iPhone Reception Problems Got You Down? You Need More Network Capacity. Now!

I’m having a very good time at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, where most everybody seems to be thoroughly enjoying themselves and the principal complaints seem to involve the weather (which finally cleared up this afternoon) and the quality of AT&T’s wireless service in and around the convention center.

The latter is an significant point, because there are legions of iPhone users here–I wouldn’t be startled if iPhones-per-capacita here are higher than anywhere on the planet, with the possible exception of whatever Zip Code Cupertino is in–and Twitter is as important a communications channel at the show as, well, you know, walking up to people and talking to them. The contrarian in me is not 100% empathetic with the folks here who have been traumatized by spotty service. 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999% of the humans who ever walked the earth managed to fare okay without working iPhones, and multiple issues remain more serious issues for mankind than spotty AT&T service (famine and brain cancer, to name but two). And I got the sense that moaning about AT&T had become trendy here. I saw one guy brandish his iPhone, jab at it with his forefinger, and say something unrepeatable about AT&T’s service. In an elevator.

Still, the fact remains that my own iPhone basically had no working wireless service inside the convention center yesterday afternoon. (I made do with my notebook and its EVDO card, which is on the Verizon network. It was fine.)

This morning, however, I tried my iPhone again, and data service worked, Actually, it worked great–it was snappier than it usually is back home in the Bay Area. I chalked it up to random good fortune–in general, I never know whether my iPhone is going to perform like a champ or fail to connect at all, and I’m never sure whether to blame Apple, AT&T, or both.

Tonight, however, I had a chance to talk with someone with knowledge of AT&T’s response to the SxSW Crisis of 2009. He told me that the company hadn’t anticipated that SxSW would be bursting at the seams with iPhones. (You’d hope that it was aware it’s sold a heck of a lot of iPhones since the last conference, but perhaps SxSW wasn’t on its corporate radar screen, or it didn’t realize that everyone would be Tweeting up such a storm.)

By 5pm yesterday, AT&T realized it had a problem on its hands, and it spent four hours doubling capacity in downtown Austin–something it was planning to do anyhow, but over the course of a few months, not a few hours. It did so not by rolling out portable cell towers (also known as Cells on Wheels, or by the wonderful acronym COW) but by borrowing capacity from other areas that didn’t need it as much–there’s only so much capacity to go around.

The person I spoke with said that the whole experience was a wake-up call for AT&T, and that it plans to monitor tech conferences and other gatherings that are likely to spur heavy use of 3G phones on its network from now on, and plan accordingly.

AT&T’s response didn’t turn every SxSW attendee into a happy camper–over at Cnet, Andrew Mager has blogged about folks who were still disgruntled as of Sunday. But as a guy who knows very little about the nuts and bolts of wireless phone service, it was news to me that a provider could do anything at all to improve the situation in a few hours. I look forward to the day when wireless capacity isn’t stretched thin anywhere. And I’m curious how my iPhone will fare in a couple of weeks when I visit the CTIA Wireless trade show in Las Vegas. It may have somewhat fewer ardent Twitter users than SxSw is seeing this year, but it’s surely be rife with heavy-duty phone users…

Coming Next Tuesday: Live iPhone 3.0 Coverage

Wondering about Apple’s plans for the iPhone is unavoidable. Speculating about them can be great fun. But nothing beats learning about them. And we’ll get the first concrete news about what’s next next Tuesday at 10am PT, when the company will hold a press event to talk about version 3.0 of the iPhone software. I’ll be sitting in the audience, and as usual, I plan to share what I learn as I learn it, right here on Technologizer.

Live coverage will happen at www.technologizer.com/iphone3. (If you head there now, you can sign up to get an e-mail reminder.) I hope you’ll join us–around 700 folks showed up for our last real-time reporting on an Apple rollout back at Macworld Expo, and everyone involved seemed to have a very good time…

Apple’s New iPod Shuffle: The First Invisible MP3 Player

It’s tempting, when writing about Apple’s new third-generation iPod Shuffle, to veer towards the whimsical, and stay there. You might compare the tiny player to various other tiny objects, or theorize that the next Shuffle will be the size of a Tylenol, or even perform stupid Shuffle tricks such as stuffing one inside a Pez Dispenser. This is not going to be that kind of review. I found this player unexpectedly interesting, and there’s a lot to talk about beyond its lack of obesity.

When Apple updates other iPod models, the change is usually about two things: better features (such as the bigger iPods’ addition of video) and slicker industrial design (such as the Nano’s evolution from a blocky plastic device to a gracefully curved metal one). The Shuffle is fundamentally different–it’s on a track of ever-decreasing size and ever-increasing minimalism. What Apple would like, I think, is for the Shuffle to be invisible. Not in the ha-ha manner of SNL’s iPod Invisa, but in the sense that the music matters and the gadget itself is sort of beside the point. The new version takes a major leap in that direction, and not just because Apple shrunk its size by almost fifty percent.

Continue reading this story…

More About Microsoft’s Kumo Search Engine, Sort of

LiveSide.net has a screenshot of the home page of “Kumo,” the next-generation Microsoft search engine which is currently in internal use at the company, and which may or may not be called Kumo when it goes public. It looks a lot like the current Live Search home page, which is dominated by a big striking photograph with hotspots that take you to search results relating to the image. The LiveSide image jibes with my only personal exposure to Kumo, which happened last week when I met with a Microsoft exec who had it loaded up in his browser; there, too, it had the Live Search-style photo teaser.

We still don’t know much about Kumo, though–and with search engines even more than most things in the world of tech, it’s hard to form even preliminary impressions without a fair amount of hands-on time. The bottom line with Kumo or any other would-be Googlekiller will ultimately be whether it helps you find relevant information more quickly than Google. Which would require that it make dramatic strides over Live Search, which usually leaves me less than completely satisfied when I use it. (I’m willing to confront the possibility that I’m so comfortable with Google that its style of results, and my understanding of how to form queries that will get me what I want, influence my impression of other search engines–but even taking that into account, Live Search results usually feel less far smart and refined than Google ones. To me, at least.)

Can we all agree that everyone involved would be best served if the weird tango between Microsoft and Yahoo ended soon–either with a breakup or with marriage? Kumo may be a Japanese word for cloud, but until the question of whether Microsoft and Yahoo will work together on search is resolved, there’s a little gloomy raincloud lurking above Microsoft’s homegrown search efforts, such as Kumo. Or whatever it ends up being called.

The Wii’s Identity Crisis

For over two years, the Wii was regarded as a family system, and in many ways, it still is, with Wii Sports, Wii Fit and Mario Kart commanding most of the revolutionary console’s popularity. But a sudden turn of events hint of changes on the horizon.

This week’s release of Madworld — a high-profile and thoroughly blood-soaked affair — drew the ire of the National Institute on Media and the Family. The game’s main character uses a chainsaw and a variety of deadly environmental objects to maim his foes, earning more points for more gruesome kills. Here’s a statement from the watchdog group:

“In the past, the Wii has successfully sold itself as being the gaming console for the entire family and a way to bring family-game nights back into people’s living rooms. Unfortunately, Nintendo opened its doors to the violent video game genre. The National Institute on Media and the Family hopes that Nintendo does not lose sight of its initial audience and continues to offer quality, family-friendly games.”

I don’t think Nintendo will abandon the family audience — it’s too big of a market to lose, for one thing — but there are signs that the Wii is moving away from its image as a console strictly for kids, parents and the elderly.

Continue reading this story…

Facebook Users About to Get Vanity URLs

With Facebook increasingly more popular these days, and more and more social networking users ditching their MySpace profiles for the service, its no surprise that Facebook is beginning to borrow some of its competitors conveniences. One of them is the vanity URL.

Simply put, it’s so much easier to give someone your MySpace URL. I jumped on that bandwagon real early, so mine is nice and short: http://www.myspace.com/edoz. However, on Facebook, there’s no way I’d remember this doozy: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1014145619.

Up until recently, you had to be a band or group in order to get one of those nifty vanity URLs on Facebook. Well, that policy appears ready to change. A few folks, including Demi Moore, Aston Kutcher, and now Digg’s Kevin Rose have their own vanity URLs on Facebook.

When will this happen? It’s not quite clear just yet. But with it beginning for those social media elites already, its only a matter of time before us commonfolk get the same opportunity.

Twenty Years Ago Today, the Idea That Became the Web Was Born

Over at Cnet, Charles Cooper has a nice post on a meaningful historical tidbit: Twenty years ago today, Tim Berners-Lee, who was working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research near Geneva, Switzerland, submitted a proposal to his bosses on how the organization could do a better job of keeping track of information. It involved publishing documents online with links to tie everything together, and it was the idea which eventually turned into the World Wide Web.

If you were trying to determine the twentieth anniversary of the Web, you probably wouldn’t decide it was today. (Another possibility would be August 6th, 2011–the day that marks two decades since Berners-Lee’s first Web site went live on the Internet.)  But his 1989 memo remains good reading, and the fact that his plan to change how CERN used information turned out to change how the world uses information is as inspiring as stories about technology get.

I’m about to board an airplane to go to the South by Southwest Conference in Austin, and have been brooding about the fact that I’ll be deprived of the Web for just a few hours while we’re in flight. It’s startling to remember that something as essential as the Web is so new–and that the guy who came up with it is not only still with us but very much involved in shaping its future.

Thanks, Sir Tim! I feel like I owe you my career–because if there weren’t a Web, there sure wouldn’t be a Technologizer…

5Words for March 13th, 2009

Happy Friday the thirteenth, everybody!

Mozilla releases new Firefox beta.

AOL gets CEO from Google.

StumbleUpon preps a URL shortener.

Cybercriminals get down to business.

Unlimited-VoIP-and-data carrier.

New iPod Shuffle teardown photos.

A little more Pre news.

An iPhone 3.0 wish list.

Poor Woz fractures his foot.

Regimes that repress the Internet.

Want to Play Resident Evil 5′s Versus Mode? It’ll Cost You.

We’re hours away from the midnight launch of Capcom’s latest blockbuster, Resident Evil 5, and there’s already news about downloadable content coming in a few weeks. And it will cost an extra $5.

This isn’t not your typical bonus level pack, either. The new content is a Versus mode, in which several players compete against each other. Paid downloadables have been around for a while now, but this is the first time I’ve seen a standard gameplay mode excluded from the disc and sold for an additional cost. I fear that other publishers will follow suit, leaving more significant content for separate purchase while keeping the initial game’s price tag intact.

With all kinds of post-release content, there’s always a question of “too soon.” How long after a game’s release is it appropriate to offer new material? The question is even more pertinent in this instance, because it regards a mode of play that’s usually part of the whole package.

Now, it’s possible that Capcom simply didn’t have the Versus mode ready in time and excluded it from the disc to meet scheduled ship dates, but it could have been offered for free if that was the case. Or perhaps there’s a mindset that not all players are interested in Versus mode, so it isn’t worth including as a standard feature. But that would suggest an a la carte approach to gaming, and that’s not happening here. Consumers aren’t saving any money by skipping the extra mode, they’re simply getting a raw deal.

Introducing the iPez Shuffle!

I’m not sure if there are any deep psychological insights to be gained, but one interesting thing about Apple’s tiny new iPod Shuffle is that it reminds different people of different other tiny things. USA Today’s Ed Baig compared it to a tie clasp. For David Pogue of the New York Times, it evoked Trident gum.

And me? The moment I saw it in person, I thought to myself, Pez. The player’s size and dimensions brought to mind a wrapped roll of Pez candy, the kind you insert into a Pez dispenser. So I did a comparison. The Shuffle is a tad wider than a Pez packet, but its depth is about the same, and it’s quite a bit shorter. And that’s including the Shuffle’s built-in clip.

Continue reading this story…

Microsoft Does Its Own Browser Benchmarking

In recent months, the hottest topic in the world of Web browsing has been speed. Apple says its beta version of Safari 4 is the world’s fastest browser. The first thing Google tells you about Chrome is that it’s “faster.” Better performance is a key feature in Mozilla’s upcoming Firefox 3.5. Opera says that its alpha of Opera 10 is “30% faster.”

And Microsoft? Well, mostly it’s had to contend with coverage like this story that reports that Safari is forty-two times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and six times faster than IE 8.

Today, the company is fighting back. It’s done its own speed benchmarks and has created a video about them and published a white paper about browser benchmarking. Here’s a stunner: It’s not concluding that IE is a horribly slow browser. In fact, it says that Internet Explorer 8 is not only competitive, but loads many of the world’s most popular Web sites faster than Firefox 3.0 or Chrome 1.0. I met with IE general manager Dean Hachamovitch last week, and he made the same claim.

Continue reading this story…

iPhone News Next Week

My friend Tom Krazit of Cnet is reporting that Apple is sending out invitations today to an event in Cupertino on March 17th to announce version 3.0 of the iPhone software. Even if the news doesn’t involve any specifics on new iPhone models–it still seems reasonable to expect some sort of upgrade around June or July–it’ll be the first concrete information the company has released on what’s next for its phone. And in may ways, most of what makes the iPhone the iPhone springs from its software, not the hardware that contains it.

More details next Tuesday…

5Words for March 12th, 2009

Today’s big news: Google Voice:

David Pogue reviews Google Voice.

Google Voice: privacy is over?

Will Google Voice change telecommunications?

March Madness on your iPhone.

Hulu adds social networking features.

Sirius XM plans iPhone application.

Third-party iPhone Shuffle earbuds.

Microsoft figures out netbook market.

Mozilla preps for Chrome era.

Microsoft speed tests: IE’s OK

First fix for Windows 7 glitch.

Apple patents Wii-like controller.

Dell’s multitouch desktop: Japan only!

U2: goodbye Apple, hello BlackBerry.

Coming soon: bigger Web ads.

Facebook’s New Face: It’s Twittertastic!

If you can’t buy ‘em, become ‘em. That seems to be the philosophy behind the new Facebook home page which the company is in the process of rolling out over the next few days. Facebook may have failed to acquire Twitter, but it’s reinvented itself to look an awful lot like Twitter–on the surface, at least–with a “What’s on your mind?” box and a feed that’s dominated by your friends’ statuses, without all the detail of their other activities around Facebook:

Like just about everybody else who’s ever competed with Twitter, Facebook does more. You can embed images, videos, and links; there’s true threaded commenting; you can organize your friends into groups (family members and/or high school buddies, say) and then filter the feed to view any subset. And all the very un-Twitterlike richness of Facebook is still there–the inbox, the groups, the apps, the photo sharing, and lots more.

We know by now that simply being fancier than Twitter is not a recipe for beating Twitter: If it were, Pownce would be eating Twitter’s lunch rather than being…defunct. But Facebook has multiple assets that most Twitterkillers don’t: an existing gigantic and loyal user base, plenty of technical resources, and more smart, agile minds than most tech companies. I don’t see anyone who loves Twitter dumping it in favor of the new Facebook, but the new look does fold some of what’s good about Twitter into the Facebook mix.

But the new more Twitterlike incarnation of Facebook got me thinking: In some ways, the most striking difference between Facebook and Twitter has nothing to do with user interfaces or the fact that Twitter has very few features and Facebook is bursting at the seams with them. It’s that Twitter places no limitations on who I can interact with, and Facebook is still very much about limiting interactions. (I can’t be friends with someone until we both agree to the relationship, and there are tons of precise options for cutting back on what information about me my friends can see.)

With Twitter, I feel like I’m interacting with the world–or at least a few million folks who inhabit it. And I kind of like the bustling, fast-moving anything-can-happen feel. Facebook, by contrast, is a quieter, more mundane, more predictable place. Generally speaking, I know who I’ll run into there.

So here’s an unanswered question: Will Facebook ever open up more, in the sense of encouraging looser, more far-flung interaction between members, whether they’ve friended each other or not?

Facebook does have public profiles (here’s mine). But what I wish it had was an option to let anyone and everyone see everything I do on Facebook–with the exception of private messages–even if they’re not Facebook members. That’s the default option on Twitter, and it works for me…

Windows 7: The State of the Beta

Ever since Microsoft started to share early versions of Windows 7 with the world last October, the response has been, for the most part, pretty darn enthusiastic. At least when it comes to folks who blog, write for magazines, and otherwise have soapboxes to speak from. But vast quantities of civilian Windows users–including quite a few Technologizer community members–downloaded and installed the Windows 7 beta during the time it was available. I wanted to give more of these savvy laypeople a chance to share their experiences and impressions. So a couple of weeks ago, we launched a survey (using PollDaddy’s excellent service) to let them speak out. And the results are in.

In the end, they aren’t startling: Most of our survey respondents like what they’ve seen of Windows 7 so far. They reported surprisingly few technical problems considering it’s a beta, and most of them liked most of the OS’s new and improved features. Really liked them, in many cases

Background/disclaimers: A little over 200 people took the survey. We didn’t screen them or capture demographic info. You might argue that folks who are interested enough in Windows 7 to go through the trouble of installing it now would be more predisposed to like it than the teeming masses who won’t give it any thought until it ships. You might also point out that it’s possible that the beta makes a better impression than the final version will, once it’s installed on shipping PCs and in some cases larded up with unnecessaryware . You may well be right. But that’s okay: The goal of this survey is to see what people who have actually used the OS in its first public form think. And hey, once Windows 7 does ship, we can field another survey. Probably will, in fact.

The report that follows is divided into four parts; here are links to all of them in case you feel like skipping ahead…

Part one: The Basics: Usage, Setup, Glitches

Part two: Feature-by-Feature Feedback

Part three: Windows 7 vs. the Competition

Part four: The Bottom Line and Verbatim Feedback

Continue reading this story…

GrandCentral: It Lives!

Ever since it was acquired by Google back in mid-2007, the interesting and useful phone service GrandCentral has been in the news for only two reasons: service glitches and skepticism over whether the service, which has been in closed, largely unchanging beta since the acquisition, would ever show any signs of life. Tonight, at long last, there’s good news: GrandCentral is relaunching tomorrow, under a new name that sounds like it was probably inevitable: Google Voice.

Over at TechCrunch, Leena Rao has posted an upbeat preview of the new version, reporting that Google Voice will keep existing GrandCentral features such as the ability to ring all your phones at once so you never miss a call you want to take, and to screen your calls so you never take a call you want to miss. It will also add the ability to receive text messages, and a text-to-speech feature that lets you get your voicemail as e-mail.

Leena also talks about Google Voice providing cheap international calls and conference calls, which suggests that it’s becoming a service for outgoing calls as well as incoming ones, at least to some degree. Currently, a GrandCentral number is really only half a phone number, since it’s for incoming calls only–and there are usability issues in the fact that when you make outgoing calls, the folks you call see your “real” phone number and may add it to their address books, thereby making it hard to train them to call you on your more powerful GrandCentral number.

The TechCrunch report says that a beta for current GrandCentral users launches tomorrow. (I’ll jump on it as soon as it’s available and let you know what I think–if you’ve ever called me at Technologizer’s business number, you’ve dialed my GrandCentral number.) The beta will be closed at first, but Google will begin to let more people in during the coming weeks.