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Personal Technology Columns Tagged ‘Personal Technology’

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How TIFF, RAW Help Pricey New Digitals Produce Better Pictures

(See Corrections & Amplifications item below.)
As a rhinoceros rampages through his neighborhood, a suburban Everyman grabs his fancy camera and shoots. The scene, part of a TV commercial for the Nikon D70, introduces a new kind of digital photographer — the well-armed amateur.
High-end digital cameras that sell for less than $1,000 — whether Canon’s Digital [...]

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Net-Based To-Do Lists Permit Collaboration By Family, Colleagues

Submit expense reports: Check. Buy school raffle tickets: Check. Finish writing column: Not quite.
For all of us trying to meet the myriad demands of work and home, a comprehensive to-do list can be indispensable. Part of the checklist’s power is its simplicity. Just a few minutes with a stub of pencil and a scrap of [...]

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IM Services Offer Alternative to Phones, But Are No Bargains

(See Corrections & Amplifications item below.)
All over the world, consumers are turning to the Internet for phone service. Companies like Skype Technologies and Vonage Holdings have been marketing inexpensive, even free, calls. Now, Internet giants like Google and Yahoo, and software manufacturer Microsoft are upgrading their services and features to win the same customers.
Instant-messaging services [...]

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How Your Cellphone May Beat Computers As a Dating Service

Cellphones are becoming devices not only for reaching people you know but for reaching people you don’t know — yet.
Increasingly powerful and Web-enabled, the latest phones can do email, video, music, photo sharing and Web surfing. It was inevitable that popular online services such as “social networking” sites would find a home on cellphones as [...]

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Three Phone Makers Point to Advances In Camera Cellphones

Cameras were introduced on cellphones in 2000, but for years the photo quality was so poor, the devices were little more than toys.
That’s changing as handset manufacturers add cameras that take pictures equal in quality to those taken by average digital cameras. In the U.S., some camera phones are built with two-megapixel image sensors, similar [...]

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Prepaid Online Plans Offering Global Calls Suffer From Glitches

nternational calling has been an expensive and cumbersome process over the years, with consumers always hunting for new ways to find inexpensive, user-friendly plans. Today, consumers have more low-cost choices.
In addition to prepaid calling cards, options range from free Internet calling via computers, inexpensive Internet calling via services such as Vonage and heavily discounted wireless [...]

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Skype-Only Phones Bring a New Mobility To Free Online Calls

All over the world, people are increasingly using the Web to make phone calls, if not free, then for a few pennies a minute. One of the most common ways of doing so is with Skype, the free software whose parent company was bought last year by eBay.
In fact, Skype has become so popular that [...]

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New Nikon Can Send Its Photos Via Wi-Fi So It’s More Useful

What has a colorful screen, fits in a pocket, takes pictures and can go with you almost anywhere?
Nowadays, there are two possible answers: a small digital camera and a cellphone. But sophisticated cellphones with better built-in cameras — including some with up to three megapixels — are making it increasingly practical for consumers to just [...]

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Kodak’s New Printer Is a Good Start, Plus It Cuts the Cost of Ink

Kodak is offering a new line of home inkjet printers that use cheaper ink. Walt tries one out to see if its quality is good enough to satisfy people attracted by the lower ink costs. Video

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Buying a Laptop Means More Attention to Special Features

Walt provides some tips for making laptop purchases. First, you may want to wait to get that new laptop until later this year or early in 2008. There are a number of interesting new hardware features coming.(Video)

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Helio’s New Ocean Has a Clever Design For Phone and Email

Walt Mossberg tests out the new smart phone from Helio. He finds the Ocean has an elegant solution to the common design problem of how to optimize smart phones both for making voice calls and for email and Web surfing.

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This Time, Samsung Has Made a Tiny PC That’s Practical to Use

Walt Mossberg tests Samsung’s Q1 Ultra, and says the tiny PC addresses the biggest weaknesses of an earlier model and throws in other improvements such as a built-in keyboard. (Video)

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Hate Voice Mail? New Services Turn Recordings Into Text

New services using voice-recognition technology aim to eliminate checking voice messages by transcribing them into text. To see how efficient they are at transcription, Sarmad Ali tested two such applications.

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When I Was Your Age, We Didn’t Have Sites For Writing Our Bios

Sarmad Ali tests two Web sites that help people to write accounts of their life stories or family histories. But the results can be disappointing, especially for those who opt for the least expensive services.

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You’re Using iTunes, But Are You Missing Some of the Fun?

Walt talks about a lesser-known feature of iTunes that allows users to share their music, even with a PC. (Video)

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