Website offers phone 'tests' before you buy

mobile phones
The next time you're tempted to step into a mobile phone store to check out that beauty in the window, find a place to pop open your laptop instead. At a new website you'll soon be able to take that phone for a virtual ride, without having a salesman hovering over your shoulder.

The site, TryPhone.com, will include new, in-depth demos of mobile handsets each week. Visitors can push a phone's buttons by clicking on images on a computer screen, and delve into the phone's menus and applications - up to a point.

Consumers can also read reviews of specific phones from other gadget-heads and submit their own at the website.

TryPhone, launched last week, is in beta mode, so it's a bit on the rough side. (Many sites hold onto the "beta" for far too long, by the way. It is the site developers' attempt to put visitors into a more forgiving mindset.)

At the moment, you can poke around virtual reality versions of the Samsung Juke, LG Muziq, Blackberry Pearl, and Apple iPhone. Each is available from a different service provider in New England, so the site looks like as much a play for the carriers as for consumers.

TryPhone's virtual handset demos are based on actual recordings of the devices, according to the service's developer, Mobile Complete.

Rather than letting you view the phones "as-designed," the company says, TryPhone shows you how the handsets work "as-built."

That should make TryPhone more useful than other phone emulators, which can also give you a taste of the latest devices. But the demos at TryPhone take you only a couple of layers down into the workings of the phone. For example, the iPhone and other camera demos at TryPhone will take you into the first screens of many applications, but will not show you all of the available features in those applications.

Internet Radio

Piano downloads and plays back music from the Net

Owners of some Yamaha Disklavier pianos can now download Internet radio streams that will get the keys tinkling and the pedals pumping - while they kick back and tell the guests there's a ghost in the house.

Through DisklavierRadio and the Disklavier MusicStore services, you can download music to your Disklavier piano for playback.

You can store the songs you purchase from the MusicStore to the piano.

If you don't subscribe to the radio service (about $200 per year), you can still download 30-second clips of various channels.

Nonsubscribers can also receive a full stream of full-length, public-domain songs from one DisklavierRadio channel.

Elton John and the Beatles are among the performers featured in the new services.

The piano parts of the songs you download - be they classical, jazz, rock, or Broadway show tunes - play out on the keyboard.

Speakers on the underside of the piano broadcast the other parts of the songs.

Music Listening

Bluetooth speakers let you get rid of all those messy wires

To me, they're just speakers without wires. (I do hate futzing with those frayed wires on the back of my speakers.) But Wilmington-based Blue Raven Technology prefers that we call them Maestro.

That's because there is more to the Blue Raven's Maestro speakers than cones and spiders. The latest versions also have built-in Bluetooth technology, so you can connect to them wirelessly from your MP3 player or PC.

Some of the company's iPod-dockable models also let you play video from your media device to your television screen.

The 40-watt Maestro 2040 Bluetooth Hi-Fi Speaker System costs about $300 at blueravengear.com. Apartment and dorm dwellers can get away with the 20-watt Maestro 2020, which costs $100 less. The iPod-dockable Maestro speakers start at about $170.

Blue Raven sells a $49 Bluetooth iPod Nano and Video MP3 Player Transmitter adapter to help you make that wireless connection. The speakers come with remote controls.

You can also output sound from the Maestro Bluetooth speakers (available in black, white, and red) to an optional subwoofer.

Innovative last week

New help for wrinkling boomers

A partnership between L'Oréal and Light BioScience might yield new devices, cosmetics, and other products to help boomers undo the effects of, well, living. (I call it aging; they call it damage.) Light BioScience makes an LED device (GentleWave), which it says reduces wrinkles and blemishes. Light BioScience says its treatments are a good complement to other medical and spa treatments.