HP’s Windows 7 PC Extravaganza

We’re a little over a month away from the launch of Windows 7–which means that a lot of new PCs are also imminent. Tonight, HP is announcing a bunch of new laptops, along with one desktop. I had a chance to see them recently; herewith, some thoughts.

I was most taken with two new notebooks called the Envy13 and Envy15. These 13- and 15-inch models are the successors to the Envy 133, an extremely slick machine from HP subsidiary Voodoo PC, and their appearance presumably marks the end of Voodoo as a separate brand. The new Envys are unquestionably aimed at the sort of  well-heeled, style-conscious computer buyers who might otherwise buy MacBook Pros–they’ve got cases that combine aluminum and magnesium (which HP says provides a better balance of lightness and strength than Apple’s all-aluminum unibody design), touchpads with integrated buttons (yes, like Apple’s), bright screens, function keys that (unlike most on Windows PCs) don’t make you press the Fn key, and “slice” extended batteries that make them a bit thicker . (HP says that the Envy13′s extended battery will power it for 18 hours.)

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HP Mini 311-1000NR Netbook Image Gallery

HP’s 11.6-inch Mini 311 netbook. Front view.

HP Envy13 Image Gallery

HP’s new high-end laptop in its aluminum/magnesium case. Front, closed.

Google’s Interesting, Useful, Odd, Imperfect Fast Flip

Did I just say that one of the differences between Bing and Google is that Bing is splashy and Google revels in its  plain jane interface? I lied. Google had a TechCrunch50 announcement of its own this afternoon, and involves a new Google Labs feature that has a high “wow, lookee there!” quotient: Google Fast Flip.

Fast Flip is based on Google News, and Google says it came up with it to address the fact that browsing through news sites is usually a slow process–not at all like the effortless instant gratification of flipping through a magazine or newspaper. Google has partnered with several dozen news sources–including the BBC, BusinessWeek, the Christian Science Monitor, the Daily Beast, Esquire, the New York Times, Newsweek, Salon, Slate, and TechCrunch–to create previews of their stories that live on Fast Flip but which display the first several paragraphs of the article in a form that looks like the originating site. You rifle through these previews by clicking left and right arrows, and the pages zip on and off-screen in high-speed, fluid animation–hence the “Fast Flip” name.

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Clicker’s Guide to Online Video

I’ve lost track of how many search engines have claimed to be a TV Guide for Web video, or have been described as such by others. This morning at TechCrunch50, another contender joined the fray: Clicker, which is headed by former Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone. It’s focused on professional content (content from broadcast TV, cable, and some Web-only items); aims to know more than competitors about the shows it finds to make it easier to find programs you’ll like (such as whether they’re comedies or dramas); embeds shows from Hulu, network sites, and other sources; and lets you maintain a personal library of shows so you can come back and watch your favorites.

Looks useful and straightforward enough, but it’s hard to judge until it’s open for business–which it isn’t yet. Here’s a video walkthrough:

Sites like Clicker are going to be important, unless Google and other garden-variety search providers add enough video-specific features to render them superfluous. But to me, the biggest problem with TV shows online isn’t that they’re hard to find, but that too much of the good stuff just isn’t available yet. I’m looking forward to the day when just about anything that’s ever aired on TV in episodic form is available online–including scads of items that never made it to DVD. When that happens–and I’m convinced it will–we’ll really need Clicker or something comparable…

Spawn: It’s SlingBox for Your Console Games

The most potentially interesting thing I’ve seen so far at the TechCrunch50 conference is Spawn Labs’ Spawn HD720 box. It’s also one of the easier things to explain: Just as a SlingBox lets you redirect your TV signal to another PC on your home network or anywhere on the Internet, Spawn lets you broadcast console games–it supports PS2, PS3, Xbox, Xbox 360, and GameCube, but not Wii–to distant computers. You can use it to play a game in another room when your TV is otherwise occupied, or to play a game remotely when you’re traveling–and you can even play against someone who’s in the living room using the console directly, or who’s in a third location.

It all works via a $199.95 box (which goes on sale today) and adapters you plug into your computer to let you connect gamepads, and Spawn says it’ll work with any game for the consoles it supports. It worked well in the demo–which isn’t a given, since several TechCrunch50 debutantes haven’t–and if it does what it’s supposed to, it’s going to be cool. Spawn says that games look good and there’s virtually no latency on home networks and only a tiny bit over the Internet, but even the impressively-engineered SlingBox sometimes has trouble dealing with chokey real-world Internet connections. I’ll believe it when I play it.

Even if it performs as advertised, it is, of course, another box to buy and install. Wouldn’t it be nifty if this feature was built into consoles–or if Spawn and Sling teamed up to sell one box that did both games and TV?

Bing Search Gets Visual

Here at TechCrunch50, Microsoft search honcho Yusef Mehdi just announced Bing Visual Search, a new feature which is supposed to be going live any moment now at http://www.bing.com/visualsearch. (Actually, it seems to have gone live and then stopped working again, at least for me–and oops, now it’s working again. Sort of. Okay, now it’s broken again.)

It’s a pretty clever feature that displays results as thumbnail images of stuff–cameras, handbags, movies, U.S. presidents, athletes, dogs, and a whole lot more. The images fly into place, and if you refine your search (say, to cameras of a certain megapixel range) they rearrange themselves onscreen. It’s unquestionably an eye-catching effect and a fun way to discover information; it also helps reinforce part of Bing’s apparent strategy, which is to be a far splashier search engine than the intentionally plain-jane Google. And in cases when aesthetics are the overriding aspect of your search–such as with handbags–it might be the single best way to browse results.

Visual search is apparently only available for subjects that Microsoft has prepped for the service, but dozens are available and the company says it’s working on more.)

More thoughts on Visual Search once I can get it to work reliably for more than a moment or two at a time–for now, after the jump, a few fuzzy photos from the TechCrunch stage.

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More Apple TV for Your Money

I can’t remember if anyone onstage at Apple’s press event last week even mentioned the words “Apple TV.” It certainly didn’t announce any major news associated with it. But the product which Apple loves to tell us is a mere hobby is now a better buy. Apple has discontinued the 40GB model (the one I own) and cut the price for the much more capacious 160GB version from $329 down to $229, the price it had been charging for 40GB.

Depending on how you use Apple TV, you might or might not find the 4X jump in capacity for your buck to be a boon–if all you do is rent the occasional movie, store a typical music collection, and stream stuff from other computers around your house, 40GB was plenty. 160GB starts to sound like enough space for a sizable movie collection (although it’s still teensy compared to the space offered by pricier media services such as HP’s MediaSmart Home Server.)

Apple TV is a fun and well-designed product, but it hasn’t turned out to be an iPod-like transcendent hit. Then again, neither has anything else involving bringing the Internet into the living room. I find myself using Roku’s $99 box more than Apple TV, mostly because its Netflix Watch Instantly integration lets it provide all-you-can-view access to a ton of content for one low price. Other than video podcasts, most of Apple TV’s content is priced per title, making it impractical to gorge on movies and TVs as you can do with Roku. I wonder if Apple has ever considered offering some sort of Netflix-like subscription plan, at least for a subset of stuff?

Time for a T-Poll:

Mintuit: It’s Official

The TechCrunch story from last night was solid: The first major news at the TechCrunch50 conference this morning was that Intuit is indeed buying personal-finance service Mint for $170 million. Mint founder Aaron Patzer appeared onstage to confirm the acquisition. He also said that the Mint team will be responsible not only for Mint but for the existing Quicken Online service…and the Quicken desktop software. Which might help assuage the fears of Mint fans who are worrying that Intuit will ruin it.

It’ll be fascinating to see how Quicken, Quicken Online, and Mint relate to each other once all this is sorted out…

More TechCrunch50 news to come today and tomorrow–some here, and more at my Twitter feed.

5Words for Monday, September 14th, 2009

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Will T-Mobile pick up Sprint?

NYTimes.com delivers ad-based malware.

FTC stops Sears, Kmart spying.

AT&T starts iPhone MMS early.

Dell discounts the Zune HD.

Apple’s hogging all the flash.

Apple chops Apple TV price.

Here’s your Atari 800 laptop.

Eee Keyboard PC: October arrival.

Nokia’s Booklet: priciest netbook ever.

Intuit Buying Mint?

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington is reporting that personal-finance behemoth Intuit is about to buy Mint, the nifty financial site that has provided stiff competition (as well as inspiration) for Intuit’s Quicken Online. The timing of the report is intriguing: We’re hours away from the start of Arrington’s TechCrunch50 conference, at which Mint deservedly won best of show in the conference’s inaugural edition two years ago.

If the story’s true, it makes sense: Intuit has been scrambling to play catch-up with Mint. The current version of Quicken Online is less rich than the Quicken application, and more focused on folks who want to make sure they have enough money to get through the month, not those thinking about the long haul. But you gotta think that Intuit wants its Web-based tools to be at least as rich and popular as its traditional ones, and that it knows it can’t wait very long to get there. Owning Mint would bring both some cool features and a lot of customers to Intuit.

Would Intuit kill the current Quicken Online and redub Mint with that name? Keep the two services but use the same underlying technology? Use Mint as the primary brand for online personal finance? I have no idea, but it’ll be fun to watch if the deal does go down.

Speaking of TechCrunch50, I’ll be spending much of the next two days at the conference. Stay tuned for live reports on the most interesting stuff that debuts there…

Comcast to Take TiVo National By Year End?

My eagle-eyed blogging partner Davis Freeberg caught this juicy nugget yesterday from a member of the ComcastCares Twitter support team:

As TiVo (TIVO) investors are aware, TiVo linked up with Comcast(CMCSA) to deliver their DVR experience onto third party cable company hardware (Motorola). And while the initial fruits of their labor began deployment as a Comcast offering in New England in late 2007, we’ve yet to see a broader release to other markets. Making ComcastMelissa’s tweet, a response to a customer request for an improved DVR interface, notable.

However, I suspect she will be proven wrong. I seriously doubt Comcast intends a nationwide TiVo roll-out in the few remaining months of 2009 and doubt their ability to execute on such a plan, should it exist. Most likely, “ComcastMelissa” is good intentioned but misinformed of the Comcast TiVo deployment strategy. Anyone who’s followed Comcast and TiVo statements on the matter would probably agree that the parties have a more conservative market-by-market deployment plan in place. Some supporting evidence from TiVo CEO Tom Rogers at their recent earnings call, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha:

They continue to work through in Boston the infrastructure issues that particularly relate to the installation in individual homes. And I can’t say they are where they want to be yet; there are clearly things that Comcast needs to solve for both TiVo and for themselves so the product can be more smoothly installed. They are totally committed to solving those issues and we believe they will be solved in the near future. Obviously, there’s frustration on both their part and ours that it’s not quite solved yet. But I think, as Mark Hess’s quote indicated, the commitment to continue to roll TiVo beyond the two named markets that we’ve mentioned, they indicated in last quarter earnings that they were focused on a market rollout where TiVo would be the primary DVR and then again today have announced yet another yet to be soon-named market.

[This post republished from Zatz Not Funny.]

You Own Your Tweets … But So Does Twitter?

Reading about changes to a site’s terms of service is a lot like hearing someone say, “We have to talk.” It’s never a good sign.

So, despite the calm way in which Twitter’s Biz Stone described the site’s updated terms of service, I’m raising  skeptical eyebrow. We’ve heard a lot today about the new terms’ advertising possibilities, but I’m more alarmed by the declarations of what Twitter can do with your content.

Stone notes that “your tweets belong to you, and not to Twitter.” At the same time, Twitter is allowed to “use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).”

After all that, what ownership do I have that Twitter doesn’t?

Let’s make an analogy. Say I write a sentence on a piece of paper. They’re my words, on my paper, plain and simple. But let’s say the paper company had declared that it can take those words and use them as it pleases, because they were written on the company’s paper. Can I still say that I’m the owner of those words?

The justification for Twitter’s reproduction rights is, simply, “that’s what we do.” Not good enough.

Twitter’s terms look a lot like the ones that got Facebook into hot water earlier this year. They’re not word-for-word the same, but you see a lot of similar language: use, copy, scan, reformat, modify, edit.

Not surprisingly, Twitter moved to pre-empt the backlash that Facebook faced by saying that “your tweets belong to you.” (Facebook said it in reverse: “We are not claiming and have never claimed ownership of material that users upload.”)

We’re talking semantics here. The bigger problem is the blanket claims these social networking sites are making on users’ content. I appreciate that Twitter’s terms of service are brief and readable, but I’d rather the site spell out exactly how and where it intends to use people’s tweets, so we’re all on the same page.

More Lite Versions, Please!

I think of them as Facebook brain freezes: Every so often, when I’m on the site, I just get overwhelmed by the quantity of features it offers and can’t figure out how to do something simple such as post a photo. They’re a temporary condition, but a frustrating one. Which is why I’m intrigued by Facebook Lite, the new stripped-down-to-the-essentials alternative interface the company launched yesterday.

Originally meant for emerging nations such as India where broadband isn’t a given, Facebook Lite is also being rolled out in the U.S. Here’s my home page in Lite mode:

And here it is in heavy standard form:

Facebook Lite does away with third-party apps and a number of inessential fripperies in favor of a more streamlined look. As far as I can tell, it also doesn’t include chat, which is one reason why I haven’t made up my mind whether I’ll use it much. But I really like the idea of an alternative, simpler interface for a feature-rich application, and I hope other purveyors of services and software crib it.

For eons, developers have talked about how 80 percent of users rely on only 20 percent of a typical application’s features. In response, they’ve sometimes come up with simpler versions of well-known apps–Microsoft Works and Photoshop Elements being two examples. Most of these products haven’t been all that good or all that successful–Elements is an impressive exception–and I think part of the problem is that most folks are convinced they’ll eventually need the 80-percent-of-features they aren’t currently using.

Facebook Lite, however, isn’t something different from Facebook; it’s Facebook with a different skin. You can graduate from Lite to full-fledged Facebook without losing anything, or jump back and forth between the two versions at will.

What if Microsoft Works was not a dumbed-down edition of Microsoft Office but rather a different view of Office? (Works’ other selling point besides simplicity has been its low price; maybe you’d have to pay to unlock the full Office interface.) FriendFeed (now owned by Facebook) is notoriously complex; the current version’s a lot easier to use, but it could still benefit from a Lite view. Every time I try to learn Adobe Flash, I get overwhelmed and put it off; a Lite view would help

Call Lite versions training wheels if you must, but there are instances in which I wouldn’t be ashamed to use them–especially if I knew nobody was watching…

Fifth-Generation iPod Nano: The Technologizer Review

Weird but true: For Apple, 2009 has turned out to be the year of inner beauty. Most of the company’s new products, including the iPhone 3GS and the latest MacBooks, are virtually indistinguishable from their predecessors, but which pack meaningful improvements inside. The trend continues with the fifth-generation iPod Nano. For the first time, Apple’s annual reinvention of its most popular music player isn’t about aesthetics–in fact, the new Nano is the same size as the old one and differs visually only its slightly larger screen and slightly smaller clickwheel, the camera on its backside, and the slicker and more vividly colorful (and, I’m hoping, more scratch-resistant) finish on its aluminum case. But the latest Nano carries more new features than any of more outwardly revised predecessors.

In fact, this is the first Nano that feels a little less like a music player and a little more like a Swiss Army Knife. Much of what Apple has added has nothing to do with music: The Nano is now a video camera, a stand-alone voice recorder, and a pedometer. And the major new music feature–an FM radio–is so retro that I’d long ago assumed that Apple would never add one to one of its products. Like most Swiss Army Knives, the new Nano doesn’t match every single-purpose product in every respect, but the improvements add up to a fun upgrade that retains a logical place in the iPod family even in the era of the much fancier and more versatile iPod Touch.

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Calling It: 2009 is the Year of the Playstation 3

Even with the reduced-price PS3 Slim arriving at the tail end of August, Sony’s console gained considerable ground on the Xbox 360 and the Wii according to the NPD Group, coming in just behind the former by 5,400 sales, and the latter by 67,400 sales. Indeed, the stage is set for the PS3 to top both the Wii and the Xbox 360 in September.

So let’s make the declaration, shall we? 2009 is the Year of the Playstation 3. Nintendo and Microsoft fanboys, delay  your vitriol while we qualify this.

The “Year of the Playstation 3″ has become somewhat of a punchline in the gaming press. According to numerous accounts, 2008 was supposed to be the PS3′s year, except that the console never dug itself out of last place in North America, and had no signs of doing so. (To be fair, Sony’s doing just fine overseas, as PC World’s Matt Peckham wrote last month.)

At the start of this year, when some were bold enough to back Sony again, chuckling ensued. But now, things are looking up. It’s already September, so there’s a lot of catching up to do and little time. Come the end of the year, Sony may still be on the bottom of the heap in annual sales, but it’ll have something its competitors don’t: Momentum.

Yes, I said “momentum,” the buzzword Sony’s PR team kept using to describe the Playstation brand even as it languished through the end of last year. No joke, Sony has it now, thanks entirely to the PS3 Slim and the price cut it brought along. Meanwhile, the Xbox 360 seems to be stagnating with a pseudo-price cut, waiting for Project Natal to tap the casual audience. Same goes for the Wii, which desperately needs something to spark interest and stop the shedding of year-over-year sales.

Sony, on the other hand, has nowhere to go but up, and a cheaper, slimmer console is the best way to begin the ascent. Come 2010, the console wars will look a lot different.