Palm Goes For the Throat in Apple Tiff

Apple locking you out of iTunes? Call on the USB Implementers Forum. That’s Palm’s tact as it looks to muscle its way back into the smartphone space. Its complaint to the group which manages the standards for USB alleges that Apple is misusing those standards by permitting only its own devices to use the application.

It’s unknown what may come out of it as this is basically the first time a company has taken this route in attempting to break into the walled garden that is iPod/iTunes. That is essentially what the Pre’s Media Sync does–it tricks iTunes into thinking the Pre is an Apple device.

That strategy has its pitfalls too: it very well could be against the policies of the USB governing board, but Palm is saying its the only available route because of the way iTunes is set up.

Palm has a lot riding on the Pre: many industry watchers see the device as the last hope for the company which has slowly been fading since its heyday when Palm Pilots were the rage, and its acquisition of Handspring’s Treo helped catapult it into the smartphone industry.

The company will likely again build a workaround, continuing a cat and mouse game between the two companies. Apple has shown a willingness to play for as long as is needed, so Palm better have developers on call to continue to break into iTunes when needed.

It’s a smart move for Palm to at least try. With iPods so ubiquitous, and many using it to organize their digital media, as the saying goes “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

But in the end, we all know Jobs and Co. want Apple to stay at the center of the iTunes universe, and will do what is necessary to keep it that way. Palm better be ready to be in this for the long haul.

Hey Pop-Up Ads, Get Outta My Xbox!

Over the weekend, I sacrificed the better portion of one evening to my Fight Night Round 4 addiction. Home alone, playing offline (but connected to Xbox Live) and grinding through match after match, I was confronted with this:

Aah!

After a moment of shock, I realized this was an advertisement for the upcoming film The Final Destination, and suddenly Fight Night Round 4 was stumping for it in every available nook and cranny. Each post on the corners of the boxing ring had a number you could text message to enter a movie-related contest, and the floor mat had the name of the film running down the center.

What most offended me was not the ghastly imagery, but the ads that appeared during the boxer recovery phase between rounds. I call them pop-up ads because they make no effort to blend with the game world, as most in-game advertisements do. They’re just plain tacky (by the way, these photos were hastily shot on my iPhone, so my apologies for the quality):

A similar set of pop-ups for Ford appeared in an earlier session, but I had no camera at hand to prove it. Keep in mind that I had already logged countless hours with the game before seeing either of these ads, and that I was playing offline, against the computer, while connected to the Internet.

It’s not clear whether this is happening on the Playstation 3 as well as the Xbox 360, but I’ve asked Microsoft whether this has anything to do with Silverlight ads coming to Xbox Live, and I’ve requested that Electronic Arts answer a few questions as well, such as how the ads are being delivered and for long we’ll be dealing with them. I’m hoping to hear back from both parties.

In any case, I hope these ads aren’t the start of a new trend. Buying this game, no one told me it’d be cluttered with ads that have nothing to do with boxing. While a bit of in-game advertising is appropriate when it fits the surroundings (such as street billboards in a racing game), blatant banners that cover up the game screen are just uncalled for.

5Words for Tuesday, August 4th 2009

Like 5Words? Subscribe via RSS.

____________________________

Rid your Twitter of spammers.

Apple vs. Palm: it’s war.

Military members get Google Voice.

Obama’s cybersecurity czar steps down.

Toshiba packs 64GB into SD.

Hey, let’s kill off IE6!

ARM-based netbooks coming soon.

More shots of Zune HD.

Rumor: Apple building PayPal killer.

INQ smartphones have Twitter, iTunes.

Forget netbooks–”smartbooks” are coming!

Enter the Tablet Naysayers!

At the moment, Apple’s tablet is not a real product but a gumbo of rumor, speculation, patent diving, and unabashed daydreaming. But it’s already inspiring a thoughtful backlash. Over at IntoMobile, Stefan Constantinescu lays out in amazing detail the history of rumors about an Apple tablet that turned out to be pure fiction, or which at least haven’t resulted in Apple releasing such a device to date. It’s a sobering and useful piece, especially given that there’s some chance that the Apple device that pretty much everyone is now assuming will appear soon may indeed be nothing more than the result of mass hallucination.

At LIVEdigitally, my friend Jeremy Toeman isn’t saying that the Apple tablet is fantasy–but he does contend that such devices would be rife with limitations and that they would join the giant deadpool comprised of products which the industry got excited about but real people had no interest in. It’s certainly true that there’s a long history of tablets being released and then failing miserably. The image at the left is the Momenta tablet computer, which was a big story and a major flop back when I got into the tech-journalism business in 1991. And if you were going to compile a list of Microsoft’s five biggest misfires, it might well include the whole idea of the Tablet PC, a platform which Microsoft representatives told me at Comdex in 2001 would make up the majority of notebook computers sold within five years. Tablets not only don’t dominate, but are pretty much moribund. (Even in 2001, I thought they’d drunk an entire vat of their own Kool-Aid.)

Every tablet computer we’ve seen to date has suffered from being…a computer. That is, they’ve taken many of their basic design concepts from standard laptops, borrowed much of their user interfaces from traditional operating systems, and generally been intended for applications we know from traditional computing, such as note-taking. Basically, they’ve proven again and again that pen and/or touch input doesn’t provide a very satisfactory substitute for plain old physical QWERTY.

If Apple is releasing a tablet anytime soon, however, I think it’ll be smart enough not to offer us something that has much of anything in common with Microsoft’s Tablet PC design and other existing tablet concepts. The Apple tablet won’t use a pen, won’t repeat the Newton’s handwriting-recognition mistakes, and won’t be pitched as being very useful for taking notes or engaging in other text-intensive tasks. It’ll be an iPhone (or iPod Touch if you prefer) with more real estate–a gizmo optimized for listening to music, watching movies, reading Web pages and other content, playing games, and other activities that involve minimal input.

The iPhone and iPod Touch have shown that the basic idea not only works but is hugely appealing. It’s still not a given that enough people want similar functionality in a larger size enough to add another gadget to their lives–especially a $700 or $800 gadget. But if Apple really is readying a tablet (not a given) and it’s a giant iPhone rather than a “tablet computer” (also not a given, but I have my hunch) it could be something utterly new: a tablet that makes sense.

Netflix: An iPhone App Litmus Test?

Rumor has it that Netflix may be bringing its Watch Instantly video-on-demand service to the iPhone. Unless there are insurmountable issues with content licensing, actually, it would be startling if it Netflix didn’t want to be on the iPhone. (In some respects, the iPhone land grab reminds me of the mad rush to release Windows versions of existing applications in the early 1990s.)

The big honkin’ question with a Netflix application for iPhone is the same as with any other app that involves video on the iPhone: Would it permit streaming over AT&T’s 3G network, or only over Wi-Fi? So far, there’s no discernible consistency to what’s happened with other such applications. TV.com does 3G but Joost doesn’t; SlingPlayer’s 3G version was apparently rejected on the grounds that it violated AT&T’s terms of service; Major League Baseball’s At Bat app not only streams games over 3G but takes advantage of new features in iPhone OS 3.0 designed to make that possible.

A 3G-enabled Netflix could be terrific; a Wi-Fi-only one would be a letdown. Here’s hoping.

I guess there is one other significant question about Netflix on the iPhone: Is there any chance that Apple would keep it off the iPhone altogether by using the “this duplicates features built into the phone” rationale it’s used to remove some apps, such as third-party Google Voice clients? iPhone owners who have access to movies and TV shows from another major provider such as Netflix, after all, are less likely to buy content from Apple’s iTunes Store.

So far, Apple has permitted other video merchants onto the iPhone, but neither TV.com nor Joost provides really compelling competition to iTunes. Netflix would be a bigger deal, as would the rumored iPhone edition of Hulu. But the really big question is whether there’s any chance in heck that iPhone users will ever get access to Amazon’s Video on Demand, the most direct competitor that the iTunes Store’s movie offerings have.

I’d love to think that the fact that the FCC is now nosing around into Apple’s app-approval process will lead to a chastened, paranoid Apple erring on the side of approving competitive apps–whether or not the feds eventually force it to do so. A really good iPhone Netflix client would be an encouraging sign; one that felt crippled would not be.

Nikon’s Projecting Camera: It’s Showtime!

Nikon announced four new point-and-shoot cameras today, one of which has a truly striking feature: a built-in projector. The $429 Coolpix S1000pj uses picoprojector technology to cast images through its lens, letting you display single images,  slideshows, and movie clips at sizes up to 40 inches.

It’s the first point-and-shoot that projects, and the tech does sound like it’s still in bleeding-edge territory: The S1000pj shoots images at up to 12.1 megapixels (4000 by 3000 pixels), but it projects them at VGA (640 by 480) resolution, and Nikon rates battery life at one hour. But it’s still exciting to see projection start to work its way into reasonably inexpensive and compact consumer devices, and it’ll be fascinating to see whether it becomes commonplace in other cameras, phones, laptops, and other gadgets anytime soon.

Would you be tempted to buy the S1000pj over a comparable camera with no projection feature? Will you wait for second- or third-generation passes at the idea? Does the idea appeal to you at all?

Google Ties Chrome to Cloud Services

Today, Google fired a new salvo in the browser wars, announcing an upcoming synchronization service for its Chrome browser. A preliminary mockup of the service will be released to developers later this week, with general availability possible later this month, according to reports.

The service will first deliver bookmark synchronization –something that’s already possible with Firefox via plug-ins as well as Opera. Google will add other types of browser data incrementally. If Google carries out its plans effectively, Chrome will provide users with a seamless user experience across many devices. Other browser makers will have to follow.

Netbooks, which have the focus of Google’s most ambitious development efforts, will be an obvious beneficiary. The synchronization service will also give a boost to OpenID, which Google users to authenticate digital identities (with its own proprietary twist).

All in all, Google is continuing to blur the line between desktop software and the cloud. It is not alone in its thinking–I’m convinced that Microsoft, which is often perceived as its biggest competitor, will eventually follow suit.

Last year, I detailed Microsoft’s Midori operating system development plans. While Google has not announced anything as ambitious as Midori, it is going down the path that Microsoft laid out in the memos that I reviewed.

One of Microsoft’s principal  design motivations is to support the ability of users to share resources remotely, and for applications that are a composite of local and remote components and services. The Web browser is just beginning to enable the application side of that vision.

The Joy of Random Information

I recently reacquainted myself with a gadget that was once one of my primary forms of data retrieval (a microfilm reader) in a place I don’t spend nearly enough time at (my local public library). The experience left me both grateful for the breadth and the precision of Web search–and a little nostalgic for the pleasant randomness inherent in microfilm in specific and libraries in general.

In my latest guest post over at BingTweets, I muse on the value of stumbling upon interesting stuff by accident in a post I called “The Search for Serendipity.” I’m not arguing for the return of microfilm. But I do feel like I’m a more well-informed person than I might have been if I’d never whir-whirred my way through untold reels of old newspapers back when I was in college and the Web didn’t yet exist…

The Eternal Virtue of Good Old Fashioned QWERTY

One of my personal heroes in the whole history of technology is Christopher Sholes. He didn’t invent the microprocessor or the LCD or cellular communications–he’s the man who gave the world the first QWERTY keyboard, back in 1867. And even though new approaches to input such as multi-touch screens can be pretty cool, I think that QWERTY will be with us for a long long time to come.

Over at WePC.com, where I’ll be guestblogging periodically, I’ve contributed a post called Physical QWERTY Keyboards: Long May They Wave. Take a look and lemme know what you think: Is Christopher Sholes’ keyboard a gift to cherish forever, or an antiquity we should be trying to ditch?

The iPhone Outpowers the Wii? Who Cares.

A game programmer is getting mouthy about the Wii, saying that an iPhone is more powerful for gaming.

This argument transpired at the forums (via GameZine) for TellTale, which developed Tales of Monkey Island as a downloadable title from the WiiWare online store. A programmer with the handle “Yare” explained that the Wii is just not meaty enough to address all of the issues players are having, including blurry textures and choppy framerates.

“Frame rate issues will probably get sorted out eventually, but keep in mind that the Wii is just not a powerful console,” Yare wrote. “An iPhone is much more powerful than a Wii, even.”

A boisterous claim, no doubt, but does it hold water? It’s hard to say given that neither Apple nor Nintendo freely discusses hardware specs. You can take a look at the leaked specs for both the Wii and the iPhone and be the judge, but even then you’d have a hard time making a direct comparison.

In any case, I don’t think it really matters. One of the things I like about WiiWare is how it forces simplicity. The console space is so otherwise littered with face-melting graphics that a space for constraint in game design and visual aesthetics is welcome. To that end, a couple of my favorite games for this generation of consoles – World of Goo and Bit.Trip Beat – are downloadable WiiWare titles. Both games have simple foundations, but they manage to create complex challenges without relying on technical muscle.

I understand some of Yare’s concerns, particularly that WiiWare titles can be no larger than 40 MB in size (Nintendo has not explicitly confirmed this, but has said the company encourages smaller games). With Nintendo now allowing access to games directly from an SD card, there’s room to relax those constraints, but that doesn’t mean the floodgates should open for games of all sizes. I don’t want WiiWare to become musclebound.

Is RadioShack Changing Its Name? I Can’t Tell!

Last night, I was fretting over the ugly rumor that RadioShack was about to change its name to The Shack. Today the company issued a 700-word press release announcing its plans, and…I still can’t tell whether it intends to change the names of its thousands of stores or not.

Some quotes from the release:

RadioShack Corporation (NYSE: RSH) will unveil its new brand creative platform, “THE SHACK,” on August 6, supported by an integrated television, print and digital media schedule, as well as a high-profile, three-day launch event taking place in New York City and San Francisco.

Remind me again what a brand creative platform is again?

Trust is a critical attribute of any successful retailer, and the reality is that most people trust friends, not corporations. When a brand becomes a friend, it often gets a nickname – take FedEx or Coke, for example.

Not terribly clarifying considering that Federal Express completely shucked its old name and is now FedEx Corporation, while the folks at the Coca-Cola Company are equally pleased if you call their product Coca-Cola or Coke.

“Our customers, associates and even the investor community have long referred to RadioShack as ‘THE SHACK,’ so we decided to embrace that fact and share it with the world,” said Lee Applbaum, RadioShack’s Chief Marketing Officer.

Fair enough. But will your embracing and sharing involve the changing of signage? How will you answer the phone? Also, does the fact you call RadioShack “RadioShack” but spell the new name “THE SHACK” mean that your customers, associates, and the investor community have long bellowed that nickname at the top of their lungs?

This creative is not about changing our name. Rather, we’re contemporizing the way we want people to think about our brand.

Semantics question: Does the fact it’s not about changing your name mean that you aren’t changing your name?

We have tremendous equity in consumers’ minds around cables, parts and batteries, but it’s critically important that we help them to understand the role that we play in keeping people connected in this highly mobile world.

Okay, that makes sense–if I were RadioShack, I’d emphasize mobile stuff over batteries and cables, too. But how does calling yourself THE SHACK help achieve that goal?

“We’ve partnered with RadioShack to develop a creative platform that will cause people to take another look at THE SHACK. Everything about the advertising – the media, format, style, music and tone – will contribute to a new interpretation of the brand,” said Greg Stern, [CEO of THE SHACK’s ad agency. “Everyone knows RadioShack. Our job is to communicate what THE SHACK stands for today.”

I’ve been in my local Radio Shack RadioShack THE SHACK recently, and the biggest difference I noticed over Radio Shack RadioShack THE SHACK of the past is that they no longer badger you for your home address. Can I get some clarification on how changing the music in the commercials will make me a happier, healther customer of Radio Shack RadioShack THE SHACK?

To bring the new creative strategy to life, RadioShack will host Netogether, a three-day event taking place in New York City’s Times Square and San Francisco’s Justin Herman Plaza on August 6, 7 and 8. The event will connect the cities with two, massive, 17-foot laptop computers with webcams that allow live video and audio exchanges. Netogether will feature live music, celebrity appearances and unique contests to demonstrate how technology can keep people connected – even 3,000 miles apart. Consumers are invited to visit the event and chat with friends or family via the laptops, or to join in the conversation online at www.radioshack.com/theshack, where they can offer real-time comments on the live video feeds.

Now you’re talking! I’ll try to visit the 17-foot laptop in San Francisco later this week and report on it here.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Lewis Kornfeld, former president of Radio Shack RadioShack THE SHACK, published a column called “Flyerside Chat” in the company’s weekly circular. It was remarkably earnest and direct, and bizarrely free of marketingese–a sort of a corporate blog decades before anyone knew what a corporate blog was. Now the company’s trying to tell me news in wording so laden with buzzwords that I can’t figure out whether it plans to take down the RadioShack sign at the location a mile from here and replace it with one that says THE SHACK or not. Wouldn’t a friend who was changing his or her name tell you so rather than tapdancing around the question? Can anyone help me out here?

Possible clue: www.theshack.com is taking me to RadioShack.com…

5Words for Monday, August 23rd 2009

New Google/Microsoft warfront: billboards!

SSD corruption prompts Intel recall.

Google plans Chrome cloud synchronization.

Verizon knocks smartphones to $99.

Ten more markets get WiMax.

Bing’s gain is Google’s loss.

Nikon camera’s its own projector.

Should Microsoft snap up Palm?

Is PayPal acting up today?

Like 5Words? Subscribe via RSS.

Apple Tries To Hush Owners of Exploding iPod

In true Apple fashion, the company has reportedly attempted–and failed–to hush the owners of an defective iPod that ended up exploding in England. Acording to The Times, the only way the Stanboroughs would get a full refund was if they agreed to sign a settlement form.

On it, the form specified that if the family would talk, it would open them up to possible legal action by Apple. Obviously since The Times is reporting on it, they didn’t accept Apple’s terms.

While the Stanboroughs apparently may have some culpability here–the iPod touch in question was dropped shortly before it reportedly exploded–it’s still a little worrisome. There are a lot of us out there who have done the same thing.

This is only the latest reported incident of pressure by Apple to keep folks with defective iPods quiet. Last month, the company did all it could to prevent KIRO reporter Amy Clancy from investigating fire incidents involving the company’s ubiquitous music device.

Documents obtained by Clancy indicate Apple knew about issues with its players and overheating as early as 2005–even though they were telling people complaining years later that it was the “first time” they ever heard of such a problem.

It is believed that the iPod’s lithium-ion batteries may be the source of the problem. But with 175 million iPods sold, how do you go about recalling the devices if it was necessary? That could be a daunting task.

Eric Schmidt Disappears From the Apple Board

After three years as a member of Apple’s board, Google CEO Eric Schmidt is stepping down. “Eric has been an excellent Board member for Apple, investing his valuable time, talent, passion and wisdom to help make Apple successful,” Steve Jobs is quoted as saying in an Apple press release. “Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple’s core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple Board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest,” Steve Jobs is quoted as saying in an Apple press release. “Therefore, we have mutually decided that now is the right time for Eric to resign his position on Apple’s Board.”

The news comes the Monday morning after it became public that Apple had rejected Google’s Google Voice application from the iPhone App Store, a development that the FCC wants to know more about. The timing is intriguing even though that ongoing minidrama might well have developed even if Apple and Google weren’t OS competitors. But it’s also evidence of just how fast Google’s ambitions have expanded that it was as recently as three years ago that it sounded logical for a Google representative to sit on Apple’s board at all.

There’s no reason why Schmidt’s exodus will necessarily usher in an era of fierce rivalry between the two companies. But it’ll surely have some impact on their relationship, and not just in the areas of phone and computer operating systems which Jobs references in the press release.

Google’s mission statement famously refers to organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful–and for awhile now, I’ve wondered if it was mere coincidence that it steered clear of organizing the world’s music or otherwise engaging in businesses that competed directly with Apple’s iTunes Store. (Google did try to sell video content for awhile, but it turned out to be a short-lived experiment.) May Schmidt’s disappearance from the Apple board usher in an era in which Google enters even more of Apple’s businesses without blinking. That sort of healthy competition would surely benefit consumers more than the last three odd years of Apple/Google coopitition have.

RadioShack Remembered, Via Old Ads on YouTube

The news that RadioShack may be becoming The Shack has left me feeling nostalgic and wistful…and when I feel nostalgic and wistful, I often head to YouTube to cheer myself up. After the jump, a bunch of old commercials for the electronics giant, most of which date from the era when it was Radio Shack, a proud division of the Tandy Corporation.

Continue reading this story…

Nine Reasons RadioShack Shouldn’t Change Its Name

[UPDATE: RadioShack has released a press release about all this, and I still can't tell if it's changing its name or not.]

Funny thing about RadioShack: I’m not sure if I’ve been inside its stores more than a dozen times over the past seven or eight years…and yet I still feel proprietary about it. The company’s TRS-80 microcomputers were what got me interested in technology in the first place. In college, I was a frequent customer of the location on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, the oldest remaining store in the chain. I live about a mile from a RadioShack, and as I think about it, I believe I’ve either worked or lived within a mile of a RadioShack for the majority of my life. Which is nothing exceptional; the company is as omnipresent as any business that doesn’t sell hamburgers, chicken, donuts, or coffee.

Tonight, rumor has it that RadioShack is planning to change its branding to The Shack. I dunno if it’s true–the scuttlebutt that Pizza Hut was going to become The Hut turned out to be overblown–but there’s already a page on RadioShack.com with the slogan “Our friends call us The Shack.” If the 88-year-old electronics retailer is indeed dumping its name, I think it’s a bad idea, and I’m pretty sure I’m not just being resistant to change. After the jump, nine arguments against the new identity.

Continue reading this story…