For you, a Bluetooth headset offers a safe way to use your cell phone hands-free in the car. For cyberthieves, it’s just another security gap waiting to be exploited.

The U.S. CERT (that’s the government’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team) just issued a list of tips to help you use Bluetooth devices more securely. Nothing too difficult, and in fact it’s mostly common-sense advice.

Two practices stand out. First, disable your Bluetooth device when you’re not using it. And when you do enable it, use it only in hidden, or "not discoverable", mode .

You can get other Bluetooth security tips and learn more about setting up a good password for your Bluetooth and other devices at the U. S. CERT site:

http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/tips/ST05-015.html

—Donna Tapellini

View source

With Texans along the Gulf Coast recovering from Hurricane Dolly, we thought it would be a good time to mention electronics gear that can be invaluable to have before, during and after a natural disaster or other emergency. Of course, there are other items you’ll need, such as flashlights, water, and more. For a complete checklist and other tips on preparing for—and dealing with the aftermath of—devastating storms and disasters, see our free Storm and Emergency guide on ConsumerReports.org.

On the electronics front, here’s what we recommend:

• Make sure you have an emergency radio—powered by either batteries or a hand-crank—which will work even if the lights go out. A radio can pull in vital news, weather, and evacuation information from AM radio stations, which have further "reach" than TV broadcasters.
• Have at least one corded phone that doesn’t require electricity. A cordless phone’s base station won’t run without juice.
• Keep your cell phone charged and have alternative power options—a car adapter or a portable cell phone charger that uses common AA batteries or features a hand crank or other "green" energy source.
• Consider having family members use different cell phone service providers in case one carrier goes down.
• Know how to text message. If cell towers are still up but available bandwidth is limited, a text message may be able to get through when voice calls won’t.
• Learn how to browse the Web on an Internet-enabled phone. You’ll have news bulletins, maps, and more at your fingertips.
• Have a portable GPS navigation system, which can be handy if you have to evacuate through unfamiliar routes and areas.

A reader on the Electronics Blog says her battery-operated, portable LCD TV has been a "lifesaver" during emergencies and power outages. She laments that this will be the last season she can use it, because it’s an analog TV, and as of February, all full-power stations must broadcast only digital signals.

Because of that, any portable TV you want to use after February will have to incorporate an ATSC tuner. We found a mini TV with a built-in digital tuner at RadioShack.com for $200. It can run on a car adapter. Don’t count on connecting an analog set to a DTV converter box. All the boxes we’ve seen require AC power, ruling out use in a blackout. (For more information on the switchover to digital TV broadcasts, see our guide to the DTV transition and our latest reviews of DTV converter boxes.)

Also keep in mind that it can be harder to receive digital signals than analog broadcasts. Many of our readers have trouble getting digital signals via rooftop antennas under normal conditions. (See the reader comments on our blog entry, "How to use a converter box & antenna to get DTV.") It could be even harder under emergency conditions.

—Nick Kolman-Mandle

View source

This week, Samsung offered a sneak preview of some of its flat-panel TV offerings that will hit stores shelves starting next month, including models with color accents (Touch of Color) on their frames, super-slim designs, and LED backlights. The company also showed a new home-theater-in-a-box system that incorporates a Blu-ray disc player.

A new high-end LCD line, the 950 series, features 1080p resolution, 120Hz technology (called Auto Motion Plus), and LED backlighting with local dimming. These sets have the ability to dim certain segments of the screen while others remain bright, which improves color, contrast, and black-level performance, and reduces power consumption, Samsung claims. The 46-inch LN46A950 ($3,200) and 55-inch LN55A950 ($4,200) will be available next month, and replace the LED-based 81-series models. The TVs come with a flash drive preloaded with HD-quality artwork, recipes, children’s shows and games, and other digital content.

Other new LCD TVs include the 850 and 860 series, the slimmest LCDs yet in the Samsung line, with a depth of just 1.9 inches. They also have narrower frames than previous models, so they take up less room in your media center. These 1080p sets have 120Hz technology and two USB 2.0 inputs. The main difference between the lines will be that 860-series models, which have blue rather than rose accents, will be sold exclusively through A/V specialty dealers, and are priced $100 higher. The 46-inch LN46A850 ($2,700) and 52-inch LN52A850 ($3,400), and comparable 860 sets will be available in September.

All the models in the 850, 860, and 950 series include InfoLink (Internet access that delivers RSS feeds of news, weather and stocks from USA Today) and WiseLink Pro, which provides access to digital music, photos, and videos stored on a flash drive.

The 630 series, shipping now, is the company’s entry-level 1080p/120Hz offering. Available, in 40-, 46-, and 52-inch screen sizes, the models (the LN40A630, the LN46A630, and the LN52A63), range in price from $1,700 to $2,700. The 630 models include Wiselink Pro, but not InfoLink.

Samsung expanded its plasma TV lineup with 50-, 58-, and 63-inch 760-series models, which have 1080p resolution and the company’s Ultra FilterBright technology, an anti-reflective filter that purports to reduce glare. They have separate "day" and "night" calibration modes for optimum performance for either daytime and nighttime viewing. The TVs, priced from $2,800 to $5,000, also include InfoLink and WiseLink Pro.

Samsung also showed the $800 HT-BD2T, a 5.1-channel surround sound system with five satellite speakers, a passive subwoofer, and a Profile 1.0 Blu-ray player integrated into the console. The system will upconvert standard DVDs and can output 24p video (the native frame-rate of movies) to displays that can accept them, eliminating judder artifacts that arise from having to convert the 24 frame-per-second frame rate of movies to the 30-frame-per-second rate of video.

The new system joins Samsung’s two current 7.1-channel Blu-ray HTIBs, the $1,000 HT-BD2S and the $1,500 HT-BD2T, which feature powered subs.

€”James K. Willcox

View source

If you’re planning any air travel in the near future, you might find yourself surfing while you fly. American Airlines is one of several carriers planning to offer Wi-Fi in the sky with a broadband Internet service called Gogo.  The service will be implemented on some of its transcontinental Boeing planes. Other airlines are also implementing or planning to launch their own services.

American’s Wi-Fi will be available for $12.95 on flights longer than three hours. Passengers with their own Wi-Fi-enabled devices will be able to access the Internet using Aircell’s Gogo technology, which communicates with cellular towers on the ground via three antennae on the plane’s exterior. Your laptop or other mobile device connects via several wireless access points within the cabin. American says Gogo is also compatible with most corporate VPNs and e-mail.

JetBlue is offering a test of limited Wi-Fi capabilities on what it calls the BetaBlue plane, a Wi-Fi-equipped Airbus 320. The service is free, but limited. You can access e-mail from services like Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, and AOL; use your Blackberry; send instant messages; and, in case you’ve just got to buy the latest bestseller from 30,000 feet up, shop at Amazon.com.

Later this year, Virgin America will begin testing Wi-Fi as well, with the goal of offering it across its fleet by 2009. In addition to using your own carry-on devices, Virgin will let you access the Internet using seatback video touchscreens. Lufthansa says it will also roll out a program next year.

The spate of new on-high Wi-Fi comes a couple of years after Boeing pulled the plug on Connexions, its in-flight wireless broadband service. That program reportedly failed after the company was unable to get enough paying customers.

If you’ve been on a flight that offers Wi-Fi, share your experience with us. Was it worth the price (if you had to pay)? Would you be satisfied with a free service that offered limited access? Or do you think the wild blue yonder should remain Internet-free?

—Donna Tapellini

View source

When you turn on your new high-definition TV, it probably won’t look as stunning as it did in the showroom. The default, out-of-the-box settings on most HDTVs are designed to create a super-bright, vividly colored image, but they’re almost always a bad choice for use at home. Here in our labs, our engineers fine-tune each set before evaluating the picture. It’s likely the TVs in our Ratings would have much lower scores if we didn’t.

You don’t need an engineering degree to get the most from your HDTV. The easiest way to adjust picture quality is to use one of the preset picture modes. (Press menu on the remote and find picture or video controls.) Most TVs are set to Vivid or Dynamic (names vary by brand), but we’ve found that modes like Natural, Cinema, or Pro generally provide the most pleasing, natural-looking picture. Play around with the choices and see which looks best. Finding the right mode might be all you need to do.

You can also adjust picture settings individually rather than using a preset mode. One simple method is to set the brightness, contrast, color, and tint controls to a middle or neutral position, then move them up and down until the image pleases you. Also, turn off sharpness, noise reduction, and image-enhancement. This approach generally results in a decent picture.

If you’re more adventurous, try these seven steps to better picture quality. You’ll find more detail in our article on tuning your TV.

Seven steps to better looking HD

1. Lower the brightness, or black level, to the setting that gives you the deepest black without obscuring detail in the darkest areas.
2. Raise the contrast, or white level, to the setting that gives you the brightest image without losing subtle, near-white details, such as the buttons on a white dress shirt.
3. Set the color temperature, or color tone, to warm or low.
4. Adjust tint/hue to around the middle of the range, so flesh tones look natural, neither too red nor too greenish-yellow.
5. Set color-level, or saturation, so that colors look vivid but realistic, not too hyped up.
6. Turn sharpness down to zero, then raise it slightly only if the image looks soft or edges are indistinct.
7. Turn off noise-reduction and image-enhancement, which tend to reduce image detail.

Don’t worry about messing up—if you’re unhappy with the results, press the reset button to restore factory settings, and you can start over.

While you can make any TV look better, you’ll get top picture quality only if you start with a great TV. If you’re a subscriber to ConsumerReports.org, view our LCD TV Ratings, plasma TV Ratings, rear-projection TV Ratings, and front projector TV Ratings to see which models did best in our tests.

A few last pointers

To get high-def signals, you must:

• use either the component-video or HDMI connection; S-video and other inputs cannot carry high-def signals. (For off-air HD, you can get high-def signals using the RF input.)
• have a high-def receiver and sign up for high-def service from your TV service provider
• tune to a high-def channel displaying a high-def program.

See "Get the most from your HDTV," for more details. If you tweak your TV successfully, tell us about it.

—Eileen McCooey

View source

It’s not very hard to lose hundreds of photos from your digital camera’s memory card in the blink of an eye. Just ask my colleague, Eileen McCooey, who asked for my help after accidentally erasing pictures of her recent summer vacation when she unintentionally reformatted the memory card.

Fortunately, if you know what you’re doing, it’s nearly as easy to recover deleted images as it is to erase them.

Here’s how I rescued Eileen’s photos:

1. I told Eileen to immediately remove the memory card from the camera. This is critical, because right after photos are deleted (or a card is formatted), they’re usually still intact and recoverable. But once you use that card to store additional shots, you put your deleted photos at risk.
2. I knew there was software that could recover deleted files, because I had bought and used programs at home to help family members with similar problems. (Card makers Sandisk and Lexar both sell such software.)

   But I wanted to recover these photos in the office, without buying more software. So I Googled "freeware to recover memory card." Several hits seemed to fit the bill. But I wasn’t sure if those downloads were both spyware- and virus-free, so I checked Download.com, which has a reputation for safe downloads.

3. At Download.com, I searched for "recover memory card" which turned up 82 hits. I tried a couple that appeared to be free (there was no "Buy now" displayed). One of them actually found the lost photos, but wouldn’t recover them unless I paid up.
4. So, I used "Narrow Your Search" on the results page to find the few that actually were free. That turned up just four hits.
5. 
   I downloaded and ran VaioSoft Recovery Manager 1.5 (click on image at left), which recovered nearly 500 photos in just a minute or two. There they were, on my hard drive. I copied them to a CD for Eileen. VaioSoft encourages users of its software to make a contribution to support its work.

   (Note to Mac users: Recovery Manager 1.5 runs only under Windows. You may need to hunt for alternatives through reputable freeware sites that cater to Mac users.)

If you attempt this yourself, keep these tips in mind:

• If your damaged memory card has some form of write-protection, use it to avoid accidentally writing to the card.
• Never copy files to the memory card while it’s in your computer’s card reader.
• Check the software’s destination settings to make sure it will place the recovered files on your hard drive, not the memory card. (See image at right.)
• View the recovered photos to make sure everything is intact.
• Before reusing the memory card, make sure you have also backed up the recovered files to a CD, DVD, or other device, so that you have at least two copies of them.

And remember: Anyone with a PC can do what I did, so before you lend an "empty" memory card to someone, make sure you’ve irrevocably erased any files and photos you’d rather not share. (You can do that with a "complete-delete" utility like Eraser or by totally filling the card with other files and then erasing all of those.)

—Jeff Fox

View source

grk writes “I am from Europe, studying Business Informatics. I have plenty of IT-related work experience (from my part-time job and summer jobs) ranging from Project Management and Software Planning to Programming. In the 5th semester my curriculum has scheduled an internship for February 2009 preceding bachelor examinations and bachelor thesis. It will last for about three months. I would like to do my internship in the US, but I do not know how to start. Is it common to send unsolicited applications to companies in the US? Try the big corporations? Should I go for an employment agency? Which ones to choose from? What about the pay? Where I come from it is common to pay only a fraction of what your work is actually worth if it’s called an ‘internship.’ Does this apply to the US as well? Any other recommendations?”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

View source

An anonymous reader notes a development from the world of photography that could spread to notebooks and cell phones. Canon has filed for a patent on a fuel cell powered DSLR. The fuel cell would power not only the camera body but also all accessories attached to it, doing away with the need to power flashes (for example) with AA or other batteries. The patent covers other electronic devices generally, but is clearly directed toward DSLR cameras, given the diagrams and examples used. “Canon continues to push its fuel cell development by devising a method for powering not only the internal DSLR body electronics, but also external components such as lenses and hotshoe flashes.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

View source

Ben Morris writes “A recent judgement in the UK courts has forced a former employee to hand over details of his business contacts built up through LinkedIn.com while he was employed by his former company. The decision is one of the first in the UK to show the tension between businesses encouraging their employees to use social networking websites, and trying to claim that the contacts should remain confidential when they leave.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

View source

NewbieV points out coverage of the effort to assess Beijing’s air pollution control efforts. Quote from one of the investigators: “This will be a very interesting experiment that can never happen again.” Here’s the main project scientist’s site on the monitoring effort, and Newsweek coverage that brings out a paradoxical effect of reducing pollution on global warming. “Unmanned aerial vehicles are measuring emissions of soot and other forms of black carbon. The instruments are observing pollution transport patterns as Beijing enacts its “great shutdown” for the Summer Olympic Games. Chinese officials have compelled reductions in industrial activity by as much as 30 percent and cuts in automobile use by half to safeguard the health of competing athletes immediately before and during the games.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

View source