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GoldenEar SuperCinema 3: How big can a little 5.1 speaker system sound?

Sandy Gross was one of the founders of two major speaker companies, Polk Audio and Definitive Technology, and now with GoldenEar Technology he's going for one more. I recently spoke with him about his new venture, and he didn't seem the least bit concerned about entering a rather tough retail market. He is in fact off to a good start and already has 100 brick-and-mortar U.S. dealers, and he will have overseas distributors coming aboard in the near future.

As soon as I heard Gross' SuperCinema 3 I understood why he's so confident. It's a lifestyle-friendly satellite/subwoofer system that sounds remarkable.

It comes with four SuperSat 3 satellites ($249 each), one SuperSat 3C center channel speaker ($249), and a ForceField 3 subwoofer ($499). The gloss black speaker cabinets feel extremely well-built, which is because they're fabricated from injection-molded marble powder infused polymer, a big step up from the more typical plastic, medium-density fiberboard or metal cabinets. That said, the wedge-shape, textured black finished sub is made from MDF, but it also appears to be well-built. GoldenEar Technology speakers are only available in black.

At 12 inches by 4.75 inches, the SuperSat 3 isn't tiny, but it's a mere 2.7 inches deep. The gently curved cabinets are decked out with two 4.5-inch mid/bass drivers, and one high-velocity folded ribbon tweeter (similar in operating principle to a Heil tweeter). Ribbon tweeters are the hot ticket for lots of high-end speakers, including my two personal references, the Magnepan 3.6 and the Zu Essence, but ribbon tweeters are rarely seen on speakers in the SuperSat 3's price range. The tweeter really does play a big part in the speaker's extraordinary sound quality. The SuperSat 3C center speaker sports the same driver complement, but the 3C's drivers are oriented for horizontal speaker placement.

Both speaker models can be wall-mounted via keyhole slots on their backsides, or used with the included table stands. GoldenEar Technology will offer floor stands for the speakers sometime in 2011.

The ForceField 3 subwoofer features a proprietary 1,000-watt digital amp with digital frequency shaping electronics; a front-firing 8-inch active driver; and a special 9.6-by-11.4-inch quadratic planar infrasonic (passive) radiator on the bottom panel. Connectivity options include a direct RCA input as well as speaker-level inputs and outputs. GoldenEar Technology will have an optional wireless kit for the sub for $130 early next year. The sub measures a tidy 11.5 by 15.75 by 11 inches.… Read more

How OpenTable puts loyalty to the test

A month ago, San Francisco restaurateur Mark Pastore of Incanto wrote an impassioned blog post, Is OpenTable Worth it?, in which he bemoaned the reservation system's fees and encouraged his readers to better support restaurants, many of which are operating on the edge of business viability, by calling them directly for reservations, thereby reserving OpenTable's substantial fees for the restaurants themselves.

It's a complicated relationship that restaurant owners have with OpenTable. There's no question that OpenTable fills seats that would otherwise go empty. And it's ridiculous to pine for the pre-OpenTable era, when finding a reservation meant calling establishment after establishment and hoping for the elusive available table at the time you wanted. Even Pastore, in an e-mail to me, relented:

I certainly don't want guests to go back to booking all reservations by telephone or as you suggest going serially from one website to the next to find a good table match. Yes, both of those scenarios suck.

What does he want, then? He wants OpenTable to not have a monopoly on the reservation business:

How about some good old fashioned American competition to keep pricing honest? And how about someone figuring out a way to monetize this online service on an ad model, like Gmail or any other of countless web services, rather than as something that ultimately siphons hefty fees from the diners. And how about someone figuring out a way to present a more trustworthy and comprehensive directory of all bookable restaurants out there, not just the closed universe (OT.com) of those who are paying thousands for the privilege of being listed?

At the very least, Pastore would like to see a more restaurant-friendly fee structure. Based on some admittedly old available data, he believes that an OpenTable reservation that costs a restaurant about $10 (taking into account monthly and per-booking fees) would completely negate a typical 5 percent profit on a $200 dinner check. OpenTable takes issue with Pastore's math in its own post. Also check out this discussion on Chow.com.

Leaving the table It was with my conversation with Pastore in mind that I talked to Chuck Templeton of GrubHub, the OpenTable of take-out. Not coincidentally, Templeton was the founder of OpenTable in 1998. He's already made one fortune from restaurants (OpenTable went public in 2009). It appears he's at it again, with a similar, if less audacious and more open plan.

… Read more

Hands-on with the new Dell Vostro V130

Last year, the Dell Vostro V13 was an affordable small-business laptop surprise, a thin 13-incher that amounted to an affordable Adamo for budget shoppers. Dell's holiday update, the Vostro V130, keeps the same aluminum and magnesium-alloy flat design as the V13, but gives the innards a boost. We have one here at CNET, and we've been trying it out leading up to a forthcoming review.

The V130, like many Dell laptops, comes in a variety of configurations starting affordable and ranging up to the pricey. Our V130 has a Core i5 ULV processor, which runs about half the … Read more

New ways for small businesses to advertise online

Web analysts have been predicting a boom in online advertising for almost as long as there has been a Web. After years of steady growth in online ads, the long-awaited boom could be just around the corner.

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PwC US, U.S. online ad revenues increased 17 percent in the third quarter of 2010 over the same period of 2009, reaching $6.4 billion, the highest quarterly mark ever recorded.

While online video ads and more traditional banner and pop-up ads continue to generate increased revenue, the text ads that accompany search results … Read more

Start-up squeezes flowing wind to boost turbine power

There's a small cadre of companies trying to crack into the wind power business with a seemingly improbable approach: making machines that work in low-wind areas.

V Squared Wind (V2 Wind) today is competing as a finalist in the Clean Tech Open competition in Santa Clara, Calif., where it will reveal details on the technology it's developing. The company has been funded by friends and family until now and is looking to raise money.

The two founders of V2 Wind have designed an unconventional device which they say taps into an area of fluid dynamics that few other … Read more

Quick image editor

MemeCode's i.Mage is a compact, flexible image-editing tool that's designed to handle a variety of common tasks quickly, much like simple pixel editors such as DPaint from the Days of DOS. That's prehistory to most users, but i.Mage is actually up to date. What sets it apart is its speed: instead of starting bloated out of the box and then being loaded down with plug-ins, i.Mage launches and loads images quickly. It's got quite a full assortment of tools plus some interesting options.

Launching i.Mage calls up the program's interface in … Read more

Does Kinect hate your small apartment?

In many ways, Microsoft's Kinect for the Xbox 360 is an innovative concept: ditch the controller and let your body interact directly. Sounds great on paper, but the Kinect is a bit more greedy with its space requirements than either the Nintendo Wii or PlayStation Move, and that could hurt folks with small apartments. Folks like me.

I've had a rough experience with the Kinect in New York City, mainly because my living room has only about 6 feet between my 32-inch TV and the edge of my sofa. The Kinect requires a good 6 to 10 feet of space between the user and it, according to documentation in the games we received. That's a huge amount of room in most urban apartments, especially as that space also needs to be open and unobstructed. The Kinect's setup process suggests you move furniture if necessary, a task that's impossible for me, and an unkind expectation for most people.… Read more

Microsoft puts name, date to Aurora

Microsoft has revealed details of the next generation of Windows Small Business Server, including names and the final feature set.

The software maker introduced Small Business Server (SBS) 2011 Standard Edition, formerly known as SBS 7, and Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, previously code-named "Aurora," in a blog post today. The Standard version of the updated server suite will arrive in December, while the Essentials version will be launched in the first half of 2011, Microsoft said.

SBS 2011 Standard is "an effective refresh" for previous editions, Michael Leworthy, Microsoft's senior product manager for Windows … Read more

Why I think Steve Jobs is lying

At yesterday's Apple earnings call, CEO Steve Jobs quelled rumors that the company was on the verge of producing a smaller 7-inch iPad to counter the arrival of such mini slates as Samsung's Galaxy Tab. He said that these devices were "tweeners" and would be dead on arrival. He scoffed that normal-size human fingers are simply too big to be able to accurately hit icons on a screen that size.

"Apple has done extensive user testing and we really understand this stuff," he said. "There are clear limits on how close you can … Read more