Gadgetory

this week on the cnet tech review facebook announced something but don't call it email highlights from the 2010 LA auto show Google TV just can't catch a break and a new app that's no tech turkey it's all coming up right now hi everyone I'm Molly wood and welcome to the cnet tech review where we collect our hottest videos of the week and tell you what's good and what's bad in the world of tech and offer some unique tech wisdom in the form of our bottom line let's start with the good when is email not email when it's brought to you by Facebook of course earlier this week the company announced a new communications feature that will bring chat text messages and even email into your facebook inbox but they said it's not email confused yet here's Rafe Needleman to explain sort of hi this is Rafe Needleman with a first look at facebook messages this is the revamp of the private person to person messaging system within facebook there are some big improvements facebook messages now keeps all your conversations with their contacts together no matter how they communicate everything you say to people and messages be it in an email message a chat or an SMS has filed in one long conversation thread in messages to reach someone all you have to know is their name facebook will find users wherever they want to be found on the facebook website and chat or on their mobile phone depending on their preferences it means you don't have to think about how your message gets from you to them but it doesn't post some limitations for example there are no subject lines and facebook messages essentially the subject is now the relationship but as facebook's goal was to combine SMS chat and mail like messaging together there really was no other way to blend the communication modes facebook is clear to say that messages isn't email in fact but there is a little confusion on this since facebook's messaging system now for the first time actually gives everyone on the network and optional email address when the system is rolled out everyone will have a facebook com address you'll be able to receive messages from the outside world to that address and send from facebook to other systems as well one of the other big features of facebook messages is that by default the only messages you see in your inbox will be those from your network of friends other messages like invitations alerts and spam show up in the other inbox and you have to promote people to have messages from them appear in your main inbox likewise you can demote people so their communications don't clutter your main box if you prefer facebook messages is a necessary and useful upgrade of the platform's current very limited private messaging system facebook says it's not email and that's accurate the product is missing standard features in email there's no concept of a multi-person conversation for example Facebook's has the group's feature for that and you can't even forward a message to someone else at least not yet in this current version it won't replace email for those of us comfortable with that platform but for younger users who communicate primarily an SMS N and Facebook it's a welcome upgrade facebook says messages will roll out slowly over the next few months and users will get an alert when they log into their account when it's enabled for it users who have messages can also invite a very limited number of their friends or seen it i'm rafe needleman i really don't see how facebook messages could be an actual email killer although to be honest I wouldn't have guessed that our company would ditch outlook for Gmail either so I guess Never Say Never now a few weeks ago we showed you a preview of the new color version of the barnes & noble nook and we asked if maybe it wasn't more an android tablet than just an e-reader well here's David Carr nguoi with his answer to that question I'm David Carr no way and I'm going to give you a quick tour of the barnes & noble nook color back the end of 2009 bars owner will released an ink reader the nook that differentiate itself from the amazon kindle by having a small color LCD at the bottom of the screen for navigation and keyboard entry among other things now the company isn't messing around with a strip of color is instead betting the farm on a full color e-reader that features a 7-inch touchscreen LCD built-in Wi-Fi and as people asking is it an e-reader or a tablet the short answer is both or as barnes noble is spinning it this is a reader's tablet it just a shade less than a pound it's about twice the weight of the latest generation kindle but it is significantly smaller than an ipad which weighs in at around 1.5 pounds the color screen is a next-generation LED backlit display supplied by LG which is bright yet energy-efficient the products designers added a special layer of laminate to the glass that covers the display to help cut down on glare and improve off-axis viewing however like any screen that has a layer of glass over it it's not immune to glare and like the ipad screen it is a fingerprint magnet and will potentially crack if dropped that said the touch mechanics are quite responsive and the device as a whole is zippy for those who are hoping for a full-fledged Android tablet you get such features as web browsing and multimedia functionality along with a little Pandora and some basic games and the ability to read format such as Microsoft Office documents and PDF files but one thing missing is android marketplace yes more apps are on the way but Barnes & Noble is really gearing this toward readers first and those looking for a multifunction device like the iPad second we were generally impressed with how elegant the user interfaces and how easy the new color is to operate and navigate well I selected the designers included a physical home button it's the end at the bottom of the device rather than a virtual one the hard but makes going back to the home screen easier and it's well placed along with its large selection of e-books the company is making a bigger push into kids content with its new new kids brand that features digital picture books designed to take advantage of such color devices as a new color and the iPad the same time the company is highlighting how well the new color handles periodical content particularly magazines at the end of the day despite the limited number of apps available at launch the nook color is a much more polished ereader than the original look was when it launched we've called this the poor man's ipad in the past and while it doesn't offer nearly the range of functionality from a reading experience standpoint it certainly rivals that of the ipad just on a smaller more portable scale and at half the price i'm david carr know and that's the barnes & noble nook color e-reader it may rival the iPad in terms of reading books and magazines but I think that's about it in fact I think we can safely put the Nook back in the e-reader bin for now the 2010 los angeles auto show is going on right now and although it's far from the biggest car show of the year that doesn't mean you can't find some surprises while you're there or better yet why not just watch Brian Cooley's highlights from the show right now in the last 18 10 years Cadillacs really reinvented itself but can they go this far that's why this concept is being shown here at the LA auto show it's a very compact urban luxury vehicle a city car if you will about the size of a mini cooper though it presents much more massive which is kind of that Cadillac design language they're really sharp sort of blades here along these side flanks inside of course strictly concept car stuff but they're trying to get it to say luxury for the urban dweller this was actually designed in a los angeles-area studio for this kind of a car culture that is very much in need of mobility loves their cars but at the same time wants to get into something smaller but maintain the luxury well here it is the nissan murano wait that's not new but this is come here look what's missing it's the nissan murano crosscabriolet nissan says and i'm pretty sure they're right it's the first all-wheel drive crossover without the top i think they've got a hit on their hands it's just quirky enough and also useful enough because let's face it open air cars are once again all the rage and this one retains the high seating position of a crossover which kind of i think is gonna add to the exhilaration of open-air driving you're up high and you're in the open air two things people tend to like at a visceral level inside it's pretty standard Murano stuff although you do have a little bit of a difference shaping in the rear compartment here which brings us to the Bose audio system it'll be available on this car which has an auto sensing position to know when the tops down and adjust I believe volume and equalization to make sure the music still prints well the murano crosscabriolet is perhaps most surprising and that it's coming to dealership soon this is not some design studio trial balloon early 2011 in showrooms pricing around 46 for before destination a little high but realize they only sell it in a high trim model like we see here there's no stripper version so it's got all the cabin tech obviously the convertible top the nice Bose audio system the fancy interior trim and of course the all-wheel drive is standard didn't have minivans when I was a kid just had things like econo lines so I feel somewhat cheated and with vans like this on the market who wouldn't Nissan's back in the game in there with Toyota with Sienna Honda with Odyssey now the all-new Nissan Quest is getting back in the market and as you can see they're following the current trend on the Asian minivans go high style quasi luxury kind of a sporty look that isn't doughy your dopey nissan points to this kind of vanishing dipping line in the body here that really says it looks like it's in motion even when it's parked maybe not exactly but you get the idea kind of an aggressive as opposed to a doughy front end and the Lions overall have some style to them now in terms of Technology here's when it's interesting you'll be showing up on a lot of cars soon but when you go down here to the filler valve on the tire if the tpms pressure monitor on the dash says you're low you pull into a gas station start filling that up and because most folks don't know or have a good tire pressure gauge let alone how to use it this car will beep when you get to the proper pressure this talks to another sensor in the car that then tells the horn honk when we're at the right p.s i kind of cool okay let's talk about some other technologies in and around this car you got to have serious rear seat entertainment in a minivan the Asian cars are getting very serious about the size of that monitor Nissan chose to go with an 11 inch center of the roof drop-down LCD that's as big as the smaller of the two new MacBook Airs it's a pretty good size screen unfortunately the bigger the screen the more it obstructs that rearview mirror I'm not a big fan of these centres roof dropdowns I liked them better when they're here in the headrest but you can't make them that big when they're in the headrest unless you just bring your own iPad and velcro tape this vehicle will also offer a blind-spot warning system and you're also going to find a interesting partitioned duel panoramic roof I'm not sure if that's going to be a continuous glass roof if you get it without the rear seat entertainment or if it's always these two pods like this and of course in modern minivan technology you've got to have a totally disappearing third row of seats an easy flip second row check and check I'm not sure what's cooler the giant Hot Wheels track or the car coming off it the giant Hot Wheels car here it is finally the Camaro in ragtop form and it'll come in three potencies if you will be available with a 3.6 liter v6 doing about 312 horsepower or go for a v8 6.2 liter that has an automatic that's going to give you 400 horsepower or go up to 420 plus horsepower if you get it with v8 and manual transmission now they're playing to the faithful beyond that it's pretty much the same canary you know but that's like saying a convertible is no big deal it operates a lot like the Corvette top does you release it at the center latch here and then it's a power retractor that goes into this well behind the seats and largely leaves the trunk intact and one of the best improvements about going topless in this guy no more of that bunker feeling that I get in the regular Camaro now the key question is a Camaro ragtop for posers because that's a big deal among folks who buy cars like this I don't think it is we just talked about the engine choices nothing phony there and the engineer is a GM say they were able to use the same suspension setup and settings in this car and get the same ride quality which means they were able to stiffen up the body too rigid eyes it with improvements and various buttresses to get the same kind of rigidity which means the car should handle as much on point as one that has a metal top ok availability this convertible camaro will hit showrooms in February of 2011 exact pricing is still TBD and of course it'll vary widely by the powertrain choice you decide to put in here but this is the Camaro a lot of folks say is the one it was designed to be now that's what I call a bitchin Camaro right does anybody remember that song no well I do anyway can't get enough of Brian Cooley stick around because he will be back with this week's top 5 countdown when the cnet tech review continues welcome back to the scene at tech review our weekly video digest of all things good and bad we've seen here at cnet TV continuing on in the good as the debate over the dangers of cell phone radiation rages on it's still terribly unclear whether it's harmful or not but if you feel like hedging your bets check out this list of the top five smartphones that won't kill you at least not right away thus our number specific absorption rate it's the government's measure of how much your cell phone is treating you like a bag of microwave popcorn it's expressed as wats absorbed for kilogram of body mass but nobody is really sure what it tells us nonetheless it remains the only yardstick you've really got now in our third decade of this debate over whether a cell phone causes cancer so with all that in mind here are the top 5 smartphones of 2010 that rate high with cnet and low on their SAR number number 5 the samsung vibrant scene at rating of 8.3 and ass are number of point 8 9 just over half the legal limit of 1.6 pretty low this tmobile android phone is a looker with a 4 inch AMOLED screen and 16 gigabytes of memory as well as speed performance all around but much of that helps make the battery life a bit soft and that beautiful screen is way nicer than the plasticky case around it oh and no flash with the camera auto mission number 4 is another Sammy the epic 4g on sprint seen that rating 8.7 and SAR rating just point six eight under half the limit this guy can utilize Sprint's 4G network where available and it's got just about everything else including 5 megapixel camera another big am OLED display and it can be a hotspot for up to five other devices unfortunately all that stuff needs a place to live and the epic is just plain epic in size number three is the HTC legend on well not really on any carrier in North America because it isn't compatible with 3g networks here hmm but if it works where you are you'll enjoy a phone with a cnet rating of 8.3 and ass are number of just point 5 6 nice and low another Android phone here another AMOLED screen but mixed results from its built-in camera the number 2 smartphone on our list is the samsung fascinate on verizon cnet rating 8.3 SAR number aamir point 57 sister phone to the vibrant we saw earlier but on verizon in this case and with some service tweaks including the annoying lock-in of its search function Microsoft Bing before we look at the number one smartphone in this list of clean ones let's update thats our story the FCC recently announced it's no longer sure what the hell this number means and that any phone in its opinion under the 1.6 our limit is as safe as any other which doesn't really make any sense because the number represents radiation absorbed by body mass doesn't more mean Bourque so while the mystery continues the choice to play it safe remains yours which brings us to the number one smartphone on our list today the samsung captivate cnet rating 8.3 SAR number just point for two that's like a quarter of the legal limit this phone is the virtual twin of the fascinate and the vibrant but running on AT&T so notice how the phone you buy is not the only factor in radiation the network it's on has a big impact another reason to think about carrier and phone when you're making a choice for all our smartphone reviews go to cnet's cell phone section and to see that's our ratings which sort them by maker as well as by top 20 cleanest and dirties i'm brian cooley thanks for watching so I guess if you're really worried about radiation go with Samsung for entries in the top five is not too shabby alas the time has come for us to check what's up this week in the bad now that more google TV enabled devices are coming on the market the service seems to be getting more notoriety for all the things that can't do so if you're in the market for a blu-ray player should you take the leap and go for one with google TV built-in Matt Mackowiak has an opinion on that hi I'm Matthew Mackowiak senior associate editor at cnet com and we're here with the Sony nsz gt1 with Google TV this is the first blu-ray player available with the new Google TV platform which means it searches through your online and offline media controls your cable box and handles your blu-ray and DVD movies from a single box and it's selling for four hundred dollars the exterior design is bigger than we were expecting coming in at a little bit larger than a standard blu-ray player the top has a glossy black finish while the rest is white which is in our favorite color since it doesn't blend in well with other home theater products now controlling the google TV requires quite a bit of typing so the way you control it is important sony's include a controller it looks a little bit like a ps3 controller with a keypad at it and while it feels comfortable in your hands we didn't really like it for controlling Google TV the right thumb pad is touch sensitive and it's used to control the on-screen cursor but it's inaccurate and that can be frustrating to use the controls for the blu-ray player are also small and sometimes require you to use the function key which makes it hard for technologies to use hardware issues aside our experience with the Google TV software has been mixed as well it has a built-in chrome browser capable of playing back flash and html5 video but major content providers like Hulu CBS FOX NBC and ABC are blocking Google TV devices from streaming video it currently has some basic apps like Netflix Napster Pandora and Twitter with the included Netflix interface outdated compared to other devices like the Apple TV roku XDS and the ps3 cable and satellite box control is fully integrated if you have a dish network DVR but if you don't then Google TV can't schedule recordings or season passes and while we love that we could bring up the Google search bar at any time to find content Google currently doesn't find programs on Netflix and we also found that some of the listings info isn't accurate for shows like The Colbert Report and the daily show altogether although we love the idea of Google TV and blu-ray in a single box right now we'd recommend the competing logitech revue over the sony for early adopters because we prefer Logitech's excellent wireless keyboard but for mainstream buyers we pass on both the review and the sony for now until Google TV can iron out its issues I'm Matthew miskovic for cnet and this is the Sony nsz gt1 with Google TV we had such high hopes for Google TV when it first came out I mean I've even on it pete's sake but having all the networks block their websites is not a very good sign the least it plays blu-ray right all right now let's see what we've got going on in this week's bottom line we're less than a week away from Thanksgiving so don't wait too long before you start planning your turkey dinner and if you need a little help in that department there's a new app from our friends at chow com that will hold your hand every step of the way hey everyone I'm Hollywood and welcome to tap that app the show where we rundown the hottest applications for your mobile doohickey or whatever this week it is all about Thanksgiving here in the United States and for a lot of you I know that means you're starting to panic maybe you've never made the big turkey dinner before maybe grandma's coming and she's going to judge your gravy you need help our sister site chow com has created the thanksgiving dinner coach app it's free for the iphone and ipod touch actually i downloaded it onto my ipad and i made it big because i like to use this for cooking so hopefully an ipad version is next also speaking of cooking thanks to chow for letting me shoot this in their Test Kitchen I'm never leaving anyway dinner coach app lets you choose from nine recipes here pretty basic thanksgiving fare nothing that's going to scare off your picky eater friends you can delete whatever recipes you don't think you'll use except for the turkey actually so vegetarians you might want to look elsewhere anyway once you choose the recipes you want to use let's see green beans turkey gravy yes it creates an entire shopping list for you now what I really like about this shopping list is that it also includes the gear you're going to need like the pitcher the whisk the frying pan the roast or that kind of thing but anything you already have you just tap it and then it disappears from your list off you go okay then and this is where it's really helpful it creates an entire cooking schedule for you by day so what you need to do on Monday defrost your turkey what you need to do wednesday and what order you need to cook things so you can have everything ready all at the same time this is a super useful organizational tool now this is a pretty basic app it's probably best for people who haven't cooked Thanksgiving dinner before or who are just interested in keeping things simple and organized for example I wish that you could import other recipes from the child database there's a lot of good stuff there but in this case you're pretty much stuck with these ones here if you wanted to customize you might want to try something like I feast thanksgiving or you could combine this with the turkey recipes app in the itunes app store that's got 38 different turkey recipes also i would love it if there was a way to email someone the shopping list so that you could send someone else to the store maybe even printed out all in all though if you're nervous about Thanksgiving dinner or you just want a good way to stay organized this app is dead simple to use and it's free so you know if you can take the stress out of cooking that means that you can just serve a good meal sit back and go to your happy place while Aunt Alice criticizes your housekeeping again for tap that app at cnet com I'm mollywood the bottom line this week better cooking through technology I am a little disappointed though that the dinner coach app didn't include that recipe for turkey cake did you see that thing I can't decide if I'm disgusted or craving it probably a little bit of all all right folks it's time for me to go join us next week for a special black friday buyers guide episode of the cnet tech review until then there are tons of great videos available every day at seen at tv.com thank you for watching and happy turkey day