Apple iPhone 5

What Will iPhone 5 Offer?

The tech world is abuzz with rumors about Apple’s upcoming iPhone 5, most likely the next in its famous line of smartphones. The exact release date and specs of the iPhone 5 are still not certain, but a number of persistent rumors point to some highly probable details of the much anticipated device.

A New Look?

Until recently, the closest anyone outside of Apple could get to knowing the appearance and form of the iPhone 5 was through countless mockups by designers with no connection to Apple, faint rumors, and other near-fantasy. However, Apple may have recently revealed the iPhone 5′s new look on accident.

The beta of their new Photo Stream program shows an icon of an iPhone-like device, but there is no precedent for its details. It has a rounded rectangular Home button, in contrast to the circular button seen on all previous iOS devices. This button has been vertically truncated to compensate for the new screen size; the screen stretches to cover nearly the entire front surface of the device, with the camera and speaker pushed up to the very top to compensate. Mockups created with this icon as a blueprint indicate that the body of the iPhone 5 is smaller than the iPhone 4, but that the screen is larger, perhaps 4 inches.

Still the Best Screen with Maybe the Best Camera

Even though it has a larger screen, the iPhone 5 is unlikely to have a higher screen resolution than the iPhone 4. The iPhone 4′s infamous 960×640 “Retina” screen is still unparalleled among smartphones in terms of dots per inch, and even if this resolution is spread out from 3.5 inches to 4 inches it will still rank among the densest displays in the touchscreen smartphone world. Another popular rumor is that the iPhone 5 will improve on the iPhone 4′s 4-megapixel camera, doubling its resolution to 8 megapixels, which is the latest standard for high-end smartphones.

Worldwide Compatibility but No LTE

The iPhone 5 is almost guaranteed to be a “world phone,” capable of receiving calls from both CDMA and GSM networks. Verizon’s CFO has hinted at this dual network functionality. Also, a popular app developer who logs use of his apps has reported detecting iOS devices sporting two distinct sets of mobile network codes (MNC) / mobile country codes (MCC) for Verizon and AT&T. The iPhone’s ability to receive signals from the two most popular network styles will make traveling around the world while receiving calls with an iPhone much easier. However, there is no indication that the iPhone 5 will support LTE, and therefore will not have the potential connection speed of 4G devices.

Processing Power

Just as the iPhone 4 inherited the original iPad’s single-core A4 processor, it is likely the iPhone 5 will contain the iPad 2′s dual-core A5 processor. Older apps won’t directly take advantage of the dual-core, although they won’t be so easily hamstrung by background tasks. Benefits will be most noticeable for new apps that feature both complex rendering and complex processing, like games and media production apps.

SIM Only plans may be available for the iPhone 5. AT&T, the iPhone’s longest-standing carrier in the United States, has been offering these plans for several years. This will allow users with existing SIM Only plans to trade up to the iPhone 5 on their own terms, or to easily replace the iPhone 5 with an even more advanced phone sometime in the future. Such plans also tend to have cheaper rates and are not bound by contracts.

The iPhone 5 is heavily rumored for a mid-October release. This will coincide with Sprint’s adoption of iPhones and the finished production of ad agency TBWAChiatDay’s iPhone apps.

Blake Sanders is a tech writer at broadband comparison site Broadband Expert where he specializes in writing on mobile broadband, sim only plans, and the latest in internet service provider news and information.

Note: Photo courtesy of dpolicarpo via FlickR Creative Commons.

Related posts:

1. Smartphones and Laptops – which is better for surfing?
2. iPhone 4S Introduces iOS 5
3. How To Convert iPod Touch to iPhone

Facebook Mail

Facebook recently launched their own mail service so users can now have their own vanity email addresses @facebook.com There are some talks that this is a threat to Google’s Gmail. I doubt this is true, at least anywhere in the near future. Yes, it’s true that tweens and teens use text and Facebook to communicate. This, however, will not cause disruption in Gmail. Remember when Google Wave was supposed to be its own Gmail Killer? Why didn’t Google Wave succeed? Because there is nothing wrong with Gmail that really needs complete overhaul. What will likely happen is that we will just be introduced to more options of communicating of our choice and the recipient’s.

• phone
• text
• email (Gmail, Yahoo, Facebook, AOL)
• Chat (Gtalk, Skype, Chat, FaceTime)

The point is no one service will monopolize communication.

Related posts:

1. Docs by Microsoft and Facebook
2. Google Push Email for iPhone Now Available
3. Gmail Labs Lets you Undo Sent Email

o2 dongle laptop

The internet used to be all about sitting in front of a computer at home or in the office. Now though, thanks to the evolving world of mobile technology we can all stay online pretty much wherever we go. With a bewildering array of gadgets on the market it can be a tough call deciding on which one to go for though, and new products and deals hit the shelves on an almost daily basis.

If you’re looking for a mobile device that can keep you hooked up to the internet both at home and while you’re out and about then there are essentially two options – the laptop or the smartphone. There are pros and cons for going down either route and while laptops have been around for longer, smartphones are fast becoming a real challenger to mobile computing on a laptop, although smaller screens and keyboards will always be the major drawback for some.

Now that laptops have come down in price (you can even sign up for free laptops with mobile broadband) and have been joined by the smaller netbook option it’s possible to pick up an excellent machine for a very small outlay. Some mobile broadband deals even offer a laptop for free, although these generally fall under longer-term mobile contracts of around 24 months. Laptops will need a dongle connected to a USB port on the machine in order to access a mobile broadband network of your choice, but lookout for coverage and data limits when comparing the many and varied deals out there. Lookout for battery life if you’re planning on computing on the move too and durability is another important factor.

A smartphone, meanwhile, makes a great deal of sense if you’re looking for a powerful computing experience on the go, but don’t want the bulk of a laptop or netbook. The screen and keyboard will, of course, be rather more limited, but thanks to a smartphone being an amalgam of the best bits of a computer and the choice cuts from a phone, there’s not much you can’t do on one of these devices. The smartphone also has all of its connectivity options built-in to the unit, so there’s no messing around with dongles.

However, a smartphone can suffer similar problems to the laptop when using mobile services, with coverage and network traffic issues contributing to a slow performance. You may not be able to connect at all in some cases. Data usage is also something to watch out for with smartphones, and both handsets and laptops shouldn’t be seen as a replacement for home broadband services. Current technology doesn’t really make either gadget ideal for downloading large amounts of data such as movies. Things will improve as technology evolves, but mobile gadgets are currently more of a supplement to existing services rather than a replacement.

Whatever mobile computing device you choose, it’s likely that the mobile broadband speed you get will generally be less than the ‘up to’ advertisements you see all over the place. However, it’s a good idea to get some impartial advice from a comparison website like Broadband Genie, which will not only show you the best deals but also save you money on a laptop, smartphone or both.

About the author: Rob Clymo writes on behalf of www.broadbandgenie.co.uk, the independent comparison website for broadband, mobile broadband and smartphones.

Related posts:

1. What Will iPhone 5 Offer
2. Toshiba Snapdragon (TG01) hits 1 Ghz with a bite!
3. PayPal Goes Down For the Count

Top 5 Useful and Free iPhone Apps

There are thousands of apps available to use on your iPhone, iPod and now your iPad as well and, surprisingly, many of the best are free to download.

The following list shows 5 of the very best free apps that also happen to be extremely useful as well.  There are loads of apps out there that can help make your life that bit easier so it’s well worth going through them to find the ones that will apply to you and your life.

Here are a few of the best useful apps out there that are well-worth a look.

Thetrainline – For those of you who commute to work by train, Thetrainline is a free transport app that outshines all of the others – and it’s free. The app can help you to plan your journey, obtain offline results and timetables and also has a location-aware ‘next train home’ option.  All of these features are available on Thetrianline’s clear and streamlined interface. There are of course other train apps available but many will cost you upwards of £5 and when you can get this one for free and it does the job – why look elsewhere?

Skype – This is a great money-saving app and allows you and your friends to chat to each other for free via your Skype app. The interface is simple and usable, enabling anyone with a Skype account to make free calls to other Skype users and also offers you the ability to make cheap calls to anywhere in the world. Pay as you Go users will find this app particularly useful but so will iPod touch owners as this app also allows them to make calls to other Skype users.

Dropbox – There are many apps out there that transfer content between your computer and your device but this one is free and actually a lot easier to use than many of the paid ones out there.  Any files you want to sync up – just drop them in to a folder on your computer and Dropbox will enable you to access them.

Around Me – Around Me is a great app for when you’re out and about.  It works out where you are and then shows you all the local banks, bars, petrol stations and restaurants etc that are in your vicinity.  The app is really useful when you happen to be in unfamiliar surroundings and the ‘augmented reality’ landscape mode is great for getting to know the area, just be aware that this new technology isn’t completely there yet so expect that you may come across a few little errors.

Moneysupermarket.com Voucher App – No matter what you’re looking for, moneysupermarket.com will no doubt have a voucher for it that will help make savings on your purchases. There are thousands of free discount codes and vouchers on this iPhone app that can help all UK shoppers save money on whatever they want to buy.

Related posts:

1. Make Free Calls to Canada with Google Voice
2. What Free Apps Are You Thankful For?
3. iPad Apps

Apple iTunes Cloud Lala Very Cloudy

Many people expected that Apple would offer your iTunes music and movies over the cloud after it acquired Lala.com last December. That is of course after Apple obtained the appropriate music licenses to do so. Lala, the music serviced, shut down after being acquired by Apple this past May.

The Lala team leadership that went to Apple after the acquisition seems to leaving. Bill Nguyen, Lala’s founder, is known to be press friendly and against Apple’s culture of secrecy. Another founding member has left the company leaving Apple’s media cloud plans in a haze.

Google, on the other hand, hired Elizabeth Moody, an attorney with deep experience negotiating digital-music deals. Record executives expect Moody will help cut the first cloud music licensing agreement. Google has told label managers that it wants to launch a music service this year.

Apple is not worried though since it is still the #1 online and offline music store and jukebox.

However, in this fast pacing media game, tables can turn very quickly.

Related posts:

1. New iTunes 9 App Management Concept
2. Philadelphia Apple Store Grand Opening on Walnut Street Friday, July 30
3. Google and Apple Marriage Falls Apart

After years of rumors, Apple will finally open an Apple Store in Philadelphia on Walnut Street! I walk by here almost every day. It’s amazing how Apple can keep its store openings and product releases so secret.

Apple will hold the grand opening celebration for Apple Store Walnut Street in Philadelphia on Friday, July 30, 2010 at 5pm ED

Address: Apple Store Walnut Street
1607 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103

The Apple Store Walnut Street is the best place to learn about all the latest products from Apple, including the new iPhone 4 featuring FaceTime, which makes the dream of video calling a reality, and Apple’s stunning new Retina display, the highest resolution display ever built into a phone. Customers can experience Apple’s entire product line hands-on including the magical new iPad that lets users browse the web, read and send email, enjoy and share photos, watch videos, listen to music, play games, read ebooks and much more. Visitors to the store can also try the updated MacBook and MacBook Pro with the NVIDIA processor for up to 80 percent faster graphics, and the incredibly popular iPod touch with access to more than 225,000 apps offered on the revolutionary App Store.

Every Apple Retail Store offers a range of free services designed to help customers get the most out of their Apple products, including face-to-face support and advice at the Genius Bar, hands-on workshops and special programs for kids. Customers who buy a Mac®at the Apple Retail Store or Apple’s Online Store can also join the popular One to One program. For just $99, owners of a new Mac get Personal Setup to customize their computer and transfer files from their old Mac or PC, plus a year of Personal Training sessions and Personal Project support on a wide range of topics, from getting started on a Mac to advancing their digital photography or moviemaking skills.

UPDATE BY JAY: Here are some more pictures I took when the family and I stopped by after dinner on Friday night.  As you can see, quite the mad press!

And the requisite panoramic view!

Related posts:

1. My Experience In a Fake Apple Store in China
2. Apple MacBook Touch Tablet Report by Oppenheimer
3. Apple iTunes Cloud Lala Very Cloudy

Given that Poly9 provides a solid map and Placebase provides map-centric layering, it seems logical to extrapolate that Apple is building a multilayer mapping client of some sort, whether that be a browser-based solution or an app-based solution (most likely both).  Maps is one of the most essential iPhone apps, one I personally rely on all the time.  The lack of a free turn-by-turn nav solution on the iPhone is a big differentiator between Android and iOS, and Google Maps is still probably one of the most robust mapping solutions available on the web.  Now that Apple has a location-aware advertising solution, they are going to want to supplant the Google-provided Maps data with their own version so that they can integrate iAds into Maps.  I can definitely see Apple providing an iOS update that supplants Google data in the Maps application with Apple’s own home-bought solution.  As of yet, Apple hasn’t bought a company to replace the YouTube app, but that app is pretty junky on the iPhone.

Heck before the iPhone 4 announcement, there was talk that Bing would replace Google as the search provider for iOS.  It didn’t happen but I’m expecting that that’s going to happen next year.  Or Apple is going to buy a search engine (say, Yahoo) and use their own search solution on iOS.  At this point, given how big a platform iAds is expected to become, Apple needs to get as many tendrils into location-sensitive search as possible, and rolling their own, controlled, solutions is a critical necessity.

Google is realizing the potential loss and moving rapidly to address this.  The new HTML5-based YouTube site and the new iPhone/mobile-optimized YouTube URL (m.youtube.com) are Google’s way of fighting back.  I’ve pretty much switched over to that version as my primary access point to YouTube and the default app has been relegated to a folder buried in my last homescreen.  Note that the new mobile-optimized site has a little reminder telling visitors how to add the site to the iPhone’s Home screens so that they appear as just another app.  Google Voice has a similar feature, and Google Mail is evolving rapidly on the web to match feature parity to the default Mail app.

Related posts:

1. AT&T, Google, & Apple respond to the FCC
2. Google crushes yet another technology with free Maps
3. Apple Finally Approves Google Voice App

On Protection.

Over the long weekend, I did a bunch of tech stuff I’d been meaning to do for some time. Most importantly, I installed a clear protector onto our new iPhones. For the first time, I used the BodyGuardz line of protective sheets rather than the InvisibleShield line. The BodyGuardz are a much better value. For $25 you get two sets of protective sheets that fully cover the iPhone’s front, back, and sides. Installing them was relatively straightforward but it conclusively proved why I would never be a surgeon.

There is a level of mental comfort in having these shields on our phones. But to cover up that amazing screen with anything is just a darn shame. No film application is ever perfect, and any bubbles are incredibly annoying. The liquid applicator they provide does create a thin glaze under the film which detracts from the beauty of the iPhone’s screen when it’s off. On the plus side, it does give a little bit more tactile grip to the iPhone. I also think it helps a bit with the attenuation issues people have been suffering when they touch the sides. The side films seem designed to exactly fit the phone but it is exceedingly difficult to apply them so that they run the full length properly. I ended up overlapping the antenna gaps just slightly, which seemed to act as a non-conductive layer between my fingers and the band. I don’t know if this is an intended benefit or not, but it’s relatively cheap to try out if you’re having major issues. I personally haven’t noticed a huge problem with attenuation or service interruption but that could just be me.

For now, I’m planning to keep these on the phone, at least until the cases I ordered come in. This phone is never going to be outside a case anyways so I may decide to remove the front film to let the gorgeous screen shine through.

And if anyone has a good case recommendation for the iPad, could they please contact me?  All the cases I’ve tried out so far suck.  I don’t want a sleeve and I don’t want a backside-only protector.  I need something that I can use on a desk as well as on the sofa, and it needs to support the iPad in portrait and landscape modes.  I like the Apple case, but it’s just a little too cheap-looking for me and I’d ideally love a case that has a latchable/securable front protector.

UPDATE (7/14/2010): I’ve had the Bodyguardz film on the iPhone for about a week now, and the glaze underneath has vanished completely.  The screen protector is still visible (you can see where the cutouts are for the speaker and the front facing camera) and it feels like there is more “depth” when hitting the Home button.  I gotta say that I am really liking the Bodyguardz.  I no longer think they interfere with the Retina Display and for all intents and purposes, they’ve disappeared from my perception, which is kind of the point of these things.  I’ve definitely noticed a decline in the number of dropped calls as well, though that needs to be heavily caveated.  First off, I don’t make a ton of calls so I’m not a great sample.  Second, since the issue has been covered to death in every tech blog and news rag, I’ve been more aware of how I hold the phone.  Finally, I could never consistently reproduce the issue, so I may not have been impacted.  Having said all that, I routinely hold the iPhone 4 in my left hand with the antenna gap perilously close to be covered by the base of my thumb and I’m sure I’ve covered that gap on calls, both before and after the film application.  Since I’ve applied the Bodyguardz, I have not had a single dropped call.  Period.  So perhaps the combination of the side protection plus my clumsy application have created a nice little insulated zone around the antenna openings that is helping my calling?  In any case, I’ve become a big fan of these things, and their customer service can’t be beat.  They were prompt to answer my emails about returning my extra films, and they were prompt about issuing me a refund.  Good on ya, guys – keep up the great work.  I am seriously considering buying a set of the iPad 3G protection skins to replace my InvisibleShield cover.  The InvisibleShield just seems to attract more dirt, though that could just be due to the increased surface area.  But definitely something I’m considering in the longer term…

iPad vs. iPhone

I’m fairly sure that if I had gotten the iPhone 4 before my iPad, I would have skipped the first gen iPad in hopes that the second gen would come with a Retina Display. Apple probably knew this, which is why they didn’t pull out the iPad as a “One More Thing” during the iPhone launch.  I still love my iPad but the iPhone is proving good enough for almost everything I need to do when I’m mobile.  I have used the iPhone for navigation, for checking newsfeeds, and for recipes.  It’s perfectly fine as a quick reference device, especially since the Retina Display makes it so much easier to read despite its small screen real estate.  But for consuming books and video, for gaming, and for productivity, the iPad is still the superior device.  Am I glad I have both?  Yes.  Should I have gotten the unlimited data plan for both?  Probably not.  I’m spending $60/mo on data access for the i-Devices, which is a bit much.  I’m seriously considering dropping my unlimited plan on the iPad, except that I’d still like roaming access, so I’d only be saving $5/mo (I refuse to pay for tethering, which is just AT&T saying “please bend over” while holding a very thick broom).  I’m really annoyed that Apple didn’t put a decent GPS chip inside the Wi-Fi only version, since that’s the main reason I went with the 3G iPad.

iPhone Antenna Issues

One of my best friends is a bigshot at M&M/Mars.  He was once asked to participate on a panel discussion at a telecom conference.  The audience consisted of telecom providers who wanted to know how to best sell into the large enterprise market, especially because things like data and messaging were just starting to become popular.  One of the audience members stood up and asked him what he looks for in a mobile phone.  In response, my friend pulled out his Nokia phone (which was at least 2 generations out of date) and said “I’d like it to work as a phone.”  Tech companies really seem to forget this basic concept – it’s a smart phone.  If it can’t make calls, it’s not a phone, it’s a mobile device.  Apple is being disingenuous when they blame the iPhone‘s attenuation problems on their inability to do math.  Too many people are complaining about a problem making calls, which is humorous if you’re not the one suffering from the problem.  But when you’re trying to call 911 late at night after you’ve witnessed a crime or been in an accident, it’s really not funny.  The bad thing is that I can’t rely on the iPhone as an emergency contact device, issues with AT&T service aside.  When I’m trying to call for an ambulance, I really don’t want to worry about whether I’m levitating the phone correctly to maximize signal strength.

It also means that every time I see one of those Apple videos featuring their internal designers talking earnestly about how hard they tried to create beauty and how magical the i-Device is, I’m going to just laugh and blow them off (even more so than I already do) as self-loving nerds.  No matter how good they think they are and no matter how pretty their end result, I know they failed.  Gizmodo had a great post about just how huge a failure this is on Apple’s part – they’ve fallen so in love with themselves that they are ignoring the fact that good industrial design means that it works, not just that it’s pretty.  If I have to think about how to use a product, something’s wrong, and Apple has only themselves to blame.  They’ve been promoting that mode of thought ever since they released the first iPhone.  Yet now here they are saying, basically, “yes always think about how you’re using your iPhone to make sure you’re not using it wrong”.

Luckily, phone calls are rare and far between in my household, and 90% of my calls are to my fiancée, who is also on AT&T, so those minutes buckets are pretty much unlimited.  I really hope, though, that she’s never stuck late at night on a bus coming home from work and trying to reach me.

iPad’s Video and iPod apps

These apps suck.  Suck suck suck suck suck.  No other way to put it.  Why they are split into two apps rather than the single iPod app that’s provided on the iPhone is beyond me.  There is obviously some higher design principle at work that I am too pedestrian to understand.  But when I can’t skip through a list of video podcasts using the CONTROLS PROVIDED FOR THEM, I consider that a pretty major design flaw.  The only way I can move from one video to the next without picking and choosing each one is if I create a playlist.  That’s just stupid, Apple.  Why should I create a playlist of video podcasts when the Videos app has a podcast section?  And is there any reason why you decided that TV shows don’t need to have any identifying information aside from a still image from the show itself?  Maybe I’d like to, oh I don’t know, see the SHOW’S NAMES?!?!?  You guys are starting to approach Microsoft levels of stupidity with these issues, and I sincerely hope that you fix them in the next version by providing an iPod app, rather than this craptastic Video/Music split function junk.

On the plus side, you seem to have fixed the issue with Smart Playlists not being synced when Live Updating is checked.  I think it’s only been about a year now since that issue’s been reported?  So I guess I should expect an iPod app on the iPad when you release iPad 3.0?

UPDATE (7/14/2010) – Yea, Apple, your Video app sucks hairy moose testicles.  What is the sense in showing one sequence of videos on the iPad and a completely different sequence in iTunes?  This weekend I was playing through some TV shows I’d ripped and I realized they were completely out of order on the iPad.  Since I’m a metadata FREAK, I quick checked the iTunes versions to see what I’d screwed up.  Lo and behold, the iTunes list was in correct order.  After much trial and error, I realized that the iPad sorts TV shows using the Track Number while iTunes uses Season and Episode Number.  Can someone tell me how the team that created the Video app thought this was a good idea?  It’s like they decided to remove the Video functionality in the iPod app but just do a half-assed job of it so that they could piss off as many people as possible.  So for those of you trying to figure out why the hell the iPad isn’t sequencing your shows correctly – either fill in both Track Number and Episode Number fields for each show, or just rely on Track Number to do your sorting.  Of course, if you choose the latter, I fully expect that one day Apple will fix this stupidity and then you’ll have to go back and re-enter the Episode Number data so you might as well do both now.

iPad memory issues

I’m running a jailbroken iPad, primarily because I can.  Now I understand that jailbreak tech is really young on the iPad and developers are still trying to figure out how to do it right.  But I’m seriously concerned about the iPad’s lack of RAM.  I think Apple made a bad choice when they went with 256MB in the iPad vs the 512MB in the iPhone 4, because when multitasking comes along, apps are going to be seriously memory constrained.  Apple’s limited implementation of multi-tasking in iOS (a name I predicted here on this blog well before His Jobs-ness announced it) is a lot more memory-efficient than traditional multitaskers a la Backgrounder.  But still  - I see memory leaks all the time running apps like Reeder and TweetDeck under the jailbroken iOS 3.2.  And I’m pretty sure that it’s not due to leaks in the jailbreak code.  TweetDeck reboots itself regularly on the half-hour, even when it’s the only app running on the iPad.  Running it on an unjailbroken iPad, the reboot periods are longer but I know they still were happening.

My guess is that iPad iOS 4.0 is going to be based a lot on iPhone iOS 4.0.  It’s a little aggressive to have the entire code base made common between the two platforms, but it’s inevitable that that will happen.  My guess is iOS 5.0 next year will be the first true common iOS base for all Apple platforms.  They can’t keep doing this multi-version iOS thing forever, especially if they release an iOS for AppleTV and for the Mac.  That would be four different fragments of the same base, which would make Android look like a bamboo shoot in terms of variety.

Multiple users on the iPad

The iPhone is intended to be a single-user device.  No bigs – it’s (marginally) a phone, it’s small, it’s got a fixed identifier (the phone number) attached to it – it’s very personal.  The iPad, for all its “magic”, is a multi-user device.  I’d like to share my iPad with my fiancée and a regular basis and my son has basically adopted the iPad as his own when he’s with us.  I’m totally cool with that, but it means that I’ve removed all my email accounts from the iPad.  I’d like some way to have user profiles and app sharing rules set up so that I can control what others accessing my iPad have access to.  I know user accounts are a big OS overhead issue, and there would be all kinds of complaints that Apple didn’t allow fast switching etc etc.  But basic user-level customization would go a long way to making the iPad a viable family device.  There’s no way I’m buying iPads for every member of the family and it’s stupid for Apple to think that people actually will do this.

And while we’re on the subject, Apple’s lack of controls on their Safari browser means that there is no way to control/limit kids’ access to the Internet.  Apple only allows binary control – either Safari is on or it’s off.  There’s no way to firewall or block access to non-approved sites.  Tools like OpenDNS’s Family Shield are a good start, but it’s relatively easy to circumvent.

So what do you guys think?  Am I way off base?  Spot on?  Comment up any of your complaints or compliments!

Related posts:

1. Top 5 Useful and Free iPhone Apps
2. Apple Unveils iPhone 4
3. NetFlix Streaming iPhone App Rumor

Related posts:

1. Windows 8: A step in the right direction?
2. How To Have A Web 3.0 Website
3. Apple vs. Google

iPhone 4

Steve Jobs says the new iPhone is beyond any consumer product that’s ever been seen, only 9.3mm thick and 24 percent thinner than the iPhone 3GS, making it the “thinnest smartphone on the planet.”

Availability
The new iPhone 4 arrives on June 24, while preorders begin on June 15. It is available in the same prices and capacities as last year’s model: $199 for 16GB, and $299 for 32GB. The iPhone 3GS will be available for $99.

Internals
The new hardware also has a larger battery that offers longer uptime, including 7 hours of talk time 3G, 6 hours of 3G browsing, 10 hours of Wi-Fi browsing, 10 hours of video, 40 hours of music, and 300 hours of standby.

Dual cameras
The iPhone 4 also includes a whole-new camera system that includes LED flash with a 5 megapixel lens that records HD video. The new rear camera will record 720p video at 30 frames per second. Users can also use built-in video editing to trim their HD clips right on the phone.

The handset’s forward facing camera can be used for video chat with the application FaceTime, allowing users to see someone using another iPhone 4 as they talk to them. Videos can also be edited using the new iMovie application, which will cost $4.99 on the App Store.

Related posts:

1. Apple iPhone 3GS
2. NetFlix Streaming iPhone App Rumor
3. Dropbox Online Storage and iPhone App

Docs by Microsoft and Facebook

Look out Google because Microsoft and Facebook are teaming up to challenge Google Docs online document sharing.

Microsoft Docs looks like a real threat to Google Docs because simply Microsoft still makes a better word processor than Google. Facebook’s crowd sourcing and social networking platform creates a true online desktop and utility for productivity. Docs also have a simple domain name that people can remember http://www.docs.com.

Google needs to respond with a true social networking strategy by merging their Gmail, YouTube, and Picassa audience to a single destination to share and communicate more seamlessly. They have made a pathway so far with integrating Buzz into Gmail. It was disappointing, however, that Google Wave was still a separate destination that needed another active conversion for adoption. Furthermore, their UI across different sites like Gmail, YouTube, and Picassa do not have similar look and feel.

Via http://docs.com

Related posts:

1. Facebook Mail Will Not Threaten Gmail
2. Google Docs Now Convert Images to Text
3. Google Is Gunning For Facebook

When I first got my iPad, I honestly was not that enthusiastic about it. Sure I’d blown close to a G on this thing, but all in all I wasn’t giddy with techno joy. (By the way, do NOT buy the docking stand. It’s less than useless and I’m hoping that Apple will take it back for a refund even though I don’t have a box for it.) I purchased some apps, downloaded some free ones, loaded up a few gigs of music and videos, and set about using it. I carried to and from work every day. I used it on the couch and in the dining room and in the kitchen as my wife was making dinner. I used it with the kids. I took it with me when we went out. And yes, I’ve used it in the bathroom (don’t tell me you guys didn’t think of that use case when you saw the iPad!). And gradually it took over my life.

First off, the screen is freaking gorgeous. Pictures can’t really do it justice. Somehow, the fingerprints and smudges disappear when that thing is fired up and you just see this giant expanse of real estate. Switching between my iPhone and my iPad was painful because I just couldn’t bear looking at the tiny iPhone screen.  Videos are just incredible to watch on the iPad.  Everyone I showed it to thought the screen was amazing.  Pictures were popping off the surface it was so brilliant.  Of course it was absolutely worthless in sunlight or while wearing sunglasses, but still.

Second, the virtual keyboard proved surprisingly useful, especially for someone with my ladylike hands. I was able to almost touch type on that puppy, so long as I wasn’t trying to tab or use too many special characters. (Apple, you guys aren’t nearly as smart as you think you are – WTF is up with not including a Tab key on the virtual keyboard?). In landscape mode, I was probably at half my regular typing speed (and I’m not a slow typer by any stretch). In portrait mode, I was typically two- or four-fingering it, but still getting along pretty darn well. I can access my corporate email via Outlook Webmail using the iPad just fine, which just relegated my Blackberry to the “never have to look at you again” pile. In fact, I’m probably going to give it back to the company because I just never use it.

Third, I realized that I could use this as my primary music player, with the sole exception of the time I spend in the weight room. They sell dock extender cables that will allow me to plug the iPad into my Sony stereo at work. I can download maps before I leave for a trip (and download on the fly when I get the 3G version). I can watch videos. I can even use it in the gym to practice my group exercise class training videos. And it’s a lot easier to follow along using the iPad versus trying to squint at a tiny iPhone screen.

Fourth, a lot of the stuff I’d kept around but never got around to doing anything with are finding new life on my iPad. PDFs are a pleasure to read. Comics too. (Comics are good, but the iPad isn’t going to be the salvation of comics.  The page size of comics are just a little “off”.  Manga, on the other hand, may have met their secret weapon.) Even reading is more pleasurable because I can pull out a book anywhere and I can carry dozens at a time.  I’d been considering a Kindle but now I don’t have to.  I’m still split between the iBook and the Kindle apps, but just being able to read anywhere is great.

Finally, compared to my iPhone 3G, the iPad is FAST. Blazingly, gloriously, wonderfully fast. Apps load like lightning. I can switch between apps with minimal fuss. Screens scroll easily and quickly. Granted, my iPhone is old and jailbroken, but I am not running tons of apps on that puppy. The iPad puts it to shame. I’m sure the new iPhone will be as fast as the iPad, but until I have that replacement in my hot little hands, I’m loving the greater speed.

That’s not to say that the iPad is perfect. From a productivity perspective, the iPad is sorely hampered by the virtual keyboard. I can pound out emails and write simple blog posts just fine, but I’m planning to buy a Bluetooth keyboard for the thing. And I don’t recommend Apple’s Pages or Numbers apps. Both produce files that are basically unusable outside the iPad and both are incredibly frustrating to use on the iPad itself, so don’t have dreams of creating massive spreadsheets or novels using them. If a developer ever figures out how to provide Office compatibility however, this thing would rock. Heck, even Google Apps integration would be good.

Also, the inability to save and transfer files outside of the iTunes environment is a pain in the butt. And the lack of multi-tasking is also incredibly annoying. I’m really looking forward to iOS 4.0 because the addition of multitasking means it will make the iPad a lot more manageable from a productivity perspective.  Once task switching is available, I could easily write entire blog posts on the iPad.

As another annoyance, Apple needs to stop treating music and video as two separate apps on the iPad (and the iTouch). There should be a single app to manage my media, and I should be able to mix and match media in my playlists, regardless of whether they’re audio or video. I’m hoping they will address this in iOS4 as a reveal feature when they announce iPhone HD.

The Calendar app needs a to-do feature integrated into it.  I shouldn’t need a separate app to create to-do lists.

Customizable themes should be made available (adding this would remove a lot of the need to jailbreak).

Given my new love of this toy, I’m now stuck on the iPad upgrade cycle (and no that was not a sly joke!), which is exactly where Apple wants me to be. With my iPhone, the contract made annual upgrades too expensive. But with the iPad, I can let my iPhone get two or three years old without worrying about lack of features or speed, as long as I upgrade my iPad each year. Apple is going to make a ton of money off of me. The brilliant jerks.

Related posts:

1. My iPad – Initial impressions
2. iPad Apps
3. iPad’s Real Competition

In Philadelphia, sections of the city have city-owned pots of land that residents can rent out for a year.  On those plots of land, folks have planted vegetable and flower gardens.  The gardens are secured by fences and locks, but each resident doesn’t get individual access to their plots – they have to share the lock code with each other because there’s only one lock.  The rules are relatively simple and the renters tend to watch out for each other because they tend to be long-time renters, paying the nominal fee every year.  Importantly, they tend to follow the rules and they act to ensure that others follow the rules.  Every so often, the rules change and some people stop renting space because of those rules.  But that frees up a plot for someone new to come in, and they come in knowing the new rules and agreeing to honor them.

What Adobe is trying to do is pay the fee to access the garden and then passing out the combination to the garden’s lock to anyone who wants to pay.  In their best case scenario, they don’t even have to pay the fee for access – they just start selling the key and let the community sort out who’s supposed to be there or not.  Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.  For good or bad, Apple’s ecosystem is THEIRS.  They didn’t set out to build something on top of an already existing platform (like Google), nor did they try to make their ecosystem the biggest in the world by making development as easy as possible to as many as possible (like Microsoft).  Apple started out with a simple idea – let’s sell music.  Maybe they had this end state in mind all the time, maybe they didn’t.  Doesn’t matter.  It’s all theirs.  And because it’s theirs, they get to make the rules, and even change those rules, whenever they want.

Note that this viewpoint is not necessarily a conflict with the fact that I am using a jailbroken iPhone.  Since I’ve bought the device and own it, I think I should be able to do whatever the heck I want with it.   To not have that right is like buying a piece of produce from the community garden but being told that I can only use it in stir fry or fruit salad.  It’s stupid to even think that that sort of thing is possible, and just because it’s tech vs. produce doesn’t make it any less so.  However, once I change the parameters of the agreement of sale, I don’t have the right to request Apple’s support to fix my problems.  To extend the produce analogy even further, that’s like my buying a bell pepper, agreeing to use it only in stir fry, then putting it in fruit salad and complaining when people don’t like it.  I know and accept the risks of jailbreaking but by that same token, Apple shouldn’t be going out of their way to stop me.  Would I like Apple to be less restrictive in terms of what they do or don’t allow in the App Store?  Absolutely.  The main reason I jailbreak is to skin my phone and to get access to two apps that Apple won’t sell.  But those are the risks I’ve accepted because I’m choosing to go around the ecosystem.

Back to the topic at hand though – Adobe vs. Apple.  Whether or not Apple is right or wrong ethically is not the issue.  Apple is doing what it feels it needs to do to protect their investment in the iOS infrastructure.  Adobe is trying to grow their produce in the Apple garden and calling foul because they got caught.  Sorry, Adobe – you didn’t pay for the garden and you don’t get to access the garden and set your rules in the garden just because you pout about unfairness.  You want to build out your Flash platform, then you go out and build your own damn garden.  Otherwise, be happy with the pervasiveness you have on the Internet and pray that you can find a workaround to making money once HTML5 begins supplanting your fancy animations.

Related posts:

1. AT&T, Google, & Apple respond to the FCC
2. Flash For iPhone Coming
3. FCC Steps Into Apple and AT&T for Google Voice Removal

iPhone 4 (currently called iPhone HD)

• I predict that the hardware itself will probably not get an incredible form factor change. It will not have a slide out keyboard, nor will it transform into a little robot complete with rocket launcher. Apple has a great design – why mess with it? I recently took my iPhone out of its protective shell (first time in over a year) and the experience of holding the thing is just incredible, even though it’s two years old. No need to mess with great. Plus if it got any bigger, people would skip the iPad for the iPhone and Apple does not want that to be a possibility.
• I am in firm agreement with the rumors that indicate the screen will be exactly half the resolution of an iPad. Makes sense. Also makes sense that the OS will have hooks to auto-detect and auto-size apps (I believe Android has this already). Anything Apple can do to simplify development for third parties it will do. Plus it allows Apple to run a single code base for their entire iOS line. iOS – I think I’m going to trademark that.
• I would rate the chances of a Verizon enabled iPhone at 75% within the next year. I say this because Apple is starting to reach the limits of conversion. Just about everyone who wants an iPhone has switched to AT&T, and the universe of new cell users is not growing all that fast. If Apple wants to sell millions of these puppies, they’re going to have to expand the platform. Adding Verizon will immediately give Apple access to millions of new customers. The loss of AT&T subscribers is not a big deal because they’ll still be iPhone users. Maybe they don’t make as much money per sub on Verizon, but at this point it becomes more of a numbers game and making up the profits through volume. This theory is further confirmed by the fact that there were two iPhone models mentioned in the iPad’s guts.
• Front-facing camera? Maybe. Who cares? Are you really going to videoconference with this thing? I guess the market for amateur porn would skyrocket, and Chatroulette could have more interesting backgrounds. I’d rather hold out for a front facing camera on the iPad v2.
• I originally thought that it would feature a faster chip with more RAM. Required to support multitasking in iOS4 (see below). However, given that the iPad is apparently running with the same RAM as the iPhone 3GS and is performing faster, maybe all they need is a faster chip. I don’t think Apple’s going to go nuts trying to slot things into the iPhone that they can’t fit into the iPad with its much bigger size.
• The iPhone’s camera will get an upgrade, most likely to 5MP and add a flash. The motion capture rate will increase, mostly due to the faster processor. No front-facing camera, especially if that YouTube video of the supposedly new replacement screen is to be believed.

UPDATED 4/8/10 after the iPhone OS4 Release – I’ve updated the below predictions to reflect the announcements today.

iOS 4.0 (my new trademark!)

• Multitasking will be in iOS 4. It has to be for Apple to remain a credible contender. Android is barking up their heels in certain respects, and AT&T’s slow embrace of Android phones means that Android will be able to do simultaneous voice and 3G data (who the heck thought this was not a good thing for CDMA networks to be able to do? They should be hung in effigy. I didn’t even realize this wasn’t ubiquitous. And Verizon charges you more for this crapservice? Unbelievable.) I think most everyone agrees this is coming.  OK so multitasking wasn’t announced but what was announced is the next best thing, and quite honestly a heck of a lot more sensible for a mobile OS.  Most people don’t need true multitasking, and Apple again proves that they can think outside the box.  I love this implementation of multitasking, and I hope that it’s as flexible and as powerful as I think it will be.  Will it do everything the techies might want?  No, but it will do what 99% of what the rest of the people need.
• As much as possible, Apple is going to try to remove the hassles of having a single OS for three different multi-touch devices. The resolution change, the multitasking, the single inbox – all of these will make the iOS a seamless experience across the platforms.  Hard to tell, but I find it interesting that iPad won’t be getting OS4 until the fall.  My guess is that OS4 gets released with iPhone HD, and OS4.1 gets released in the fall to iPhone, iPad, and iTouch.
• Enhancements to the video management features of iPad (and probably iPhone). Why Apple thinks it’s not a good idea to have video playlists in the Video app on the iPad is beyond me, but fix it dammit. I figured out that the iPad video app is the same as the iTouch’s video app, and that the core behavior of videos on the iPad/iTouch is different than on the iPhone. This is rather annoying, especially for folks who have both an iPad and an iPhone. Consistency should be the watchword for Apple now that there are three different platforms with basically the same OS. As the iPhone’s capacity increases, the ability to store more video is going to mean that it should start to match the capabilities of the iPad/iTouch.  Can’t tell yet.  Though the mention of “create playlists” says to me that some sort of change to the media management feature is coming.
• Universal inbox and possibly multiple Exchange account support. Jobs has committed to a universal inbox, but allowing multiple Exchange connections support would allow folks to get push email from more than one source. Right now, I have three different Google Apps domains I maintain/participate in. I’d love to get all my Google Apps ID’s connected to a single inbox with push mail.  I was spot on with this.  And as far as I know, the idea of multiple Exchange boxes wasn’t really mentioned in other tech blogs so I give myself a big thumbs up here.  This will be awesome, and if they increase security, then the iPad/iPhone becomes a much more credible enterprise platform.
• Increased security. If Apple really wants to compete against RIM, they need to make the iPad/iPhone a much more secure device. I think the iPhone was hacked in under 2 minutes at the last hacker convention? That’s just sad. Say what you will about RIM but until Apple gets a credible security model and platform, they will never be taken seriously as an enterprise platform. With the iPad, they have a real chance to break into the enterprise, but not if every noob hacker can cut their teeth screwing with their neighbor’s iPad.  Still TBD, though I’m hopeful.
• New collapsible calendar view. Ok this is my own personal wish list, but why can’t Apple can’t do something like Palm’s “shrink non-allotted time” view of a day?  Can’t tell yet.  Might be saving this for iPhone HD announcement.
• Overall, my guess is that iOS 4 is a refinement rather than a radical advance. There’s just not a whole lot that it’s missing once you add in the multitasking. It won’t stop the hackers from jailbreaking the devices, but it will give a lot of people like myself a lot less reason to jailbreak.  It was a pretty big step forward overall, both fine-tuning the existing platform, while significantly expanding its capabilities.  I think iOS now resumes its place at the top of the mobile smartphone pecking order, and I’m really looking forward to iPhone HD.  I will also most likely not need to jailbreak my future iPhone, since this version has just about everything I might need.  Sure, skins aren’t there, but I can live without skins.
• Overall, I give myself a B+.  What do you guys think?

Future Apple Devices

• iPad 3.0 will have a front facing camera. It would be inefficent for Apple to put in a front and rear facing camera, and why the heck would you even try to take a picture/video with the thing? A front facing camera will allow web conferencing. I predict that in order for this to be a possibility for iPad 2.0, Apple would have to release a version customized to AT&T and Verizon because otherwise, the load on AT&T’s network will just slam them back to square one again like the early iPhone days.
• The iPhone will not get significantly smaller. Much smaller and it would require a customized screen resolution that wouldn’t play nice with the 2:1 scale iPhone HD is supposed to bring. Much larger and it becomes a miniPad and a lot less portable. (This is why I think Dell will fail utterly with their impending product whose name I totally forget with the 5″ screen, continuing Dell’s long chain of mobile failures.)
• The iPod classic is going to go away by this time 2011. SSD prices keep dropping and Apple buys in such quantity that they get incredible discounts. I could see a 128GB iTouch to top out the storage line from the current 64GB. This would make sense if Apple continues to increase the iPhone’s storage capabilities and offers up an iPhone with 64GB of storage. Quite frankly, though, I think the storage is getting way past what most people need. I’m having a ton of trouble filling my iPad now and that’s after I transferred over a ton of video content. Why would I carry around a 64GB iPhone when I have a bigger counterpart to watch videos with? Music doesn’t take up that much room for most folks unless they’re storing uncompressed files. I would top out at 64GB for the iPhone and just concentrate on keeping the prices the same or lower.
• Apple TV will be integrated into a 40″ Apple TV panel. I think they learned a lot from the 27″ iMac production process and that’s the last piece of the entertainment puzzle for Apple. I could picture a simplified iOS for a TV with just a few standard icons (or heck, they could put the whole iOS on a TV – the only issue would be mimicking touch and finger movement).

How about you guys? Think I’m crazy? Let’s hear it!

Related posts:

1. Apple Unveils iPhone 4
2. iPhone 4G With Front Camera Multi-Way Video
3. iPhone 3GS Running on iOS 5

I’ve posted the obligatory unboxing pics but they aren’t very good and I would suggest skipping over them just because every other gadget blog on the Interwebs have posted much better ones (though I did include unboxing pics of the Apple case just to be different).

I’m actually writing this post on my couch using my iPad. I’m using our standard WordPress blogging interface but via the HTML interface rather than the visual one. For some reason the visual interface doesn’t seem to like the iPad. I cannot stress how absolutely GORGEOUS this screen is. I haven’t changed any of the default brightness settings yet the colors and visuals just scream off the page. While the screen is on, you can’t see any of the fingerprints. It’s a totally different story when you turn the screen off however. It’s actually kind of cute – you can see where the keyboard keys are by the pattern of fingerprints. Surprisingly, you can almost touch type on the keyboard, especially in widescreen mode. In portrait, I pert much two-finger it but in landscape mode I can build up a pretty good head of steam. Combine the wider keys with the amazing Apple word recognition and auto-correction and I’m able to pound out probably 40+ words per minute.

The video quality is also incredible. Stuff that looks good on the iPhone look blocky and pixelated. But stuff I converted over to the ipad’s dimensions look amazing. I downloaded a few HD podcasts and the picture quality is crystal clear. Screen dimensions aside, this thing was MADE for video.

Response time is also lightning quick, especially compared to my antique of an iPhone 3G. Apps load quick, you can’t really overwhelm the keyboard or the screen with input, and pages load at computer speeds. In short, the thing screams. I love that aspect of it. Overall, I’m getting more content that I made the right choice in terms of buying an iPad and I’m getting more comfortable with having the non-3G version. The last thing I want is another monthly bill and I could easily see myself activating the 3G and never turning it off. This thing is horribly addicting in that sense. Apple does a great job of making their tech ubiquitous – once you buy it and star using it, you soon wonder how you got along without it. (Though damn this thing would bed an amazing GPS when mounted properly in the car…..)

The GoodReader app I purchased to read PDFs is incredible on the iPad.  This app makes the device about a thousand times more useful to me because it means I’ll be able to keep technical documentation close at hand instead of on a bookshelf.  Awesome.

And 64GB is a LOT of space.  I’m trying desperately to fill it up and I’m maybe halfway there.  And that’s only because I’m including a ton of music.  I am still planning on using the iPad to play music and video, but once the new iPhone HD comes out, I will probably switch the iPad to primarily videos and the iPhone to primarily music.

So because I’m a half-empty kind of guy, let’s get together the list of things about the iPad that have already started to annoy me.

• The biggest issue so far is that the iPad is not an iPod in the same way that the iPhone is not an iPod.  On the iPhone there is no differentiation between the videos and the music when you are using the iPod app. On the iPad, there are two distinct apps – the iPod app and the Video app. While you can get to videos via the iPod app, you can’t go back to the iPod via the Video app, at least not as far as I can tell. This makes it really annoying to switch between the two media kinds. It also means that video playlists don’t work on the iPad. You play one video and then it returns you to the main video screen. And there is only one view of the videos available. You get a screenshot of the videos and the title. You can’t sort it differently and you can’t group them in any way. It’s not how I organize my stuff and I don’t really like it. I mostly play podcasts and tv shows. I also play a lot of ripped video files that I use for learning my group exercise class and they have to be played in a particular order. The iPad doesn’t let me do that.
• Another problem is that the bookmark manager is not the easiest thing in the world to use. But that’s a problem with the iPhone OS overall. I just didn’t really notice it until I started using it on the larger screen.
• I’d love if Safari could be split screened so that I could get two pages on the screen at once.  I actually purchased on iPhone app that did this – I’m guessing they’ll be releasing a version for the iPad as well.
• A Google Calendar issue where only the primary calendar syncs to the iPad.
• It is heavy and the typing angles are tough to get used to. I tend to put the iPad on a flat surface rather than on my lap if I have to type for extended periods.
• The iPad does not fit into the dock when it’s in the case. Very very annoying especially when this thing cost so much.  I want to keep it in its case as much as possible.  I would not recommend the dock – there are other versions that will allow you to keep the iPad in its case while still allowing you to plug it into the charger.
• The iBook app does not seem to be as responsive as the Kindle app.
• The apps are a lot more pricey than the iPhone equivalents.
• Don’t buy the Numbers app if you are planning to use it with Excel.  As far as I can tell, many basic Excel functions and features don’t convert over to Numbers very well.  Numbers does seem like a pretty full-function spreadsheet and I’m planning to try it out in greater depth.  But as a guy who lives on Excel, I’m probably going to have to wait for Microsoft to do something for the iPad.

So am I happy with my iPad?  Yes, but not because I’m in love with the device.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s an incredible piece of tech.  But I think that its utility right now is way underrealized.  The iPad’s already been jailbroken so the thought of combining the raw power of an iPad with a legion of clever hackers and developers means that people will start pushing its capabilities sooner rather than later.  The preliminary rush of apps is a poor representation of what the future of iPad development will be like, and I’m hopeful that a slew of new and interesting apps will make their way onto the device either officially or non.

Related posts:

1. iPad Update – the Return
2. iPad Apps
3. Joystick-It iPad Arcade Stick

Being a gadget blog, it’s kind of weird not being at the Consumer Electronics Show.  Neither Quang nor I could make the show this year due schedule conflicts.  At the same time, being away from CES gives me a sense of perspective on the show that being submerged in the whirl wouldn’t necessarily provide.  So from 3000 miles away, here’s my take on CES 2010.

Tablets tablets tablets

HP Slate (image courtesy Engadget)

Everyone showed off tablets.  Windows 7′s built-in tablet functionality makes this viable from an implementation perspective, since that feature is built-in already.  But because vendors are relying on Microsoft to provide a feature set, the tablets are boring.  There’s no product differentiation – sure some are smaller or bigger, fatter or thinner, but from the pictures I’ve seen and the product snapshots I’ve read, there’s nothing really revolutionary about any of them.  In my mind, that further magnifies Microsoft’s increasing irrelevance in the growth of mobile platforms.  The Microsoft keynote was, from all reports I’ve read, boring.  Even with Ballmer’s hyperantics, they really didn’t have much to show.  Right now, the only products they’ve got that’s generating any kind of buzz are Bing and XBox360.  Project Natal is interesting, but it’s a platform that presumes something many XBox360 owners might not necessarily have – room to move. I’d guess that a large number of gamers play in their rooms, and unless you’re wealthy the typical room doesn’t have the space to use Natal easily.  The old handheld controls may be archaic but they also don’t require a ton of space to flail around in.  Show me someone using Natal in a 10′x10′ bedroom with a full size bed, a dresser, bookshelf, desk, and piles of clothes on the floor and I’ll believe in its viability.  Otherwise, I’m guessing it will be destined for a small portion of the population.

Ebook Reader, who’s got an ebook reader?

Skiff Reader (image courtesy Crave Blog)

At CES 2010, it seemed everyone had an ebook reader.  They were practically giving them away with entry.  Many of the online vids I’ve seen make me less than enthused.  I guess I am just disappointed by their lack of speed.  It shouldn’t be a case where I press a ‘next page’ key and have to wait for the screen to refresh.  I know e-ink is slow due to the technology and its current state, but as those e-ink screens get bigger and bigger, the refresh lag gets more and more disturbing.  The few 8.5″x11″ ebook readers I’ve seen really magnify the response rate issues, and will be one of the key issues preventing fast adoption.  That and publishers’ refusal to change their paradigms.  Did I mention that I saved the publishing industry?

3D TV

Intel 3D w/o Glasses (image via Engadget)

Too soon.  Too expensive.  Wait til CES 2012.  Plus would you really want to wear those glasses all the time?  And keep spares around for guests?  Annoying.

Mobile Tech

Levnovo LePhone (image via Engadget)

Lots of new smartphones.  Lots of new Android-based mobile tech.  There’s going to be an interesting war between carriers and device manufacturers.  I don’t know that the carriers will ever be relegated to dumb pipe status, unless Google is successful in licensing a swath of spectrum and developing it itself.  But carriers will definitely be shifting to more of a partnership model than a “we tell you what to make” model.  Verizon will be the carrier to watch – if they start shifting to a more device-friendly stance, then you’ll know the power balance has equalized.  For all their talk about network access and being able to hook any device onto their airspace, I’ve seen remarkably few devices that actually do this.

Furthermore, as smartphones become more powerful and capable, many single-use devices (navigation, pictureframe, ebook readers, etc) are going to be obsoleted.  I’m just not willing to pay for three or more different devices that are best in class when I can buy one device that does on OK job at all the things I need it to.  Especially as cellphone-based cameras become more powerful and capable, that market is going to fragment into a low end and high end, with little in between.  ’Good enough’ is becoming the deathnell of many consumer electronics companies that can’t adjust to the times.

iPhone and the unicorn known as the iSlate/iTablet/iPadd/iTouch Supersized

Mythical iSlate (image via TG Daily)

Let’s face it – CES 2010 really showed the dominance of the iPhone as a platform (if it wasn’t apparent before).  There was basically an expo-within-the-expo with iLounge’s iPhone Pavilion.  But the items identified as Best Of 2010 didn’t really impress me all that much.  The risk with having such an iPhone-dependent area is that the products being displayed are towards the tail end of Apple’s development cycle.  So far, the iPhone timeline tends to be that June/July announces the new hardware version of the iPhone/iPod Touch, followed in the late January timeframe for the latest update to the iPhone/iTouch OS (after CES) followed by Mac-based updates a few months later.  So the products being shown at CES are for a form factor/OS that will soon be previous generation once the Apple announcement cycle starts.  It’s gotta be painful for the manufacturers, since they’re constantly behind the development curve (especially given Apple’s notorious secrecy levels concerning upcoming products and features).

Overall

CES 2010 seemed more upbeat than CES 2009.  All in all, however, it seemed that this CES as good a one to miss as any.  Nothing really revolutionary seems to have been announced, and the elephant in the room was definitely Apple’s pending Jan. 27th announcement of its Jesus tablet (if that’s indeed what they are going to do).  Apple’s got a LOT of pressure to deliver something truly revolutionary, which is in a way a really sad testament to the state of consumer electronics.  So many companies out there vying for a piece of the consumer dollar yet only one company is consistently able to deliver something that people seem to want.  Why do Microsoft, Dell, HP, and the like even have R&D budgets?  They should just slavishly copy Apple.  Oh wait, they already do.  Even Google, which is trying to do something revolutionary with Android and Chrome OS, is going to get bogged down by their total lack of understanding of the consumer space.  Looks like it’s going to be an Apple world….

Related posts:

1. Random thoughts on the i-Devices
2. Screenshot: Google Chrome OS To Be Released 2010
3. Show Desktop in Windows 7

Captured at 1/1 11:11

Happy New Year to everyone from the folks at GadgetMETER. GadgetMETER is now officially 1 year old and I am proud of what we’ve accomplished in that time.

One of my New Years resolution consists of simplifying my online and offline lifestyle.

• Get rid of junk in my house I haven’t used in years
• Eat less or no meat.
• Reduced the number of RSS subscriptions.
• Deactivated my Facebook account. (I’ll talk more about this later).
• Discovered http://mnmlist.com and http://minimalmac.com. These are two great websites if you feel you are too distracted with todays bombardment of information.
• Run a 10k
• Enrolled at UPenn for Graduate School.
• De clutter my MacBook desktop and menu bar

Now, if you are wondering how this screenshot is appropriate for this post. Well, I just happen to look at my iPhone at exactly 1/1 11:11pm so I quickly captured it. The background is a picture of Monica Belluci on my jail broken iPhone. Pretty cool huh? It must be a sign because I see it as a way to reset our tech lifestyle and look back at what’s really important: family, friend (true friends, not the persons you don’t know on your Facebook), health, and the environment. Today, we have way too many distractions in our life that really clouds our judgetment on what’s really important. Let’s take time to get rid of online and offline baggage and welcome the New Year!

So I propose this New Years Challenge for you.

• Go take a walk.
• Meet with a friend for coffee.
• Enough with Twitter already. It’s really just for celebrities!
• Delete contacts on Facebook you don’t ever engage with. Heck, deactivate your Facebook account like I did!
• Delete LinkedIn. Who really uses this anyway?
• Stop texting while having lunch or dinner with someone. Enjoy the moment.
• Volunteer at a community center or shelter.
• Donate to a charity: time, money, clothes, food. It can be anything.
• Read a long form book.
• Go camping or hiking.
• Call up a friend. No texting!

Related posts:

1. Screenshot: Facebook 3.0 iPhone App
2. Screenshot – Google Phone Confirmed
3. Dropbox Online Storage and iPhone App

I am going to save the publishing industry from itself.  And no, they don’t have to thank me, shower me with roses, send young virgins my way, or pay me (that’s the important part).  It’s very simple.  I’ll even put it in big font so the old hats in publishing can read it with their aged eyes.  Ready?  Here it is.

Rent the books

No, no, please.  I can’t accept your praise and thanks.  It’s enough knowing that I did something good in 2009 (and boy was I cutting it close!).  Oh, what?  You don’t understand?  Geez do I have to do everything?  Ok let me explain it to you.  Pay attention, old publishing – don’t become even more of a dinosaur.

Most people I know don’t like to buy books.  I know lots of people who like to read, but they don’t necessarily want to buy every book they read.  This is why libraries exist.  However, there are times that a library is too small to have the latest book you want, or they take too long to get a copy to you when you want to read something right away because there’s only one copy and it’s being read by some geriatric who’s going to keep it the damn full three weeks plus renewals.  This is why used bookstores exist.  But those tend to be rare, messy, and rarely stock the book you’re looking for.  Turn to Amazon or eBay and you might as well buy the book new after you add in the shipping costs.  And let’s face it – most books aren’t really worth buying.  I mean c’mon – do you really need to buy the Star Wars or Star Trek or D&D books that seem to be released by the dozen every day?  99.99% of those are throwaways – read them once and throw them away.  Even the best books are typically throwaways – read once and never again.  I’m willing to bet a year’s salary that the publishing industry loses hundreds of sales each day because the number of people willing to pay $7.99 plus tax for a throwaway book is small and getting smaller.  Rather than trying to fight for a piece of an ever shrinking pie, the publishers need to think about getting a bigger pie.  Book rentals are the bigger pie.

Imagine you’re an average reader.  Average in that you buy maybe one or two books a month (if that – I consider myself an above average reader and I buy maybe one book every three to four months).  What if you could get access to a set number of books per month for a flat fee?  And to add spice to the offer, what if you could get a free e-book reader for signing up?  Let’s say you could rent books in units of five, ten, twenty, or thirty books a month for a range of prices.  Five books might cost you $15/month, while ten books might cost you $25/mo and so on.  Every month, on the first of the month, you get access to your alloted limit of new books.  Those could be books you pick out that day, or over the course of that month, or you could build up a list of books you’d like to read, from which a subset would be released to you each month.  Of course the books you’d already rented for the previous month would disappear from your reader, but that’s OK cause you can always re-add them to your list.  You read through your allotted books and everything is hunky dory.  Every month, you’re guaranteed access to your subscription limit.  But you read through your limit already?  Well, you could be offered the chance to increase your limit for the month or from that point forward.  Similarly, you got access to 20 books but only touched three of them.  Maybe you get asked if you’d like to downgrade your subscription.  The point of the service shouldn’t be to maximize immediate  revenue – the point of the subscription should be to maximize long term usage, and you do that by making things as convenient as possible for the user.  If that means giving up some short term revenue for long term gain, so be it.  And the thing is, Mr. Publisher, you’re getting money for books that YOU NEVER WOULD HAVE GOTTEN OTHERWISE.  Let me say that again.  YOU’RE GETTING MONEY FOR BOOKS YOU NEVER WOULD HAVE GOTTEN OTHERWISE.

People are going to say that there’s nothing like the feel of a book in your hands.  Those people are, frankly, luddites.  Are there some books I’d rather own permanently rather than temporarily?  Sure.  I can name maybe a dozen or so.  All other books I own are books I’ve bought, read once, and have thrown onto a bookshelf because I was too lazy to sell it or wouldn’t get enough money from the sale to make it worth my time.  This service removes the need for me to have bookshelves of paper that I rarely use (the bookshelf industry is screaming bloody murder right now) plus gets me access to a universe of books I’d never have bought in the first place.  For authors who still live for book signings, there will always be a cadre of fans who will buy a physical copy of your latest tome so that it can be graced with your signature.  But those people would have bought your book anyways, and I guarantee you that that set of people will only get bigger when you combine them with the set of people who will read your book once and never think about it again.

The beauty of a subscription model is that it’s a steady revenue stream for the publishers.  The only cost to them is for an e-book reader and digitization of their collection.  Once those are funded, they can count on a constant flow of dollars, punctuated by the occasional best seller that people decide they absolutely must own a physical version of.  It removes the need to front a bunch of stock to booksellers that they then have to buy back.  It encourages reading and the concept of temporary ownership – a key point upon which the music industry floundered.  Most importantly, it means that it DOESN’T MATTER what books people read.  If I decide to read the same five books over and over again each month, it DOESN’T MATTER because I’m still paying the publishers for the same five books.  Can you do that with a paper-based model?  Likewise, it doesn’t matter if I read 30 books a month because most likely those were books I wasn’t going to buy if I didn’t have a rental option.  The number of people who can afford to buy 30 books a month (much less read all 30) are probably less than 1% of the US population.  But the beautiful thing about such subscribers is that the publisher is still being paid for 30 book rentals a month regardless of whether or not those rentals are actually used.

What about sharing?  What if people get a 30-book subscription and share the reader amongst themselves?  WHO CARES?  At some point, the publishing industry (and every other industry) needs to get out of the mindset of maximizing every dollar and decide how to grow for the long term.  Even if five people share a 30-book subscription, there’s only ONE reader.  Think those five people can shuttle that reader amongst themselves for an entire month without impacting their ability to enjoy/read the books?  I doubt it.  It’s easier to just get a single reader for each person with a small monthly subscription.

Here’s a great example.  Manga.  How many people actually buy manga and read it more than once or twice?  Not many.  My daughter goes through manga like a pig goes through excrement.  Each book is $10 a pop.  How many do you think I buy her on a monthly basis?  One?  Two?  (Try none.)  Instead she spends tons of time at Borders or Barnes & Noble, sitting on the floor and reading.  And she’s young enough that coffee has no allure, so those stores aren’t making any money off her (and neither are the publishers).  What if she had an e-reader with a five-book subscription?  Five new manga every month and each month a check from me for the service.  Maybe she finds one or two that she wants so much that she asks for a physical copy.  Well hey – a bonus of $10-$20 on top of the monthly subscription, shared between store and publisher.

Are you getting the idea now, Mr. Publisher?  Do you see how magical this is?  And how easily you could implement something like this?  All you’d need is a Kindle equivalent with Whispersync but minimal local storage and featureset.  No need to provide external storage because you only need it to hold the maximum number of possible rentals (and 30 rentals won’t take up more than a gig).  No need for a keyboard – you could have them manage everything via a web site.  Every 30 days you’d get a burst from the transfer of data, but it’s basically the data equivalent of a 30 minute phone call (if that).  You could start with books and then expand it to magazines, newspapers, comics…the possibilities are only limited by what you can print electronically on a regular basis.  I can even tell you what the starting point should be in terms of a price per rental.  Want to know what it is?  Are you sure?  Want to maybe guess before I say it?  Here it is.

$3.00 per rental MAXIMUM

Why $3.00?  Because Amazon charges $2.99 for shipping used DVDs and $3.99 for shipping used books, and you’re not shipping anything.  At $3/rental for a five rental subscription, that’s $15/mo, which seems reasonable when you consider that buying two paperbacks will run you almost $16.  And it can only get cheaper from there.  In fact, over time, I’d recommend dropping the maximum price per rental to $2 once you figure out how many people will buy what price points.  DON’T GET GREEDY.  The music industry got greedy and they’re being destroyed.  The movie industry is greedy and is in the process of trying to fight getting destroyed.  You guys don’t know how to fight and you’re not big enough to make it a big fight.  Do it right and focus on the customer.  More so than music and movies, your industry is based on a fickle public.  Don’t give them reasons to hate you.

Now go on and build this thing before Amazon or Google does.  You’re welcome.

Related posts:

1. The Nook. No, it’s not new slang for something.
2. Reading 2.0 with the Amazon Kindle 2.0
3. CES 2010 – Some Thoughts

So today was Avatar day.  The fiancee, kids and I took in the 3:40 IMAX showing of James Cameron’s latest epic at a nearby megaplex.  I have to admit that I was not having the greatest of expectations for the movie, though I’d studiously avoided all reviews, critics, discussions, and associations with the movie to keep myself pure.  And of course I had to see the 3D version, because there was no way I was going to sit through a 2.5 hour standard movie.

We got to the theatre about 40 minutes ahead of showtime to find a rather large line.  But we only waited about 10 minutes before they let us in, and we got pretty good seats near the middle of the screen, in the row right before the dropoff to the next lower level.  I’m not sure if you’re aware but there are seats in an IMAX theatre that are useless for movie watching, and the number of bad seats increases for 3D movies.  In general, if you’re in the lower levels and on the outer ends the rows, you should probably just leave and get tickets for a less crowded showing.  This becomes critical for movies that Avatar is going to spawn because of how Cameron does 3D (more on that later).  I’m sure if you google “bad Avatar 3D seats” or some such, you’ll find plenty of articles talking about the details.  I personally have a rule that I will not sit below the midline of an IMAX movie, and for 3D movies, that rule has been amended to not sit below the midline or towards the ends of any rows.

So enough preamble – how was the movie?  In a word, amazing.  The glasses were uncomfortable at first but you get used to them really fast.  And after a bit, they disappear and you immerse into the screen.  The 3D is incredible.  Not the popout type of 3D, mind you.  That whole market has just been effectively rendered dead by Avatar.  No, this 3D was more about general depth.  There was a distinct difference between the foreground and the background, and the focus had a sense of being in front of the screen, almost as if it were being extruded from the screen itself.  And because Cameron doesn’t rely on the popout type of 3D, it means that you can’t focus on the background or you’ll get a migraine.  Flat movies can use an in-focus background to add depth to a scene or to shift attention.  If you remember Speed Racer, one of its signature visuals was that everything was in focus simultaneously, both foreground and background.  Avatar is different.  You have to look at what Cameron wants you to look at because if you don’t, the background won’t come into complete focus and it will give you a headache.  The few times I felt the most vertigo was when I was trying to pick out details in the scenery rather than watching the characters currently in focus.  That is a darn shame, because the visuals of the planetary ecology are just incredible and you want to see all the detail.  That may be the main advantage to the 2D version – you can catch more of the side stuff.

If you haven’t seen Avatar yet, I strongly urge you to see the IMAX version.  Even if you have seen the regular version, go and see the IMAX one.  I’d be pretty curious to know if you thought the movie was a deeper experience because of the 3D.  I can’t imagine seeing this moving in a flat version now, and quite frankly it’s going to color my decision to buy the DVD (Blu-ray of course).  The 3D was that good, and because it ran through the entire movie, there were no real “gotcha” moments where arrows leap off the screen or animals jump out at you.  The only times I saw anything like those types of moments were in a few scenes where ash or insects were flying around the characters – they appeared to be in midair, and seemed so natural that you almost wanted to brush them away.  I am not sure that Avatar will make a billion dollars like Titanic did.  But it will make a mint, and there will be sequels.  I’m not really looking forward to those, because the story is not anything to write home about.  But what I am certain of is that Cameron as a visual pioneer has raised the bar on immersive movie experiences and Avatar will now be the starting point for a whole new generation of movies that blend 3D into cinematography as a natural extension of filmmaking rather than as a gimmick.  My kids are going to be a bridge generation between flat screen films and true 3D, and their kids will probably grow up never knowing what a 2D film really was like.  Few people are able to advance an industry overnight.  With Avatar, Cameron joins the ranks of those few.  Absolutely amazing.

Related posts:

1. Official Teaser Trailer for Avatar
2. Leaked Photos of Google Chrome OS

Adam explains that Internet search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, are becoming gate keepers of information and that their results should be unbiased and ranked on relevance. There is truth to this. If Search Neutrality should be the case, we would essentially have a single search engine for all our needs because they would all share the same algorithm to rank sites and content. However, what search neutrality implies is that all the engines would have the same exact results which would be anti-competitive. A user is not forced to user Google or any other search engine. The openness of the Internet allows for anyone with the best service to succeed without prohibition. Isn’t that what Net Neutrality is all about? Google itself hardly ever advertise it’s service. Users flock to Google because it does provide the most simple and effective search results. By having different search engines with varied results and services, creates competition for all sides and ultimately benefiting the users.

Adam Raff does disclose that he works for Foundem – a search site to compare products. Raff alleges that his site’s Google search rankings disappeared and thus stunted his company’s growth. Writing an article against Google on the NY Times is also a sure way to bring exposure to your company doesn’t it? What Raff doesn’t explain is why his site disappeared from search results. Gaming the system by adding keywords hidden behind background colors can do this. Listing your site on link farms solely for the purpose of Search Engine Optimization can also put your site in the “bad neighborhood”. Raff does not explain how his site might have been black listed by Google or what he tried to do to remedy the situation.

Raff further claims that Google isn’t innovative as people expect but instead buy a lot of other companies such as YouTube and Applied Semantics (now AdSense). AdWords is developed by Google but licensed under its inventors Overture. My response to this is – so what? Is buying another company a moral crime? What does acquisitions have to do with search neutrality? My understanding of what Raff is trying to say is that Google can provide preferential treatment to search rankings for it’s affiliated services as somehow it is not beneficial to the user. Hey, Raff, remember, you can still use Bing or Yahoo if you want Search Neutrality as you claim. Why is Google singled out in your article? You didn’t mention Microsoft’s interest in providing Bing as the search engine for Yahoo. I take it because your site wasn’t black listed from them.

Raff has a lot of superfluous reasons for search neutrality. However, he can best support his argument by presenting a case where if a site is black listed from a search engine without justifiable cause, then there should be an explanation and process to fix this. However, Raff’s article seems more like a kid ranting he didn’t get picked to play basketball. Maybe Raff’s next article should be on Sports Neutrality where every player no matter what his skill set, gets to score.

Related posts:

1. Google Custom Search
2. Google Must Have Heard My Advice
3. Search Results

Google doodle featuring Popeye

• Google doodle depicts Popeye eating spinach
• 115th anniversary of E.C. Segar’s birthday

When I was 5 years old, I went through a phase where I was really into Popeye. I remember as a kid walking around acting tough (and even enjoying my spinach). An aunt still calls me by Popeye till this day. I even had a pipe through blew out bubbles!

When I opened up Chrome this morning, it went straight to the Google home page where I saw this latest doodle. It brought back a lot of childhood memories. Popeye was an inspiration to me where the little guy can beat the brute (his nemesis was Bluto) and still get the girl Olive Oyl. Whenever Popeye and Bluto fought, Popeye would lose at first until he finds a can of spinach in his back pocket or laying around some where. As soon as he eats it, his fore arms grew 3x its size. I always wondered why Bluto wouldn’t just eat the spinach as well. Heck, even Olive Oyl could use some calories.

Related posts:

1. Google Palestine and a Bomb?
2. Google Wave Already Works With iPhone
3. Screenshot Google Wave

Sithsense Paper Laptop

I have been following Pranav Mistry’s SixthSense technology since his debut at TED conference in which he had a standing ovation. SixthSense allows for an ultra portable and interactive augmented reality based on genstures. It enables interactions between the real world and digital information.

His latest invention which he displayed at TED will kill any iTablet rumor from Apple or likes. Better yet, it is the introduction of the paper “laptop”. It works by attaching a microphone on the paper to sense the touch. Check out the whole video.

Via Engadget

Related posts:

1. Wearable Technology Gives You Real 6th Sense
2. iPhone App: Twitscoop Real Time Twitter Trends
3. Little Tikes My Real Digital Video Camera

Transfer Your Mobile Number to Google Voice

I’ve been using Google Voice since it was owned by Grand Central. It is a great platform for managing free calls, SMS, and contacts with intelligence. Now Google Voice lets you port your mobile number from your carrier to Google as well. This way, your voicemail is accessible from the cloud. By allowing Google Voice to manage my voicemail, it solves my issue with AT&T which prevents me from receiving voicemail notifications. Once you receive a voicemail, you can be alerted a number of ways by transcribed email or SMS text messages.

Google Voice can let you have a single phone number that automatically rings to your mobile, work, home and other phones based on rules and settings. For example, calls from your kids will ring all numbers while office related contacts only ring your work number.

The process to move your carrier number to Google Voice requires a few steps. However, it is very worth it in the end.

Via TechCrunch

Related posts:

1. Make Free Calls to Canada with Google Voice
2. Google Voice Now Fowards SMS To Email
3. Google Sync Synchronizes Calendars and Contacts on Your Mobile Phone

If that should come to pass, it would be interesting to see how many net adds T-Mobile gains vs. jumpers from AT&T.  I’d especially be interested in seeing how many folks would be willing to jump from AT&T to T-Mobile with their existing iPhone.  That would be a pretty damning indictment of AT&T’s network.

Of course, this probably also means that Verizon will not be getting an iTablet next year either.  I can’t imagine Jobs would be willing to let his new baby play on a network that was abusive towards his old baby.

Related posts:

1. AT&T Introduces A-List for Free Unlimited Calling
2. Top 5 Useful and Free iPhone Apps
3. iPhone 4G With Front Camera Multi-Way Video

Google Wave iPhone App

Google Wave has been making headlines in the tech world. Not many people know this since not everyone received the official invite yet but it already works in the iPhone. It looks quite fantastic.  You can simply go to wave.google.com in mobile Safari on your iPhone and wil be prompted that you are using a browser not supported during the preview, however, once you click through, it actually works well.

You can save a bookmark on your Home screen and it creates a little icon like other Web pages on the iPhone. However, Google Wave is a bit different. Once you launch it it removes the Safari wrapper which allows you to nagivate to another page or search the Web. It actually looks like a regular native iPhone app.

The screen shot on the right is what Google Wave looks like on the iPhone launched from the Home screen bookmark. The screen shot at the bottom is what it looks like from within Safari.

Via TechCrunch

Related posts:

1. Want a Google Wave Invite? We have some!
2. Screenshot Google Wave
3. Google Wave

Dropbox Online Storage and iPhone App

Dropbox is an easy to use online file storage that syncs your files across all your computers. I installed it recently and must say it is very intuitive, easy, and fast! You simply go to their website, create and account, and then install on your computer (both Windows and Mac compatible). You can then select your drop box folder to by synced. Files or folders that are in your Dropbox folder are then synchronized online. The performance is great. When you make a change, Dropbox sends the “delta” only to the server thus making the change very quickly. You can also access your files through the website.

The free version begins with 2 Gig of storage space with an additional 1 Gig by referring friends. There is also premium paid version which offers much more.

Dropbox recently released an iPhone application to make it even easier to access your files anywhere in the world. This new iPhone app will let you get access to all your Dropbox documents, PDF’s, pictures, videos and much more. Dropbox also introduced offline viewing in the iPhone app, with “Favorites.” If you add a file to your ‘Favorites’, they’ll be accessible at any time. To do so, just hit the star at the bottom of any file, and it’ll be added. Otherwise, your files stay in the cloud. This is great for people who complain that the iPhone does not offer local file storage. Dropbox offers this and more with automatic sync with their cloud!

Dropbox can also let you share files and folders to anyone in the cloud. The iPhone app also lets you upload pictures and video (with iPhone 3GS).

In just a few days, Dropbox reached over 2 million users. Impressive.

When is Google’s rumored GDrive coming? Google???

Related posts:

1. iPhone App: Twitscoop Real Time Twitter Trends
2. Top 5 Useful and Free iPhone Apps
3. NetFlix Streaming iPhone App Rumor

Google Wave Collaboration

Google recently released their new web-based collaboration tool called Wave to developers, volunteers and select Google Apps members. The shortest way to describe Google Wave is real-time Gmail on steroids. Wave is the entire Google Product while a wave (lower case) is an individual message or document. Google is initially targeting students, colleges, and collaborative teams to test out this new paradigm of communication.

A wave can include a message with rich content (images, YouTube video, links, maps) and can be shared with other users. There is also a video playback feature that shows a new member coming into the wave the history of the changes.

A wave can also be embedded on another site such as a blog. Currently, there are still bugs to be worked out but this does seem to be a promising step forward for Google to compete with Facebook, Twitter and other crowd sourcing social networks.

Google Wave Header

Here is the Google Wave 3 Panes: Navigation, List, Rich Content.

Google Wave Default View

A wave with rich content

Google Wave Rich Content

Google Wave is similar to Gmail with search features, tagging, file uploads, and even folders. The rich web interface is completely drag and drop.

Related posts:

1. Google Wave
2. Want a Google Wave Invite? We have some!
3. Google Wave Already Works With iPhone

Google Push Email and Calender Sync

Dammit.  I just spent $2.99 on an app to give me push Gmail on my iPhone and then Google goes and adds that capability through Google Sync.  Damn you Google, for making what used to cost money free.  Details at the Google Mobile blog.  Thanks to TechCrunch for alerting me.

If you have GSync already set up on your iPhone, all you have to do is go to the Exchange entry and activate the Mail option.  Simple!

Warning – the Google mobile blog servers are apparently mobbed right now, cause performance is slow slow slow.

UPDATE: In the 20 minutes since I activated this service, I’ve noticed three things.

• You don’t get a popup alert on your screen when new emails come in.  This could be a good or bad thing, depending on your point of view.  You will get  a buzz indicating new mail (if your iPhone is set up for that).
• There is a definite lag between receipt of email and Google pushing it to your iPhone.  It’s not huge but it can be a couple minutes.  I’m curious as to if this is due to the newness of the service or if it’s normal lag due to using Exchange.  It’s no different than what sometimes happens with the Blackberry, so unless you’re OCD about your email you probably won’t notice it.
• My Yahoo push email has apparently never worked properly and for whatever reason I do not get my Yahoo mails pushed to my iPhone.  I only noticed this because of how Google’s push works.  Luckily I don’t care about my Yahoo accounts, since they serve as repositories of spam and junk emails for various signup lists.  Plus all my porn user names and passwords.

Related posts:

1. Google Voice Now Fowards SMS To Email
2. Google Wave Already Works With iPhone
3. GPush Notifications for Gmail on iPhone

Steve Ballmer grabs Apple iPhone from Microsoft employee and ‘stomps’ it into ground

Microsoft is having a tough time these days with its image. Google forced Microsoft to to launch the free vaporware Office Online to compete with Google Docs. The Zune player which was meant to compete with the iPod is a dud. The Zune’s slogan “Welcome to the Social” has got to be one of the worst in history. You kind of need a crowd to market with that slogan first don’t you think?  Let’s not even talk about the horrible name of Zune itself.

Now it looks like Microsoft has another publicity stunt they have to dampen.  Microsoft Steve Ballmer, at a conference to showcase Bing 2.0 and a new Windows 7 commercial, saw an employee take pictures with his iPhone. He then grabbed the iPhone, threw it to the ground, and pretend to stomp on it after much booing from the audience.

The good news is that no one threw eggs at Ballmer this time. If Ballmer spent the same energy trashing the iPhone, Microsoft might have some relevancy left in the mobile market. Otherwise, Ballmer should just c:\>format himself

Via TechFlash

Related posts:

1. Docs by Microsoft and Facebook
2. Apple Unveils iPhone 4
3. Google Wave Already Works With iPhone

Successful technology companies are the ones that control the platform. The platform allows 3rd parties to extend features by using the APIs. An example is the widely successful iTunes App Store. This allows the company controlling the platform to grow exponentially with scale and thus profit with others effort. This is another reason why Google wants to be the operating system for both mobile phones (Android), laptop computers (Chrome OS), and browser (Chrome browser).

Google’s core business is search and advertising. What do you do, however, when the ISP serving the user injects their own ads instead of defaulting to your engine? Well, most recently, I noticed this when searching using Safari but instead of the usual Google Search page, I get Comcast with Yahoo results!

Is this a threat to Google? Absolutely! Is this legal? Not sure. But by the time this matter goes through the courts. Google may have lost so much revenue that it doesn’t matter if Google wins by law. Remember the fate of Netscape browser after Microsoft included their own browser in their Windows releases? Microsoft got fined a huge amount. However, by the time it was over, Netscape was gone (well, actually sold to AOL) but is no longer relevent.

Domain High Jacking By Comcast

Related posts:

1. Screenshot: Google Chrome OS To Be Released 2010
2. Google Custom Search
3. Google Must Have Heard My Advice

OK I am not a James Cameron fan by any means but this movie looks freakin’ amazing. I’d watch it in 2D. How it’s going to work out in 3D, though….if he can pull this off, it will change movie making.

Related posts:

1. Avatar in IMAX 3D. Go see it.
2. Official Stanley iPhone Level
3. Tomb Raider Reboot Trailer Revealed

Here is TechCrunch’s commentary on AT&T’s response, as well as the full text of the AT&T letter.

Here is TechCrunch’s commentary on Apple’s response, as well as the full text of the Apple letter.

Here is TechCrunch’s commentary on Google’s response, as well as Google’s response.

Most importantly (and if you want to skip over the previous to get to the meat of the matter), here is Michael Arrington’s insights into Apple’s distorted reality as evidenced in their letter.  Even someone like myself, who writes about gadgets out of love and as a distinctly part time hobby could see issues with Apple’s responses.

Mr. Arrington points out something that didn’t even occur to me until I read his post – aside from the email app and the phone, most of what I do with my iPhone does indeed revolve around Google-provided services.  I use Safari to access Google Reader.  I use third party apps that get me to POI’s via Google’s mapping app.  I use Google’s mapping app as a poor man’s GPS when I am too lazy to fire up my Mio.  I’ve already swapped out Apple’s Contacts and To-Do apps with an app that sync Google Calendar to my iPhone (and, god willing, will allow Tasks syncing in the near future).  As Google improves the Safari version of gMail, I’ll probably start moving over to using that more than I use the Apple mail client, especially because Apple seems incapable of providing a universal inbox a la the Palm Pre.  He’s absolutely right that the iPhone is a very pretty shell around a bunch of Google services, with Google Voice supplanting yet more iPhone functionality.

Dammit I never should have sold my Google stock.  At this rate, AT&T will be a dumb (albeit expensive) pipe to an Apple manufactured platform that provides a pretty (non-Android) version of the Google OS.

Related posts:

1. FCC Steps Into Apple and AT&T for Google Voice Removal
2. AT&T Plays the Blame Game Card on Apple
3. Apple Finally Approves Google Voice App

But sometimes I do receive Friend Requests where the Profile No Longer Exists. I assume that these are spam accounts that were detected after the request was sent. However, having an avatar with No Photo and status of This Profile No Longer Exists has not purpose. You cannot click on it and it doesn’t provide any value to the user.

Why can’t MySpace simply not show any of these This Profile No Longer Exists messages of these deleted accounts? The user cannot track what the profile originally looked like so what’s the point? There is no added value to displaying these items. Why has this been over looked for so long?

MySpace No Longer Exists or Is Relevant

Related posts:

1. Google Is Gunning For Facebook
2. Google Push Email for iPhone Now Available
3. Random thoughts on the i-Devices

The YouTube video below is a concept on how it would work.

Furthermore, iTunes 9 is rumored to feature Blu-ray support and more integration with Twiter, Facebook, and possibly Last.fm. The integration can involve status updates to the respective social networks on what songs you are playing on your iPhone/iPod Touch. Facebook has worked with Apple before on integrating the iPhone camera to upload to Facebook so this collaboration rumor is not so far fetch.

Related posts:

1. NetFlix Streaming iPhone App Rumor
2. iPhone App: Twitscoop Real Time Twitter Trends
3. Screenshot: Facebook 3.0 iPhone App