Aside from the terrible print quality, we also spent the majority of our testing time trying to pull paper out of feed tray jams–not fun. The official review is live, so check it out and the next time you’re shopping for a inkjet, remember there are definitely
better
options.

Here’s a rehash of the Didj’s key specs:

Processor: 393 MHz Arm 9
Display: 320×240 resolution
One 24-bit 2D layer (no hardware acceleration)
One 16-bit 3D layer
One YUV video layer (no hardware acceleration)
Graphics: API OpenGL ES 1.1–A reduced instruction set version of OpenGL for embedded systems Main RAM: 32 MB DDRI 131 MHz
NAND Flash: 256MB for data storage/download content
Media Cartridge: 64MB
System Software: Brio–Firmware is built on an abstraction layer called Brio to make OS and hardware transparent to developers. This means all software must be ported to Brio to run on this device.
Screen LCD: 3.2 inches, 16.7-Million Color TFT

A few months ago we got a preview of Leapfrog’s new handheld learning/gaming systems, the Didj ($89.99) and Leapster 2 ($69.99)–and now they’re officially available.

The idea behind the Didj is to up the gaming and graphics ante while continuing to integrate the learning stuff that the company’s known for. Those educational elements are starting to show up in a handful of DS games, but LeapFrog’s giving the whole educational-gaming slant a harder spin to appeal to parents who would prefer to have their grade-schoolers graduate to something other than the DS.

While the Didj doesn’t have a Wi-Fi connection like the DS, there’s a whole online angle that LeapFrog’s working with its LeapFrog Connect Application. The application lets children customize game content (the device connects via USB to both PCs and Macs).

(Credit:
LeapFrog)

LeapFrog's Didj gaming system.

The Leapster 2 is also available now.

According to LeapFrog’s news release, “Players first select and personalize an avatar. Then they design the game, choosing background scenery, color schemes or music. Most important, parents and kids can then customize content, connecting gameplay with schoolwork. Multiplication hard to master? Kids can choose to be quizzed on the 6s, 7s and 8s tables. Spelling a stumbling block? Kids can create a custom spelling list from the 10,000-word database and practice for next week’s test.”

I saw an early build of the game that ships with Didj and the graphics are indeed–excuse the pun–a nice leap forward for LeapFrog. At launch, 9 games are available for the system, including SEGA’s Sonic the Hedgehog, Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants: Fists of Foam, and Indiana Jones. Another premium title, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, is due out shortly. Didj games carry an MSRP of $29.99.

LeapFrog doesn’t exactly bill the Didj as a Nintendo DS competitor, but the new device is geared toward 6- to 10-year-olds, an age bracket where the DS currently rules. Meanwhile, the Leapster 2 is targeted at even younger children.

(Credit:
LeapFrog)

Anybody think the Didj is a worthy DS competitor? And: Can it appeal to both parents and kids?

It’s slow. When I open up a file window–let’s say my Applications folder–it takes 10 to 30 seconds before the file list appears. It’s painful when you are in a rush, being much slower than the regular MacBook, let alone the MacBook Pro. Battery life is generally bad. I have yet to get more than 2 hours and 15 minutes since I have owned the notebook. The need to lug around a bunch of accessories (including Apple’s always-burdensome power adapter) defeat much of the purpose. My whole point with the MBA was to have a machine with which I could easily travel. I have been screwed by the lack of Ethernet connectivity at least three times. Many hotels don’t offer Wi-Fi in room. Last week in New York, I had to go to the 24-hour Apple store to buy another USB adapter. It runs hot, and the memory tends to max out at least once a daywhile running very basic applications (Mac Mail,
Mac Calendar,
Safari,
Firefox, and Excel are what I normally run). It’s odd to me that the Apple applications are the items that push the memory over the top, whereas Firefox has gotten much better with it.

The size is great, and the keyboard remains a pleasure to type on. I have become dependent on the track pad, which is a total shocker, as I have never liked any of them in the past. The function keys are extremely useful, and I miss them on any other machine.

My consumption and inevitable destruction of technology products provides a great deal of entertainment for my friends.

The negative:

The positive:

Hey, your Facebook is in my Outlook.

It gets really cool if you use a Windows Mobile phone to connect to your Exchange server, because once it syncs the address book, the photos will then show up when people call you.

I’m not completely sure this app honors Facebook’s terms of service, but it seems pretty innocuous. And it only applies to people who use all four of these platforms: Facebook, Outlook, Exchange, and Windows Mobile. It was developed by Mel Sampat, who works on the Windows Mobile team at Microsoft.

I tried the program on my networks. It took 20 minutes to compare my 3700+ Outlook contacts to my 278 Facebook friends, and it made 101 matches. It put those 101 photos into my Outlook file as advertised and then shut down. Downsides: The algorithm doesn’t let you examine the Facebook and Outlook records side-by-side to make sure the matches are all correct, nor does it let you manually match records when it doesn’t pick up a correspondence. And it’s not a live sync–it won’t pick up new Facebook/Outlook matches until you run it again.

But it’s a great, if small, example of how our separate social networks should work together. And what do you want for free, anyway?

Microsoft rarely sues anyone, but gets sued plenty. It’s interesting, therefore, that when Microsoft recently took legal action against an alleged patent violator, the subject is hardware, not software, and relates to its mouse technology, of all things, and not something more significant like, say, its Windows cash cow.

As noted elsewhere on CNET, Microsoft filed a complaint [PDF] with the U.S. International Trade Commission against Taiwanese hardware maker, Primax, over allegations that Primax violated seven Microsoft patents related to two technologies - TiltWheel and U2 - used in computer mice.

In a sign of how Microsoft acts when it really feels its patents are being violated, Microsoft’s Horacio Gutierrez, a Microsoft vice president and deputy general counsel for intellectual property and licensing, indicated that Microsoft approached Primax multiple times over two years to try to resolve the issue. In other words, the company was quite reasonable and consistent in its approach.

Now compare this to how Microsoft engaged the Linux community over the alleged violation of no less than 235 of its patents back in 2007. No quiet discussions with the alleged violators (No, the Novell patent deal doesn’t count, as Novell never even remotely suggested it had violated any of Microsoft’s patents). Just a big Fortune interview, a few grenades launched, and then absolutely nothing beyond continued bursts of FUD.

With Primax, Microsoft demonstrates that it cares deeply about its intellectual property, but also that it knows grown-up ways to deal with protection of that intellectual property. In markets like computer mice it knows how to behave, but when the stakes are high…it yells loudly and stomps its feet?

Microsoft has publicly stated that it doesn’t know how to have “grown-up” discussions with open source because there’s no one corporate entity with which to negotiate. No cathedral, as it were.

But that’s OK. Red Hat has shown how to work with the open-source communities. It’s really not that hard, once you get your head around the importance of downstream users and contributors. Just follow Red Hat’s example.

Starting Wednesday, e-mail helper Cc:Betty has a new look. It now puts cc’d e-mail conversations in a threaded view, so you can look at past correspondence and catch up quickly. You’re also able to sort out messages in each of those threads by person, attachment, and included links using filters that remain on the side of the screen.

The service has taken a similarly simplified approach to viewing both links and e-mail attachments by presenting them as thumbnails. This lets you very quickly parse through attached content without visiting your mail client. And using the aforementioned filters, you can choose to only see things like images, videos, or links from an entire conversation thread.

The simplified view lets you sort by attachment, as well as see items like photos and links with thumbnail previews.

(Credit:
Cc:Betty)

In a phone interview on Tuesday, Cc:Betty CEO and co-founder Michael Cerda told me the next big step for the service is to make it easier for its users to go through the motions of cc-ing Cc:Betty. Right now you have to do it manually every time you send an e-mail–a move that arguably gives users far more control over which conversations they choose to organize and aggregate, but can be a pain for heavy users.

To alleviate that, Cerda says some automation tools are in the works, such as browser and e-mail client add-ons that should give users the ability to make the cc-ing a part of the usual routine, or to choose which bits they want the service to keep track of.

Cerda also told me that he’s looking forward to Google’s Wave product since it’s putting conversation management in the spotlight. “The Wave is a monster initiative,” he said, “but I see us as being a simple, relevant, and invaluable version of what some of that wants to deliver. With the right mashup integration, there’s a tremendous opportunity.”

Cc:Betty continues to be a free service, although Cerda says that it will eventually get advertising. “We have instincts around (making money). How can we leverage the fact that Betty has a persistent view of all the data that is coming in and out. How do we not screw up the user experience?” he said. “When Gmail came out, and they put ads in it, people kind of freaked out at first, and all the ads aren’t that great. There’s an opportunity because of all the widespread range of all the data sources. It’s not just about text, so we can present things that are potentially valuable for users.”

Cerda says that long before ads make their way to the service, he wants to make sure his company gets it just right. And even when ads do arrive, he’s not going to use the service to spam people with offers.

“Betty is this trusted persona,” Cerda says, “so the last thing we want to do is violate that trust.”

Imagine your music library online, available from any device.

(Credit: CNET News.com)

But there’s very little there today, as Webware’s Rafe Needleman points out. I’m going to wait for more deliverables before passing judgment on whether this is really a major change in direction, or a mere feint in the direction of Web 2.0. One thing I know for sure: most of the revenue and all of the profits in Microsoft’s earnings call on Thursday will be from software, not services.

One item in Rafe’s hands-on review caught my interest, however. Apparently, Live Mesh will let you post certain types of music files (MP3s and, I’m guessing, non-DRM-protected WMA files) from your Mesh-connected devices to the service. Then, using a plug-in based on Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, users will be able to stream these files to any device with a Web connection. Once Microsoft gets its cross-platform story ironed out (Silverlight on its way to becoming truly multiplatform; Mesh is Windows-only in this closed-beta stage but is promised for the
Mac and mobile devices soon), this could become a great way to make your music collection portable–like Ezmo promised to do before the company ran out of money and shut down.

Go a little further and imagine the
Zune team building links to Mesh. For instance, the PC software could transparently sync your collection to the Mesh service, then you’d be able to stream any song in your library to any device with a Web connection. Sort of a celestial jukebox for one.

Three of the largest broadcast TV networks have sent a cease-and-desist letter to RedLasso , a little-known but rapidly growing video syndication site.

Fox News Network, NBC Universal, and CBS sent a letter on Monday, accusing the company of “building a business based on the unauthorized syndication of” the content owners’ news, sports, and entertainment shows.

RedLasso records TV shows and then indexes clips so users can find, pull, and embed them on other Web sites. Reporter Liz Gannes over at Newteevee.com saw this one coming. Two weeks ago, Gannes noted that RedLasso had grown from 2 million unique users in November to 24 million in April.

Gannes wrote: “Now might be a pretty good time to get permission.”

She added later that RedLasso executives told her they were on good terms with broadcasters. The executives’ assertions, however, are untrue, the networks said in their letter to RedLasso. In the letter, the entertainment companies wrote that such statements “falsely convey an affiliation…when there is none.”

At a time when the networks are giving their content away for free, one has to wonder why RedLasso would even get into this business. Anyone can go to Hulu and grab embed code for many NBC Universal shows without violating the law.

I was in Los Angeles for the Digital Hollywood conference earlier this month and there was plenty of discussion about the influx of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs moving in to make deals with the studios. The big entertainment companies were more open to cutting deals than ever, insiders told me.

They also said that partnerships awaited those that could help the entertainment industry solve problems of advertising, marketing, and syndication on the Internet.

Executives from King of Prussia, Pa.-based RedLasso were unavailable for comment.

Disclosure: CBS has agreed to acquire CNET Networks, publisher of News.com. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter.

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos (center) in a photo op with Mashable's Tamar Weinberg (left) and PaidContent's Joseph Weisenthal

(Credit:
Caroline McCarthy/CNET News.com)

Friday night promised to be the least party-heavy night of the week, with only one “official” party on the books: PR firm Porter Novelli’s happy hour at the massive bar called Six Lounge. Probably because of the lack of other SXSWi parties, the line outside the door at Six soon stretched round the block and satellite soirees popped up at several other bars, like the zillion-beers-on-tap Ginger Man down the street. Nevertheless, the onslaught of Twitters and text messages saying that everyone should hit up a certain bar–or even more specifically, a certain floor of a certain bar–got really, really nuts. And if you left one bar for the next only to decide to go back, you had to hop back in line.

But the company was worth keeping. The most unexpected socializer of the night was arguably Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, who said he wasn’t in town to host a panel or make a high-profile appearance at SXSWi–he was just around to socialize and talk to people, which everyone seemed to think was pretty darn cool, and was also an effective strategy in convincing bloggers that it would be rude to ask him prying questions about Amazon.

Blog entrepreneurs and perpetual Valleywag gossip targets Pete Cashmore and Robert Scoble.

(Credit:
Caroline McCarthy)

Spotted at either Ginger Man or Six: uber-blogger
Robert Scoble, Digg founder Kevin Rose (who told me in jest that his company doesn’t have a buyer but is up for sale on eBay), WineLibrary.tv host Gary Vaynerchuk, PaidContent blogger Joseph Weisenthal, Gawker’s Nick Douglas, AllFacebook’s Nick O’Neill, Pownce co-founder Leah Culver, and a whole crew from social-networking blog Mashable, whose founder Pete Cashmore was passing out business cards and swag rather than dancing this time.

At least thus far, it appears that Twitter is the new Twitter. The microblogging service managed to hold up in the wake of Friday night’s SXSWi activity, and was getting used nonstop across the board. But Saturday night’s parties will be about an order of magnitude bigger, so we’ll have to see if it manages to survive another evening out.

See more stories in CNET News.com’s coverage of SXSWi (click here).

The $3.1 billion acquisition, which finally closed last week upon European regulator approval, gives Google a much needed boost in the market for display advertising.

Google hasn’t offered many clues as to what its plans are with DoubleClick, other than to hint at layoffs. But Google pundits and executives at small ad outfits do have concerns and plenty of opinions about what the search king should do.

Google’s AdSense serves up pay-per-click text ads to Web sites within its publisher network, while DoubleClick, which markets a product called Dart, places banner ads on Web sites. DoubleClick also runs an advertising exchange and a search-engine marketing business called Performics.

There are some basic conflict-of-interest questions with some of the additions to Google. As the largest search engine, Google has kept its distance from search engine optimization, or SEO, which is the science of increasing a Web page’s rankings in search results. But with Performics, Google owns an SEO company.

“Even if Performics is kept completely separate from the Google search team, there’s the impression that Performics might have some special ‘in’ with Google’s non-paid search results,” writes Danny Sullivan in a Search Engine Land blog post in which he urges Google to get rid of Performics.

Granted, Microsoft finds itself in the same SEO-owning boat after acquiring Avenue A/Razorfish and Sullivan poses this question to both companies: “You own the pie; do you really need to sell the pie cutters too?”

There’s another conflict Google bumps up against with DoubleClick–the fact that it risks alienating publishers who don’t want Google to have too much control. Google could integrate DoubleClick’s Dart ad management and serving technology into AdWords to offer one unified dashboard and see into even more Web sites across the Internet.

“Now, if Google owns all the technology they have access to that data, they know what’s being bought and sold. It puts customers in a tough situation.” –Frank Addante, The Rubicon Project

“A lot of DoubleClick’s customers consider Google a competitor,” says Frank Addante, chief executive of The Rubicon Project, which offers a dashboard for sites to manage the more than 300 online ad networks. (Addante was formerly with L90/adMonitor advertising platform, which was bought by DoubleClick in 2001.)

“Now, if Google owns all the technology they have access to that data, they know what’s being bought and sold,” Addante says. “It puts customers in a tough situation.”

The merger “cements Google’s position as ‘frienemy’ with major publishers,” says Jim Barnett, chief executive of Turn, an automated online ad market.

And there’s the question of whether Google will continue to restrict its customers from working with third-party ad servers. “Advertisers working with Google couldn’t use third-party ad serving, so a lot of people wouldn’t use Google,” says Michael Cassidy, chief executive of online ad network Undertone Networks.

“Our clients on DoubleClick that have contracts expiring with DoubleClick are saying it’s a dead end,” that it will be eclipsed by Google technology, which will impact customers, said Ruben Buell, chief executive of AdShuffle, an ad serving company.

Google also has to figure out what the best business model is for ad serving. DoubleClick charges customers for it, but Google is testing a free ad management service called Ad Manager.

Beyond the technical integration issues, the two merged companies face a culture clash. It’s “Madison Avenue hipsters” meets “Silicon Valley geek types,” according to Addante.

“Display is more brand advertising, more emotional,” he says. “I think it’s going to take Google some time to learn that side of the business because they’re so data driven.”