Oh Yeah, Windows Mobile 6.5

Between yesterday’s news about Flash on phones and today’s Google-Verizon deal and announcements yet to come from the CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment show in San Diego, it’s a big week for phone-related developments. But the release of the first phones with Windows Mobile 6.5 is going off with a whimper, not a bang. (That’s the HTC Pure, available from AT&T, to the right.) The title of John Herrman’s review of Microsoft’s new phone OS over at Gizmodo kind of sums it up: “Windows Mobile 6.5 Review: There’s No Excuse for This.”

The fact that Windows Mobile 6.5 is blah and uncompetitive with iPhone OS and Palm’s WebOS isn’t news. Microsoft’s massive problems with its phone OS were apparent the moment Steve Jobs removed the first iPhone from his pocket at his Macworld Expo keynote in January of 2007, and they’ve unfolded in slow motion ever since. The company unveiled the new version back in February at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, and it was clear then that the update was going to be an unsatisfactory stopgap. This week’s only new twist is that the unsatisfactory stopgap has finally reached consumers.

I’m trying to think of another example in tech history of a major player moving quite as slowly to react to the changing world around it. The ones that come to mind involve the major developers of productivity apps for DOS–products such as Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect–and their delayed reaction to the transition from DOS to Windows in the early 1990s. Both Lotus and WordPerfect eventually came out with perfectly respectable Windows versions. But it took way too long, and the products were never the same.

Microsoft is in no danger of becoming the next Lotus or WordPerfect anytime soon. Long-term, though, there may be nothing more important to the company’s future as having a competitive mobile operating system. Even if Windows Mobile 7 turns out to be dazzling, it going to be a latecomer to a party that’s been going on for years. Speculation has it that the first WinMo 7 phones may not show up until the end of next year, around three and a half years after the first iPhone arrived.

That might just be too late. And even if Microsoft stages a dramatic comeback in the phone biz, it may have more than a year of additional slow-motion woe–and degradation to the Windows Mobile brand–ahead of it.

Verizon and Google Team Up for Android Phones

Google’s Android phone OS may have gotten off to a slower start than I’d have expected, but it’s quickly making up for lost time. Today’s news: Google and Verizon Wireless are working together directly to design new Android phones, the first of which will be unveiled in “the next few weeks.” They’ll come with Google Voice.

The proof will be in the pudding phones, but it’s good news for consumers that the nation’s largest wireless carrier will be getting Android phones. It’s good news for Verizon, too–the company’s signature smartphone, the BlackBerry Storm, didn’t turn out to be a particularly formidable iPhone rival, and the Google partnership gives Verizon multiple additional shots at getting phones that are cool enough to grab mindshare and marketshare away from AT&T and Apple. (We still have no idea whether Verizon will get the iPhone anytime soon.)

For all the Android phones released and announced to date, I think we still haven’t seen the platform’s defining handset–the one that’s slick enough to join the iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre among the most sophisticated next-generation smartphones. (We haven’t seen a BlackBerry that fits that description, either–and definitely not a Windows Mobile phone.) Sounds like it won’t be too long until we’ll be able to form opinions about whether one of the first Verizon/Google offerings might be that phone.

Heck, maybe I’m just in an upbeat mood, but this is potentially good news for iPhone owners, too. The more smartphones from other carriers that have Google Voice, the greater the chances that Apple might decide it’s in its competitive interests to stop pondering the Google application and get it for the App Store. Wouldn’t be cool if AT&T ended up putting pressure on Apple to…approve innovative telephony apps like Google Voice?

VMware Fusion 3 Takes Windows-on-Mac Up a Notch

Was it really only a little over three years ago that the formerly fanciful notion of being able to run Windows apps within OS X without major limitations became reality? Today, archrivals Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion continue to undergo aggressive upgrades aimed at making the virtualization of Windows on Macs even more powerful, seamless, and simple. And today, VMware is announcing that it’s taking preorders for VMware Fusion 3, which will ship on October 27th.

I haven’t had any hands-on time with the new version yet, but the list of features that VMware has revealed leaves me anxious to get my mitts on it:

• Snow Leopard support, including a 64-bit engine and support for OS X’s 64-bit kernel.
• Full support for Windows 7, including the Aero interface and Flip 3D task switching and better support for DirectX and OpenGL graphics.
• A migration utility that lets you import a real PC’s Windows installation over the network. (Parallels introduced something similar in August, but did so in a separate version of the product that does the job over a bundled USB cable.)
• A menu for your Windows apps that appears on the right-hand side of OS X’s Menu Bar, reducing or eliminating the need to use Windows’ Start menu and Taskbar.
• A more efficient engine that’s less taxing on a Mac’s CPU, can run Windows well in 1GB of RAM, and reduces battery drain, according to VMware. I’m especially happy about that last point–my biggest beef with both Fusion and Parallels is the dramatically reduced battery life I get when they’re running. (Still to be determined: How this version’s speed compares to Parallels–the Parallels folks understandably like to tout this MacTech story that shows their product outperforming Fusion 2 in most tests.)

In all, VMware says that Fusion 3 has more than fifty new features. It’ll cost $79.99 for new users; an upgrade version will be $39.99. A few screens supplied by VMware after the jump.

Continue reading this story…

The FTC Goes After Bloggers (Say, What’s a Blogger, Anyhow?)

The lady in the weight-loss ad who says that she took off a hundred pounds in no time flat. The washed-up minor celebrity doing late night commercials on behalf of some obscure product. And me. We’re all subject to new scrutiny by the FTC, as a result of revised guidelines for “endorsements” of products and services announced on Monday.

Here’s the FTC’s entire document, in case you feel like reading all eighty-one pages (I’ll wait):

Even if you read the whole darn thing, the upshot is hard to summarize. But I’ll give it a try: The FTC is trying to clarify its expectations of paid endorsers, a group into which it lumps real people who givetestimonials in ads, celebrity spokespeople, and bloggers. It wants bloggers who receive products or who otherwise have “material connections” to the companies whose products they write about to disclose the relationship. If they don’t, they’re at risk of receiving a fine of up to $11,000.

Continue reading this story…

We’re Looking for the Worst PC in America

Attention, computer owners! Some of you own some really lousy PCs–either ones that were dogs in the first place, or which have gotten so roughed up over time that they’re just plain sad. Maybe most of these machines aren’t in active use–I sure hope not–but if they aren’t, they’re lurking in closets and attics across this great nation. I just know it.

And we want to hear about them, since the one type of computer more memorable than a great one is a bizarrely terrible one. Here’s your incentive to spill your guts: Courtesy of HP, we’ll pick a winner from among all people who tell us about their bad PCs–and that person will receive HP’s extremely slick, feature-laden Envy 13 notebook as a prize. (Thanks to HP for providing it.)

Enter the contest, won’t you? It’s easy–just tell us about your crummy machine in words, pictures, and/or video. Go here for full details on how to do that–you have until 5pm PDT on October 16th to tell your tale. (Comments are closed on this post so nobody accidentally enters here.)

Please spread the word by telling your loved ones, friends, coworkers, and random strangers to visit http://technologizer.com/worstpc–the more rotten computers we uncover the merrier…

It’s Flash on the iPhone (Well, Sort of)

The iPhone may be the only major smartphone in the known universe that’s unlikely to get Adobe’s Flash Player anytime soon, but there is a bit of iPhone/Flash news today. At Adobe’s MAX conference in Los Angeles, the company announced that Flash Professional CS5, the next upgrade to the Flash developer package, will be able to create native iPhone applications for distribution through the App Store.

This has nothing to do with Flash Player, and won’t let iPhone users view Flash content on the Web–it’s just a way for developers who are comfortable with Flash to build iPhone apps. It’ll presumably be useful when a company’s putting together an app in Flash for multiple devices, and wants to get it onto the iPhone without starting from scratch.

It sounds like a smart way for Adobe to jam its foot into the iPhone door even if Flash Player for the iPhone remains an iffy proposition–but if these tools are worth using, iPhone users should see no signs whatsoever that there’s anything unusual about the apps that developers build with them.

Jimmy Fallon: “We Want to Treat Video Games Like Movie Openings”

Say what you will about Jimmy Fallon’s talk show hosting talent, but the former Saturday Night Live star and Conan O’Brien replacement has won a place in my heart for celebrating, and not demonizing, video games.

On Friday, Fallon hosted Tim Schafer, the game designer behind Brutal Legend. While not the biggest holiday game release — that honor falls to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 — Brutal Legend’s comedic tale of demon-slaying in a land of heavy metal, paired with the voice acting of Jack Black, has the hallmarks of any blockbuster, regardless of medium.

So it was refreshing to hear Fallon preface the interview with a ringing endorsement for gaming. “On our show, we want to treat video games like movie openings, ’cause it is a huge thing,” he said.

It wasn’t the first time Fallon brought gaming onto the show. In April, he played Punch-Out with G4′s Morgan Webb, and he sent SNL cast member Jason Sudekis to cover E3. Shortly thereafter, Microsoft’s Kudo Tsunoda went on the show to demonstrate Project Natal. Schafer’s appearance went beyond those demos, as Fallon likened Shafer’s celebrity game designer status to the weight Martin Scorsese brings to a film.

I’m always rooting for this type of thing to occur. Video games, in many ways, have yet to mature, and in some ways they’ll never be like film, but it doesn’t help when they’re viewed as a waste of time. It’s even worse when they’re simply ignored in the mainstream because they aren’t seen as important, like movies.

You get the sense from Fallon that he really is a gamer, and is passionate about the subject matter. Good for him, because he’s tapping into a lucrative demographic that too many other broadcasters won’t even touch.

A TWTRCON DC Deal

TWTRCON DC–the second edition of the conference on Twitter for business which I helped launch–is hitting the nation’s capital on October 22nd. The list of speakers is impressive: Everyone from Craiglist’s Craig Newmark to political strategist Joe Trippi to folks from Intuit, PepsiCo, H&R Block, Dunkin Donuts, the NFL, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.

If you’re tempted to go, here’s a little added incentive: TWTRCON is extending a 20 percent discount to members of the Technologizer community. Use discount code SPKR32 when you register at the TWTRCON site, which has more details on the speakers, the agenda, and the venue.

5Words: Tablets Come Into Focus

Tablets: finally coming into focus?

Windows Mobile 6.5 phones arrive.

A massive Hotmail password leak?

I want this Toshiba TV.

Matt Cutts is avoiding Microsoft.

Does Mozilla fear Chrome Frame?

Android on Verizon by Christmas?

iPhone Documents to Go spreadsheet.

Google puts ads on phones.

________________________

Like 5Words? Subscribe via RSS.

Mac vs. PC? No, Mac and PC

9 to 5 Mac is reporting on the NPD Group’s newest figures on Mac ownership in the U.S., which say that twelve percent of households with computers have a Mac–up from nine percent in 2008. But the really interesting factoid is that the overwhelming majority of that twelve percent of Mac-owning homes also have a Windows machine.

Makes sense to me–these days, there’s very little reason not to be biplatform. Once you get them home, they can share nearly everything you might want to share, from MP3s to Word documents to a printer. And OS X and Windows, for all their differences, are now similar enough that moving between them isn’t much more complex than owning a Mazda and a Chevy and driving both.

Apple runs ads that depict PCs (and by extension PC users) as nebbishy losers and talks about switching from Windows to the Mac. Microsoft has been mocking Macs and Mac users as effete and spendy. But if more than eight out of ten Mac households are also PC households, we’re not talking about an either/or situation, and the whole notion–leveraged by both companies–that Mac users are different kinds of people from PC users doesn’t jibe with reality.

Maybe Apple should do more to explain why a PC household should welcome a Mac or two; maybe Microsoft should stop snarking at Mac owners, since most of them are also PC owners. If they did, they’d be addressing millions of sensible consumers who find value in both companies’ wares…

Flash on Phones? Is That a Promise or a Threat?

Adobe’s MAX developer conference is underway in Los Angeles, and the big news is Flash (almost) everywhere–and especially on phones. The company is announcing Flash Player 10.1, due in beta form on Windows Mobile, Palm’s Web OS, Windows, Macintosh, and Linux later this year, and on Android and Symbian in 2010; in addition, Adobe and RIM are announcing that they’re working together to bring Flash to BlackBerries and that Google is joining Adobe’s Flash-everywhere Open Screen project.

On a conceptual, forward-looking level, this is good news: The more options that developers have for building cool stuff, the better, and it’s best when the cool stuff they build works on as many devices as possible. The notion is that Flash will let them design functionality that’ll work on multiple computer and phone platforms without having to be reworked from the ground up–which will be an interesting challenge given how very different smartphones tend to be from each other in terms of factors such as screen resolution, graphics oomph, and connectivity.

Continue reading this story…

Palm’s Quixotic Quest Continues

What is Palm up to? With its new WebOS 1.21 update, it’s once again re-enabled the Palm Pre’s ability to sync unprotected music and videos, photos, and now photo albums with iTunes, no extra software required. The move comes after the USB Implements Forum took Apple’s side in the tiff over Palm’s spoofing of iTunes into thinking that the Pre is an iPod. If I recall correctly, Apple has released two iTunes updates that blocked earlier versions of WebOS from syncing, and chances are presumably sky-high that it’ll block this one the next time that it pushes out a new version of iTunes.

I keep declaring this clash of wills between the two smartphone companies to be over, but I’m officially giving up on making any guesses. Whatever will happen will happen, and Palm, at least, isn’t behaving in the nice, predictable way that you expect of large companies. I dunno how the USB-IF will respond to Palm ignoring its stance that the Pre shouldn’t masquerade as an Apple product via USB connection, but it seems to be clear that Palm is willing to burn bridges behind it.

The company is unquestionably bursting at the seams with smart, talented folks; the Pre remains the iPhone’s most formidable competitor by far from the standpoint of user-interface sophistication. But I’m mystified by what it’s up to here. Palm continues to tout iTunes compatibility as a major feature of the phone. But the convenience that the feature offers when it’s working is completely negated by the periods when it’s in limbo, not to mention the general uncertainty of the whole idea. Whether you take Apple’s side or Palm’s or (like me) aren’t completely thrilled with either company’s behavior, it would be silly to think of the WebOS’s Media Sync feature as an argument in favor of buying a Pre.

Mac and iPhone developer Craig Hunter has a cogent post up on all this that beats up Palm pretty good. He wonders the same thing that I’ve been curious about for months: Why doesn’t Palm, like numerous other companies, write a standalone app to do the syncing? It would work well, and there’s no evidence that Apple would try to foil it.  Just how many Pre owners would vote for continuing to play chicken with Apple when there’s a boring but effective alternative route to nearly the same end result?

The Last 12-Inch Netbook in America

Have I mentioned lately that I’m a big fan of netbooks–but that I think treating them as a fundamentally different sort of device than a notebook is kind of silly, and that it’s a shame the computer industry doesn’t seem to like them much? A netbook is just a notebook that happens to be (1) small and light, (2) designed for relatively basic computing tasks rather than heavy-duty stuff, and (3) attractively priced. And despite ongoing attempts to pigeonhole netbooks, there’s no reason why there should be any hard-and-fast rules about what they are and aren’t.

Which is why I like Lenovo’s IdeaPad S12, a netbook with a 12.1-inch display that refuses to play by the rules. With Dell’s recent discontinuation of its 12-inch Mini, the S12 is a machine in a very small category: Big-Screen Netbooks. (Asus’s Eee PC 1101HA, and HP’s Mini 311 have 11.6-inch screens, but the rest of the netbook universe generally tops out at 10.1 inches.)

Continue reading this story…

Note to Rude Gamers: You Don’t Have the Right

I got a chuckle today reading about the failed lawsuit of Playstation 3 owner Erik Estavillo, who tried to sue Sony after getting banned from the Playstation Network for bad behavior.

If you’ve ever played a competitive online game, you know the type: Loud-mouthed, cussing, insulting, maybe even racist, sexist or homophobic. It’s not clear which of those offenses Estavillo committed while playing Resistance: Fall of Man, but it was apparently bad enough that Sony kicked him off the entire Playstation Network.

A few months ago, Estavillo sued Sony for $55,000 and asked that the company be enjoined from banning other players, on grounds that his right to free speech in a public forum was violated. He added that his agoraphobia (social anxiety) precludes him from socializing in public, so PSN was his only outlet. Estavillo further claimed that Sony effectively stole his pre-paid Playstation Store points.

Too bad. Game Politics reports that a judge has dismissed the case, ruling that a First Amendment claim isn’t plausible. After all, it’s Sony’s private network, and when you sign on, you agree to Sony’s rules. If there’s any question that PSN is like a public place, the tech law blog of Eric Goldman further notes that Sony’s network wasn’t considered a “company town,” because it doesn’t take on any functions of a municipality, virtual or otherwise. PSN is an entertainment venue, not a public service.

The bottom line is, you don’t have First Amendment rights in online gaming. You do have a responsibility to be courteous to those around you. For all the times that people ignore those principles in Resistance, Halo or Gears of War, I’ve got to pump my fist for the minor victories.

Sony Prototype Powers TV Wirelessly

During the 1890′s, inventor Nikola Tesla toyed with the possibility of transferring electricity (safely) through the air. Tesla’s vision has become reality in laboratories within the past decade, and today, the IDG News Service is reporting that Sony has devised a wireless prototype to power its television sets.

The technology, called magnetic resonance, achieves power transfer by feeding energy from a power supply into a coil of wires to produce a magnetic field. A current is transferred when a secondary cool falls within that field. Sony used the technique to send 100 volts of electricity 50 centimeters to “plug in” a wireless 22-inch television set.

Other metallic devices that fall within the field will not become significantly electrified, according to the company. The range can be extended to 80 cm with passive relay units, according to IDG.

Sony’s power system is hardly unique. In 2007, a team of MIT researchers was able to power a light bulb from as far as 7 feet away by using magnetic resonance. But there was considerable energy loss with only 40 percent efficiency.

The research was spun off into company called WiTricity, and it is planning a commercial rollout of the technology – once it is refined. If Sony’s experiment is any indication, those refinements could take awhile.

Sony is also tackling the efficiency issue. While its prototype was 80 percent efficient, additional energy loss occurred after the transmission was made to the secondary coil. One quarter of the original 80 watts was lost.

With further improvements, the energy loss could become more acceptable, but I don’t believe in wasting electricity (and potentially increasing carbon emissions) for aesthetics. If the technology could be used to eliminate the need for toxic batteries to power portable devices, Sony could be onto something. For now, though, a power cord does the job just fine for televisions.

Blu-Ray: Still No Big Whoop

Will Apple release Blu-Ray-equipped iMacs for the holidays? Maybe–and it probably makes sense, since it’s been a while since iMacs got meaningful new features other than ongoing refinement of their industrial design. But to abuse a famous Steve Jobs quote, Blu-Ray still feels like a bag of boring to me. It’s one of the few high-profile examples of gadgetry I have no impulse to invest in.

Here’s why:

It’s not truly part of the digital world. These days, I’m less interested in getting better image quality, and more interested in doing stuff with content–sending it via wireless networking to multiple screens in my house, sticking it on my iPhone, storing it in the cloud. Blu-Ray doesn’t help with any of that. In fact, it’s designed specifically to prevent me from doing it.

The content isn’t there. At least not for me. I admit that I’m not representative of the Average American Consumer here, but I’ll never buy any blockbuster movie on Blu-Ray. I like obscure animation and box sets that aren’t going to sell by the million. For now, they come out on DVD, not Blu-Ray. That’ll change. Eventually. Probably. But if I bought a Blu-Ray player today, I’d mostly use it to watch DVDs.

It’s a stopgap. Like the 2.88MB floppy disk, Blu-Ray is ultimately an impressive (and pricey) improvement on a technology that’s going to go away. By 2012, it’s going to look almost as retro as VHS. Okay, it might take a year or two more than that. But no more.

I’m not saying that Blu-Ray will never show up in my living room or inside a computer I own. (Hey, I was a late adopter of DVD, too.) But I’d say the odds are less than fifty percent that I’ll ever get it–at least as a conscious decision which I’m excited about. (The day will presumably come when all computers that sport optical drives have it.)

But enough about me: