Operation Gadget

Category: Portable Video

I Play My Son’s Songs on the Music Player on My Nokia N93

Reading Time: 2 minutesBeginning with Thanksgiving, Kathleen and I have been using a Nokia N93 mobile phone to shoot DVD-quality video at family get togethers. People are shocked when they see the quality of the movies we can make with this phone. Conversations with some of our more gadget-savvy friends sometimes continue with the question,…

December 21, 2006
iTunes Purchases May Be As Much of an Influence on Network Programmers as Nielsen Data

Reading Time: < 1 minuteVerne Gay of Newsday.com wrote a column called How iTunes saved ‘The Office’ that I’ve been meaning to point out. Kathleen has fallen in love with The Office in the past few months, but if there’s truth to what Verne Gay is saying, the program wouldn’t have lasted on NBC’s schedule…

November 18, 2006
Nokia N93: The Swiss Army Knife of GSM / UMTS Multimedia Phones

Reading Time: 2 minutesThe Nokia N93 produces DVD-quality video, has a terrific MP3 player, and includes wireless broadband and WiFi capability. It’s great for people who want a phone that can be used in relatively serious video production. [ Photo: Dave Aiello ][ Check out my Nokia N93 photo set on Flickr. ] A friend who works with Nokia…

November 17, 2006
Microsoft Zune Reportedly Incompatible with “PlaysForSure” Windows Media Services

Reading Time: < 1 minuteMartin O’Donnell pointed out an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer stating that Microsoft’s Zune player won’t play content bought through services compatible with the Windows Media “PlaysForSure” initiative. That means Napster, Yahoo! Music Unlimited, MTV Urge, and RealNetworks Rhapsody, among others. Martin called this a “shafting” for Microsoft’s PlaysForSure partners, and…

September 18, 2006
Personal Electronics Power Station is a Good Central Point for Charging Most Handheld Gadgets

Reading Time: < 1 minuteThe other day, my brother Scott Aiello tipped me off to a device that can be used as a convenient one-stop place to charge all of your handheld devices. It’s called the Personal Electronics Power Station and it’s available from several vendors on Amazon.com. The Personal Electronics Power Station is an…

June 5, 2006
Nike and Apple Announce a Music-Centric Approach to Fitness Gadgets

Reading Time: < 1 minuteNike and Apple team up to create a running computer that consists of a pair of shoes, a motion sensor, and an iPod nano. [ Photo: Apple Computer, Inc. ] On my son’s birthday, Nike and Apple announced a collaboration that will initially allow a pair of Nike running shoes to…

June 2, 2006
Is the NBA Deal with iTunes the First Move in a New Direction for Sports Marketing?

Reading Time: < 1 minuteOn Monday, Paid Content reported that the NBA struck a deal with iTunes to provide next-day highlight packages to subscribers paying fees between $1.99 and $8.99, depending on the packages selected. I think this is a brilliant move to keep fans in touch with games that they may have missed, and…

May 10, 2006
WSJ Says The Slingbox and Place-Shifting are the Latest Threats to the Television Industry

Reading Time: 2 minutesA page one article in today’s Wall Street Journal discusses the technological threats that are developing to the television industry’s business model. One example given in the article is that Major League Baseball‘s MLB.tv video streaming service collected $265 million from 1.3 million subscribers last year, but still blocked subscribers from watching…

March 16, 2006
Using the Nokia N90 to Film Ice Hockey

Reading Time: 2 minutesLast Saturday, Scott Shalom, Bill Maurer, and I officiated a men's college ice hockey game between Drexel University and Villanova University in Philadelphia. I thought it would be interesting to see how Nokia N90 video clips of a hockey game would turn out, so I lent the camera phone to my friend…

December 17, 2005