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Portable Projector Reviews

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If you have money burning a hole in your pocket, and you’d like to jazz up your family reunions and genealogy presentations, PC Magazine has a review of some of the latest portable projectors, the Canon Realis SX50, the Sony VPL-CX20A, and the ViewSonic PJ256D. The ViewSonic is the cheapest, running around $1300 and on up. This is not for those on a budget, but if you could see using these elsewhere, not just a few times a year, they might very well be worth it. They are made for computers or standalone media components (DVD/VHS, etc.), but there are PDA cables/extentions available that would allow you to hook your PDA upto one (I know, for instance, that Dell makes a cable for their Axim PDA series).

Palm Treo 650 vs 700 Phones

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PC World has a rundown on the differences between the Palm Treo 650 and 700 phones, which are PDA/Phone hybrids from Palm. The 650 runs Palm OS, and the 700 runs Windows Mobile 5.0. I haven’t seen anything to indicate that the 700 is a stripped down Windows Mobile device – i.e. like many of the Smartphones that can’t run all Windows Mobile software (including genealogy software). It definitely looks like the 700 is a full Windows Mobile 5.0 device that looks like it can run genealogy software, but I’m not 100% sure just yet. The 650 can run Palm OS genealogy software (not sure of any limitations).

One important difference, the 650 has a 360×360 screen, whereas the 700 has a 240×240 screen. On the other hand, the 700 has 128MB of built-in memory, while the 650 has 32MB, and the 700 is faster. The 700 also has a 1.3MP digital camera, while the 650 is a much lower resolution.

Treo Mobile has extensive coverage of both of these phones.

The Treos could be a good compromise for genealogists who want a mobile device, but are afraid they won’t use it much, or that it will be “just one more thing” to carry along – using them as both phones and PDAs can be handy.

LAPTOP Magazine Reviews the Palm T|X

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If you are leaning towards the PalmOS platform, LAPTOP Magazine has a new review of the Palm T|X, and they gave it 4 out of 5 stars: Multimedia is really a value-add in this reasonably priced PDA. Nevertheless, Palm has succeeded in giving us a powerful yet very portable handheld that won’t break the bank.

scanR – scanning/copying/OCR with your cell phone

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Engadget has short article up about scanR. scanR is an interesting product service – here’s their description:

Scan documents or whiteboards, anywhere, anytime, using only your camera phone.

scanR is simple to use:
• Take a picture of a document or whiteboard with your 1 megapixel or better camera phone.
• Send the picture to scanR
• Receive the scanned image in email or fax.

I have used OCR (optical character recognition) software in the past with scans I made using my scanner, but had never thought to try it with my camera phone (which I will do this weekend). With camera phones getting cheaper and better, this could a fairly big deal for genealogists who need to copy some information but don’t have the time or means to do it on the spot properly.

Kodak Easyshare V570 Digital Camera

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Normally I wouldn’t talk about cameras, but Kodak has come out with a camera that some genealogists may find a little interesting – it’s a very compact, dual-lens 5MP 5x optical zoom digital camera. Yes, dual-lens. One lens is a wide-angle 23mm lens, the other is a 39 – 117 mm zoom lens. Granted, that is a fairly big gap between 23mm and 39mm, however you’re getting a small camera, and in theory, seperating it into two lenses should give you a better picture at either end. It does have a macro mode as well.