AT&T: Palm’s Pre Stinks Because…

PreCentral has what appears to be an internal AT&T document designed to prep staffers on how to compare the iPhone 3G with Palm’s upcoming Pre. It’s not completely stunning that it tends to accentuate the negative when it comes to the Pre, and the positive when it comes to the iPhone:

As unfair comparisons go, this one isn’t a complete outrage: The Pre’s lack of international capability and a robust, well-developed platform for distributing applications and content are significant limitations. But in case you didn’t know, an AT&T salesperson will never be the most reliable source of advice on how an AT&T phone compares to one which, like the Pre, will be sold only through Sprint.

Meanwhile, I’m sure that Sprint is prepping its own Pre/iPhone 3G head-to-head that point out a bunch of things about the Pre which AT&T forgot to mention: Its more compact size, its ability to multitask applications, integration with Facebook and other social networks, a better camera, and the Sprint network’s reputation for reliability. (Of course, by summertime it’s possible–likely?–that the Pre will be competing against a new iPhone with a better camera and a form factor that’s at least slightly different.)

When the Pre and the new iPhone arrive, I’m thoroughly looking forward to the battle between them. And I’m guessing that the real bottom line may be one that neither AT&T nr Sprint will admit: That they’re both going to be terrific phones that differ enough in key ways that neither is the clear winner for everybody. I can’t wait to judge ‘em for myself…

The New Flavor of MMOs: Shooters

Traditionally, Massive Multiplayer Online games are not the avenue for testing one’s reflexes.

World of Warcraft, the quintessential MMO, follows the typical formula of managing health and attack skills through a system of statistics. EverQuest does the same. Even EVE Online, which abandons the typical fantasy setting in favor of Sci-Fi, is a game of resource management and overarching strategy.

As you’d expect, the Halo and Call of Duty crowd (e.g., me) are turned off. Massive multiplayer shooters exist, but only on the fringes of MMO culture, where your average shoot-em-up fan isn’t likely to find them.

MTV Multiplayer ran a nice round-up today on five games that are trying to change the status quo: APB, The Agency, Combat Arms, CrimeCraft and Earthrise. Reporter Tracey John asked one developer from each game to basically justify what they’re doing. I won’t summarize each of developers’ elevator pitches here; the important takeaway is that a wave of MMO shooters will hit over the next few years, aimed at the set that thinks World of Warcraft is for squares.

It’s funny, however, that none of the pitches sound much different from one another. They all claim the same predictable formula — take straightforward shooter, add community features and character building, stir — and I was surprised to hear very little about the games themselves. After all, once you strip away all the MMO features, you still need combat that’s good enough to draw people in. Leveling up only becomes addictive after the initial hook. Avoiding the stigma of MMOs with convoluted terms like “persistent world next-gen shooter” only goes so far.

I don’t want to pre-judge these games, but I’m worried that they’ll rely too heavily on community features instead of focusing on the actual act of play. To truly avoid lure shooter fans toward MMOs, it should be the other way around.

Windows 8 is in the Works. But What Will It Be?

ZDNet’s Mary-Jo Foley notes that Microsoft is hiring developers to work on the successor to Windows 7, which she guesses might ship in 2010. As Mary-Jo says, some folks have talked about the possibility of Windows 7 being the last Windows that’s a piece of software rather than a service. I have no doubt that Microsoft will be shipping new versions of Windows for years to come–even if the world moves sharply to the Web and old-fashioned operating systems look…well, really old fashioned. But I see at least five routes that Microsoft could take with Windows 8, or whatever it’ll end up being called:

1) Evolutionary improvement on Windows 7 (much as Windows 7 promises to be an evolutionary improvement on Vista);

2) A major upgrade with big interface changes that’s still recognizably a traditional OS (think Windows 3.0 or Windows 95);

3) A major upgrade that blurs the line between traditional OS and Web service in a way that Windows 7 doesn’t;

4) A back-to-basics OS that’s focused lwon providing robust plumbing for applications that are largely Web-based (I think of this as the Return of DOS);

5) Some combination of the above scenarios.

Which would make the most sense? Well, route #1 might be the most immediately useful, and route #3 could do the most to make Windows relevant five, ten, and fifteen years from now. And I persist in thinking that we’ll see all operating systems–including OS X and Linux, too–focus more on the unglamorous stuff of route #4 and less on flashy signature features and bundled applications. There are hints of this approach in Windows 7, and Apple’s Snow Leopard looks like it’ll follow it as well.

Anyhow, we know nearly everything there is to know about Windows 7 at this point except for final bullet points like its ship date and price. Windows 8, however, is a blank piece of canvas. What do you think it’ll be like? More important, what do you want it to be like?

iPhone App Store Policies: Broken!

The latest evidence: Even though good-taste guidelines put limitations on use of swear words, a game that involves shaking a baby to death is permissible. [UPDATE: The app is gone from the App Store. Thank heavens.]

My Most Memorable Computer Was…

Got a moment to get all nostalgic over old electronic equipment? Over on Twitter–where I’m @harrymccracken and a feed of all Technologizer stories is available at @technologizer–I tweeted thusly:

More than three dozen folks responded. Here’s the count of memorable computers by brand–two companies dominated:

Apple: 9

Commodore: 8 (no C64s, though–surprising!)

Homebuilt: 4

Atari: 3

IBM: 3

Sinclair: 2

Toshiba: 2

Radio Shack: 1 (hey, where were all the Tandy fanatics?)

Amstrad: 1

Compaq: 1

IMSAI: 1 (archaic!)

NeXT: 1 (classy!)

Osborne: 1

Packard Bell: 1

After the jump are all thirty-eight tweets (and Facebook messages) I got. If you weren’t one of the respondents, please chime in via comments… Continue reading this story…

Oprah Driving New Traffic to Twitter

Hitwise has released data that shows Oprah’s debut on Twitter has worked wonders to increase its overall traffic. While the site did see a bump with the CNN/Aston Kutcher race to a million followers, the real traffic increase occurred after Oprah joined the fray.

(For what it’s worth, Oprah is already at some 486,000 followers. I’m willing to be within a month or so she’ll blow by CNN and Aston without even looking back.)

Traffic on the 17th, the day of Oprah’s Twitter show and her first tweets, was up 43 percent from the previous week. Digging deeper, traffic analysis indicated 37 percent of visitors were new to the site, about five points higher than average.

5Words for April 22nd, 2009

Here’s what’s up this morning:

How the CIA uses spyware.

iSuppli tears down the Kindle.

Embedded broadband for new Macs?

Crooks want old Nokia phone.

Firefox fixes twelve security holes.

New OLPC uses Via CPU.

Pleo maker files for bankruptcy.

A Blu-Ray player for cars.

Oprah fans pour onto Twitter.

Second Life’ red-light districts.

Facebook 1.5 for BlackBerry: A More Integrated Experience

I got real excited when I heard about the new Facebook application 1.5 for BlackBerry phones, thinking it would provide the same functionality as is delivered on my iPod Touch or my wife’s iPhone. Question is, does it even come close to the iPhone interface, or does it leverage the strength of the BlackBerry?

I instantly appreciated the following improvements on my BlackBerry Bold:

• Viewing comments on someone’s status.  Hard to imagine, but no, you couldn’t do that before on a BlackBerry.
• Commenting on a status update and commenting on those comments.
• Connecting your Facebook contacts to your BlackBerry’s contacts.  Here is where it gets really interesting.  While in Facebook 1.5, you choose a contact and it gives you the option choose to “Connect to BlackBerry Contact”.  You then get the chance to “Select Contact” from your BlackBerry address or create a “New Contact”.  If the person already in your BlackBerry address book it marks that contact as a Facebook contact then places the avatar picture in the BlackBerry address book.  If it’s a new contact and you choose “New Contact”, it creates a new one in the BlackBerry address book.  In either case, if you don’t have the person’s phone number, it will send a message asking them for it.
• Connecting your Facebook messages to the BlackBerry’s inbox. Message integration is easy to explain… you see Facebook messages in the BlackBerry’s universal inbox with a Facebook icon to let you know it’s from Facebook.  You can also go into BlackBerry messages and select “Facebook”, to send a message over FaceBook.  I can also go into my BlackBerry address book, choose a friend on FaceBook, then either send that person a message, write on his or her wall, or poke him or her.  This leverages the BlackBerry’s universal inbox and address book.
• Connecting your FaceBook calendar to BlackBerry’s.  I did not try out the calendar function as I don’t use that in Facebook.  I did go into the BlackBerry calendar and it would allow me to pick “Send using FaceBook.”

So the new FaceBook 1.5 BlackBerry application does leverage BlackBerry’s strengths.  This is impressive to me as I believe for my uses, BlackBerry has a superior universal inbox, calendar, and address book.  But I still want some of the items available on the iPhone, such as the application bar and the ability to easily view photos, links,  the live feed, notes, and other apps.  I can’t have it all!

If you have a BlackBerry and want to give the new Facebook a spin, try it out here. Here are a few images of it in action:

Google Profiles: Still Not That Interesting. Yet.

I like to think I’m reasonably well-informed about Google’s offerings, but if I’d ever heard of Google Profiles–which have been around since 2007–I’d forgotten about them. Which was understandable enough, since they were merely brief personal bios that you could associate with a few Google services such as Reader.

Today, Google Profiles got considerably more important: The company is revealing them in search results, and it’s encouraging users to fill them out by running text ads for them when you search for names. I just filled out the basics of my profile, which you’ll find here.

Google says it’s doing this to give all of us more control over what other people see when they Google for our names. Interestingly, though, it’s intentionally suppressing Google Profiles in results just as much as it can without bumping them off the first page of results altogether: They appear at the bottom of the page. You get up to four of them (if there are enough people who match the name who have filled out Google Profiles) along with links to do a search for the name on MySpace, Facebook, Classmates, and LinkedIn,

The placement of Google Profiles in results–findable if you know where to look, but not too prominent–is presumably to prevent anyone from accusing Google of favoring its own service over LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, personal blogs, professional sites, and all the other places on the Web where people tell the world about themselves. Which makes sense, since Google Profiles are so basic that they’re only going to be the profile of record for people who haven’t done any real social networking at all.

But it also means that having a Google Profile doesn’t give you much control over what people will find when they Google for your name. If the first three results are currently a news story falsely accusing you of stealing cheese, a YouTube video of you pretending to play with a light saber, and a diatribe by someone you annoyed in preschool, they’ll all still be there no matter how self-laudatory your Google Profile is. And even if you use the profile to defend yourself, Google users will only see it if they notice it at the bottom of the page and click through.

Google Profiles also let you set up a vanity URL for your profile (mine’s at http://www.google.com/profiles/harrymccracken). Over at Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan has a typically exhaustive and insightful look at Google Profile’s new features, in which he points out that if your Google Account is associated with a Gmail account–which is usually the case–your profile’s vanity URL will disclose your Gmail address. For instance, I’m harrymccracken-at-gmail-com on Gmail. I don’t mind if you know that–hey, it’s kind of obvious–but if you’re careful about disclosing your e-mail address you might want to think before you use Google Profiles.

If the definition of a social network involves the ability to associate yourself with friends, family, colleagues, and other people you’re connected to, Google Profiles doesn’t amount to a social network, even in its new, more high-profile form: There’s no way for me to use my profile to friend anyone else who has a profile. Which is kind of strange considering that friending exists elsehwhere in the Googleverse–for instance, you can set up a list of friends in Google Reader, but it doesn’t travel over to your profile. And as far as I can tell, Google Friend Connect, which lets you add social-networking features to any site, has nothing whatsoever to do with Google Profiles.

In Orkut, Google created one of the original social networks, but it turned out to be a big hit in only two countries: Brazil and India. You gotta wonder if Google ever looks at Facebook or Twitter and gets wistful about what might have been. Now that Google Profiles are easy to find–at least kind of–I’d be startled if the company didn’t add more features over time that leave them feeling less like disconnected, static biographies and more like–I hate this term, but it fits here–a social graph.

Amazon Video on Demand Goes HD

In multiple ways, Amazon.com has been girding itself to become the principal rival to Apple’s iTunes Store, with an impressive DRM-free music download service and movie and TV shows that are available on PCs, Macs, TiVos, Roku’s cool video player, Sony Bravia TVs, and elsewhere. The most notable omission to date has been a biggie: There hasn’t been any HD content. But as we speak, Amazon is rolling out HD offerings at its Video on Demand site and through the various hardware devices that support its video service. (I just checked out my TiVo, which magically has Amazon HD TV shows and movies where none existed before.)

Amazon says there are 500 movies and TV shows total; as usual with HD, it includes some recent high-profile stuff but not everything, along with some older releases and oddities. Movies cost $3.99-$4.99 to rent; TV shows are $2.99 to purchase. For some reason, PC and Mac viewing is available only for TV episodes; you can only watch movies on hardware devices such as TiVo and Roku boxes, which also provide access to TV programs.

Another bit of related news today: Panasonic TV sets with the Viera Cast service, which until now has provided mainly an uninspiring selection of services such as YouTube and Picasa photo albums, will be able to stream Amazon video in both its standard-def and high-def incarnations. That should instantly make Viera Cast a whole lot more appealing.

More thoughts once I’ve had the chance to consume some HD content. Meanwhile, here’s an screengrab of what the HD-ordering system looks like Roku:

[UPDATE: My TiVo went from giving me access to Amazon HD to telling me that the Amazon service is temporarily unavailable for "scheduled maintenance." And the Roku box I'm using isn't showing HD titles on its menus, though the episode of The Office in HD that I bought at Amazon is available for playback. I'll try again later...]

Keeping Your Mac Malware Free

(Ed: Sorry we’re a day late this week!)

My post last week on Mac botnets created quite a stir here on the site. The assertion I made (to the consternation of some) was that it was time for the Mac community to swallow their pride and download and employ anti-malware applications. While several of our readers vocally disagree, i continue to hold this position. Simply put, there are too many valid reasons to protect ourselves.

Let me be perfectly clear that I do believe that Macs will never become as malware and virus-ridden as our PC counterparts. It is all but a fact that the Mac OS operating system has been built to a higher degree of security than Windows has only recently begun to even come close to matching.

At the same time, Mac is gaining increasing popularity. Security experts have often argued that it is not only Apple’s more secure code base that immunizes it from attack, but also its small market share. Think about it: if you were writing a virus that was aiming for worldwide attention, which platform would you pick? With Apple’s increasing user base, Macs will become an ever more popular target.

Continue reading this story…

Resolved: Netbooks are Notebooks. Period.

Netbooks aren’t just changing the world’s perceptions of how powerful a computer must be to be useful–they’re also having a major impact on Microsoft’s business model. They’re one reason why Windows XP refuses to die–even though the Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft makes less than $15 per copy of XP installed on a netbook, versus $50 to $60 for a copy of Windows Vista.

Things will only get more complicated when Windows 7 arrives. It’s designed to do what Windows Vista can’t: perform reasonably well on a modestly-equipped netbook. Microsoft surely hopes that its arrival will help nudge XP into overdue, well-earned retirement. But netbook manufacturers can’t make economic sense of putting a $50 copy of Windows 7 onto a $300 netbook. And Microsoft, understandably, has no desire to sell them a $15 copy of full-blown Windows 7, thereby destroying its ability to sell a $50 one for use on fancier, pricier computers.

Enter Windows 7 Starter Edition, the version that Microsoft plans to pitch for use on low-cost netbooks. It’s got one limitation, but it’s a doozy: It only runs three applications at a time. Which sounds like it would make it useful only for clueless newbies and other folks whose needs are really, really undemanding.

Over at ZDNet, Ed Bott has a revealing post up based on having spent three weeks using Starter Edition, an experience that left him relatively positive about the product. He points out that there are multiple exceptions to the three-app limit: Windows Explorer windows, Gadgets, anti-virus apps that run as separate services, Control Panel utilities, and other items don’t count. Neither do multiple windows and multiple tabs opened up from a single application, such as your Web browser. The bottom line: Depending on what the items in question are, you may be able to have a lot more than three of them open without running into a message telling you that you must save your work and close an app before you can launch another one.

“In short, when I used this system as a netbook, it worked just fine,” Ed writes. “On a netbook, most of the tasks you’re likely to tackle are going to take place in a browser window anyway…If I tried to use this system as a conventional notebook, running multiple Microsoft Office or OpenOffice aps, playing music in iTunes or Windows Media Player, and using third-party IM programs, I would probably be incredibly frustrated with the limitations of Starter Edition.”

Which brings up an interesting question: Are netbooks really netbooks? By which I mean, are they designed primarily to let you use Web-based apps, and are they a distinct class of computer from traditional notebooks?

As of this very moment, you can make the case that the answer to both questions is yes. I’m thinking that the distinctions are going to vanish rapidly, though. A netbook is just a notebook that happens to be small and cheap–and the definitions of both “small” and “cheap” are blurring. Dell, for instance, sells a Mini netbook with a not-tiny 12-inch screen. And the existence of cheap netbooks is driving down the cost of notebooks, period: Best Buy, for instance, already sells multiple traditional notebooks in the netbook-like neighborhood of $400 or so. I don’t think every notebook will look like today’s netbooks, but I think the trend will be towards smaller, lighter models (especially as features like optical drives go away) that cost less than a thousand bucks.

Do people use netbooks mostly for Web-based apps? I may try to find out via a survey, but for the moment I can speak only for myself: I do a lot of Web stuff on my Asus Eee PC 1000HE, but I also use old-fashioned software–Web browsers, Skype, Paint.NET, Adobe Acrobat, and more. I suspect I’d run afoul of Windows 7 Starter Edition’s limitations…well, not constantly, but frequently. Then again, I’d be willing to pay for an upgrade to a version of Windows 7 without the three-app limit–and I’m already curious about how much such an upgrade might cost.

All of which leaves me thinking that Microsoft is still in a tough spot that will only get tougher over time: As notebooks get dirt cheap, it’s going to be incredibly difficult for it to maintain the profit margins that Windows has enjoyed for the past couple of decades. And if it doesn’t come up with a low-cost version of Windows that a reasonable person won’t find to be unreasonably crippled, it gives Linux a great big opportunity to grab the market share that so far has eluded it.

Of course, anything anyone says right now about Windows 7 Starter Edition the future of netbooks is speculation. When Windows 7 ships in a few months–on netbooks that will deliver more power at a given price point than today’s models–we’ll get to see what real people think about all this.

The Game Boy Turns Twenty

It was twenty years ago today that Nintendo released the Game Boy handheld in Japan. The recent rash of publicity for the anniversary has me feeling nostalgic for my Game Boy, which I bought at the going-out-of-business sale at a location of one-time Toys R Us rival Child World; I’m pretty sure I have it boxed up in storage somewhere.

We celebrated the Game Boy’s special day a bit early with Benj Edwards’ gallery of Game Boy Oddities–some of which are really odd–and if you haven’t seen it yet, I recommend taking a gander. Benj is marking the anniversary over at Ars Technica with a list of six reasons the Game Boy is #1, and he performed a commemorative Game Boy teardown at PC World a couple of weeks ago.

5Words for April 21st, 2009

It’s sweltering in San Francisco…

Windows 7 Starter Edition’s okay.

iPhone to get voice control?

More on Microsoft’s Europe case.

Sharp’s touchpad has an LCD.

Twitter’s limit on daily following.

Are pirates big music buyers?

A real-time ray-tracing card.

Belkin iPod charger: almost invisible.

AT&T Plans Speed Bump for 3G

It might not yet have its network issues straightened out, but its moving forward anyway with plans to boost speeds from 3.6MBps to 7.2 MBps. This would likely be a final speed boost before the company moves to evolved 3G and its selected 4G technology, LTE.

Most devices already have the capability to be able to handle the current bandwidth specs. It has begun testing devices on its two 7.2MBps-capable test networks on track to debut the higher speeds in the near future. While the current 3G technologies could theoretically support speeds up to 14.4MBps, AT&T says those higher speeds have been fraught with technical glitches.

Thus, it plans to jump right to HSPA+, which would mean the next jump would take data speeds to 21MBps. With LTE’s commercial rollout expected to happen in 2011, this quick ramp up in speed is likely to happen over the next 18 months or so.

With this new data-centric focus, AT&T’s business is also beginning to change ever so slightly. At CTIA, the company in presentations talked about data-only devices that the carrier will begin to offer. It has even begun to mull pay-as-you-go plans, where the user only pays for the amount of data he/she uses.

While better speed is always great, in the end quality of service is more important. I sure hope AT&T puts that before any speed boost because it won’t mean a hill of beans if you can’t get on the network in the first place!

[Hat tip: Telephony Online]

What Does the PSP Want to Be?

Ask Sony for some thoughts on the state of the PSP, and it seems you’ll get a profoundly different answer than that of third-party interests.

In an article titled “Sony’s Forgotten Console,” Edge did a bit of quote gathering on what’s wrong and right with the handheld, and though the authors don’t explicitly point this out, it seems there’s an identity crisis going on. Sony continues to insist that the PSP provides deep, immersive video games, while at least one publisher believes it’s just too costly and risky to do that sort of thing anymore.

The key quote comes from Sebastien Rubens, a former SCEE employee who left to found Anozor, which makes download-only PSP games. “If you look at the market for PSP developers, it’s impossible to find a publisher that will put money into making games for PSP,” he said.

Rubens adds that the investment to make a full-featured PSP game is too high. Meanwhile, a game like Brain Age for the Nintendo DS performs wonderfully and is dirt-cheap to produce.

I’ve talked about the issue of “hardcore” gaming on the PSP before, but in a different light; this was back when Sony marketing executive Peter Dille called the iPhone “largely diversionary” and said PSP owners want a 20-hour game by comparison. Now it seems that even the game makers are turning against this idea. If Edge’s article is any indication, PSP developers want to make iPhone-like games — cheap to produce and easy to distribute, maybe even free from the old brick-and-mortar model.

Shelf space is competitive, after all, and when it comes to selling those big and fancy games, Sony’s first-party offerings — the ones created by its own studios — are finding the most success. Titles like God of War: Chains of Olympus and Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters perform well, but that’s no consolation to the third-party game makers.

To be fair, this is a crisis that all handheld game makers are facing. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the Nintendo DS, widely regarded as a monumental stretch on the console’s resources, only sold 89,000 copies in its first month. While there are lots of potential explanations — poor marketing, piracy, GTA overload — there’s always the possibility that a lot of people aren’t interested in “hardcore” handheld gaming.

The difference is, Nintendo and Apple aren’t talking about 20-hour games as a major selling point, while Sony remains fixated on it. As the most powerful handheld with the most straightforward design, the PSP has no choice but to play to those strengths. Ironically, that muscle is dragging the PSP down.