Electron Hut: Kyle Bedell’s Blog

Say what you will about the abundance of crappy merchandise and a television series that degraded rapidly in quality, but the core Pokemon games (not the spin-offs) have been nothing short of excellent.

When I was twelve years old on September 30th, 1998, Nintendo introduced me to a role-playing game the likes of which I had never seen before: Pokemon Blue for the original Game Boy. Those 150 pixelated monsters gave my brother, sister, and I hours of fun battling, trading, and leveling. Every few years, the company would introduce new features and more monsters until it became apparent that they were “missing” (sales/exposure-wise) a generation of gamers who had never played the originals. Then the remakes started. Nintendo looks at them as a way to introduce new gamers to the older entries in the series. For me, it’s more about reliving the “golden years” of playing the games with my siblings.

Enter the latest entries in the 4th Generation of Pokemon games: Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver for the Nintendo DS.

Remakes of my favorite entries in the series, Pokemon Gold and Silver, the DS editions add most of the “next generation” technical improvements seen in Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum (wireless trading over the Global Trading System, WiFi battles, etc.) while keeping the setting and story from the original titles. Oh, and there’s the bundled Pokewalker accessory.

This handy little pedometer has become the best ‘gimmick’ I’ve seen from Nintendo in ages. By making use of the device’s built-in IR port, you can offload Pokemon on to the Pokewalker. Each step you take makes the monster inside a bit stronger, and every 10 steps or so generates a Watt. You can spend Watts on the Pokewalker itself to use the Poke Radar (allowing you to catch monsters specific to the route you’re walking on) or the Dowsing Machine (a sort of ‘find the item’ game that lets you obtain various medicines and power-ups). Any monsters or items you get will transfer back in to the game when you return from a stroll. Alternatively, you can transfer the Watts back to the DS cartridge without spending them. When you hit certain totals, you open up new routes to walk your Pokemon on. Each route has different items to find and different Pokemon to catch. To make things even more interesting, Pokewalkers can ‘connect’ to each other to share data — every person you connect with each day earns you an item.

Thanks for putting Skinner’s research to good use again, Nintendo.

In all seriousness though, if you like the Pokemon series, you won’t go wrong with the latest remakes. If you’ve never played, try to forget about all of the marketing and merchandise and give it a shot. You might be surprised!

A special thanks to Noah at Kanguru for providing a drive for review!

Flash drives are mostly commodity items at this point; the cost per megabyte on these portable storage devices has plummeted in recent years. I can remember paying $79 for a 16 megabyte USB key around 1999/2000. Now, you can buy a 16 gigabyte key for $39 if you shop around. In a world full of similar products, how do you differentiate yourself? As it turns out, there’s a sizable demand for secure flash drives, especially in the government sector. Armed with 256-bit AES hardware encryption, a built-in antivirus scanner (BitDefender with a year of updates included), and a durable case, the Defender Elite fits the bill. For government security buffs, the drive meets FIPS 140-2 standards.

The first thing you notice about the Defender Elite is its construction. Made out of anodized aluminum, its build quality is tier above the myriad plastic drives out there. In addition, the drive has been filled with epoxy to make it more difficult to access the flash memory chips inside. If yellow isn’t your style, you can also get the drive in green, red, blue, and tan.

The Defender Elite’s key differentiator is its software bundle: a combination authorization/authentication/antivirus app called Kanguru Defender Manager. When you first plug the drive in to a machine, the Kanguru Defender Manager automatically launches. A few quick setup steps later (including setting a password and configuring the update schedule for the built-in antivirus), and you’re ready to go.

Anytime the Defender Elite is plugged in after the initial setup, you’ll be asked to input your password before the drive’s data can be accessed. Before the password is entered, only a separate, unencrypted partition containing the Defender Manager software is available:

After entering your password, the secure partition is decrypted and this tray icon appears in the system tray:

A right click brings up a menu you can use to configure various features of the drive:

By default, the antivirus is configured to scan everything on the drive in real time; each time a file is added, the Defender Elite automatically scans it for viruses and malware. Definition updates are painless and handled automatically. Actual Defender updates are a breeze as well, although the process is a manual one. When an update was available during this review, the Defender Elite downloaded and launched an Update Wizard. I just clicked Next on the two pages of the Wizard, allowed the update to run, then un/replugged the drive. The whole process took less than a minute.

For those who are curious, the included software is 64-bit compatible (I tested on Windows 7 Ultimate) and DPI-aware. This was an unexpected bonus — I run my machine at 125% DPI (the resolution of my screen doesn’t change, but everything is approximately 25% larger). Many applications with fixed windows sizes that aren’t DPI-aware have buttons that are cut off. The Defender Manager, however, worked perfectly with no UI issues in that regard.

Ah, but what about performance? What good is an encrypted flash drive if it takes forever to read and write data? While far from the fastest drive I’ve ever seen (that honor goes to Patriot’s Xporter series, which I’ve seen read and write around 30Mb/sec), the Defender Elite 1Gb turned in decent numbers for an encrypted drive when I benched it with USBDeview. With write speeds around 6Mb/sec and read speeds around 20Mb/sec, the Defender is an average performer. Still, the write speeds are much better than any bargain bin USB drive (I know of a popular brand with a swiveling metal clip that gets 2Mb/sec), and the read speeds are up there with many 5400RPM notebook drives.

The Bottom Line: if you’re looking for a solid performer in the arena of encrypted flash drives, the Kanguru Defender Elite won’t let you down. With an easy-to-use software package, built-in antivirus, and solid construction, it stands up to physical and digital security requirements. The read and write speeds won’t blow you away, but they’re acceptable considering the overhead of the virus scanner and encryption. Available now directly from Kanguru with a starting price of $49 for a 1Gb drive.

Katt and I just got back from 3 days at the inaugural PAX East conference in Boston. A delightful blend of video games, tabletop gaming, movies, cosplayers, exhibits, and general geekery, it was quite the experience. I’ll be heading back next year for certain! Rather than repost all of the pictures here, I will direct you to the Flickr set I put together for the event. Some highlights:

• ATI’s Eyefinity multidisplay technology was driving a wall of six displays off of one graphics card
• Alienware’s m11x 11 inch gaming laptop was on display. It’s even smaller than it looks in the Engadget hands-on. 6.5 hours of battery life in integrated graphics mode, 4 in dedicated watching 1080p movies, 2.5 gaming. Also, I want one.
• Watching the SurfaceScapes team play Dungeons and Dragons on the Microsoft Surface was a treat. The table has the ability to detect fingers and ‘tokens’ placed on its surface. The team has tokens on the miniature bases so the software knows where the players are on the map.
• Getting to see the DSi XL. It’s huge.
• Trading info with a mob of Pokemon lovers thanks to my new Pokewalker.
• Seeing Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik present the PA Make-a-Strip panel. Possibly the most hysterical thing I have ever listened to/watched.
• Having my sister Micaela join us on the last day for some Expo Hall fun (Micky on the left, Katt on the right)
• Playing indie games like AAAaaaAAAaaa (A Reckless Disregard for Gravity) at the showcase on the expo hall floor
• Making liberal use of the tabletop borrow-a-game library. Played everything from Munchkin to We Didn’t Playtest This At All!

A finalist at TechCrunch’s TC50 2008, the Fitbit has been a long time coming. A year after its debut, the wireless pedometer is finally shipping to the public! A few days ago, I received mine in the mail courtesy of the U.S. Postal Service. So, what makes the Fitbit different from a $10 pedometer you can buy at the store, you ask?

• Improved step and activity tracking (courtesy of a gyroscopic motion sensor, the same one in the Nintendo Wii’s controller)
• Sleep tracking (measures when you fall asleep, how many times you wake up, etc.)
• Wireless uploading to Fitbit.com through the included base station
• Rechargable battery (the Fitbit clips on to the supplied base station)

The uploaded data is sent to your personal Dashboard at Fitbit.com, which takes your information and turns it in to this (click to enlarge):

In addition, the Fitbit.com site also offers a  meal tracking system with a user-maintained database and the ability to manually record activities that the pedometer isn’t particularly good at figuring out (lifting weights, for example). You can sign up and use all of the manual features for free, even if you don’t buy a Fitbit tracker. For the more competitive folks, there’s even a friends-based Leaderboard for comparing statistics.

Speaking of the tracker, the build quality is excellent. Good plastics and a bit of metal for structural integrity. If you pry open the clip a bit, you’ll see a set of electrical contacts (for charging, initial setup, and firmware updates) lining both ends. One of the nifty things about this is that you can just push the clip over the top of the base station for charging, no need to worry about orientation. As far as buttons go, there’s just one on the back! It serves two purposes: flipping between the various trackable statistics (calories, steps, miles walked, and the fitness flower)…

…and toggling Activity Mode on and off (which allows you to track specific step/calorie/distance counts for a span of time and track sleep). The first three statistics will reset at midnight every day, but the flower shrinks and grows based on your recent activity level. It you’ve been sitting in your office chair for 4 hours, it will resemble a small weed. Climb to the summit of Everest and you’ll see a flower that fills the tracker’s screen.

So is it worth it? There’s a lot of subjectivity in reviewing a gadget like this. The Fitbit is only as useful as you make it. If you wear it all the time, keep it charged (mine’s been running for four days and it still has a 90% full battery), and make use of the information you get on your Dashboard, $99 is a steal for insight in to your exercise habits and sleep quality. If you leave it at home all the time, it’s a waste of money. My honest opinion? The automatic data uploading and “put it on and forget about it” usage model is perfect for me. It’s like I say:

The best technology is the kind you don’t realize you’re using.

If you’re interested in learning more about your sleep and activity levels, and the idea of automated data collection seems cool to you, the Fitbit comes with my highest recommendation.