Google’s Nexus OneIt’s no surprise that Google’s
platform (Android) preceded its
hardware (the Google phone)—
Google is primarily a software
company (Internet apps). But
with the arrival of the Nexus
One smartphone, Google is now
a hardware company selling the
best Android-powered cell
phone. Nexus One has no key-
board, and it strongly resembles
Apple’s iPhone, only it’s thinner
and a little lighter. Four basic
touch buttons on the bottom
row will take you back one
screen, open a menu, bring you
home, or open search. Right
below these basic navigators is
a trackball pointing device. The
screen is larger than the iPhone
(3.7" diagonal widescreen) and
has higher resolution (800 ✕
480 pixels compared to iPhone’s
320 ✕ 480 pixels). The Android
Mobile Operating System (Éclair)
runs on a 1GHz Qualcomm QSD
processor, which can run multi-
ple applications simultaneously.
There’s a built-in five-megapixel
camera with 2X digital zoom
and LED flash capable of video
capture at 720 ✕ 480 pixels at
20 frames-per-second. Built-in
512MB of RAM is supplement-
ed by a 4GB Micro SD card
(expandable to 32GB). The bat-
tery provides up to 10 hours of
talk time, 290 hours of standby,
up to 6.5 hours of Internet use,
seven hours of video playback,
and 29 hours of audio playback.
There’s more information at
www.google.com/phone.
BlackBerryPresenterIt may look like an Eskimo Pie®,
but the Blackberry Presenter is
actually much cooler. It’s a little
less than 2" ✕ 3" ✕ 1" thick,
and it weighs five ounces. In its
case, it will get lost in your pock-
et. It’s an accessory for your
BlackBerry smart phone that will
let you plug into a projector or
monitor and then run a Microsoft
PowerPoint presentation wire-
lessly from your phone. Leave
your laptop at home if your pres-
entation is on the road. The con-
nection between your phone and
the Presenter is via Bluetooth, so
you can walk around during the
presentation—the reach is up to
30 feet with Bluetooth Version
2.0. There’s no additional work
to prepare the PowerPoint file,
and the Presenter can support
most PowerPoint (2003 and
2007) animations and transi-
tions. The display resolutions
include VGA, SVGA, and XGA
(1,024 ✕ 768). You can use a
single button on the Presenter to
put it in sleep mode, wake it up,
or begin a new presentation.
And you can set a loop mode to
automatically run the slideshow
with a set time between each
slide. The Presenter works with
the following BlackBerries:
Bold 9000 and 9700, Curve
8500 Series and 8900, the
Storm, and the Tour.
www.blackberry.com/presenter
LaCie USB Flash Drives
LaCie is an international com-
pany that’s as concerned with
design as they are with func-
tion. Their personal digital stor-
age products are unique. In the
case of their key series of per-
sonal USB flash drives, they
offer three different designs so
you can immediately identify
your home, your office, and your
photo or MP3 data keys. It isn’t
difficult to tell them apart with
all on the same keychain. And
they are reasonably priced, with
the 4GB versions selling for $20
each. They are also available in
the 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB sizes.
The design is sturdy, and the
gold SIP connector on each is
water- and scratch-resistant.
Protective edges on the connec-
tors guide the proper insertion
of the LaCie Keys. With the pur-
chase price, you get two years
of 4GB of online backup storage
from Wuala. www.lacie.com
TECHNOLOGY
58 S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E I Fe b r u a r y 2 0 1 0
TOOLSof theTRADE
TaxWise TaxWise, a CCH Small Firm Ser-
vices enterprise, has tax solu-
tions that cover three areas with
a wide variety of products in
each: tax software, tax research,
and specific applications that
speed up the process from inter-
views to e-filing and final
reports. Among the Tax Software
offerings, there are seven pack-
ages for professional preparers:
ProFiling handles 1040, A, EZ,
X, NR, NR-EZ, SS/PR, and all
states; ProBusiness and Special-
ty covers 1120-Corporate,
1120S-S Corporate, 1065 S
Partnership, 1041 Fiduciary, 990
Tax Exempt, 706 Estate, 709
Gift, 5500 Employee Benefits,
and all states. The other five
packages offer combinations of
personal and business modules,
added research services (CCH
U.S. Master TaxGuide Online
and Research Library from CCH),
and a number of accounting
modules, including TaxWise
Fixed Assets Manager, Trial
Balance, Document Manager,
Client Write-Up, and Payroll.
All the programs have built-in
e-filing. The TaxWise features
that are universal include
Instant Error Checking,
keystroke-by-keystroke or entire
return; the ability to open multi-
ple instances of TaxWise to view
more than one return at a time;
Automatic Fill-Ins with ZIP
Codes that fill in city and state,
auto name, and address com-
pletions for EINs; Real-Time
Calculators; Comprehensive
Diagnostics with multiple
warnings checking your input;
K-1 Pass-Throughs that carry
data from business returns to
appropriate 1040 return; Carry
Forward of Last Year’s Data;
3-Year Summaries; What-if
Alternate Scenarios; Manage-
ment Reports, and more. Visit
the www.taxwise.com site for
more details and online
evaluations.
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has been held
each January in Las Vegas since 1967. The show has quite
an impressive history of firsts, debuting the first VCR in
1970, the Commodore 64 computer in 1981, Tetris in
1988, DVDs in 1996, and the DVR (Digital Video Record-
er) in 1999, among many other new technologies. This
year featured the portable computer in the form of Web
tablets, netbooks, and new e-Readers. The Apple tablet
didn’t make an appearance, but many others were there.
Two interesting devices that have similar functions in
very different formats were the Lenovo U1 Hybrid note-
book/tablet and the Skiff steel e-Reader, with its largest
and highest-resolution electronic display.
The Lenovo U1 looks like a conventional notebook com-
puter with a nice, high-definition screen and reasonable-
size keyboard. With a sideways push on a button on top,
the detachable screen lifts out of its hinged backing and
becomes a thin, very portable tablet. It’s actually now a
different computer. Attached to the base, it’s a computer
with an Intel Core 2 processor running on Windows 7.
Detatched, it’s a Web tablet with a touchscreen interface
and an ARM Snapdragon processor running a Linux oper-
ating system. The unique, dual computer format will be
available this June.
SAVING THE PRESS
For years, the situation has been getting more and more
desperate for newspapers and magazines in their tradi-
tional (500-year-old) paper-and-ink format. Advertising
isn’t providing the buoyancy necessary, and major titles
are sinking with increasing frequency. Many think the
solution will come in the form of a new business model
on the Internet, but that grail has yet to be discovered.
There are news websites like Politico.com that claim to
be profitable, but the other online counterparts of the
conventional press, like NYTimes.com, are still stumbling
around.
The New NewsprintBy Michael Castelluccio, Editor
continued on next page
TECH FORUM
Fe b r u a r y 2 0 1 0 I S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E 59
Some media specialists see the salvation, or, more accu-
rately, the successful transition, coming in the form of a new
delivery system for newspapers. The survivors, they claim,
won’t depend on the flat panel on your desk at home or in
the office, but rather on some kind of electronic daily news
reader carried in your briefcase or found lying on the
kitchen table.
The news tablet isn’t exactly a new idea. Sixteen years ago,
the Knight Ridder Information Design Lab proposed a large,
page-size tablet that would download your daily newspaper
with all of its advertising and some additional audio-visual
information. This tablet was never developed because screen
technology at the time was just too limited and advertising
streams were still comfortably flowing. Not so today. When
the publisher of The New York Times publicly laments that
his paper is dying, the rising tide that he blames may drown
all but a few publications.
Enter Hearst’s Skiff. Unveiled at this year’s CES, this slate
format reader is described as competition for the now
almost 50 different varieties of e-Book readers, but that isn’t
the reason for the 120-year-old publisher’s backing. Hearst
is looking for a new format for its magazines and newspa-
pers that doesn’t involve a press. In its current design, the
Skiff is a black-and-white reader, but a color edition is
promised for later this year. No surprise, the front page
shown on the product photos at the show was of one of
Hearst’s most famous imprints, the San Francisco Chronicle.
The technical specs on the Skiff are amazing. It has the
largest page size of any electronic reader (9" ✕ 11")
to more easily accommodate the layouts for newspa-
per and magazine pages. Even better, the resolution of
the print is a world-class 1,200 ✕ 1,600 pixels
(UXGA—quadruple that of SVGA). It has a full touch-
screen that responds to both fingers or stylus, with no
printer’s ink to smudge your fingers.
The Skiff is sleek, weighing just slightly more than
one pound (17.56 oz.) and about a quarter of an inch thick
(0.268 in.). And you won’t be able to break the screen because
it isn’t made of glass or plastic. It has the first metal-foil e-
Paper display constructed of silicon thin-film transistors
(TFT) on a flexible stainless-steel substrate. You won’t want to
be training the puppy by tapping him on the nose with a
rolled up copy of this newspaper. But if you do leave it on the
couch, your mastiff could sit on it, and it would survive.
The Skiff ’s battery will last for a week of page turning,
and it recharges in two to three hours. Content delivery is
via WiFi and 3G connections or through a direct USB
hookup to your computer. Whichever you choose, your
paper or magazines can be scheduled for automatic down-
loads. On-board memory is 4GB, with an additional SD
card slot for a larger library. There’s a built-in speaker and
audio jack.
Will newspapers like The New York Times and the San
Francisco Chronicle have a better chance of survival with
delivery over the Skiff? The publishers have been slow to
react to their revenue problems, but this could work for
them and the other venues planned for it. Skiff is setting up a
Skiff Store online to deliver newspapers, magazines, books,
and blogs. SF
TECH FORUM
TECHNOLOGY
60 S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E I Fe b r u a r y 2 0 1 0
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