No Google Voice Apps for the iPhone

Google Voice aficionados–of which there are more by the day–were excited to see mobile apps for the service launch for Android and BlackBerry devices. The general consensus: A similar iPhone app must be right around the corner. Not so fast.

The unofficial GV Mobile app written by Sean Kovac has been rejected by Apple or, more likely, AT&T, according to Mashable and Kovac. GV Mobile lets Google Voice account holders dial numbers through the address book or keypad, send SMS messages, retrieve call history data and take calls on a different phone–all functions the Google Voice web site offers. Google too had its official Voice application rejected by Apple, according to TechCrunch.

The problem with Kovac’s app, Apple says, is that this duplicates functionality of the iPhone and therefore is not needed. “Richard Chipman from Apple just called–he told me they’re removing GV Mobile from the App Store due to it duplicating features that the iPhone comes with (Dialer, SMS, etc). He didn’t actually specify which features, although I assume the whole app in general,” Kovac wrote on his blog.

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Tech You Can Wear. If You Dare!

Once upon a time, dressing like a geek meant using a pocket protector and taping the bridge of your glasses. Today, my friends, it can indicate that your shirt keeps you cool with USB-powered fans. Or doubles as a Wi-Fi finder. Or has a built-in spy camera. I’m pleased to announce that JR Raphael is joining Technologizer’s esteemed group of contributors with a look at high-tech clothing and wearable accouterments, from head (sunglasses with flash storage) to toe (Facebook-compatible shoes). There’s some pretty darn nerdy stuff in there, some of which I wouldn’t be caught dead in. But I confess that I’m taken with Timex’s prototype of a disposable translucent timepiece you wear fastened to your fingernail…

View World’s Wildest Wearable Gadgets slideshow.

The World’s Wildest Wearable Gadgets

Welcome to the Future

When Marty McFly donned power-lacing shoes and a self-drying jacket in Back to the Future Part II, geeks everywhere gushed with excitement. Fast-forward 20 years to today, though, and that futuristic fashion is almost a reality. All right, so the auto-lacers aren’t here yet–but they weren’t supposed to debut till 2015. Plenty of other high-tech attire is actually available or under development right now, and you don’t even need a DeLorean to track it down.

Grab your hoverboard and get ready: We’re going on a journey to see the wildest wearable gadgets around. And–it probably goes without saying–where we’re going, we don’t need roads.

Ubisoft Strikes 2 From the Holiday Lineup

If you were hoping to find Splinter Cell: Conviction or Red Steel 2 under the Christmas tree this year, too bad.

Ubisoft said today that both games will be pushed back until the fourth fiscal quarter — corporatespeak for some time between January and March of 2010.

These aren’t small-time games. Conviction is the fifth game in the popular Splinter Cell series, which focuses on steathily hunting down enemies from the shadows. Red Steel 2, a Kill Bill-inspired hack-and-shoot, is a marquis title for the Wii’s MotionPlus, a peripheral that makes motion controls more sensitive and accurate.

When Bioshock 2 was delayed a couple weeks ago, I prayed aloud for the end of the infamous holiday game glut, during which publishers release all their top shelf titles to cash in on shopping season. It’s a strategy that’s worked for years, but it tends to inundate game fans, only to hit them with a drought in the summer.

Things have changed in the last two weeks. Before then, we all knew the industry was deflating, because this year had no Wii Fit, no Grand Theft Auto IV and no Mario Kart Wii to carry everyone along. Console sales have been better, too. But when the NPD finally blamed June’s poor sales on the recession, it was a wake-up call even though everyone knew what was happening.

Now, we have publishers retreating into 2010, and that’s fine with me, because there’s a silver lining: Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot noted that in these summer months, Call of Juarez and Anno met sales expectations, and they ”demonstrate that good products are continuing to sell well.”

Well, duh. If publishers can carry that mentality into 2010, the whole year could be a lot of fun.

(By the way, all’s not lost for holiday gifting. Running through Gamespot’s upcoming release list, I found a dozen games that interested me personally, due for release between mid-September and mid-December. Three games per month is just fine, thanks.)

The Apple Tablet: Some Possibly Answered Questions

About the only thing we know for sure about Apple’s allegedly upcoming tablet computer is that there’s definitely misinformation floating around at the moment. Last week, AppleInsider. Last week, AppleInsider was exceptionally confident that Apple will be shipping its long-awaited tablet computer in the first quarter of next year. This week the Financial Times (in a story co-reported by my very old friend Joe Menn) is confirming that the tablet is due in September of this year. Unless we’re talking two different tablets here, somebody is wrong. (Or everybody–no Apple product is a sure thing until somebody brandishes it onstage at an Apple event.)

Still, chances seem very good that Apple is indeed working on a tablet device, and I’m going to assume for the moment that the FT has it right and the tablet will be here in a few weeks. (In part because venerable and traditional media outlets have a better track record of being right when they declare something to be true, and in part because I’m tired of waiting.)

So I’m choosing this moment to publish what I’m calling a PAQ on the tablet. That stands for Possibly Answered Questions–there are no real answers in this story, just me trying to piece together rumors and semi-educated guesses into something that sounds logical. I’ll try to remember to go back and fact-check all this stuff once if Apple releases a tablet, but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if I get much or most of this wrong.

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Finding Sexual Predators? There’s an App for That.

For ninety-nine cents, iPhone users can download an app called Offender Locator to locate sexual offenders in their vicinity. You might be surprised what you learn, even if you’re not personally worried about sex offenders at the moment.

Offender Locator was reviewed on TechCrunch today. The app has become one of the top ten paid offerings in iPhone store despite the fact that the same information has already been available on the Web for some time.

Offender Locator leverages the iPhone’s built-in GPS to locate local U.S. sex offenders, or alternatively, users can input an address manually. I installed it out of curiosity about how many offenders were listed around me in Manhattan. The GPS function did not work, so I entered in my mother’s address.

Lo and behold, the first result was someone that I knew. It was a neighborhood man who used to idle his car and chat with me at the corner while I waited for the bus to come and take me to my junior high (I had seen him around while I was jogging after school). My mother always told me not to take him up on his offer to “learn how to play pool” at his house, and her instincts were prescient.

With this app, she could have validated her concern, and altered other neighbors about the man’s unusually attentive behavior toward a minor.

My take is that making it easier for a parent or guardian to access information that can protect a child is a good thing–even if a nominal fee is included. It is worth nothing that selling people’s personal information can run afoul of some state laws.

5Words for Monday, June 27th 2009

Apple tablet: Here in September?

Digital liner notes? How exciting.

Still more Orwellian Kindle gripes

AT&T blocking parts of 4chan.

Foxconn under fire over suicide.

Western Digital’s 1TB mobile drive.

A speaker for your pocket.

Netflix recommendation contest: It’s over!

Where’s Toshiba’s flash memory going?

Nicholson Baker vs. the Kindle

Novelist Nicholson Baker is an unapologetic friend of paper–and his book Double Fold* is an important expose of the mass dumping of bound newspaper volumes by libraries in favor of vastly inferior microform copies. So you gotta think that when The New York arranged for him to write about Amazon.com’s Kindle, it knew that it wasn’t going to get a love letter. It didn’t—but “A New Page” is as eloquent a bad review of the Kindle as you’re going to find. Even if you find much more value in the Kindle than Baker does, as I do, you may find yourself nodding as he makes the case for print and ticks off all of the Kindle’s downsides.

Other than…well, me, Baker is one of the few Kindle judges I’ve seen who doesn’t buy Amazon’s “reads like real paper” claims for the device’s E Ink screen:

The problem was not that the screen was in black-and-white; if it had really been black-and-white, that would have been fine. The problem was that the screen was gray. And it wasn’t just gray; it was a greenish, sickly gray. A postmortem gray. The resizable typeface, Monotype Caecilia, appeared as a darker gray. Dark gray on paler greenish gray was the palette of the Amazon Kindle.

Baker also points out rightly that the presentation of newspapers–at least all the ones I’ve seen–on the Kindle is pretty pathetic. It’s not just that they aren’t well done; they’re nowhere near as well done as they could be even considering the Kindle’s limitations.

Like me, Baker isn’t so sure that the conventional wisdom that an LCD screen such as that on the iPhone is harder on the eyeballs than E Ink is true. Actually, he’s pleased with the iPod/iPhone Touch version of Kindle as a way to quickly dip into a snippet of a book.

So am I–enough so that I’m flirting with the idea of selling my Kindle 2, since I do most of my Kindle reading on the go on my iPhone these days. I’ll let you know if end up parting with it.

*footnote: Baker’s takedown of the Kindle is available on the Kindle, which lets you subscribe to The New Yorker. And Double Fold (subtitle: “Libraries and the Assault on Paper”) is available as a Kindle book, too. In fact, Amazon seems to really want you to buy it in that form:

Brilliant But Doomed: Technology’s Most Magnificent Failures

Life, as John F. Kennedy once helpfully pointed out, isn’t fair. Neither is the market for technology products. There’s no law that says that the best products win: The history of tech is pockmarked with breakthrough hardware, software, and services that were dismal failures in the marketplace. (It’s also rife with mediocre products that became massive bestsellers–insert your own example here.)

Of course, not every innovative tech product deserves to be a hit. Some flop because they’re ahead of their time, which is kind of admirable; others bomb because they take too long to emerge from the lab and are obsolete by the time they do, which is simply embarrassing. And some products that are enticing on paper turn out to have fatal cases of Achilles’ heel in the real world. But they’re all valuable case studies in how good intentions can go awry.

For this article, I intentionally skipped some of the most legendary magnificent failures, such as the Apple Newton, Commodore Amiga, and Sony Betamax–they’ve been celebrated more or less continuously since their untimely passings, and I wanted to devote more space to lesser-known contenders. I figure you’re going to reminisce about your own favorites in the comments anyhow.

Thanks to my pals on Twitter (where I’m @harrymccracken) for nominating scads of products for this story. And yes, the title of this article is a homage to Brilliant But Cancelled, a retrospective of short-lived TV shows that appeared on the Trio cable channel…a channel which was itself both excellent and unsuccessful.

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A Pre for Under a Hundred Bucks? Good Deal!

[UPDATE: As noted in the comments, Best Buy is saying this is an error. I still think we'll see a $99 Pre before too long, though...]

PreCentral.net is reporting that Best Buy is living up to its name by offering Palm’s Pre smartphone for $99.99 with a two-year contract–no rebate paperwork required. That’s $100 less than the previous price, which you’ll still pay if you buy a Pre from Sprint (and which you’ll only get after you apply for and receive a $100 rebate). We don’t know whether Best Buy’s new price is permanent, or whether Sprint will match it soon, but it seems like a good bet that it’s the price that the Pre will ultimately end up at.

Only Palm and Sprint really know how well the Pre is selling, and whether it’s living up to their initial expectations. But I don’t think the 50% discount a few weeks after the Pre’s release is a sign of panic on anybody’s part. When Apple cut the price for the iPhone 3G to $99 two days after the Pre debuted in stores, it pretty much set $99 as the new starting price for a smartphone with specs comparable to those offered by the Pre, and there was nothing Palm could do about it. At $199, the Pre looked a tad pricey compared to an iPhone 3GS with twice the storage and video recording, even though it had more RAM and a keyboard. At $99.99, however, it costs…exactly what you’d expect.

You gotta think that part of Palm’s response to the iPhone 3GS will be a Pre that matches some of its features–especially the starting storage capacity of 16GB–and which can be sold for a similar price. Best Buy’s price cut might even be a sign that the new model will arrive soon. One way or another, I hope that the Pre sells well enough to be considered a major success: It’s an excellent and innovative phone, and even iPhone owners will benefit if Apple has plenty of healthy competition.

Orbitz and Buy.com’s Sales Tactics: Cluttered and Confusing

Cnet’s Greg Sandoval has a good story on use of “loyalty” programs by Orbitz and Buy.com-which are basically attempts to get you to sign up for services that charge you monthly fees as you check out during the buying process. A meaningful number of shoppers apparently sign up for these services by accident, and the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee is investigating some of the companies that provide them. Good.

I wrote a few months ago about my own personal gripe with Orbitz, which kept tacking charges onto my ticket for things I hadn’t asked for–that I think should be illegal, period. Of course, both Orbitz and Buy.com say they provide the “loyalty” services because they think customers want them, and they say very few people complain. But maybe one of the lessons here is that online check-out transactions should be streamlined and distraction-free, period. (Amazon.com’s shopping experience can be cluttered, but once you pay up, it does a good job of making it simple.)

How Low Can EA Go? Contest Encourages “Acts of Lust” With Booth Babes

Update: EA’s Dante Team has apologized “for any confusion and offense that resulted from our choice of wording, and want to assure you that we take your concerns and sentiments seriously.” The team further explained that “commit acts of lust” is “simply a tongue-in-cheek way to say take pictures with costumed reps.” Full statement here. Original post below.

Electronic Arts is no stranger to controversial PR stunts, so maybe I’m playing right into the company’s hands by decrying its latest giveaway for Dante’s Inferno. Whatever, I’ll risk it.

Have a look at the contest flyer, as posted on Kotaku. The idea is for San Diego Comic Con attendees to take pictures of themselves with booth babes and send them in to EA. The more pictures sent, the more entries in the contest. EA calls these photo ops “Acts of Lust.”

To the winner, the contest promises “Dinner and a sinful night with two hot girls, a limo service, paparazzi and a chest full of booty.” The innuendo is cringe-inducing.

In a way, I’ve got to hand it to EA for pointing out the very backwards aspect of the games industry that unashamedly degrades women. If only the gaming blogs covering the story could see the forest from the trees. Destructoid, for example, cries foul despite having no problem celebrating booth babes during E3.

And then there’s the game itself, poor Dante’s magnum opus dumbed down to yet another male power fantasy, and a God of War wannabee to boot. I guess EA figured it had already lost the female demographic by turning a cautionary tale on sin into a hack-and-slash bloodbath. Why not alienate them completely?

Stunts like these — and booth babes themselves — give gaming a bad name, but it’s only made worse when related to a work that’s treated with dignity in any other medium. Game publishers have gone to some incredibly puzzling lengths for publicity before, but this is the most offensive example I’ve seen, in more ways than one.

Microsoft’s Netbook Problem

The persisting popularity of netbooks has been a major drain on Microsoft’s Windows client licensing revenue. The worldwide economic downturn has driven many people to purchase cheaper machines, but I believe that the netbook’s ascension also reflects changing consumer tastes.

Windows client licensing revenue fell $1 billion from last year, and Microsoft’s unearned revenue from multi-year license agreements has flatlined.

Unless Windows 7 proves wildly popular, the company’s prospects for restoring its Windows business to its past luster appear to be grim. I expect that the company will experience a cyclical earnings bump that will crest near where previous Windows releases have in the past, but growth will be less substantial.

That is because there are simply too many alternatives, with the Web acting as the great equalizer. I access Gmail just as quickly on a netbook running Linux as I would on a higher end laptop powered by Windows. And even though netbook hardware is wimpy by current standards, netbooks are as powerful as high-end machines were on the not-too-distant past

Not everyone is a developer or a gamer. I believe that the netbook meets the “good enough’ threshold for most people, and there is a decent assortment to choose from on the market.

Many of those people may have been compelled to purchase a netbook by financial reasons, but it is highly possible that many will be satisfied enough  to purchase another netbook in the future. It could mean a permanent change in consumer buying behavior.

Microsoft seems to understand that, because it is downplaying netbooks at every chance it can get, and is attempting to direct customers toward more expensive alternatives. But the industry has failed to create really compelling products that would “wow’ me into paying more–so far.

I am reminded of my late grandmother, who was a child of the Great Depression. She wouldn’t spend money needlessly, and would reuse what she had (including tinfoil). People are experiencing varying degrees of hardship during this recession, and it is not unreasonable to expect that their spending habits will be permanently altered.

Consequently, if Microsoft does not see its market share slide, it will see its revenues fall. It cannot charge as much for a copy of Windows on a $400 machine than it would have traditionally done on more expensive systems. The Windows cash cow is slowly beginning to dry up.

Microsoft to Offer Choice of Browsers–In Europe

Today, the European Commission (EC) announced that Microsoft will permit Windows 7 users in European countries to select their default browser from a ballot screen when they configure their machines.

The news comes as a bit of a surprise, because, last month, the company said it was going to strip Internet Explorer from European versions of the operating system, and was originally strongly opposed to idea of providing a ballot screen.

Microsoft was compelled to make the change as a remedy for the EC’s Microsoft vs. Opera antitrust case that began in 2007. The company had a contingency plan to ship Windows 7 in January if it was unable to reach an agreement with the EC.

The settlement will no doubt keep Windows 7 on schedule for its fall debut. Windows 7 was released to manufacturing on Wednesday.

The EC has clearly learned from the failure of previous mandates. There was no demand for the Windows Media Center free edition of the OS that the EC mandated Microsoft sell in Europe. I’m glad that the ballot option was chosen over no browser at all.

5Words for Friday, July 24th 2009

AppleInsider reveals Apple tablet “exclusive.”

Twitter to revamp home page.

Hacker: iPhone encryption is useless.

Your Twitter followers may tumble.

How Palm re-enabled iTunes syncing.

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Google Latitude on the iPhone: Impressive! Not Confusing!

Google’s Latitude–which lets you use your phone to share your location with friends–has finally debuted on the iPhone, months after it showed up for Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile. On the iPhone, it’s a Safari-based Web app rather than an iPhone app. But it’s apparently only a Web app because Apple was unhappy with the native app that Google developed. “We worked closely with Apple to bring Latitude to the iPhone in a way Apple thought would be best for iPhone users,” says the Google blog post announcing the iPhone version. “After we developed a Latitude application for the iPhone, Apple requested we release Latitude as a web application in order to avoid confusion with Maps on the iPhone, which uses Google to serve maps tiles.”

Of course, this is the iPhone we’re talking about, so Apple’s requests aren’t really requests; if it had a problem with the native version of Latitude, it would presumably never the the light of day in the App Store. I’m not entirely clear on why Apple believed that Latitude would confuse iPhone owners, since Apple not only permits other mapping-related apps to be distributed on the App Store but encourages their creation by helping developers embed maps in their wares. And Latitude’s functionality is almost completely unrelated to what you get in Apple’s Maps app.

Also, iPhone owners aren’t dummies, and at least some of us would rather risk the possibility of being confused in return for the possibility of being pleased by a useful new app.

That said, the Web-based version of Latitude is impressive stuff. Google builds some of the best iPhone Web apps there are–like its iPhone-ized version of Gmail–and it’s hard to imagine that a native iPhone version would be much better than what it’s done in Safari. Latitude for the iPhone has one fundamental limitation that the other versions don’t: It can’t broadcast your location to your buddies unless you’re running the app. But it would have to deal with that even it were a native iPhone application, since Apple doesn’t permit third-party software to run in the background. (If the company doesn’t loosen up the multitasking limitations, maybe it can add some sort of ability for a GPS-related app to continue to send your location even when it’s not running, akin to the Push Notifications the iPhone already has.)

In the long run, apps like Latitude and Glympse might end up being features in a program like the iPhone’s Maps, not standalone software. For now, though, I want them to flourish–and I’m sorry that Apple thinks they’d befuddle us, and that its monopoly on distribution of iPhone apps means its gut check on such matters is gospel.