The War Against Netbooks Continues?

According to DigiTimes–a Taiwanese publication that’s always interesting, if not always completely reliable–Samsung is planning to release a netbook with an 11.6-inch screen and an Intel Atom CPU. Sounds cool–it’s a popular form factor with a roomier-than-usual display. But DigiTimes also says that Intel has responded by canceling Samsung’s deal for discount pricing on Atom chips, and similarly punished Lenovo when it introduced a 12.1-inch netbook. Samsung may also run into trouble with Microsoft, whose Windows 7 licensing agreements reportedly discourage netbooks with screens that are larger than 10.1 inches.

Netbooks make Intel and Microsoft nervous, since their low prices and high popularity threaten the market for costlier laptops that preserve a more generous profit margin for processors and operating systems. If I worked for either company, I’d be nervous, too. But trying to stifle netbook growth by making it tough for PC manufacturers to release appealing new models puts the companies on a collision course with consumers.

It’s a lousy development for anyone who’d like to buy a netbook with a sizable screen. I think it’s also self-defeating for the companies playing the pricing games, since the history of the PC business shows that consumers nearly always get what they want, even when pricing pressure makes it miserable for companies that make computers, components, and software.

Bottom line: If people want big-screen netbooks–and many surely do–they’re going to happen. I’d love to see the industry admit that and embrace it. Wouldn’t it be a more efficient way to do business than trying to prevent the inevitable?

Will Anyone Ever Abandon Another Browser for IE 8?

Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch has noticed that StatCounter’s browser market share data shows Internet Explorer usage in surprisingly sharp decline. According to StatCounter, IE has lost 11.4 percentage points to Firefox and other browsers in the U.S. since March, leaving it with 54.4 percent of the market. If IE loses another half a point of share, the combined forces of all other browsers–which I like to think of as a virtual Microsoft rival called Anything But Internet Explorer–will exceed IE’s market share. And it’ll be the first time in eons that Microsoft’s browser isn’t used by the majority of Web users.  It’s a remarkable reversal of fortune for a product that was once used by nine out of ten people on the Internet.

Like ZDNet’s Larry Dignan, I’m skeptical about the idea of IE’s usage swooning as strikingly as StatCounter is showing until we get more data from other sources. Still, there’s no question that IE faces fierce competition, and I haven’t seen any market share numbers that show it to be in anything but a period of decline. Every day, fewer people are using IE and more people are choosing something else.

For a very long time, the biggest competition for any new version of Internet Explorer has been…earlier versions of Internet Explorer. Much of Microsoft’s marketing for IE 8 seems to target IE 7 and IE 7 users, such as this list of the top eight reasons to download the browser. But it also addresses people who are at least thinking of using another browser in items such as this comparison of IE 8, Firefox 3.0, and Chrome 2.0. Which, incidentally, maintains that the three browsers are equally customizable–I’d be stunned if there’s anyone outside of Redmond who agrees with that.

If Microsoft merely prevents IE 6 and IE 7 users from jumping to another browser, the browser’s market share will stabilize. (At least among Windows users–if Apple continues to chip away at Windows’ dominance, IE’s overall share will continue to shrink.) But I assume that Microsoft would prefer to not only stop the bleeding but to get IE growing again. The only way that’ll happen is if users of other Windows browsers–Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari–switch to IE in measurable quantities.

What are the chances of that happening? Slim, I think. For Windows users, running anything other than IE represents a conscious decision to use a browser other than the default one their OS came with. Typical users of Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari-for-Windows users all seem to be dedicated fans of their browser of choice. And once you’ve found a browser you’re comfortable with, the incentive to stick with it is high. For all these reasons, any version of IE is going to need to be strikingly different and better to lure expatriates back.

As a wholly unscientific experiment, I asked my Twitter followers if any of them had abandoned another browser to use IE 8. As I write, 26 people have responded. Only two of them had dropped something else to run IE 8.

Is anyone out there a “new” IE user? What do you think it would take for Microsoft to get its browser’s market share creeping upwards again?

RIP CompuServe, at Least Sort of

Folks are noticing that CompuServe Classic–the most direct descendant of the online service that debuted in 1979–discontinued service at the end of last month. (As far as I know, Robert Anthony was the first blogger to pick up on this, and he has written an eloquent elegy.) The sort-of-recent CompuServe 2000 service is soldiering on, and CompuServe remains a cheapo ISP and low-rent Web portal. But if you ever had one of those weird and archaic numeric CompuServe IDs, it’s a sad moment–even though you, like me, probably thought that CompuServe Classic died eons ago.

(My CompuServe ID was 74352,1314–I think. I haven’t used it since 1998 or so, and was always more of a BIX man.)

It’s a pretty ignominious passing for a once mighty service, and it’s not even clear that everyone at CompuServe has noticed–its site still lets you download CompuServe Classic software that’s now apparently useless. After the jump, a few CompuServe ads that date from the era when it was a great big deal.

Continue reading this story…

The Laptop, Circa 1968

In 2009, portability is the default state of affairs with computers, since laptops outsell desktop PCs. But in the 1960s, the typical computer was a room-filling mainframe; minicomputers, which were merely the size of a refrigerator, were the small computers of the day.

Which didn’t mean that folks weren’t craving the concept of mobile computing even back then. I was just rummaging through Google’s invaluable archive of several decades of Computerworld, and came across a short item from March 1968 on carrying cases for the typewriter-like Teletype terminals that were then used to interface with mainframes and minis. Anderson Jacobson sold the cases both separately and as a package with a Teletype pre-installed. (Sadly, the Computerworld story doesn’t say how much you had to pay for one of these portable Teletype systems. Maybe if you had to ask, you couldn’t afford one.)

One model of Teletype weighed a trim 75 pounds in its case; another, was an even more featherweight 65 pounds. The cases offered optional wheels in case you wanted to roll your Teletype along. The gent in the photo below didn’t need the wheels–I wonder if he tried to store his Teletype below the seat in front of him when he traveled by airplane?

Of course, putting a Teletype in a case didn’t really give you access to a mainframe’s mighty computing power anywhere; the Teletype had to be plugged in and connected via a dial-up modem (with an acoustic coupler that attached to your telephone’s handset). What it did was help you move a big, bulky piece of equipment from place to place with a little less difficulty. But the yen to go mobile was there. Wonder how the guy in the photo would have reacted if you’d shown him even the most mundane notebook from 2009?

Bejeweled Blitz Blitzed by Seattle Data Center Fire

Facebook users looking to kill a little time before the Fourth of July fireworks with a quick game of the popular Bejeweled Blitz game were greeted with an error message saying the site was down due to a fire at the data center that hosts the game’s servers.

“There was a major fire at Bejeweled Blitz’s server hosting facility last night. We would like to say that the heat of everybody’s gem swapping burned up the servers, but unfortunately in this case it was an actual fire,” the message from PopCap read on the Bejeweled Blitz’s Facebook page. The company said it was hoping to have things back up and running later tonight.

It doesn’t look like PopCap Games main site was affected by the outage, caused by a fire in an electrical vault at Seattle’s Fisher Plaza. But a number of other sites are suffering, including Bing.com’s travel site, Authorize.net and adhost.com, according to a list compiled by Kyle Mulka. And in a domino-effect progression, other sites had trouble, such as those that use Authorize.net for credit-card processing.

Adhost posted on its site: “Beginning at approximately 11:18 PM on July 2nd and continuing through the present time Fisher Plaza experienced a significant power event that required all power systems including street power, UPS, and Generator power to be completely shut down in Plaza East.”

Amazing that a major hosting provider would have single point of failure in the electrical system. A few hosting data centers I’ve visited featured redundant electrical feeds coming in at opposite ends of the building from different circuits. Having multiple locations for failover would help too, but that option is probably not fiscally feasible for smaller companies.

Some reports say power could be restored by 5pm Pacific Time. If not, go enjoy a BBQ or real fireworks instead of playing Bejeweled Blitz.

PSP Go Could Run Faster

Sony won’t tell you this up front, but it seems the PSP Go will carry a faster processor than the existing PSP-3000.

That’s at least according to FCC filings dug up by Sony Insider. The portable gaming device, which is due in October and will get all of its content through Internet downloads, will include a 480 MHz clock frequency, compared to 333 MHz in the PSP-3000. Sony hasn’t commented on the discovery — enjoying the holiday, perhaps.

Now, this doesn’t mean that the PSP Go will run faster all the time, if at all. The original PSP was bound to 222 MHz until a firmware update unleashed its full potential, Sony Insider notes. We could be looking at a similar situation with the PSP Go, where users would have more power at their disposal down the line.

That’s still an interesting scenario, because it could lead to exclusive games or other content for the new device. Then again, Sony’s Kaz Hirai said at E3 that “the PSP Go will not replace the PSP-3000 or the UMD,” adding that both models would support the same games.

Another possibility would allow the PSP Go to tap a little extra power for the most demanding games, even if they’re designed for both devices. We could also be looking at support for applications (i.e., not video games) that take advantage of the superior hardware.

In any case, the news suggests that the PSP Go and the PSP-3000 aren’t equals, as Sony has worked hard to suggest. More than just a design upgrade with downloads instead of discs, it looks like the PSP Go has a performance advantage as well.

Employee Shot at Va. Apple Store in Apparent Robbery Attempt

DEVELOPING STORY: A employee of Apple Store Clarendon in Arlington, Va. has been shot in what is believed to be an attempted robbery, Washington, DC-based media is reporting. Although the name of the employee is not known, several sources are reporting it was a 26-year-old female who was shot in the shoulder around 10am ET, shortly after the store opened.

Police report that the robber, described as a middle-aged black male with a thin frame and fake beard, rang the back doorbell which the employee answered. When she opened the door, the would-be robber shot her and fled.

The store was closed while police investigated. It is not clear whether the location remains closed at this time.

Porn Still Available on the iPhone

After Apple removed “The Hottest Girls” application from the App Store, you may have thought that porn was gone from the iPhone. Think again: a company called iPorn pointed out today that it’s still in business.

These are the same folks that trotted a horse-drawn carriage in front of the Moscone Center during WWDC, complete with five scantily-clad women to advertise their product. You can bet that Apple was likely none too happy about that.

iPorn is able to stay afloat amid Apple’s likely opposition because it is a web application, which the company does not regulate. It’s one of the pitfalls of the Web Application structure — while it may have allowed Apple to give developers an “in” to the iPhone, it also made it possible for just about anybody to create an app.

It’s apparently a hit — iPorn claims some 45,000 registered users. Social networking tools are available, as well as your typical porn site offerings. So in essence, its everything “The Hottest Girls” was, and more.

The fact that applications like iPorn exist bring into question the possible need for more regulation of these Web Applications. Do these services act much in the same that regular ones do, so that parents can block stuff like this out? Faking your age to gain access to adult websites is pretty easy.

PC Pitstop’s “Top Loved Netbooks”

People are buying scads of the pint-sized laptops known as netbooks these days, but there’s some controversy over whether they’re happy with the machines they get. Here’s some pro-netbook fodder: My friends at PC Pitstop scan millions of Windows PCs as part of their OverDrive online diagnostic and tune-up service, and as they do they ask those PC’s owners some questions about their satisfaction with their machines. And netbooks owners report that they’re quite satisfied with their systems.

Here are new rankings of the top nine netbooks for user satisfaction, as reported in this blog post over at the Pitstop site. The Overall rating is on a scale of one to four stars. Pitstop also asks users whether their PC is slow, and whether it freezes or requires frequent reboots.

(Note: #5 and #6 are lines of netbooks; the rest are specific models.)

Overall satisfaction for most of these models is close to indistinguishable. There does seems to be a pretty close correlation between overall happiness as a netbook owner and whether you find your netbook to be acceptably fast, though–90 percent of MSI Wind U-100 owners who gave feedback didn’t think their laptops were slow, and it got the highest overall ranking. Some of the machines further down the list show more discontent over performance. Virtually half of Eee PC 900 owners say it’s sluggish, for example. But PC Pitstop’s satisfaction ratings for the top 25 notebooks of all types show that it’s common for about 20 percent of owners of a particular model to say it’s slow.

Of course, netbooks are slow compared to standard laptops with beefier CPUs and graphics and more RAM. I think Pitstop’s results show that PC users are smart about calibrating their expectations and applications to the machine they’re using. They know that a netbook isn’t going to handle video editing or 3D gaming with panache, and take that into account when they decide what to run and come to conclusions about how satisfied they are.

(Although truth to tell, I think some people underestimate netbooks’ ability to run demanding applications. I have an Eee PC1000HE that I upgraded to 2GB, and just for laughs, I installed Photoshop CS4 on it. Photoshop is more than adequately fast on it. But it has a user interface that’s too tall to work on the 1000HE’s 600 pixels of vertical resolution–there are OK buttons I can’t click because they run off the screen.)

The MSI Wind U-100, Asus Eee PC 1000HE, and Samsung NC10, by the way, are all among Pitstop’s top 10 for notebooks of all types, suggesting that users don’t see them as unsatisfactory, secondary substitutes for a “real” laptop. They judge them on their own merits, and are happy with ‘em, period.

If you’ve got a netbook, how happy are you with its speed? How happy are you overall?

Critical iPhone SMS Vulnerability Revealed

Yesterday, security researcher Charlie Miller gave Apple a good pantsing at the SyScan conference in Singapore. Miller, who is the author of “The Mac Hacker’s Handbook,” revealed that the iPhone allows remote code installation and execution through SMS, a security hole that Apple is working to patch up.

That means that a hacker could potentially turn the iPhone into a remote tracking device by exploiting its microphone and GPS capability, or do whatever else he or she pleases.

Software that runs devices like the iPhone is complex, and there is always going to be a Charlie Miller who can uncover defects. However, Apple has been sharply criticized for lacking a company wide, holistic approach to secure software development. Vulnerabilities will continue to slip by its engineers, placing iPhone user’s personal information and privacy at risk.

The iPhone 3.0 update contained 46 security patches, but it did not address against the SMS vulnerability that Miller discovered–that fix is on its way (likely to be wrapped into the iPhone 3.1 update).

I expect that this SMS vulnerability is just the tip of the iceberg, and we will continue to see more like it until Apple upgrades its security practices.

Midway To Be Snapped Up By Warner Bros.

A bankruptcy court judge in Delaware has allowed Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment to buy Midway Games, which filed for bankruptcy in February.

Warner Bros. will pay $33 million to acquire the ailing company, Gamespot reports. Popular Midway assets, such as Mortal Kombat, will change hands to Warner Bros. The sale technically still needs to be closed, but with the judge waiving a 10-day waiting provision, the deal is essentially sealed.

Not all of Midway’s property is likely to be spared. Studios in Newcastle and San Diego weren’t included in the acquisition, leaving just 60 days for them to find another buyer, Joystiq reports.

I suppose I’m interested to see what Warner Bros. can do with this seemingly cursed property. Midway hadn’t turned an annual operating profit since 1999, according to a thorough Gamasutra story on the company, and just before the bankruptcy it had a debt of $150 million.

As I said back in February, Midway has for a long time seemed like a company starved for ideas. It’s best remembered for arcade classics, such as NBA Jam and Ms. Pac-Man rather than console blockbusters. Amazingly, there is a ninth Mortal Kombat in the works, and I imagine it’ll at least be profitable development, albeit a stale one. So maybe the deal makes sense from a business perspective, but as a gamer this is a sad end for a once-great gaming company.

Canon’s G10: An SLR in Your Pocket

The stars were in alignment: I needed a small digital camera to stash in my backpack while Judy and I drove 4,000 miles in Utah, North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho; meanwhile, the Canon PR rep was on the horn and asking if I’d try their PowerShot G10, a pocket-size camera. I could have played hard to get (PR people love that), but I’m easy.

I took the G10 along for the three weeks Judy and I spent traveling. I took over 500 shots, and dozens of videos, and was pleased with the results. I was happy with lots of the features and I’d almost like to own the G10. (A few problems; more in a second.)

Continue reading this story…

You Can’t Buy Friends. Can You Buy Twitter Followers? Should You?

Australian marketing company uSocial, which ambitiously (if inaccurately) describes itself as “the world’s premier advertising service,” is offering to find Twitter users new followers for money. $87 will supposedly get you a thousand new followers; $372.75 will get you ten thousand; $3479 will get you an army of 100,000 new fans. The company’s site doesn’t seem to have much in the way of explanation of how it finds followers, but a BBC story on the service says that uSocial identifies Twitter users whose interests seem to line up with that of the uSocial customer in question, then shoots them a message inviting them to follow the customer. It’s up to the prospective follower to decide whether he or she wants to follow or not.

It sounds innocuous in theory, but uSocial’s cheesy Web site doesn’t inspire confidence. Nor does its claim that Twitter followers are worth a dime a month per follower. That’s probably true for some companies that market on Twitter, but it must vary wildly. I’m just short of 10,000 followers myself, and I know I’m not realizing a grand a month from them—even indirectly through ads on Technologizer displayed to people who found the site through Twitter. Which is just fine, since I’m not in it for the dough.

Continue reading this story…

Seriously, Asteroids The Movie?

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the classic 1979 arcade game Asteroids will be made into a movie.

No joke, Universal has picked up the film rights, prevailing in a bidding war against three other studios. Matthew Lopez, whose writing credits include Race to Witch Mountain and Bedtime Stories, will pen the script. Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who produced both Transformers movies and, fittingly, Doom, will be the producer.

Now, I tend to be skeptical when it comes to nostalgia acts — I skipped the 2007 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie on principle — but this idea is truly wacky. We’re of course talking about a video game that had no plot, no characters and really, no reason to be reincarnated in any form. Asteroids is a game whose most interesting development is the occasional appearance of a flying saucer that fires bullets at random angles (so you can bet this movie will have aliens!).

One could argue that Asteroids’ complete lack of substance opens the door to limitless possibilities, but then isn’t this movie just a cheap use of name recognition to cover for generic space opera? Unless Asteroids the movie features an endless battle against free-floating rocks, complete with ruminations on the inevitability of death, I won’t be moved.

Microsoft Discovers, Belatedly, That Vomiting May Offend Customers

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft has pulled the online ad for Internet Explorer that showed a woman puking after viewing her husband’s apparently-disgustingly-pornographic browser history. The Journal quotes a Microsoft spokeswoman as saying that “While much of the feedback to this particular piece of creative was positive, some of our customers found it offensive, so we have removed it.” People offended by a browser commercial involving onscreen vomiting? Imagine that!

Me, I nominated the ad as a strong candidate for the honor of being the worst tech commercial in history. Lots of folks agreed with me; many said they liked it. It would be a boring world if everybody agreed on this stuff.

I assume Microsoft had an inkling that some people might feel…well, queasy…at the sight of the ad before it gave the spot the OK, and decided to run it anyhow. It’s certainly possible to do effective advertising that evokes strong reactions and doesn’t appeal to everybody. But maybe one of the lessons here is that it’s not a great idea to do so for a product with a customer base as huge and diffuse as the world’s most widely-used Web browser. Some products have the luxury of offending people they weren’t trying to cater to in the first place, but IE, by definition, is trying to cater to most everybody. (There’s a reason why you don’t see people retching in ads for, say, gasoline. Or paper towels.)

Of course, conspiracy theorists may wonder whether Microsoft’s game plan all along was to release a revolting ad that appealed to some people, get (ahem) bloggers to write about it, catch flack for it, and then withdraw it…

One more thought on why I didn’t like the ad, and then I promise I’ll stop: I’m not instinctively opposed to gross humor. I might have even liked the basic idea if it had been a scene in a well-directed, funny movie. (Hey, I’m a Monty Python fan.) But as a consumer, I regard advertising as a company attempting to initiate a business transaction with me. And so I react better to ads with a certain level of decorum and respect than ones that try to gross me out. (The bar isn’t that high–some people seem more creeped out by the other, vomitless ads in the series than I was.)

That’s just me; multiple reasonable commenters feel otherwise. But it’s fascinating to see how Microsoft had to get real-world feedback before they figured all this out.

[UPDATE: Peter Kafka of All Things D reports that the IE 8 ads were directed by Bobcat "Shakes the Clown" Goldthwait. That explains a lot right there...]

5Words for Thursday, July 2nd 2009

Nokia, Sony Ericsson unlocked phones.

Google News loses comments feature.

Facebook tweaks its privacy tools.

@microsoft has officially started tweeting.

Zer01′s unlimited voice/data service.

Another obscenely expensive Motorola phone.

Bankrupt Psystar still releasing machines.

Cheap thin laptops: cracking cases.

Apple ackowledges iPhone overheating issue?

Borders UK launches an e-book.