounting returned goods or end-of-lines. Provided that it’s not loss making, it’s better to sell to price conscious customers at a discount than to lose the business to the competition.

76 Get customers to return to your online store. Analyse their sales patterns and make a special offer if they haven’t come for a while. Get and retain their permission to keep in touch with them by email by making it worth their while.

79 Don’t under-price. The quickest way that you can destroy a business is to engage in a price war where no-one makes any money. Make your offering the best overall value, not necessarily the cheapest - unless you have clear cost advantages which mean that you can sell low and still make a good profit.

80Upsell in your cart and after they have ordered. Once people have placed items in the cart, offer further items at a discount. You could offer the extra items post-free as an incentive; you may want to identify your best selling lines, or to look at linkages between items (e.g. batteries with toys or a case with a laptop). With good software, you can do this easily. A customer who has just decided to buy is generally feeling favourable towards you - so it’s an ideal time to sell them something else. You could contact the customer post-sale to check everything is OK and to suggest some more possibilities. This gives a personal touch to your operation as well as generating additional revenue.

TOP TIPS 81–102 Security and the law

81 Reassure visitors that you are real. As a vendor, you should list your actual address and phone number, and provide a point of contact where your web site visitors can speak to a real person. Also, if applicable provide your company registration and VAT numbers as it is the law to do so. Say on the site: ‘If you have any questions or queries about us or our products, please call us’. Provide facts about your business, and maybe pictures, as this will promote confidence. This point has been repeated from earlier. Deliberately. It’s that important.

82 Join a professional scheme. These provide reassurance for shoppers through a system of independent registration and verification of online retailers. SafeBuy or the IMRG’s Internet Shopping is Safe (ISIS) scheme are the best known. Display the logo on your home page, but not in the checkout. You don't want people to stop and think twice about security when they are about to make a purchase.

86 Encryption is the key. Credit card information is fully encrypted by virtually all vendors as it travels over the net. Provide details of your security method. This usually comes from using Secure Socket Layer (SSL).

87 All of the big boys do it. Billions of pounds of transactions are now being conducted across the internet every month. This is despite viruses and all of the other problems. Thousands and thousands of purchases are taking place, and many huge companies such as Dell are making the web their main ordering mechanism. Would they do this if it was fundamentally insecure?

88 Offer alternative ordering and payment methods. As a vendor, even if you are pushing web sales hard you should give alternative ways of ordering such as by fax. A few people will take advantage of the facility, but for the rest it shows that you are fully confident. And offer additional methods of payment such as cheque or PayPal.

90Present customer endorsements. Whenever customers make positive comments about your company, try to get their permission to quote them on your web site. Scatter a few such endorsements around the site, and change them regularly.

91 Put some pictures of staff and your premises if you can. It helps to establish how real you are, and is much more appealing than a faceless organisation.

93 Understand tax on shipping. People often don’t understand the finer points of VAT. For instance, if your products are a mixture of VATable and non-VATable, then the VAT charged on shipping should be in proportion to the mixture of VATable and non-VATable goods. Make sure your ecommerce solution can handle all of the VAT rules.

94Exempt EU business buyers from tax. If your customer is a non-UK business in the EU and is registered for VAT in their own country, they are allowed to quote their VAT registration number to you in order to be exempted from tax. If you can’t accommodate this, those customers are likely to look elsewhere.

95 Charge the country VAT rate if you exceed the country VAT threshold. Not many people know this, but if your online store is wildly successful and you are starting to turn over serious bucks selling into other EU countries, you hit some additional regulations. If you exceed the individual VAT threshold for Germany, France, etc. then you should charge VAT at the appropriate country VAT rate when selling into that country, not the usual UK 17.5% rate.

96Remember your jurisdiction. We’re in the EU so we are bound by EU rules. It’s not the same when handling US buyers. US states might want to charge tax on sales into their area, but it’s their responsibility to levy this tax. You don’t have to charge this “use tax” which is between the buyer and the state where they live. So as a UK business you can sell into the US tax free.

99Allow for disabled visitors - it’s the law. Make sure that you comply with the disability discrimination law. The key requirement is that you have to take “reasonable” steps to provide access to people with disabilities, and this includes your online store. One way of doing that is to make sure that all images have alternate (‘Alt’) text tags so visually impaired people can still navigate your site.

100 Privacy matters. You probably need to register with the Data Protection Registry at www.dpr.gov.uk. Registering takes just a few hours of careful work and thought.

103 Manage customer expectations. In an e-store you need to make sure that customers know exactly what they will get, and when. Amazon tell you that a book ‘normally ships in 2-3 days’ so you aren’t too upset if it takes four. If you offer ‘24 hour delivery’ then when do the 24 hours start? What are the time constraints, e.g. ‘Orders received by 4pm normally ship the same day’.

106 Give plenty of feedback. Placing an internet order may feel risky for the buyer. Make sure your buyers are told that you have received their order, and keep them up to date with its progress. If you have to make a back-order, let the buyer know when the rest of the order is expected.

109 Say what you mean and mean what you say. Don’t over-promise. Repeat customers are much more valuable than one-offs. Make it clear when you will deliver and then stick to it - even if it costs you more. Customers appreciate merchants who go out of their way to meet their commitments.

110 Selling overseas. There are all sorts of pitfalls to exporting. Who is responsible for any duty or taxes on the goods? In Europe, the EU Directive on Distance Selling sets out a legal framework for shipping within the EU. The good news is that shipments within the EU are free of duty. In the US, Congress banned new internet taxes - but government policy can change. Most large carriers can collect duty on goods when they arrive, but you need to be clear about who is going to pick up the tab. Generally it is the buyer’s responsibility. Make sure they know. If it comes as a surprise to them when the goods are delivered, you are the one they will blame.

111 Will your customer be in when it arrives? Customers usually have to go to work, so there may be problems in receiving your goods. One obvious solution is to deliver to workplaces, or allow special delivery instructions like “deliver to neighbour at number 5”. Some companies are experimenting with deliveries to known drop-off points like petrol service stations. If you can offer this, make sure that you can deal with goods that ‘go missing’ en-route. Another approach is to offer delivery within more precise time periods.

116 Go multi-channel. If you have a printed catalog, ask if they would like a copy when they order. Don’t feel that the web is your only channel - you have multiple routes to your customer. It is much easier and cheaper to sell more to an existing customer than it is to win a new one. Research suggests that customers who buy through multiple channels are the most profitable customers.

117 Look for every opportunity to personalise your service. The internet is generally very impersonal, so you need to communicate that your business is run by human beings who care about their customers. This also reassures them that they have a contact, if there is any problem - it is much better than a faceless corporation.

118 Image is an issue when a customer has never met you. Take all the chances you have to exceed expectations and build your reputation. If you need to call a customer for any reason - for example for security purposes, if the credit card and delivery addresses are different - take the opportunity to offer something extra such as a gift-wrap service. This helps protect you without offending the customer.

119 If there are any problems, like out of stock items or a problem with delivery, tell the customer immediately and take full responsibility. Never, ever blame anyone else - even the courier. Nothing is more infuriating for the consumer than when a supplier blames some third-party over whom they have no control.

120 When a mistake happens, correct it at the highest level. Customers appreciate it when a manager calls, rather than the most junior person - it makes them feel important to the company. Also the manager has more power to offer compensation or to rectify the problem. An apology works wonders, especially if it is accompanied by a token to acknowledge the problem, such as a discount voucher against future orders.

121 Review your service continually. Contact customers, or a cross section of customers, some time after delivery and check that they are happy with what they bought and with your service to them. You can do this by email or by telephone. This gives you feedback on your operation and also gives you another legitimate chance to sell something. Your customer may have ordered one of something to try it out - if they are happy, you may get a larger order immediately. If they have any problems, apologise and deal with them.

123 Treat customer complaints as an opportunity, not a problem. As well as exposing specific problems that need to be fixed, customer complaints are a great opportunity to learn and improve. They should not be buried away and forgotten, but analysed. It’s also good to share both positive and negative feedback with everyone in the organization. If staff are mentioned by name, pass this on for praise but don’t publish it in the case of criticism. This reminds everyone how important it is to keep customers happy - and provides a well-earned pat on the back when things go well.

124 Avoid fraud. One problem when selling online is fraud. Don’t get things out of proportion, there are problems with any business and no-one has managed to entirely eliminate shoplifting yet. Unfortunately it’s true that foreign orders from some countries seem to be much more likely to be fraudulent than others. If in doubt, stick to ones from Western Europe and North America. To help avoid fraudulent orders look out for these indicators of fraud: • They tend to use the most expensive shipping method available • They tend to choose the most expensive products • They tend to use free email addresses such as Yahoo or Hotmail. In addition you can check whether an order is fraudulent by asking for a fax of a copy of the back strip of the credit card; asking for proof of name and address to be faxed; or you can telephone to make sure that the number is genuine. Most fraudsters give up at the first hurdle and you don’t hear from them again. If you use a payment service such as Actinic or Worldpay, this normally provides some standard antifraud measures.

125 If you can’t get big, get niche. The world wide web is huge, but you can be successful by being different. Maybe you can present a range of specialist products that is hard to find elsewhere.

WATCH: Steve Ballmer Unveils 'Bing' Microsoft's New Search Engine

2009-06-20T05:47:00.000+01:00

go to Huffington Post to view video (10 minutes)

Innovation: Looking forward to the smarter smartphone

2009-06-12T23:30:00.003+01:00

Apple is the market leader in smartphones. Now Palm are getting in on the act.

This week was a big one in the world of gadgets. Not only did the firm leading the smartphone market, Apple, unveil a a new iPhone; but a new contender, Palm, staked its reputation on a smartphone of its own.

Yet despite all the fanfare, neither phone offers much that is new. Each boasts a luscious full-colour, multi-touch-sensitive screen, GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi access, a camera, light sensors and an accelerometer – as do their competitors the Blackberry Storm, HTC Magic and various others.

The core package of what makes up a smartphone has already been established and the competition between them will be, for now, over relative subtleties rather than unique, blockbusting hardware.

Yet cutting-edge research is still suggesting genuinely novel additions to the smartphone package. Here are just a few of them...

Feeling the squeeze

Giving phones a new way to pick up their users' intentions could make the devices more intuitive to use and open up many new applications.

One idea being explored by Brandon Taylor and Michael Bove at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge is to build pressure sensors into the phone that can detect the exact position of a person's fingers.

The phone can switch function depending on your grip; flipping between camera, phone, music player or games controller as appropriate, for example, without you pressing any buttons.

Backwards approach

Another suggestion is to put the touchscreen on the back, not the front. That avoids what Patrick Baudisch at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany, and Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, calls the "fat finger" problem of your digit obscuring what you are trying to select.

When a user moves a finger along the back of such a device, they see a ghostly finger on the screen, creating the sense that the gadget is transparent.

After a first, somewhat-clunky, prototype Baudisch is now testing a much-improved slimmer version called NanoTouch It's about the size of a small phone, but the unusual interface allows greater precision. In tests, users have been able to accurately touch targets on the screen just 1.8 millimetres across.

Distant forces

Another answer to the small screen problem is to move the user interface off the device altogether.

Alex Butler's team at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK, added infrared sensors to a phone to let it detect the position of fingers up to 10 centimetres away, when the device is placed on a flat surface.

This system, dubbed Sidesight can be used to interact with objects onscreen without touching the phone at all and could be particularly useful for using a handset to control another device, whether a robot or a TV. The prototype device tested well, with users reporting they felt they were touching the imaginary edges of large photos as they manipulated them.

Battery life continues to be a problem, with many smart phones running low on juice after a day of heavy use. This week Nokia suggested a possible answer with a prototype that scavenges energy from mobile antennas and TV masts to charge itself. At the moment it can only grab 3 to 5 milliwatts – but if the Nokia team can increase that level by a factor of ten, the phone would scavenge enough energy to actually recharge the battery.

Feel the beat

Suggesting new ways for phones to communicate with their users is also keeping researchers busy. The "Frankenphone" designed at the Deutsche Telekom Laboratories in Berlin, Germany, vibrates with a heartbeat that is strong when the phone is fully charged, but weakens as the battery runs low.

User tests suggest that some find the beating phone a reassuring presence in their pocket – although others think it's annoying.

A similar idea from the University of Glasgow, UK, uses a phone's vibrate function to simulate the feel and sound of sloshing liquid to communicate battery life.

These concept devices are currently doing the rounds at science and technology conferences rather than consumer trade fairs, but it's only a few years since the very concept of the smartphone was little more than a research project, so any one of them could, in a modified form, soon find its way into a pocket near you.

Free Shipping both ways!

2008-09-19T06:44:00.002+01:00

Great service at Zappos! Source: Sarah Milstein here.

Zappos have great customer testimonials:-

Free Shipping both ways! That means if you order the wrong sized shoe the return shipping is free.
Shipping Upgrades free - express shipping - They sent me an email the next day saying they were upgrading my shipping to overnight, at no request of mine and at no extra cost.
immediate replacements - dont need to return goods to Zappos before you get replacement - a very painless return policy
widest product range in their niche
fastest delivery
reasonable / good prices
excellent customer service
friends recommend them - I was told by a friend that Zappos was the site to visit on the net but she didn't warn me how happy I'd be!

New DataMind website 10th September 2008

2008-09-19T06:38:00.001+01:00

Along with the LHC, the same week, Megapixels Ltd started up our new DataMind website www.data-mind.co.uk based on Actinic.

The new site is a lot easier to navigate than our old site www.datamind.co.uk which has been hosted at Merchandizer.com since February 1999.

Energy cost of PCs on standby

2008-02-07T17:06:00.000Z

This research was prompted by http://www.eco-button.com/uk/A2.0.business.htm
Eco-button puts PCs on standby - by pressing a button. It is linked to a PC via USB.

Energy cost of PCs on standby

By Chris Long
Click producer

Any device with a remote consumes electricity when on standby

Electrical power has changed our lives and given us phenomenal freedoms, from talking to people around the world, to going to the moon.

But do we know just how much power we are using when we switch things off or put them into standby mode?

Energy management consultant John Field says: "Electronic devices like TV or video or stereos, anything which has a remote control, have to be live so you can switch on remotely.

"There is nothing to stop you switching it off physically, but if you are going to switch it off with the remote control, then something at the other end within the box has to be live.

"It has to have power and electronics operating, so there's a bit of what's called standby power."

Ultimately, using your remote control can use more power than getting off your backside and pressing the buttons yourself.

Power consumption

Standby power can range between 10 and 15 watts, and occasionally beyond. On its own, this is not much. But if you get half a dozen devices on standby, it is the equivalent of a 60 watt bulb.

A PC is always using energy unless it is totally switched off

Tracking standby power is difficult, but Mr Field has developed a device to see just how much power we are burning in standby.

A laptop computer, for example, can be plugged into the mains via his meter which reads the voltage and wattage used.

The device is useful because the way the systems draw standby power can be difficult to monitor. A commercial version is being put together by a group called DIY Kyoto.

Astonishing figures

All around the house we bleed power. The modern home is permanently on standby, full of equipment that sits "half on", waiting to spring immediately to life when we ask it to.

Figures from the Energy Saving Trust on standby power use in the UK home are astonishing:

Stereos on standby cost £290m and produce 1.6 million tonnes of CO2

VCRs and DVD cost £194m and produce 1.06 million tonnes of CO2

TVs on standby cost £88m and produce 480,000 tonnes of CO2

It means that in one year, in the UK alone, our equipment on standby produces a total of 3.1 million tonnes of CO2.

But there is a bigger culprit out there: the personal computer, as Scott Richards from power supply manufacturer Antec explains.

If you really want to be green with your PC, when you're done using it turn it off

Scott Richards, power supply manufacturer

"The PC is a special case because if you don't turn it off completely, in other words pull the switch on the back, it's always drawing some kind of power.

"And

depending on what kind of mode you're in that power can be anywhere between five watts to 60 and beyond.

"If a million PC users switched to a more efficient power supply, it would save almost the equivalent of 250 thousand litres of gasoline a day."

By the end of 2004 there were 820 million PCs in use around the world, and by 2007 that will top a billion,

according to the Computer Industry Almanac.

No matter how easy these devices make our lives there is little doubt that they are costing us and the planet dearly.

As Mr Richards says: "If you really want to be green with your PC, when you're done using it turn it off."

Can Amazon wean us off paper?

2007-11-30T08:49:00.001Z

Can Amazon wean us off the paper book or can information in books be easily used on a computer using Megapixels Ltd mobile line and page scanners?

Can Amazon wean us off paper?

Amazon hopes its ebook reader will do for books what the iPod did for music. Danny Bradbury assesses this novel new device
GALLERY:The history of ebooks

Danny Bradbury
The Guardian
Thursday November 22 2007

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, shows off the new Kindle ebook reader in New York

Jeff Bezos was, as usual, in ebullient form on Monday as he launched Amazon's much-rumoured "Kindle" ebook device: "we knew we would never out-book the book," he explained. "We would have to take the technology and do things the book could never do." Certainly, it may do some of those things: with a battery life of up to 30 hours and a two-hour recharge, it is designed to untether readers from the power socket, like a regular book. But the $399 (£194) device will do more than traditional books ever could.

The US-only mobile network connection lets users instantly receive newspapers and magazines subscribed to via Amazon, and displays documents that you send to a personal Kindle email address (for a 10-cent charge). But almost as soon as it appeared, bloggers and testers began to find wrinkles they weren't so sure about: the format is proprietary (so no reading it on your PC), you have to pay to read blogs or papers that are free online, and the 170 dot per inch screen isn't as bright as real paper. Is the Kindle an iPod for books - or just another flawed idea?

Earlier trials

Ebook readers already have a long and unsuccessful history. Sony's e-Reader, available only in the US, is a revamped version of an earlier version trialled in Japan, while the UK distributor for Dutch e-reader vendor Irex estimates that at most, 10,000 units of its iLiad device have been sold worldwide. But Amazon knows books, and it knows technology, and it has significant muscle in both. Could it go further?

Jeff Jarvis, the Guardian columnist and journalism professor at the City University of New York, isn't excited about the Kindle; he's saving his pennies for an iPhone. "Is it the perfect thing for reading a 30,000-word book? No," he says. But he already carries a camera, an iPod, a Mac and a phone, and is gradually consolidating. He prefers a single device that can do many things adequately rather than a gaggle of bulky dedicated gadgets. "The beauty of the iPhone is that it has a browser, and I read a lot of things in browsers," he says. "I really don't want to carry around another device."

Should we make space for a dedicated e-reader or make do with a generic device? While dedicated readers have come and gone, others have tried to shoehorn ebooks onto PCs and mobile phones. Jane Tappuni is one of them. Her company ICUE (i-cue.co.uk) started out publishing ebooks on tiny mobile phone screens. Words would flash on to the screen one after the other in quick succession, in a system advocates call "flash reading". As screens evolved, she began offering other formats including a screen ticker and a normal page view. But customers aren't buying as fast as she'd hoped.

"Convergence devices are becoming so easy to read from, and so good," says a defiant Tappuni. "I can't see that many people would spend £200 on a dedicated reader." But clearly, they'll spend big bucks on an iPhone, which could finally give her business what it needs. With Apple opening the platform up to third party developers, she hopes to ship an ICUE reader for it. Don Norman, co-founder of technology design consultancy Nielsen Norman Group, thinks she's backing the wrong horse. "Will people read stuff on the iPhone? Sure. But it's not good for that," he warns. Instead, he thinks ebook readers should be dedicated because it will make them simpler to use and less expensive.

They're also more enjoyable to read from, says Peter Blanchard, who runs Libresco, UK distributor for Irex's dedicated e-reader. "The size of an iPhone isn't in any way comparable to the size of a paperback book," he says. "And the difference between reading on a backlit screen and the iLiad is that [on the latter] the reading experience is as close to paper as makes no difference."

But if an associate professor like Jarvis is unwilling to carry a dedicated reader around, who will? Book-laden school students, say some. Others suggest lawyers and other professionals who need access to lots of documents: the legal publisher Sweet & Maxwell converted two of its titles to one of the iLiad's supported formats, and tested the device with some customers.

"Lawyers have to lug around huge tomes," points out publishing manager Chris Hendry. "One guy was smitten with it. He uses it all the time and didn't want to give it back." But not everyone was enamoured. One person was perfectly happy looking up reference material on his laptop computer, while another was frustrated by the startup speed and the sub-second delay when turning a page on the device, Hendry says. Another couldn't cope with keeping the battery charged, and couldn't update the software. These people should be the perfect market for dedicated e-readers, but "we have concluded that it is between two and five years away", Hendry says.

Other publishers worry that the whole ebook concept is flawed. Like many, HarperCollins is currently in the throes of digitising its content. "We're partly digitising because we are saying that we're not as interested in the book as a content delivery mechanism," says group digital publisher Clive Malcher. "We want to start with the content and deliver it in the most appropriate medium."

Searching for a standard

"The book is a broad type of technology rather than a product, and we need to talk about product," says Matt Hunter, global practice leader for consumer experience design at international design firm IDEO. For him, products include novels, newspapers and reference titles. If those multiply and diverge, e-reader vendors could find it hard to support them all. Even publishers are not yet sure what the products will look like or how we'll consume them. How many radio pundits had thought of the podcast before the MP3 player appeared?

The evolution of e-reader software and the formats used to encode the books shows us where this may go. Adobe now offers a software-based ebook reader called Digital Editions that supports ePub, an electronic publishing standard that most interested parties seem to be getting behind. ePub lets publishers add their own objects to a document, explains the general manager of Adobe's digital publishing business, Bill McCoy. The company's reader supports interactive animations and video clips in its own Flash multimedia format, and is also leaving room for features such as social networking (virtual book clubs, anyone?). It also reflows content for screens of different sizes, emphasising the drive to stay device-independent.

With publishers and format developers so heavily focused on content and less interested in conventional notions of the book, developing a dedicated unit designed to replicate it begins to look either brave or foolish. Wouldn't a generic device be more adaptable?

Accepting that the content will never stand still suggests that the hardware and software won't either; that the iPhone isn't the perfect e-reader, and neither is the Kindle, or any of the others. "There's always something better coming down the pipe," argues Hunter.

Biggest challenge

In any case, developing the perfect reader won't be the biggest challenge for the still-tiny ebook industry. John Maxwell, an assistant professor in the master publishing program at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, points to digital rights management and content sharing as the bigger challenge.

"We watched the music industry slouch towards a non-DRM MP3 format," he warns. Watching the battle over music downloads, IDEO's Hunter has told clients that even though they want to make money from their digital assets, they can't. "There is no intrinsic value in the media itself. It's in the exchange," he says. "It's so hard for an industry to hear, to listen and to understand when significant disruption is happening."

Book publishers may baulk at the idea that books have no value (Amazon certainly won't stop charging for them), but they should acknowledge that at least part of that value is shifting.

Before we ask which electronic text reader is better, we should ask what consumers want. How easy do the devices make it to get the content in the first place, and to put it on to the device? How easy is it to lend books to each other, which for many is one of the most enjoyable aspects of reading?

Failing to answer questions like these may make it even harder to wean readers away from paper. To make ebooks work, we have to take user-friendliness in the device as a given and then look for it in the business model - which is why the fortunes of Amazon's Kindle will depend on much more than the hardware alone.

Dorset's first BowShot E-traders' Group launch

2007-10-24T23:06:00.000+01:00

Tonight I attended the first meeting of Bowshot in Dorset (I attended a Hamsphire Bowshot meeting and was a Dragons E-Den participant earlier this year). Speaker: Steven Gallaher of Bluhalo) who made these points:

Mystery shoppers; conversions; 6 stats ; google analytics too complex; ; tap into trafflic flow; easy to prurhase; comfortable;

Know your competitors; reinforce brand! Evolve stay ahead; do today what competitoion will do tomorrow

The Long tail = best book; a world of niches ; simplicity is the ultimate sophistication = Leonardo da vinci

52% - 75% shopping cart abandonment!!

Conversion online 1.5%

Shopping basket top right -web 2.0 drag and drop

Ab test L v R

Bag or basket in the uk or usa based in cart

Up sell / cross sell after have bought

Registration before checkout = a NoNo

Messy removal of products

Gencom = Chris Love and ANO

Shipping costs all known before try to buy

Being Confortable is a danger – annoying friend to critizise

Live chat www.etsy.com

Video use – Bournemouth surf guy

Get trust; not built in the bedroom!

Raise design game

Email campaigns

Banner – change it; calendar add monthly every month; moving banner

Content is king - linking is queen

++ Loss leader ++

Separate sight for price comparison – become a aggregator

Industry portal – eg pmp;

Liveperson

Spelling mistakes – very cheap PPC

Less barriers re checkout – don’t get them to sign up; choice of optin

**registered with data protection act – prove that got optin

reposted from: http://bowshot.org/etd.aspx

Dorset's first BowShot E-traders' Group launch

Following the successful establishment of a BowShot e-traders' group in Hampshire, the launch of a second group, based in Dorset, will take place on 24th October. Delegates to the launch will meet from 4-7 pm in Room P401 at Bournemouth University's Talbot Campus, to hear how the group will operate and to meet its prospective new members.

These members will be executives from high-growth bricks and mortar businesses with mission-critical web operations or from established e-businesses on-line sales in excess of £250,000 per annum.

For more information about this group and how it will operate in future, please see below.

Objective

The group will pool its expertise and work together to triple the value of member's on-line businesses within 3 years.

Modus Operandi

When formed, the group will meet on the third Wednesday of each month, from 4-7 pm at Bournemouth University's Talbot Campus. (There will be no meeting in December as this is a usually a hectic time for e-traders). Meetings will be facilitated by Nicholas Steven or by another experienced facilitator, in his absence.

The first hour will normally provide members with the opportunity to discuss their current e-business challenges and to mentor each other.

For the second hour, the group will hear from an acknowledged expert or exemplar in some aspect of e-commerce. These presentations will normally address one of these key interest areas:

Improving conversion
Improving traffic
Improving measurement
Improving the business

The last hour will provide for Q&A and for members to drill down and share their own experience of the topic under discussion. Action plans will be produced and monitored at subsequent meetings.

Membership

This groups will consist of 18 members. An average attendance of 15-16 can be expected at meetings, so everyone has a chance to contribute. It is important that members are the executive responsible for the attainment of their company's on-line objectives. They must have the authority to implement the best practices and ideas that they discover at group meetings. Most members' companies will have on-line sales of more than £250,000 p.a, and many with more than £1m, prior to entry.

Membership fee

Joining fee £150 plus VAT
Annual membership: £1,000 plus VAT

Fees are payable half-yearly in advance or by monthly standing order.

Meeting location

Bournemouth University, Fern Barrow, Poole, BH12 5BB. The meeting is held in one of the University Seminar Rooms. Please ask at the main reception.

Meeting frequency & timings

Members meet 11 times a year between 4-7 pm on the third Wednesday of every month except in December, when the group takes a holiday. Group members are also able to meet other BowShot groups at the BowShot Gala dinner in December.

How to join

Please contact us if you are interested in joining this group.

Head of Chinese Toy Company Said to Kill Himself

2007-09-05T12:03:00.001+01:00

By DAVID BARBOZA

Published: August 13, 2007

SHANGHAI, Aug. 13 — The head of a Chinese company that was behind the recall earlier this month of more than a million Mattel toys committed suicide over the weekend, China’s state-controlled media reported today.

Zhang Shuhong, a Hong Kong businessman and owner of the Lee Der Industrial Company, a company that made toys for Mattel for 15 years, hanged himself in a company warehouse in Foshan, in southern China, the Southern Metropolis Daily said today.

There was no independent confirmation of the suicide. A person who answered the phone at Lee Der’s office in Foshan City, near Guangzhou, immediately hung up.

A spokeswoman for Mattel, which is based in El Segundo, Calif., released a statement this morning that said “We were saddened to learn of this tragic news.”

The death is the latest development in a year filled with prominent recalls and product safety scandals involving goods that were made in China.

Mattel, which makes Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars, recalled more than a million toys worldwide after discovering that they were coated with lead paint. The recall was one of the largest this year and included 83 types of toys, including Sesame Street and Dora the Explorer characters made under the Fisher-Price brand and sold worldwide.

A string of troubling recalls of Chinese-made products this year has heightened trade tensions between the United States and China and created a public relations disaster for China, whose economy and trade surpluses are growing at a blistering pace.

Experts here say many Chinese factory owners — often under intense pressure to lower production costs — cut corners in making products and regularly use cheap and illegal substitutes. And indeed, in several of the recalls involving China this year, the government says companies intentionally used cheap or illegal substitutes.

For instance, after the United States announced one of the largest pet food recalls in history, Chinese regulators said they found that two makers of food ingredients here intentionally added an industrial chemical called melamine into the feed to save money and artificially increase the protein count. Instead, they created a toxic potion that sickened or killed thousands of animals.

Faced with growing criticism over the quality and safety of its food, toys, tires and other products, China has vigorously defended the quality of its goods, insisting products made here are on par with products made in the United States and Europe.

But the government, acknowledging some continuing problems, has also vowed to overhaul its food safety system, to crack down on companies that counterfeit and sell tainted products and to severely punish those responsible for damaging the country’s image and its booming exports drive.

Just last week, regulators in Beijing revoked the export licenses of the two toy manufacturers, including Lee Der, because of their roles in recalls. Earlier this year, the RC2 Corporation of Illinois recalled 1.5 million Thomas & Friends toy railway sets because they were also coated with lead paint. One of its suppliers, the Hansheng Wood Products Company, also had its license revoked.

Beijing regulators said they revoked Lee Der’s license because it used paint contaminated with excessive levels of lead, which could be poisonous and pose of health dangers to children.

The government said in an announcement last week that Lee Der’s paint supplier had shipped Lee Der a fake, lead-free paint pigment that could be used in producing paint. The government said it was investigating the sale of fake lead-free pigment in China.

In an interview earlier this month, Mattel’s chief executive, Robert A. Eckert, said the company Mattel later identified as its supplier, Lee Der, “is a vendor plant with whom we’ve worked for 15 years; this isn’t somebody that just started making toys for us.”

In its report today, Southern Metropolis said that Lee Der officials said Mr. Zhang received the leaded paint from a company controlled by a close friend.

China now makes about 80 percent of the world’s toys and many of the world’s biggest brand name companies, including Mattel, Hasbro and McDonald’s, use contract toy manufacturers in China.

USB - 2.0, port, Hi-Speed, Wireless, OTG - Everything USB

2007-08-31T00:28:00.000+01:00

USB - 2.0, port, Hi-Speed, Wireless, OTG - Everything USB

Anything But iPod - Where Music Comes to Play

2007-08-31T00:27:00.000+01:00

Anything But iPod - Where Music Comes to Play

NeatReceipts Scanalizer - Scan business receipts

2007-08-28T22:51:00.000+01:00

NeatReceipts Scanalizer
REVIEW DATE: 04.19.07

Total posts: 1

$166.00 - $247.00

By M. David Stone

The first time I saw NeatReceipts Scanalizer ($200 street) was in the Philadelphia airport, where NeatReceipts, a local company, was showing it off. The demo was aimed at business travelers, the scanner's target audience. The combination of scanner and software (then simply called NeatReceipts) was showing in a kiosk, surrounded by stores selling overpriced snacks. The product would scan customers' receipts for those snacks (not to mention other expenses) and let them throw out all the scraps of paper that were stuffed into their wallets—or soon would be.

		SLIDESHOW (5)

		Slideshow \| All Shots

A few months later, I got the chance to review NeatReceipts, which was shipping at the time with the program NeatReceipts Professional 2.0.2. I still had that airport demonstration in mind, so I wasn't surprised that the program worked reasonably well. But it's now more than a year later, and the current version of the software is 2.7.5. I thought it was time to take another look.

The hardware side of NeatReceipts Scanalizer is a sheet-fed scanner capable of scanning paper up to 8.5 by 30 inches. Despite the NeatReceipts logo, the scanner is actually the highly portable Plustek OpticSlim M12 that I've reviewed separately. But NeatReceipts Scanalizer is mostly about the software, which adds two additional modules—"Tax Reports" and "Documents"—to the earlier version's "Expense Reports Manager" (now called "Receipts") and the "Business Card Manager" (now called simply "Business Cards").

Aside from the names, Receipts and Business Cards are largely unchanged, at least in their general description. The main screen of the Receipts module is divided into four panes. The pane on the left shows either search options or an image of the currently selected receipt. The three on the right show a table of folders, a table of receipts in the currently selected folder, and additional information for the currently selected receipt or folder.

The earlier version of NeatReceipts impressed me with how well it enhanced receipts printed with ribbons that should have been changed long ago. The current version does just as well on that score, making nearly invisible ink easy to read on-screen, and it does at least as good a job at optical character recognition (OCR)—recognizing the text and putting it in the right database fields. For information it misses—including, for example, handwritten tips and totals—it's easy to read the originals on-screen and fill in the right amounts.

The same recognition and parsing technology works like gangbusters for business cards. In fact, the business-card module is in the same league as dedicated business-card programs. Thus, NeatReceipts is worth considering strictly for its business card features. Here again, the screen is divided into four panes. Two show a table of contacts and the details for the currently selected contact. Another lets you see any of four scanned images for the currently selected contact—the front and back of the business card, a photo, or one or more pages of anything you care to scan.

The fourth pane lets you list action items and notes for the currently selected contact, which lets the business-card module double as a simple contact manager. You can also right-click on a name in the table of contacts and choose Send Email To, and you can synchronize contact data with Microsoft Outlook or with the online Plaxo service.

The new Tax Form module can generate a long list of tax forms or generate a TurboTax file. Expense-report formats are limited, but if your accounting department insists on a particular format, you can export your data to a standard CSV (comma separated variable) file, which almost any database or word processing program can use to generate a report in any format—assuming, of course, that you're comfortable with the database program's report generator or the word processor's mail-merge feature.

The critical question is whether your accounting department will still make you keep the original physical receipts and hand them in. If you still have to keep track of the originals, you lose a lot of the benefit of the program. And for tax-deductible expenses, I'd still check with my accountant before I threw out the paper receipts.

Not so incidentally, if you'd rather manage the data in an accounting program, or need to enter it for things such as reconciling your credit card statements, you can also export the data to other formats, including Quicken, QuickBooks, and Microsoft Money, and then import it into your accounting program. The process doesn't work as smoothly as I'd ideally like. Depending on your accounting program, though, it may be a significant improvement over having to type everything in.

The newly added Documents feature is modeled on the Receipts module. It lets you create multiple folders and put individual documents into each folder. Unfortunately, it's disappointing at best. The hierarchical structure is not as useful for managing documents as it is for receipts. More troublesome, NeatReceipts doesn't OCR the documents, so you can't find a document by searching for the text in it, and you can't export the document in text format to edit it.

In many ways, NeatReceipts is unique, but it's worth mentioning that Visioneer recently introduced its RoadWarrior scanner, which is also aimed at the business traveler, putting it in head-to-head competition with NeatReceipts. (Neither one, by the way, offers full-fledged Vista support as of this writing, although NeatReceipts has a beta version for Vista on its Web site and Visioneer says it has a beta driver for Vista that will be on its Web site shortly, along with Vista-compatible updates for its bundled software.)

Visioneer doesn't include the ability to OCR-scan receipts and put the data in a database. Instead, it provides Nuance's ScanSoft PaperPort (which is a much better document manager than NeatReceipts). The idea is to manage the images of the receipts in PaperPort but still create expense reports and enter expenses in your accounting program the same way you do now.

You may prefer one program's approach over the other's, but make sure you take a look at both and consider which is the better match for your taste.

MOBILE PHONE CHARGES ABROAD

2007-05-13T17:17:00.000+01:00

EDM 844

MOBILE PHONE CHARGES ABROAD

06.02.2007

Watson, Tom

That this House notes with concern the plight of UK customers and holidaymakers who continue to face higher mobile phone call charges when abroad, particularly if they roam into networks other than their own; believes that this is due to the high wholesale charges of each network operator; welcomes the recent decision by the 3 Group effectively to abolish roaming charges for all customers who travel to other 3 Group networks abroad; notes that this is only possible because they control the wholesale charges of their own foreign group networks; calls for all other European networks to follow this example and to cut their excessive wholesale roaming charges, which currently result in UK consumers making a disproportionate contribution to foreign network profits and being charged excessive fees for making calls when abroad; and, if no such voluntary action is taken, calls on the Government and European Commission to protect the interests of UK holidaymakers and businesses by taking positive action on the wholesale roaming charges levied by European mobile phone companies and examine the possibility of capping the cost of mobile data usage in this age of wireless broadband.

Signatures( 69)

Status

Watson, Tom

Tami, Mark

Durkan, Mark

Meale, Alan

Hoyle, Lindsay

Bottomley, Peter

Simpson, Alan

Spink, Bob

Holmes, Paul

Humble, Joan

McCafferty, Chris

McDonnell, Alasdair

Campbell, Gregory

Campbell, Ronnie

Caton, Martin

Cook, Frank

Dismore, Andrew

Drew, David

George, Andrew

Hancock, Mike

Borrow, David S

Pugh, John

Illsley, Eric

Lazarowicz, Mark

Corbyn, Jeremy

Dowd, Jim

Evans, Nigel

Gerrard, Neil

Scott, Lee

Ruane, Chris

Hopkins, Kelvin

Marris, Rob

Bryant, Chris

Cryer, Ann

Godsiff, Roger

Hamilton, David

Williams, Betty

Wyatt, Derek

Younger-Ross, Richard

Anderson, David

Clark, Katy

Swinson, Jo

Clelland, David

Wilshire, David

Hunter, Mark

Naysmith, Doug

Ennis, Jeff

Vis, Rudi

Conway, Derek

Crausby, David

Williams, Stephen

Dean, Janet

Hermon, Sylvia

McCrea, Dr William

Moon, Madeleine

Khabra, Piara S

Etherington, Bill

Hemming, John

Jenkins, Brian

Robertson, John

Sheridan, Jim

McDonnell, John

Connarty, Michael

David, Wayne

Willis, Phil

Stewart, Ian

Wright, David

Rowen, Paul

Dodds, Nigel

PC Magazine - Portable Media Player - Reviews

2007-03-13T11:14:00.000Z

Models reviewed:

From Windows 1.0 to Vista (Only Screenshots)

2007-02-27T00:41:00.000Z

clipped from: fishki.net

Windows 1.0

Windows 1.01

Windows 2.0

Windows 3.0

Windows 3.1

Windows NT 3.1

Windows 3.11

Windows 95

Windows NT 3.51

Windows 98

Windows NT 4.0

Windows 2000

Windows ME

Windows XP

Windows Vista

9 November 2006 года | Прочли:81112 | Комментарии:105 | Рассказать другу | Реальные Знакомства >>>

reposted from: clipmarks.com
my highlights / emphasis / comments

Storage growth sets a fast pace

2007-02-03T16:51:00.000Z

By Ian Hardy
Click's North America technology correspondent

The Deskstar K1000 has 1,000 gigabytes of storage space

A decade ago a 500 megabyte (MB) photo collection was something to boast about. Nowadays it is more likely be a collection measured in the gigabytes.

But as our appetite for storage continues to grow thankfully so does the capacity of our hard drives.

reposted from: BBC Click
my highlights / emphasis / edits

Hitachi has unveiled a drive which has reached the new heights of one terabyte (TB). Its drive looks like any other, but uses perpendicular magnetic recording to make space for all that data.

"The previous generation of recording technology was called longitudinal and it basically recorded the bits laying down, now we're recording the bits standing up," said Kelly O'Sullivan from Hitachi.

"So if you think of it that way, you're stacking a lot more data in a shorter area, therefore you get a terabyte."

With so much data being written to the hard drive, wear and tear is inevitably a concern. So the Hybrid Storage Alliance is promoting a new laptop unit with a built in flash chip that stores all the data you are currently calling on.

That reduces disk spinning time, increases longevity and has other benefits.

"A hybrid solution will extend your battery life. If you're on a plane for two or three hours and you don't want to stop working on a project you want to keep going - so battery is really important in a laptop PC," said Joni Clark, chair of the Hybrid Storage Alliance.

Flash memory

Some storage firms, such as SanDisk, are doing away with the mechanical hard drive completely and are opting for an all flash solution. Its flash drive is due out in Spring.

Using flash memory has many advantages. A modified laptop using only flash memory can start up faster than an ordinary one; is less of a drain on battery power and is far less likely to suffer data loss when dropped.

However, the biggest it can currently get is 32GB which says something about its target market.

The need for greater storage led to the demise of the floppy disc

"If you look at my kid, he will never use it as he is downloading movies every day," said Amos Marom, general manager of SanDisk Corporation's Computer Solutions Division.

"But if you look at myself I am a road warrior, I work in airports, in aeroplanes, on trains and in hotel rooms. I am consuming about 20GB today, that's all.

Another advantage of this little device is that it helps alleviate burnt knee syndrome in laptops. Flash hard drives stay cool.

Gadget friendly SD flash memory cards are also advancing in leaps and bounds. They come in high-capacity varieties up to a staggering 8GB hence SDHC - as in Higher Capacity.

Those planning to use them should be aware that they run at a variety of speeds and can only be used in compatible SDHC hardware.

For reliability and endurance, optical storage is considered one of the best options. Holographic disks start at 300GB capacity and store data all the way through the disk rather than just on the surface.

Data is written using a split laser beam which creates holograms in the light sensitive material of the disk at the point of intersection.

That's quite a bit of money, but on a cost per gigabyte perspective it's very, very attractive.

Elizabeth Murphy, InPhase Technologies

But even if you wanted to buy a holographic burning kit you cannot - at least not in the shops.

"The reason that it's not entering the consumer market initially is because of fairly high pricing," said Elizabeth Murphy of holographic storage maker InPhase Technologies.

"The drive will be $18,000 (£9,135) list price, so that's a little bit outside the average consumer's price range. And then the media will be $180 for one disk.

"That's quite a bit of money, but on a cost per gigabyte perspective it's very, very attractive."

Still the cheapest is the traditional hard drive, which now comes in a new form - this is an external Serial ATA drive - the same kind that sits inside your PC.

This is an improvement because it does not use the slower types of connections your computer supports

"USB really was made for keyboards and mice and it's not really made for storage, neither was Firewire," said Conrad Maxwell, chairman of the SATA-IO Marketing Work Group.

"They both require protocol translations to make them work and the drives come out with SATA, so direct SATA is faster and you get six times faster performance."

While hard drive advances are impressive, losing 1TB of data is not likely to be much fun in the future. That is why devices built around a technology known by the fearsome name of Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) are becoming more popular. One such is Seagate's 1.5TB device that is actually made up of two 750GB drives.

A continuous backup is created by the same data being written to both drives simultaneously. It might well save your life. Well, your digital one.

Ban on 'illegal' FM transmitters finally lifted

2007-01-23T16:26:00.000Z

The use of such devices - which fell foul of the Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1949, forbidding the use of radio equipment without a licence or an exemption - was banned in the UK as their transmissions could interfere with legal radio station broadcasts.

However, following a public consultation exercise in July 2006, Ofcom have announced that from the 8th December 2006 certain low power FM transmitters carrying the EU approved CE mark - indicating approval for sale in the European Union - will be legal to use.

A wide range of approved FM transmitters will be available from DataMind during 2007.

Microsoft made the Zune because partner hardware "sucks

2007-01-21T04:52:00.000Z

reposted from: www.engadget.com

Posted Jan 20th 2007 5:42PM by Ryan Block

Thanks to yet another Microsoft antitrust suit in Iowa, subpoenaed emails have revealed a moment of candidness and clarity at Microsoft in 2003 when Jim Allchin (Co-President, Platforms & Services Division, depicted left) and Amir Majidimehr (Corporate Vice President, Consumer Media Technology Group) had an email thread that basically summarized the portable media device playing field then, and for the most part, now. Some choice quites from the email back-and-forth:

Jim: title "sucking on media players"; regarding a current Creative player (probably a Nomad, perhaps a Zen Touch): "My goodness it's terrible... What I don't understand though is I was told the new Creative Labs device would be comparable to Apple. That is so not the case."
Amir: "Now you feel our pain." He suggests giving cash bonuses for partners that come up with decent devices. In the instance that doesn't work: "it is time for us to roll up our sleeves and do our own hardware."

And of course so they did, with great hype and great failure to immediately capture market share, the Zune was born many years later -- far too late by most accounts, but hey, you've gotta start somewhere. Still, it's funny to think that for these guys rolling up their sleeves and doing their own hardware means taking an off the shelve portable media OS (PMC 2), getting Toshiba to make a modified Gigabeat, and cutting some seriously anti-consumer deals with major labels.

Some comments>>>>

CaptSaltyJack @ Jan 20th 2007 6:09PM

The thing is, the Creative Zen Vision:M is probably the most kickass PMP out there at this point. Let's see what it does RIGHT:

- No DRM bullshit like Zune
- Handles DivX and Xvid formats, yay for geeks
- FM radio
- Records FM radio
- Voice recorder
- Great screen
- No proprietary software needed (like iTunes), just drag and drop

What's wrong:
- Not strong enough ad campaign
- Not enough accessories

And you can't replace the battery yourself when it dies. I understand this is to conserve on space inside the chassis, but it's still an annoyance.

Sam @ Jan 20th 2007 6:22PM

Other things wrong with the Creative Zen Vision:M...

Poor build quality/cheap materials
Lackluster design
Very 'clunky' to hold, the thing just feels cheap

These are big turn-offs, not that the Zune is any better at all.

Marian @ Jan 20th 2007 6:17PM

An addition to the "what's wrong" list:
- It sucks ass

After 5 minutes of frustrating attempts to use it while I was in a store, I gave up.
By comparison, anyone knows how to use an iPod after one minute.

Eric @ Jan 20th 2007 8:21PM

Has anyone here used a Sandisk Sansa?

I have a Sansa and I love it. The menu is nice, it has nice features, it's extremely easy to add stuff to, or take off, and best of all, when you hold it, it actually feels like something durable and worth the money. I am far from an iPod hater, and I in fact like the iPod, but the Sansa is just as good in my opinion. I recommend to anyone just to try it in the store. :)

Connecting the digital home

2007-01-13T09:57:00.000Z

reposted from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/6254909.stm

By Dan Simmons
Reporter, BBC Click Online

It has long been promised that the PC will become the entertainment hub of the home. However, the problem with this vision is that our computers tend to sit in the bedroom and means getting those movies, music and pictures the last few metres to the living room is a real pain.

Many devices deliver content from your PC to your TV

This year's CES - the world's largest consumer gadget show - boasts a wealth of new kit which aims to make it easier to access digital media around the home - and in particular on TV screens.

Ideas on what should be at the centre of it all vary, from PC-based media centres, digital video recorders or even video game consoles.

Microsoft is promoting its Xbox 360 as the place to store and access movies and songs.

"Xbox 360 is at its heart, the world's best games console and we're continuing to sell it very well. But we also know that people have it connected to their TV, and that means they want to see movies," said Robert Bach of Microsoft.

"So we've added a Download Movie service, we've added an HD DVD movie player to it. You want to play music, so you can take your MP3 player or Zune player, and plug it in and see your music.

"Here we're announcing that you can take IPTV digital TV services and run them on top of an Xbox 360."

It should be pointed out that the downloads are only available to those that have a hard drive for their Xbox 360.

Sony's PS3 console does something similar.

Apple TV streams music and movies from a computer to a TV

Microsoft's ambitions also include its Media Centre software which has not made the impact some had hoped for. It will now get a boost by being integrated into all but the most basic versions of Microsoft's new PC operating system - Vista.

The consumer versions of Vista is scheduled for launch on 30 January.

Apple is getting in on the act too. At the MacWorld show Apple boss Steve Jobs gave more details of Apple TV - the set-top box which uses iTunes to stream media to a television.

Various launches at CES suggest that moving files around the house should be easy. We have more choices now than ever before - hardwire Ethernet cables, Bluetooth or wi-fi.

Netgear's new Digital Entertainer set-top box is one of several here that let you stream HD pictures from your PC over wi-fi to the TV.

But obstructions and interference may hamper a steady picture.

Compatibility

Presuming we can move our digital media files around without too much problem, you then have to consider the alphabet soup which is compression formatting - or codecs - which allow all your devices to understand each other, otherwise you will not see a thing.

I think it's unbelievably frustrating because you purchase the music expecting to be able to play it where you would like to play it and then you find out later that this is not quite the case.

John MacFarlane, Sonos

"Many of the files that people would like to buy and download, including movies and TV shows, are actually protected with what's called DRM, that is Digital Rights Management software," said Josh Bernoff an analyst from Forrester Research.

"A lot of this software is incompatible with some of these devices.

"So for example, if you buy a movie or TV show from iTunes it'll work fine on your iPod but it's unlikely to work on, say, your Xbox 360 that happens to be connected to the same setup."

Slowly this is changing. For instance, last month if you had bought a rights-protected Windows music file it would not have played on Sonos' high-end multi-room streaming system.

After a year of negotiations Sonos' hardware can now support those files. Now the boss of Sonos wants Apple to also open up, claiming it is customers who lose out.

"I think it's unbelievably frustrating because you purchase the music expecting to be able to play it where you would like to play it and then you find out later that this is not quite the case," said John MacFarlane of Sonos.

"That's not, generally, well explained at the point of purchase."

The steady march of technology is also helping break down these barriers. For instance, a new PC to TV chip by start-up Quartics might help audio and video streaming compatibility.

It allows any files your laptop can read to be streamed over wi-fi to your TV or digital projector.

It is hoped the chip - which can be updated with any new video formats as they emerge - will be integrated into some TVs by the end of the year.

Many companies are supporting a set of standardised formats through industry groups like the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA).

And the new faster 802.11n standard for wi-fi should soon be ratified, which will help boost consumers' confidence in streaming video.

But for now it might be best to take all the hype with a pinch of salt.

www.BeSeenOnABike.com server down 1st August.

2006-08-01T11:36:00.000+01:00

www.BeSeenOnABike.com server down. Status info: http://www.status-netexplorers.co.uk/

update 7th August: Server back up after 21 hours