Barnes & Noble Entering the E-Book Fray?

I like these rumors: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that bookstore behemoth Barnes & Noble will soon start selling its own e-reader device, and Gizmodo has a tip that said device will run Google’s Android OS. For all the things that are good about Amazon’s Kindle, it suffers from being a sophisticated electronic device designed by a company whose expertise doesn’t lay in designing sophisticated electronic devices. By going with an existing operating system, Barnes & Noble could avoid doing a lot of heavy technical lifting, and would be able to leverage all the things that Android is already capable of doing.

B&N, not surprisingly, isn’t confirming the scuttlebutt. It told Reuters:

We have made no announcement about an electronic reader…We believe readers should have access to books in their digital library from any device, anywhere and anytime.

The company is indeed putting its digital eggs in multiple baskets: It’s powering e-book stores for the iRex and Plastic Logic devices, and has released an iPhone app. Unlike Amazon.com, it’s supporting the ePub standard, which will let you buy a book from B&N and read it on any other ePub device, including ones that the company has nothing to do with.

At the moment, Amazon remains the only superpower of the e-book world (well, maybe Sony too, but let’s see how its latest round of devices do). Consumers will benefit if there’s at least one other company that comes out with a really spectacular device and does a spectacular job of selling it. Maybe Amazon’s recent Kindle price cut and international rollout were pre-emptive strikes against an imminent B&N reader?

Office 2010 Goes Free, Gets Ads

When Microsoft Office 2010 shows up sometime next year, the most basic version will have an appealing price: $0. Microsoft has announced that it’ll work with PC manufacturers to put something called Office 2010 Starter Edition on new machines. The new version will replace the venerable-but-languishing Microsoft Works, and will provide reduced-functionality versions of Word and Excel that don’t cost anything–and which embed advertising of some sort. PC owners will be able to purchase upgrade cards at retail outlets that let them turn Starter Edition into a full-blown copy of Office.

It’s impossible to fully judge Office Starter Edition until we know (A) just how “reduced” the functionality is, and (B) just how intrusive the ads are. (Companies have often talked about the idea of ad-supported office suites, but I’m not sure if anyone’s done it successfully; unlike Web searching, it’s not obvious how you’d integrate ads into a productivity suite in a way that made sense for consumers and advertisers.)

But if the ads aren’t too obnoxious and it’s easy to uninstall Office if you don’t want it, this could make sense–Microsoft presumably likes the idea of introducing cost-conscious folks to Office at no charge and preventing them from defecting to Google Docs or Zoho. Unfortunately, the free suite will be available preinstalled on new computers, not as a download–but if it becomes as pervasive as Works, it’ll show up on lots of machines.

Microsoft is also saying that there will be an online demo version of Office 2010 that uses virtualization to let you try out the suite without installing it–an important option considering that you can’t install Office 2007 and Office 2010 on the same machine. (When I’m king, there will be a law prohibiting software companies from releasing apps that can’t exist concurrently with their predecessors.)

Office 2007 was originally accompanied by an online demo version that the Office site says is no longer available. Don’t tell anybody, but it’s still accessible here. It works quite well–I wish something similar were available for every major application.

Anyhow, let’s wrap this up with a T-Poll:

This Isn’t a Job For Mighty Mouse!

As TechCrunch’s MG Siegler has reported, it looks like Apple may need to come up with a new name for the multi-touch mouse it’s supposedly getting ready to release: Another mouse manufacturer called Man & Machine has been awarded a trademark on the name Apple’s been using, Mighty Mouse. The name is, of course, a reference to Paul Terry’s beloved crime-busting rodent–who, oddly enough, only became Mighty Mouse after his original name, Super Mouse, became the subject of a trademark dispute shortly after the character debuted in 1942. (Apple apparently secured permission to use the name from Mighty’s current owner, CBS.)

Fortunately, there are plenty of other animated mice who’d probably be thrilled to have an Apple input device named after them. After the jump, a few nominees.

Continue reading this story…

5Words: Walt Likes Windows 7

Walt Mossberg likes Windows 7.

Sorry, still no iPhone tethering.

BlackBerry 2 coming real soon?

An even more minimalist Google.

FTC: No $11,000 blogger fines.

Rock Band: coming to iPhone.

Best Buy does mobile backup.

iPhone OS 3.1.2 is available.

Google beefs up mobile search.

Dell doing Android for AT&T?

________________________

Like 5Words? Subscribe via RSS.

Twitter’s Non-Failwhale Fail

When something’s awry with Twitter, we’re used to seeing the Failwhale show up to relay the bad news. At the moment, though, troubles of a more subtle sort appear to be afflicting the site. Peter Kafka of All Things Digital is reporting on current problems with users’ Twitter timelines, and they certainly seem to be affecting my account: I follow more than 1250 people, so I’m usually pelted with tweets more or less continuously, but the site is claiming that nobody I follow has had anything to say in more than two hours:

Checking again, I see that tweets are coming in–just very, very slowly. Twitter’s status page acknowledges the issue and says they’re working on it.

Browser-Based Wii Fun

Cloud-based services are changing everything about computing–and they’re having an impact in some pretty unexpected places. Such as the Nintendo Wii, where some clever folks are utilizing the console’s Opera browser to deliver nifty little free games that even take advantage of the Wii Remote and provide online play. Jared Newman has rounded up ten of his favorites–try ‘em all!

View Free Wii Browser Games slideshow.

10 Awesome Free Wii Browser Games

Nintendo recently made the Wii’s Opera Web browser free to all, perhaps realizing that only a fool would pay $5 for it. But even with the Internet at the command of your Wii Remote, it’s not clear what to do, especially with no support for Hulu and premium content withheld from YouTube.

Why not play some Wii browser-based video games? The Wii’s browser may only support Flash Lite, but that hasn’t hampered a handful of games designed specifically for the console’s Web browser. I’ve picked 10 of the best, including two-player Tetris, a working Galaxian clone and a full MMORPG, all of which can be bookmarked to play again at any time (To do so, click on the star icon in the browser, then click the icon with the plus sign to bookmark the page you’re on).

So grab a pen and write some of these URLs down, or even better, head to Technologizer through your console, and enjoy some Wii browser games that won’t cost you a dime.

European Commission Market-Tests Microsoft Browser Remedy

When the European Commission (EC) mandated that Microsoft ship Windows XP sans Windows Media Player, the final product proved unpopular with consumers. For Windows 7, the issue is Internet Explorer, and a more diligent EC announced today that it is market-testing its remedy for effectiveness.

After repeatedly wrangling with Microsoft over whether the company would be permitted to ship Internet Explorer 8 with Windows 7, the EC and Microsoft reached a compromise: letting customers pick which browser they want. Windows 7 users in European countries will select their default browser from a ballot screen that will be pushed for customers to configure via Windows Update.

The ballot features a choice of 12 browsers; browsers are listed alphabetically by vendor, and are sorted into groups according to their popularity. Microsoft provides introductory information for each option. You can see a screen shot of the ballot screen here.

Further action could be taken against Microsoft pending the EC’s findings in the Opera antitrust case. Opera indicated today that more work was needed for the ballot remedy to become acceptable.

I’d be interested in knowing what the users ultimately do, and would like to see data about installations to see if it jives with what is being reported on the Web. Firefox 3 has surpassed IE 7′s market share in Europe, but who’s to say that the remedy isn’t effective if Internet Explorer 8 is the most popular choice. As long as people are happy with the process and it is fair, the results really don’t matter.

Xbox 360 Achievements’ Icy Grip Needn’t Get Colder

I can’t recall my reaction when Microsoft introduced Achievements alongside the Xbox 360, but I definitely didn’t expect them to have such a profound impact on the games industry. Now, one game developer says that Achievements, particularly the easy ones, can drive game sales.

Speaking to Official Xbox Magazine, Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford said there’s a subset of gamers who base their purchasing decisions on a game’s Achievement per minute ratio. “He’s playing a lot,” Pitchford said. “So he’s a very frequent customer, and you want to be in that pile. That’s just business.”

Achievements are the new-age embodiment of the high score, rewarding players for their in-game accomplishments with a universal point system. Having a lot of points, or a high Gamerscore, as it’s called,  means you play a lot of games with at least a modicum of skill.

After Microsoft popularized the idea, Sony duplicated it with Playstation 3 trophies, and so did Valve on its Steam PC gaming platform. Entire sites exist for the purpose of documenting achievements, and at least one person is building a reputation for hunting down the most points. There’s a game that mocks the obsession, and heck, at times my inner Atari gamer prods me to play on a harder difficulty, just to get the most points.

I’m skeptical of Pitchford’s claim that Achievement hunters are a lucrative demographic, because they’re probably more inclined to rent a game and mine its points than to buy it outright. But I’m uncomfortable with his suggestion that game designers are “the worst” (emphasis his) at coming up with Achievement criteria — and therefore driving sales. I’m not sure who else he has in mind, but the last thing game design needs is more influence from the business side.

After all, one of my greatest Achievement-related pleasures was playing through Mirror’s Edge without ever shooting an enemy, and I wouldn’t have been compelled to do so without the “Test of Faith” Achievement. I’m guessing the developers were behind that one, as it emphasized the game’s flight-over-fight mechanics. That achievement felt good, and I wouldn’t want it compromised just to pawn off a few more sales on people who care about nothing but easy points.

Practically Perfect PDF, Courtesy of Google

This is very simple and very useful: Google is now using the Web-based PDF viewer that I’ve been enjoying in Gmail to make it easier to view PDFs that you happen upon on the Web. You know it’s available when you see a PDF in Google Search results with a “Quick View” link:

Click it, and you get a nice view of the PDF that retains formatting and doesn’t require you to download the PDF (or even to have a PDF viewer installed on your computer):

Google says that more than half of the PDFs it’s indexed now offer Quick View, with more to come; others still provide only the not-very-useful, plaint-text HTML view. And I see some PDFs that offer neither Quick View nor HTML and must be downloaded and opened in a PDF application. Even in incomplete form, it’s awfully handy when you want to peek inside a PDF before you go through the bother of downloading it–or when you don’t have any desire to download it at all.

5Words: AT&T Warms to VoIP

AT&T: iPhone VoIP is okay.

Apple tablet rumor (they’re mandatory!).

EU and Microsoft: friends again!

Google’s Cloudboard clipboard sounds neat.

Dell Adamo XPS: thin, thin!

Toshiba tests fuel-cell phone.

Qualcomm unveils a pocket TV.

Gartner says Android’ll beat iPhone.

________________________

Like 5Words? Subscribe via RSS.

DoubleTwist Adds a Music Store

Here’s what DoubleTwist was talking about in its Steve-Jobs-is-an-evil-overlord ad from last week: The company has released a new edition of the Mac version of its media-management software with Amazon’s MP3 Downloads store built in. That makes it a more formidable alternative to iTunes–and DoubleTwist’s key attraction remains the fact that it supports hundreds of phones, media players, and other devices rather than just iPods and iPhones:

As with the rest of DoubleTwist, the store feels like a minimalist, defeatured iTunes. There’s no information about the artists or albums, no listener reviews, and no links to concert information. DoubleTwist also doesn’t provide access to Amazon’s video download store (it does, however, let you manage and convert unprotected videos you already have, as well as photos).

Basically, all you get is a search box and the ability to listen to samples and purchase tracks and albums:

In some ways, DoubleTwist’s extreme simplicity is a pleasant break from the bursting-at-the-seams behemoth that iTunes has turned into. Other than the expansive gadget support, the best thing about it is its pure speed: You can be in and out of the music store with a purchase far faster than in Amazon’s browser-based interface or in iTunes’ Music Store. (Every time I click the iTunes Store link in iTunes, I gird myself to mentally drum my fingers while it loads.)

All in all,the new DoubleTwist doesn’t justify an ad which seems to suggest its significance is worthy of comparison to the original Macintosh, or that users of iTunes (which DoubleTwist largely mimics) are zombies. But it’s well worth checking out, especially if you’ve got a Mac and a device that comes with poor vendor support for OS X, or none at all. (DoubleTwist says that the Amazon store will come soon to its Windows version.)

Is This Twice the Netbook?

Engadget’s Ross Miller is attending CEATAC in Tokyo–it’s the Consumer Electronics Show of Japan, only far weirder–and among the gizmos he’s encountered is a prototype of a netbook with two screens (photo borrowed from Engadget):

My instinctive response to dual-screen laptops of all sorts (which I wrote about here) is that they take the best thing about portable computers–the fact that they’re easy to quickly and efficiently use almost anywhere–and mess it up. If you want more pixels than an ordinary netbook provides, wouldn’t it be more practical to buy a larger, higher-resolution single-screen notebook? Wouldn’t this machine intrude on your seatmate’s real estate if you tried to use it on an airplane? And I like to take laptops literally and use them on my lap…a scenario in which double-screen models seem particularly unwieldy.

Every time I look at a two-screener, including this one, it seems to say “We’re doing this because it’s technically feasible, not because real people would want to use this in the real world.”

Then again, you could argue that real people have never gotten the chance to give two-screen notebooks a yay or a nay–yery few of the dualies that have been invented have ever made it to market. Do you think it’s an idea that’ll ever catch on?

Kindle Gets Cheaper, Travels Internationally

Haven’t bought a Kindle 2 yet? Good. Amazon.com, which knocked the price of its e-book reader down by $60 only last July, has cut it by another forty bucks. You can now buy one for $259–and while that may not be a magic price point, it’s a lot more tempting than the $400 that the original Kindle cost when it debuted a couple of years ago. The big Kindle DX, with its 9.7-inch screen, remains a pricey $489.

The price cut may be in part a reaction to Sony’s renewed vigor as a Kindle competitor, although the Kindle was already a deal by comparison to any of Sony’s models. (The cheapest Sony is $199 but has a smaller screen than the Kindle and no wireless; the wireless Sony costs $399.)

More intriguingly, Amazon has added a $279 variant that uses a GSM radio to let you download content in a hundred countries around the world. (In the U.S., it’s powered by AT&T; other Kindles use Sprint’s network.) You pay a $1.99 surcharge to download books outside the U.S. (reasonable enough) and the same fee to download a single issue of a magazine (pricey!). Amazon is taking pre-orders now saying the new version will ship on October 19th.

Folks in many countries outside the U.S. can buy this model, but Amazon hasn’t truly internationalized the Kindle: Non-U.S. buyers apparently have to order their readers from the U.S., and get a device with an interface and content in English, with a U.S. wall adapter. One presumes that now that Amazon has engineered a GSM electronic reader, we’ll see it start to roll out some truly localized versions in other countries before long.

What is This “Browser” of Which You Speak?

Can you convince someone who doesn’t even know what a Web browser is to switch to a new one? Google appears to be trying, with a new Web site and video, which I learned about in this post by MG Siegler.

The site is, of course, a thinly-veiled promotional vehicle for Google Chrome. Although it’s an extremely soft sell–and since there’s no shipping version of Chrome for the Mac yet, the version of the site I just perused on my MacBook Pro has links to Opera, Safari, and Firefox (but not Flock or Camino, alas).

The video’s narrator says that most people don’t know what browser they’re running, or what a browser is. Can that possibly be true? Did Google do research on the matter? I dunno. But I do know that there are such people as folks who use computers every day but simply aren’t interested enough in technology to keep track of such things. One of the smartest people I know thinks her browser is Google. (Hint: She gave birth to me.)

Another question: How many people who are only dimly aware at best just what a Web browser is know how to download and install a new one, as Google suggests?

Alternative theory: Even if Google is serious about the idea that many folks don’t dump IE because they don’t know they’re using it, maybe the site and video–which are either soothing and straightforward or patronizing, depending on how you look at them–are meant more as goofy fun and a conversation-starter than as sincere outreach to the Web’s most blissfully ignorant users.

5Words: Ten Most Common Passwords

Third most popular password: “Alejandra.”

Google explains browsers to newbies.

PhotoSketch is cool, cool, cool.

Steve Ballmer eats Vista crow.

Why tablet PCs never succeeded.

What’s up with Microsoft’s “Pink?”

Gizmodo tries life without cable.

Palm unveils WebOS developer program.

Ask.com’s new search offering: coupons.

________________________

Like 5Words? Subscribe via RSS.