Is Google Too Powerful?

Over at TechFlash, Galen Ward of real-estate search company Estately has blogged about the way that Google integrates results and promotions for its various features (such as Google Maps, YouTube, Google Checkout, and real estate search) into its search results. He says the practice makes it hard for other companies that compete with Google–and which might even offer superior services–to succeed, and that it therefore hurts consumers. He goes so far as to wave an obvious red flag by comparing Google today to Microsoft in the 1990s. (He also says that if the government interfered with Google, it would probably make the situation even worse.)

The question “Is Google too powerful?” is as big and complicated as Google itself. I’ll try to blog some thoughts about it soon. But for the moment, I want to take your pulse in the form of today’s T-Poll:

Tech Folks to Follow on Twitter

TechRepublic Editor-in-Chief Jason Hiner has published a nice hand-picked list of one hundred tech-related folks who are worth following on Twitter. (Yes, it includes me, but that’s but a minor lapse–and it still leaves ninety-nine worthy candidates.)

Jason points out that Twitter needs a way to follow a group of people with one click–an equivalent to what OPML provides for RSS feeds. (If Twitter doesn’t feel like offering this feature itself, a third-party could presumably do so.) His list is also a reminder that the world could use a definitive directory of Twitterfolk who are worth your time in various major categories. WeFollow is useful, but like too many guides to Twitter users, it sort of devolves into an index of people with large numbers of followers. I know people with a couple of hundred followers who are good reads, and there are multiple people and organizations who prove that having hundreds of thousands of followers is not necessarily a sign of quality…

What if the Apple Tablet is a Mac?

Over the weekend, a French blog published new “photos” of Apple’s “upcoming” tablet. They looks fishy and pseudo-Appleish at best (and if the tablet isn’t coming until next year, which is now the consensus among the smartest Applewatchers I know, they’re here awfully early). I bring this up here mainly because the image seems to show the device booting into the welcome screen you see when you start a Mac for the first time. In other words, it appears to show…a Mac. Not an oversized iPod Touch.

Continue reading this story…

Windows XP Users Speak Out

Maybe Windows XP users, on the whole, aren’t hidebound old luddites who stick with an eight-year-old operating system because they fear change. Maybe most of them are smart people who continue to use Windows XP because it does what they need it to do–but who will upgrade to a new version of Windows when they’re impressed by one and are confident it’s ready for prime time.

At least that’s what I’m thinking as I peruse what what nearly 5,000 Windows XP users have to say about their current operating system of choice, why they haven’t moved to Windows Vista, and what they think about Windows 7. They may remain immune to Vista’s, um, charms, but most of them have an open mind about Windows 7–and most of those who have tried 7 really like it.

As part of our research for upcoming coverage of Windows 7. my friends at PC World and I partnered to conduct a survey of Windows XP users. We promoted the survey at PC World, at Technologizer, and via our respective Twitterfeeds, 4994 people took it. We didn’t screen them other than to ask them to confirm that they use Windows XP as their primary operating system. So what they said may or may not reflect the sentiments of the Windows-using world at large–but it’s interesting nonetheless. Here’s a full report.

Continue reading this story…

Gaming follows in Sega Genesis’ Footsteps

I owe a belated happy anniversary to the Sega Genesis, which turned 20 years old yesterday.

Most people will remember the Genesis as the console that went toe-to-toe with Nintendo, finding in Sonic the Hedgehog a mascot worth rallying behind. While that’s certainly a legacy worth celebrating, something more important is happening these days that the Genesis also pursued in its early years: It brought the arcade experience home.

Check out one of the early Genesis commercials from 1989. Before Sonic was born, Sega pushed the Genesis as a faithful emulator of arcade hits, such as Golden Axe and Ghouls ‘N Ghosts. Back then, arcades were a gamer’s paradise. Titles like Double Dragon and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had sharper details and crisper sounds (sometimes with real voices!) in the arcades. Nothing else came close.

Eventually, home consoles caught up. Not only are the graphics on today’s consoles better than the arcades, the games themselves are more advanced, with sophisticated plots and much more replay value.

As a result, arcades — if you can find them — have fundamentally changed. Instead of competing with home consoles on graphics and sound, many offer a physical experience. Dance Dance Revolution makes you move your body, and racing simulators put you behind a steering wheel.

The only problem is, home consoles are starting to do this, too. The Wii remote has made steering wheel racing affordable, and the Wii Fit’s balance board has players working their legs, while Wii Sports is letting people act silly with game controllers in the comfort of their own homes. When the Xbox 360′s Project Natal arrives, it’ll let people use their entire bodies to control video games.

All of this spells more trouble for arcades, which try to provide something different as home gaming becomes more popular. It’s true that nothing matches the elaborate rig of an arcade racing simulator, but that’s exactly the point. Even the Genesis wasn’t quite as good as playing in an arcade, but its “good enough” approach marked the beginning of arcade gamings’ demise.

Now, we’re starting to see the end of it.

Qik Goes Legit on the iPhone

Livestreaming service Qik finally has an app available on the iPhone App Store. (A version for jailbroken iPhones already existed.) It’s good news, but not without a major gotcha: The App Store version of Qik doesn’t permit you to stream live video from your phone to Qik’s site. It does, however, allow you to record video with an iPhone 3GS which is  then instantly and automatically uploaded to Qik (along with your GPS location), as well as share it via YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Which is useful in and of itself, and similar to the tactic taken by competitor Ustream to get into the App Store.

The biggest limitation of this Apple-approved version of Qik is that you can only upload via Wi-Fi, not 3G. Qik says it’s submitted a 3G0-enabled version of the app to Apple, though. That one should be a decent stopgap until the day comes–I’m an optimist and assume it will-that Apple lets developers write apps that stream video on the fly over 3G.

Save Ink (and Money) When You Print

Are you replacing printer cartridges faster than Citibank is raising credit card interest rates? Aggravating, and no surprise–inkjets have a voracious appetite.

Have a glass of warm milk and relax — I have a few solutions that can make you happy.
The biggest waste of inkjet cartridges is printing in color when good old black and white will do.

I say to you: Turn off the color. Yep, it’s that simple. Unless color is crucial for your document, you’re wasting ink if you output in color. Try this experiment: Print a color page, then print it again in gray scale. To do this, go to Start, Settings, Printers and right-click on the printer’s icon. Go to Properties and find the tab that lets you change from color to gray scale. Save the settings, then print the page again.

Continue reading this story…

The Beep is Being Taken Back!

Good news about David Pogue’s Take Back the Beep campaign, which targets the voicemail instructions which explain stuff everybody already knows, thereby wasting massive amounts of time and money. Over at his New York Times blog, David has posted a progress report: AT&T says it’s going to make changes; T-Mobile says it’s thinking about it; Sprint is the one phone company that already lets you disable the instructions; and Verizon is at least paying attention. Kudos to David for rallying an army of frustrated phone owners and to the folks who took the time to contact their phone companies and register their discontent. And to AT&T for being the first company to say it’s not only listening but will take action.

If Take Back the Beep works, we need to figure out what other minor indignities of modern life we might be able to change through coordinated consumer complaints. Me, I’d be a far happier consumer if I never again had to show my receipt when exiting a store so a security guard can pretend to verify that I’m not a shoplifter. I wonder what would happen if large numbers of us simply refused to participate?

5Words for Friday, August 14th 2009

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Qik reaches the App Store.

Andreessen backs a new browser.

A billion Firefox downloads: meaningless?

Zune HD: pocket media center.

Microsoft courts iPhone app developers.

Lenovo recalls faulty ThinkPad batteries.

How Microsoft sabotaged Mac Office.

Google celebrates invention of…electromagnets?

When Will Apple Announce a Tablet?

Back in June, I asked you guys to predict what Apple would announce at its WWDC keynote…and you did a better job than some professional Applewatchers. Wanna try your hand at outsmarting the pros when it comes to figuring out when it’ll announce its tablet computer, assuming it is in fact working on one?

Retweeting Gets Official

One of the best things about Twitter is that most of the best things about Twitter have been invented by its users. Such as the idea of addressing other people by using their @names and sharing their tweets by retweeting them. Little by little, Twitter formalizes these inventions as part of the service, and a new blog post by Twitter cofounder Biz Stone reports that retweeting is going to become a true feature.

Right now, you retweet by copying someone else’s tweet and affixing “RT” and that person’s twittername at the front. Sometime in the next few weeks, tweets will get a Retweet icon you can click which will insert the original tweet (along with a “retweeted by” tag) in your twitterstream, where your Twitter followers will see it even if they don’t follow the person who Tweeted it in the first place.

It sounds simpler and more elegant than the current, made-up-by-users approach. It also sounds like it’ll have some major implications for third-party Twitter clients and services. Twitter says it’ll work on communicating these implications to developers in the coming weeks.

Assuming Twitter pulls it off smoothly, it’ll be nice to see retweeting formalized. I wonder what Twitter’s users will come up with next?

Apple Tablet Date Debate

The Applesphere seems to have stopped debating whether there’s going to be an Apple tablet or not. There even seems to be some consensus about form factor and price range. What’s left to toss around? Release dates. The question seems to boil down to this: Fall/Holiday 2009 or 2010? (As you may recall, we already have had the Financial Times confident it’s September and AppleInsider confident it’s 2010.)

Today, both Gizmodo’s Brian Lam and Jim Dalrymple of The Loop say they’ve talked to insiders. Brian’s insider sort of generally suggests the tablet will arrive this year. Jim’s insider says early 2010. Me, I…have no insiders! So I have to rely on intuition, guesswork, and crude deductive logic. A few thoughts:

–The tablet’s going to be a significant deal–the biggest new Apple product since the iPhone, whether or not it’s a hit. And there’s a lot of related stuff that needs to be addressed, like its impact on developers, and the first apps for it. That’s not ten minutes at the end of a September iPod event–it’s probably an event of its own.

–Apple’s September events are also traditionally music-themed, so I’m instinctively suspicious of rumors involving them featuring a device that isn’t music-centric, as a tablet wouldn’t be. (Although that wouldn’t preclude another September event for the tablet.)

–It doesn’t seem entirely out of the question that the tablet could be announced this year even if it doesn’t go on sale until next year, especially if it has built-in Verizon broadband that would require FCC paperwork that might leak. And Apple’s been known to announce products early when they don’t compete with existing Apple products (both the iPhone and Apple TV were unveiled months before you could buy one).

–On the other hand, it would be extremely odd to announce the tablet before the holiday season when it wouldn’t be available until after it. People might forgo an iPod Touch under the tree to save their pennies.

Conclusions? It’s hard to figure this out without an insider, and even the insiders are at odds with each other! But I just checked with my gut, and it told me that the tablet will most likely be announced and released next year. Gut, if that turns out to be wrong, I blame you.

HP Technology Repairs Damaged Photos

Old crumpled, folded, and otherwise damaged photographs may have gotten a new lease on life. HP’s research wing has devised a technique to remove creases from photographs using standard scanners, according to reports published Aug. 12.

Once flaws are detected, an automated process takes over to repair photographs using techniques including infilling and texture synthesis. A more detailed description of how the technology works is available at the HP Labs Web site.

This is a neat development, and HP is once again being an innovator in consumer technology. It is a leader in software development and testing, but its commercial products do not always stand out from the crowd.

I did a quick Web search and found another HP research project that it says will lead to better color accuracy in scanning.

When I was younger, only the biggest techies owned scanners, and it was a pretty big deal to own one. Scanners have since become a commodity technology, and it has been a long time since I have taken notice of them. It might be time to begin paying attention again.

The iPhone’s in Court Over MMS Delay

A class action filed in a Louisiana district court is alleging that Apple and AT&T are improperly advertising MMS (multimedia messaging service) for the iPhone without having provided it, according to reports published today. Ultimately, a judge will decide whether the case is credible enough to move forward.

When Apple released iPhone OS 3.0 in mid June, it said that its MMS capability would be enabled on AT&T’s network this summer. I was as disappointed as the next person to hear it wouldn’t happen immediately, but am even more disappointed by how quickly frivolous lawsuits are filed.

It is beginning to get dark a little earlier now, but it is still summer. The class is seeking 10,000 participants. If 10,000 people are so distraught over their inability to send multimedia messages that they sign onto this nonsensical lawsuit, those people need to go outside and enjoy their lives a bit more .

The basis of the class is that Apple and AT&T “advertised heavily that the new version of iPhone, the 3G, as well as the even newer version the 3G-S would allow MMS. Apple’s print and video advertisements in and on television, the internet, the radio, newspapers and direct mailers all touted the availability of MMS,” court filings allege.

The filings claim that AT&T’s towers do not support MMS, yet the iPhone is only available on that carrier. If that was indeed the case, why was I able to send and receive MMS messages on other AT&T devices that I have owned in years past?

The action was filed under the Louisiana Unfair Trade Practices Act in addition to other State civil codes. It has been filed, and so going forward, a hearing will be scheduled, and then a judge will decide whether the case has enough merit to move on.

Apple is already plugging away at the iPhone 3.1 update. Would it kill people to wait for it? What harm is being done by this delay that should be remedied by a court? If the commercials jumped the gun, Apple and AT&T should pull them, and maybe pay a fine, and that’s it.

Rate the State of Microsoft!

For today’s T-Poll I’m going to ask you to play Microsoft pundit. (Don’t worry, it’s easy–or at least it’s easy to be just as accurate as the folks who get paid big bucks to do it.)

The case could be made that Microsoft is on a roll and doing some good stuff these days. Bing has gotten positive reviews and seems to be off to a reasonably strong start in the market. The company finally has the Yahoo deal it’s craved for eons. I haven’t encountered anyone who’s used Windows 7 who doesn’t think it’s a major improvement over Windows Vista. Whether or not the  Zune HD gives the iPod Touch a run for its money, it looks to be an impressive piece of hardware. And most news about the Xbox continues to be upbeat.

But then again, the cash cow that is Windows is showing serious signs of vulnerability for the the first time ever. The company still seems timid when it comes to embracing the idea of Web-based applications (a true Web version of Office won’t debut until 2010, years after Google Docs).  In the iPhone era, Windows Mobile still feels like a Model T that Microsoft is trying to spruce up with better tires and a paint job. Insert your own additional negative thoughts about the Behemoth of Redmond here.

Okay, poll time:

reMail: All Your E-Mail, All on Your iPhone

Google’s Gmail has trained a lot of us to think of an inbox as a place with near-instant access to all our e-mail. reMail–an e-mail search application for the iPhone that’s available in an all-new version on sale for $4.99 today–brings some of the same sensibility to the iPhone. (Makes sense: Gabor Cselle, CEO of reMail maker NextMail, is a former member of the Gmail team.) As of iPhone OS 3.0, Apple’ Mail app offers search and does a good job of extending searches to messages that are on the server but not your phone. But reMail puts all your mail on your iPhone, then offers full-text search of every message. (Apple’s Mail only searches header info.)

ReMail works with Gmail and IMAP e-mail accounts, and begins by downloading all your messages. (It’s estimating that it’ll take about seven hours to download about 13,500 messages from my Gmail account via Wi-Fi.) It compresses messages and trips out formatting and graphics, so a boatload of mail doesn’t take that much space: It estimates that those 13,500 messages will occupy about 88MB, which is practically a pittance on my 32GB phone. And reMail says its search is five times faster than Mail’s.

If reMail was a full-blown e-mail client, I’d go bananas over it, and probably use nothing else. But beyond the excellent search, what it offers are basic e-mail features: You can create messages, reply, and forward, but it displays messages in text mode only, and only works in the iPhone’s portrait mode. It also doesn’t support Exchange. Basically, you’re unlikely to use it as your only e-mail client, but for instantaneous searching, it’s an excellent tool. And reMail plays up its usefulness during international travel, when looking up old mail on a server back in the U.S. can cost a fortune in roaming charges.

Apple’s Mail is a good mail client with pretty good search; Google’s Safari-based Gmail for the iPhone is an amazing Web app that’s mostly meant for use when you have Internet access (it does have rudimentary offline capabilities); reMail is excellent search attached to basic mail features. I’d kill for an e-mail client that combined the best features of all three into one app. For now, though, I use both Mail and Gmail–and, as of today, reMail.