Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

Often, a shotgun is used at the beginning of a dash, but not so in the world of connected GPS devices, where Telenav launched its Shotgun portable navigation device days after Dash decided to exit the hardware business with its pioneering Dash Express.

Unlike Dash, Telenav was no newcomer to the guided navigation space, being a leading provider of turn-by-turn navigation services to cell phones. Its customers include Sprint and AT&T, and consumers can subscribe to the service directly through Telenav -- even if their carrier doesn't support it -- as long as their smartphone does. The product is free to download, but carriers charge a subscription fee for unlimited use, or offer it on a per-diem price. Because it is designed for an inherently wireless device, Telenav software includes features such as traffic notification, which is a premium feature in portable navigation devices.

In addition to physical advantages such as the large screen, the Shotgun has at least one important advantage over Telenav's cell phone services. Since its maps are local, the device continues to route even when you drive outside of cellular coverage areas. But there's at least one holdover from its cellular heritage that Telenav needs to shed on the Shotgun -- an unceasing, bright blue LED signaling wireless connectivity, which is hugely distracting to the driver, especially at night. Perhaps a bundled strip of black duct tape will do in the meantime.

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

Last week's Switched On delved into Celio's REDFLY, an austere smartphone accessory designed for enterprise users who manage their digital lives on their smartphones. REDFLY has faced scrutiny from the geek elite who have noted that, for about the same price as a REDFLY, one can get an independently functioning netbook that does so much more. A similar argument has also been levied at Peek, a wireless e-mail appliance that delivers only a part of what most smartphones can do.

But the two products could hardly be more different. Whereas REDFLY is a smartphone companion, Peek is a smartphone alternative featuring a slim design and a commitment to simplicity that borders on obsession. For example, Peek, like many modern smartphones, will attempt to guess your mail server information by your e-mail address. But if your e-mail address stumps it, there is no way to enter a server name or IP address manually. This omission is intentional, according to Peek, which didn't want consumers to have to find out technical settings. Instead, customers are directed to contact the company's support line where a customer service representative will set up the account for them.

The approach is in lockstep with the device's target market -- busy and less technical consumers, particularly young mothers, who find themselves increasingly dependent on e-mail and don't want the complexity of a smartphone or the high cost of running one on a 3G network. Peek provides an alternative to a growing movement within the cellular industry to force minimal data plans on advanced phones. And for consumers who find carrier stores less than inviting, Peek is sold at Target, and it works.

The REDFLY "smartphone terminal" (a description that leaves no doubt off the bat that this is currently an IT-focused product) looks like a small notebook PC, but it does not have any processing capabilities of its own. Instead, it uses the operating system and wireless connectivity of a growing list of supported Windows Mobile smartphones. Wrapped in a smooth rubbery plum coating, its industrial styling includes an 8.3-inch screen that runs at a resolution of 800 x 400. Its slightly cramped keyboard is on par with those of 9-inch netbooks and certainly more comfortable than that on the Eee 701. And its short but very wide trackpad tops has two large buttons where you'd expect them to be.

After downloading a video driver for a supported Windows Mobile smartphone, the REDFLY must initially connect to a Windows Mobile smartphone via a USB cable; after that, you can use USB or Bluetooth for a wireless connection with the phone. Almost any application that can be used on the phone will accept input from the REDFLY keyboard and trackpad and display on its screen. But not all applications are, of course, created equal.

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment.

As Switched On exemplified in the frenzy of mobile Ts and primary Gs last week, much of the attention focused on the involvement of Google and comparisons to the iPhone. Searching Google for "'T-Mobile G1' Apple" yields over 6.7 million results on Google. Searching for "'T-Mobile G1' HTC" yields only 3.4 million.

Given that the phone is being branded "T-Mobile G1 with Google," the temptation is to say that HTC, which has long vowed to step into the white light from behind the white label, has failed to capitalize on one of the best branding opportunities in handset history. However, there would have been limits as to how much spotlight it could have stolen in the wake of media fascination with Google and one can have only so many brands listed in the name of a phone. Wireless carriers are among the biggest television advertisers, and Google is the biggest advertising powerhouse online. Together they will fund the G1 marketing push. The stakes were just too high for HTC to significantly advance its branding status with T-Mobile, which has used its carrier brand for such HTC handsets as the Dash, Wing and Shadow.

But there are more paradoxes in HTC's first Android handset.

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment.

In the 1999 geek classic, "Pirates of Silicon Valley", an Apple employee watching the famous "1984" commercial with Steve Jobs points to the Big Brother character -- intended to represent IBM -- and then points to Bill Gates of Microsoft, whom Jobs has just introduced as part of Apple's family. The silent message is that the real threat to Apple is Microsoft, not IBM, and indeed the following scene depicts Jobs confronting Gates after Jobs sees Windows 1.0 running on an NEC PC.

That scene, set in 1983, could be easily recreated 25 years later, substituting the iPhone for the Macintosh, Microsoft for IBM as the iPhone's perceived threat, and Google for Microsoft as the iPhone's more serious threat. Like Microsoft in 1983, Google is a key Apple partner in 2008. The iPhone features Google Maps, GMail and Google as its default Web search engine, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt even sits on Apple's board of directors. And also like Microsoft in 1983, Google is working fervently to create a wide range of competitors to Apple's iPhone. None of these may ever match the integrated experience of Apple's iPhone, but it's clear that the first Android phone has come closer to the iPhone experience than Windows 1.0 did to the original Macintosh operating system.

Nevertheless, Google's task is a lot more daunting than Microsoft's was at the dawn of Windows for several reasons.

What do people think of Windows Vista when they learn more about some of its features? To find out, we located three people who had been living in a cave around the time of the massive advertising campaign at Vista's launch and started out by asking them what they thought of Windows Vista.

Subject 1: "My niece was looking up something for her nutritional science class and went to this Web site called apple.com. There were a lot of videos there that said Vista was bad."

Subject 2: "I've heard that Windows Vista gives you scabies."

Subject 3: "Four of my friends on the American Online forwarded me an email that said Bill Gates would give me $10 million if I would tell my friends to buy Windows Vista and he didn't. It must stink."

Then we told them about some of the great hardware that Windows Vista supports.

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment.
Last year, Switched On discussed the KeySpan TuneView and the DLO HomeDock Remote, two products that allowed remote control of an iPod using small screens on a remote. One of the limitations of those products was that they each required their own docks instead of working with any of the scores of iPod docks already on the market. At CES 2008, though, a company showed a product that not only allows you to use your iPod -- and many other devices -- as a wireless remote with the iPod dock you may already have. Even more unusually, the company that sells it is not one well associated with these speaker docks, such as Altec Lansing, Bose or Logitech, but rather It is iSkin, a company that made its name selling silicone cases for iPods.

iSkin's music product line is called Cerulean, the most flexible configuration of which is the $129 TX+RX (transmitter / receiver). The transmitter, like those bundled with iPod wireless headphones for years, allows you to use your iPod as a remote, sending music to any Bluetooth stereo speaker. But not only does Cerulean free the iPod from the dock, it frees the dock from the iPod.

Plugging the Cerulean Bluetooth receiver into practically any iPod dock opens a door for many Bluetooth stereo music sources -- such as MacBooks and notebook PCs, digital music players from Sony and Samsung, and many cell phones. When used with a subscription service such as Rhapsody, the Cerulean lets you create playlists from thousands of songs or listen to YouTube music videos on your notebook with better audio quality, but there's even one more trick up its sleeve.

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment.
Even as Microsoft continues to support broadcasting standards around the world to bolster Media Center's support for broadcast television, the future of noisy, black 17-inch-wide boxes sharing a cramped cabinet with your stereo receiver remains in jeopardy. Indeed, the future of the living room PC may be sitting in your lap.

When Microsoft announced the Media Center edition of Windows XP, it was in some ways the desktop counterpart to the Tablet PC mutation. Whereas the Tablet PC was envisioned as a new form factor for notebooks, Media Center held the promise of transforming the desktop into its own new form factor. Indeed, in one of Bil Gates's final CES keynotes promoting innovative PC designs, he didn't mention desktops at all, referring to stationary computers as "entertainment PCs" in an AV component style.

But while a few companies continue to sell Media Center PCs explicitly designed for connection to a television -- among them Sony, Alienware, and companies targeting custom installers such as Niveus Media, the form factor hasn't taken off for a variety of reasons. Microsoft, in turn, has focused more on Media Center Extenders such as the Xbox 360 and HP MediaSmart Connect to bring the Media Center experience to the big-screen TV. And despite some technological improvements coming to help the cause, that situation is unlikely to change dramatically.

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment.

The past few years have seen a wide range of wireless technologies proposed to substitute for the now nearly ubiquitous (at least in terms of new HDTVs) HDMI connectors, but the dust is just starting to settle. Some proposals involve squeezing more juice out of 802.11n. Others rely on ultrawideband technology. Yet another that has many in the industry excited is from SiBeam, which intends to use the 60GHz band to deliver uncompressed 1080p video at 4Gbps. That technology, embraced by a group called WirelessHD, had received the most public support among major consumer electronics companies, with Panasonic, Sony, Samsung, Toshiba and LG listed on its site as promoters (and others listed as adopters).

But WirelessHD is still a ways from consumer availability and recently another wireless high-definition technology has attracted some heavy hitters of its own, including Sony, Samsung, Sharp and the cable set-top division of Motorola. Amimon's WHDI (Wireless Home Digital Interface) is different from many of its emerging competitors because it is designed, like WiFi, to be a technology that blankets the home, whereas most competitors focus on an in-room solution. WHDI even operates in the 5GHz band (like 802.11a and 802.11n), but sheds the costly bandwidth overhead WiFi utilizes to correct transmission errors. In contrast, WHDI is a "video modem" technology that attaches to a device's video output to send uncompressed 1080p video. After that, it's survival of the fittest for the bits.

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment.

The oldest of the "three screens" -- television – is generally far from the wisest. Sure, an endless array of set-top boxes and AV components packed with processors have appeared in the last few decades to use its screen as a surrogate, and now a high-definition, display for video games, PC content, Web pages, multimedia, videoconferencing and other entertainment. But while much television programming -- especially news and sports programs – has become cluttered with contextual trivia and tickers, the core TV viewing experience has remained stubbornly passive. Now, though, with backers citing the need to reclaim appeal from PCs and cell phones -- especially among multitasking kids, teens and young adults -- the first screen is fighting back.

Correctly recognizing that upconverting DVDs posed a serious challenge to high-definition discs, the backers of HD-DVD focused on the mandatory Internet connectivity of its players and support of it in some of its late content (the movie 300 was one of the best showcases). In HD-DVD's defeat, the Blu-ray camp has picked up the cause via BD-Live, part of the Blu-ray 2.0 specification. A forthcoming title that will take advantage of the Internet connectivity is Disney's 50th anniversary platinum release of its classic Sleeping Beauty. And it is not your wicked stepmother's princess.

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment.

With all the hoopla around the iPhone 3G, the finger has taken center stage as the input device of choice on the go. However, last week's column on the prospects of the Livescribe Pulse was actually the penultimate one on the subject of smart pens -- at least two alternatives have entered the market. Both are based heavily on reference designs from Israeli companies that have taken a different approach than Livescribe.

Rather than relying on a camera to read small dots on special paper, these pens work with practically any paper. And unlike the bulky Pulse with its ostentatious display, they are practically indistinguishable from normal pens and both come with software that can do a decent job of converting handwriting to text. The tradeoff is that some of the electronics have been offloaded to a small receiver that must be positioned on the paper, creating a two-piece solution.

IOGEAR's Mobile Digital Scribe, powered by Pegasus Technology, is a follow-on from a similar earlier product that required that the receiver be tethered to the PC. The Scribe can still function this way. In fact, when connected to a PC, the pen can be used to scribble (presumably for quick doodles, otherwise why not just use the keyboard?) just as its tethered predecessor could. Writing appears on an on-screen note that appears as soon as the writer begins to write, and the software can have these pages "float" on the screen as sticky notes..

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment

The last Switched On discussed the innovative approach that Livescribe has taken in its core note-taking function while touching on some of the company's grander plans to create a wide array of applications and content, taking it far beyond its failed predecessor, the Logitech io2.

Livescribe is building an ambitious house in a neighborhood that has seen a lot of foreclosures; Pulse will need to rewrite history to be successful in the traditionally challenged smartpen market. Indeed, between the time that the Pulse was announced and shipped, Logitech announced it was writing off the market for now. In addition to improving on note-taking, the company points to the reduced size of the Pulse as being less obtrusive than previous smartpens and thus more appealing to use. One of the keys to smartpen use is that it is less obtrusive than, say, a PC using Microsoft OneNote, which also has the ability to synchronize audio to written notes.

However, the Pulse's OLED display offsets at least some of the gains made toward discretion by shrinking the pen's girth. Worse, to get the full benefit of the Pulse's cool ability to resolve conversations in a room using 3D audio recording, you must wear earbuds that contain embedded microphones. It's hard to imagine something that could be more off-putting to a speaker than seeing an audience member wearing earbuds, and it would engender curiosity when that speaker notices that they are connected to a pen. Fortunately, the Pulse does a very good job of recording even without the earbud-based microphones.

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment

If the pen truly is mightier than the sword, Livescribe's Pulse smartpen ($149 with 1GB of flash memory, $199 with 2GB) may be able to take out a tank at 50 meters. Arguably the most technologically advanced writing instrument not intended for killing a Bond villain, the Pulse includes an infrared camera (for recording text), dual microphones, a speaker, a headphone jack, and an OLED display that can even play back short "movies" (animations synced with sound). And it manages to pack it all in a pen size that, while still a bit thick, is relatively comfortable and thinner than its closest technological ancestor, the now-discontinued Logitech io2.

Using its noise-canceling microphones and ink recognition system, the Pulse can be used to either take written notes that are uploaded to the PC, or record audio. But its greatest advance for note-taking over previous smartpen systems such as the io2 is the ability to synchronize written notes with audio. Simply put the pen into "Paper Replay" mode and tap on some text to hear what was being said as you scribbled. The result is the next best thing to real-time transcription. It can be used to check what may be an unclear or hastily scribbled note, focus on commentary while the pen captures the content, or create or copy a diagram while it is explained via audio.

But first, whatever is being written will have to be done so on paper designed explicitly for the pen. Like previous products that use Anoto technology, the Pulse needs smart "dot paper" to make transcription work. Without a doubt, this requirement will be a deal-killer for many, and limit the Pulse's everyday utility for some time to come. In contrast, simpler products such as the IOGear Mobile Digital Scribe uses ultrasound to track a pen's position and can be used on any paper (and the pens in such systems are smaller as well). To make dot paper more readily accessible, though, Livescribe will offer a template that should allow many customers to print their own dot paper at home. And dot paper enables the Pulse to pull off some pretty slick feats. Read on.

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment

The first iPhone arrived at a time that suggested Apple needed to protect its iPod franchise -- but Apple delivered something that was much more than an MP3 player that could make phone calls. You probably won't be editing any iMovies on it for some time, but in the iPhone Apple has essentially delivered Macintosh 2.0. It's portable. It's affordable. It's connected. And it runs OS X, complete with its own breakthrough pointing device, your finger. Whereas the first Mac came with productivity applications MacWrite and MacPaint, the iPhone came with applications for Web surfing, e-mail, and consuming media, the evolution of what much personal computing has become.

Furthermore, Apple has shown that it has learned from mistakes it made with the first Mac. Whereas early monochrome Macs were a tough sell for game developers, Apple has highlighted games as some of the most impressive early third-party applications for the iPhone and iPod touch. And whereas Apple was notorious for keeping Mac prices high for many years, the next-generation iPhone takes advantage of carrier subsidies for an out-of-pocket price of $200 in the US (and even less or free in some countries). Despite the many changes that have transformed the software industry since 1984, the iPhone, along with its SDK, development tools and app store, have the potential to bring the work of OS X developers to millions of people who don't own Macs -- that is, if Apple lets them.