The Worst PCs in America

Some PCs are born crummy. Some achieve crumminess. And some have crumminess thrust upon them. Those are my conclusions after judging our Worst PC in America contest, in which we asked you to tell us about really rotten personal computers–with the lure of a snazzy HP Envy 13 laptop to be awarded to the most outstandingly awful entry. Herewith, some highlights lowlights, including both once-decent machines that have fallen upon hard times and some systems that were kind of terrible and/or just plain odd from the get go.

Thanks to everyone who entered!

Will the CIA Snoop on Social Networks?

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has bought a stake in a company that monitors social media as part of an ongoing clandestine effort by the agency to aggregate content from public sources, Wired is reporting.

The CIA has invested in Visible Technologies, a company that produces technology for search engine marketing for social media. The CIA’s interest in its technology is obvious–the agency needs to keep pace with the latest communications technology.

Over 70 percent of Facebook’s users are located outside of the United States, in over 180 countries. “There are more than 200 non-U.S., non-English-language microblogging Twitter-clone sites today. If the intelligence community ignored that tsunami of real-time information, we’d call them incompetent,” Lewis Shepherd, the former senior technology officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Wired.

The advent of cloud computing raises more concern, because services store data among data centers all around the world. I recently wrote a detailed report about how laws that safeguard your privacy are not the same in every country. If messages pass through a server overseas, does that give the CIA the right to browse the content even if a user is a U.S. citizen?

The CIA is barred by law from domestic spying in the United States, but in the past, the agency has employed creative ways to bypass the law, to hide documents from Congressional review, and to set up an illegal dragnet of domestic communications services. In the last case, Congress gave telecommunications companies immunity from prosecution after it allegedly learned about the spying.

Of course, most folks’ Tweets are public, and even if you don’t share everything with the entire world on Facebook, it’s less private than a phone conversation. Does the notion of the government monitoring social network activity make you nervous?

Microsoft: “Steady Progress” on Sidekick Data Restore

Good news for those of us out there affected by the Sidekick data mess: Microsoft on Monday said that it was continuing to work “around the clock” on the problem, and was making “steady progress” in attempting to restore data. The first of the user content to be restored would be user contacts (probably the most important for most of us), with photographs, notes, to-do-lists, marketplace data, and high scores to follow later.

No exact time frame has been given for the full restore. However, for those who have been affected by the issue (I actually met somebody over the weekend that lost nothing, so it’s not everybody), this is now two weeks after the initial data loss. You have to figure that many have recovered most of their data through other means, so a restore is becoming less and less useful.

Using Libraries to Bridge the Digital Divide

The nonprofit Knight Foundation announced today that it’s working with communities across the U.S. to make libraries more relevant in the information age.

Lady Bird Johnson once said that the only entrance requirement to a public library is interest. A lot has changed since the 1960s, and that interest is fading. Libraries are cutting back services, and for many, the Internet has assumed their role.

I was especially saddened to learn that my hometown of Philadelphia came close to shuttering its public libraries due to a conflict with the State budget. Many of the city’s poorest residents would have been left without Internet access.

The Knight Foundation is working to reverse that trend by funding projects at local libraries to make them centers for digital and media training. It has financed computer labs in under served areas, recruited multi-lingual technology teachers, installed wireless Internet in some libraries, and set up job centers for online employment searches and career research.

“Digital access is essential to first class citizenship in our society. Without digital, you lack full access to information, you are second class economically and even socially,” said Alberto Ibargüen, president and CEO of Knight Foundation. “If a job application at Wal-Mart or MacDonald’s must be made online, how can we pretend that we have equal opportunity if significant portions of our communities don’t have access? Libraries can be part of the solution.”

Libraries are not just places for the poor. You can access research databases through your public library that would otherwise be unaffordable, and some libraries are wading into digital lending.

Unfortunately, I haven’t waded into a library for some time. I carry a New York Public Library membership card on my key chain, but am remiss to say that I haven’t attended any of my local libraries. The same is true for my colleague Harry McCracken, who tweeted that he was visiting his local branch over the weekend for the first time since moving over a year ago. Harry used to go several times a week.

That might be because both Harry and I own multiple computers with Internet access at home. There are many people who cannot afford a computer, or are without Internet access. Those are the underserved.

Maybe the Knight Foundation is onto something. Communities need resources to bridge the digital divide, and libraries are open to everyone–even if everyone doesn’t always go.

Virgin America Wi-Fi for Free (Thanks, Google!)

I love in-flight Wi-Fi so much that I’ve used it on every flight I’ve ever taken that offered it, and don’t object to paying for it–actually, I’d probably still go online if it cost twice as much. But I’m still tickled by today’s news that Google is sponsoring free Gogo Wi-Fi on every Virgin America flight between November 10th and January 15th. More details are available here.

I presume that Google will get some promotional value out of the deal–maybe ads when you log in, with links to Google services–and am intrigued by the possibility that in-air Internet could go from a somewhat pricey paid service to a free, ad-supported one. Back on terra firma, Wi-Fi is increasingly complimentary (both Borders and Barnes and Noble now offer it gratis). Wouldn’t it be cool if that were true at ten thousand feet, too? May Google’s experiment be a success for everyone concerned, and therefore a widely imitated one…

Office 2010 Goes Public Next Month

Microsoft is planning to release a public test version of Office 2010 next month, reports Cnet’s Ina Fried. The company’s technical betas of the suite and its Web-based version have been open to only a relatively small pool of testers, so the upcoming release will be the first time that anyone with an interest in what’s next for Office will be able to get some hands-on experience.

I’ve spent time with Office 2010 in its software and service incarnations, and while there’s some good stuff in both, I’m still reserving judgement until Microsoft releases more fully-baked versions–the Web suite and other collaborative features in the previews I tried were simultaneously the most (theoretically) interesting new features and the furthest from completion. (Large chunks were still simply missing in action.) Let’s hope the November preview is feature-complete, or close to it…

An Xbox Live Price Hike? Pachter Says Yes!

I should know better than to springboard off the thoughts of video game industry analyst Michael Pachter, but sometimes it’s irresistable. The guy’s got a knack for being provocative.

His latest theory? Microsoft will, over time, double the Xbox Live subscription cost from $50 to $100 per year. Speaking on Game Trailers’ Bonus Round broadcast, Pachter said Microsoft “wants to hook every gamer who has a 360 to play everything multiplayer, and pay 50 bucks a year; and then in a couple of years it’s 100 bucks,” adding that “it’s a profit deal” for the company.

If Microsoft so much as touches the cost of an Xbox Live Gold subscription, it’ll be huge news. Since the online gaming service debuted for the original Xbox in 2002, the price has held firm at $50 per year. And earlier this year, there was a downward trend, with many third-party retailers selling discounted annual subscription cards. The fact that Xbox Live costs anything at all has also proven great fodder for Sony loyalists, who get their Playstation 3 online gaming gratis.

I’ve always felt that Xbox Live is worth the cost of admission, which is less than you’d spend on one game per year. It’s better integrated into the console’s DNA than Sony’s network, and cross-game voice chat makes communicating with friends nearly effortless. Is it worth an extra $50? Tough call.

See, Microsoft is adding new features, such as Twitter and Facebook integration, the 1 vs. 100 quiz show and the ability to watch movies with online buddies, so you can’t say that a price hike isn’t at all justified. But the core service of online play hasn’t evolved much over the years, or at least not since Halo 2 pioneered an automatic matchmaking system for finding other players. Online play remains a hotbed for foul-mouthed sore losers and spoiled winners, and bigger picture ideas such as tournaments and clans are largely missing.

The extra services aren’t worth an added cost. If Microsoft were to inch up the subscription price, I’d probably think hard about what I’d miss with the Playstation Network alone, an then set a limit on what I’d pay for Xbox Live ($60 seems reasonable). If you’re not blessed with both consoles, just hope that Pachter is wrong this time.

Microsoft, Apple Debate Operating Systems

Snow Leopard vs. Windows 7 debate.

Wolfram Alpha iPhone app: $50?

Rock Band hits the iPhone.

What’s Mozilla’s secret Firefox app?

Scottsdale Microsoft Store opens Thursday.

Thoughts on Twitter’s Lists feature.

Sony shows a 360-degree display.

Where’s that Sidekick data, Microsoft?

Tweet: Verizon Pre early 2010.

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Spring Design Springs into the E-Reader Game

Those rumors about the imminent announcement of an Android-based e-book reader with both a black-and-white e-ink screen and a color touchscreen below it? They were true–except for the part about it being announced by Barnes & Noble. A company called Spring Design has announced an e-reader called Alex, and conceptually, at least, the hardware sounds very much like what the Barnes & Noble device will supposedly deliver.

Here’s an image of Alex (and a smaller one of the B&N gadget, borrowed from Gizmodo, to its right).

Alex has a 6″ e-ink display and a 3.5″ color touchscreen; it’s got an SD slot; it runs Android OS and claims to deliver full-blown Web browsing, which no other e-reader has done to date. The press release mentions connectivity via Wi-Fi, 3G, EVDO, and GSM; I presume that it means that versions of Alex could support any of these options, not that it delivers all of them in one device.

What’ll show up on that color screen?

Ideal for professional, educational and entertainment markets, Alex dynamically transforms the reader’s experience with images, videos and notes inserted as ‘Web grabs’ or with custom text created by the user or other secondary authors pertaining to the subject being displayed. Users can create their own images and notes and capture them to augment the original text or just dynamically grab relevant content with Link Notes™, Alex’s innovative multimedia authoring tool to enhance multimedia publishing.

So when can you get your hands on Alex, and how much will it cost? Not clear. The company says:

Spring Design is currently in discussion and enlisting major content partners and plans to release the Alex device for selected strategic partners by the end of this year.

…which would appear to mean that it doesn’t have a bookstore in place yet, and isn’t entirely sure how Alex will be sold, or by who. It’s a logical guess that it may be making this incomplete announcement because it expects Barnes & Noble to make its big splash real soon now, and wanted to get some attention beforehand. (That might also explain Plastic Logic’s sudden announcement of the upcoming announcement of its Que e-reader.)

In both its Alex and Barnes & Noble incarnations, the idea of a two-screen e-book reader is a reaction to the contrasting deficiencies of e-ink and LCD displays–e-ink can barely do photos and is slow to refresh, and LCDs eat up battery juice too quickly. I look forward to the day when nobody thinks the dual-screen kludge is necessary. In the meantime, though, it’ll be fun to check out these devices, and to see if a small company like Spring Design can compete against giants such as Amazon, B&N, and Sony.

The Plot to Kill Plain Old QWERTY

A couple of months ago, I dug into Google Patents and found some weird, weird pointing device patents. The results became the most popular Technologizer slideshow to date. Where there are mice, there are almost always keyboards–so I recently checked Google Patents for peculiar keyboards, and found an embarrassment of riches.

Most alternative keyboards aim to do away with what I think of as POQ–Plain Old Qwerty, or a keyboard with a standard layout and typical keys. The filings are full of optimistic claims about the benefits to be derived, and the ease with which wildly new keyboards can be learned. But as far as I know, the majority of these designs never got off the drawing board. I wouldn’t trade the completely unmemorable keyboard that came with my HP desktop for any of them–but I’m glad they’re there in Google Patents for rediscovery. And here they are as a Technologizer slideshow.

The Droid Revealed, Sorta

Phone ubersite The Boy Genius Report has its hands on Verizon/Motorola’s upcoming Droid phone–in non-final form–and says it’s not only the most impressive Android phone to date but also the most impressive new phone since the iPhone. The site hasn’t posted a review, but it’s got a photo gallery up. Like many (most?) smartphones, the Droid looks a lot like an iPhone at first glance. But its big screen slides up to reveal the physical QWERTY keyboard that the iPhone lacks, and probably will always lack.

I’ve grown reasonably adept with the iPhone’s keyboard, but still find physical QWERTY desirable–I’m still looking for a smartphone with input as good as what I had on my Psion Series 5 more than a decade ago, and I’ve said that my ideal phone might be a Palm Pre that ran the iPhone OS. Also, the one thing that almost nobody remembers about on-screen keyboards is that they take up space; the iPhone will never be a top-notch pocketable word processor, because you can only see a little bit of your document as you type. Phones with physical keyboards can devote all their pixels to information rather than virtual keys.

Boy Genius says they like the Droid’s keyboard, and while it’s impossible to judge a tiny keyboard based on a photo alone, there’s nothing about the first views of the Droid’s keyboard that’s alarming. It could be good…

KaChing: A Better Alternative to Mutual Funds?

Finance site KaChing has been around for awhile, letting investors share virtual stock portfolios. Today, however, it’s launching a new version that’s meant to make a much bigger impact: It’s making the virtual portfolios real, letting members “invest like a genius” by putting their money in the same companies as amateur and professional investors who KaChing rates as having outstanding investment records, philosophies, and practices–using a formula it refers to as “Investing IQ.”

The idea is to provide an alternative to mutual funds that’s more transparent: You see the moves “geniuses” make in real time, and can dig as deeply as you like into information on their holdings to verify that they’re sticking to their investment strategy and aren’t doing well by dumb luck rather than by being smart. And every time a “genius” you’ve chosen makes a change to his or her portfolio, your portfolio automatically changes to match it.

If you choose to invest like a particular genius, KaChing charges a management fee that’s low by mutual-fund standards–between .98 percent and 2 percent–and turns 75 percent of it over to the “genius.” There’s a $3,000 minimum to participate.

KaChing founder Dan Carroll told me that KaChing is aimed at investors who’d otherwise sock money away in mutual funds, but who want more information on how their money is working for them than the mutual fund industry provides. He says that ratings systems such as Morningstar focus too much on past performance even though it’s not a good predictor of future results, and that the information provided by mutual fund managers in materials such as quarterly statements isn’t sufficiently detailed or timely.

Rightly or wrongly, many investors may have more confidence in venerable institutions such as Fidelity and Vanguard than in a little-known startup such as KaChing. I asked Carroll what would happen if KaChing ran into trouble: He told me that KaChing brokerage accounts are really with Interactive Brokers, a large outfit that’s not very well known because it mostly deals with institutions, not individuals. If anything were to happen to KaChing, members’ accounts would still be safe with the brokerage, he said.

KaChing’s an interesting idea (although not a wholly unique one–it’s a bit like social-investing Cake Financial, for instance). I’m intrigued enough to be flirting with the idea of signing up, even though I’m one of those garden-variety mutual fund investors who has my money with big-name funds and who likes to leave it there and forget about it. One reason I’m intrigued: One of KaChing’s investors and users is Marc Andreessen, cofounder of Netscape, OpsWare, and Ning. He’s a genius who needs no quote marks around the term, and while his involvement doesn’t make KaChing a sure thing, the fact he’s impressed is…impressive.

Keyborgs! 21 Bizarre Keyboards

If our ancestors of the late nineteenth century hitched a time-machine ride to 2009, nearly everything about the technology we use would leave them dumbstruck. They would, however, immediately recognize our computer keyboards, nearly all of which work in pretty much the same manner as the ones on Victorian-era typewriters. Which is not to say that a bevy of inventors haven’t tried to improve on standard-issue QWERTY. It’s just that most of their bright ideas go absolutely nowhere. Herewith, a gallery of Google Patents finds, including ones that never got off the drawing board, ones that flopped on arrival, and a few that achieved at least minor success among typists with open minds. Oh, and just for fun, there’s one bizarre keyboard in here that turned out to be bizarrely successful, too.

Plastic Logic’s E-Reader Gets a Little More Real

E-reader maker Plastic Logic has been giving its gadget a fascinating slow-motion rollout. It first showed it to reporters more than a year ago at the DEMO show. Then showed it at the Consumer Electronics Show last January. Then it re-revealed it at the D conference. And now it’s saying it’ll “unveil” it at next January’s CES.

It’s also telling us what the name is for the first time–Que–and has revealed a couple of sexy photos which steer clear of revealing the full monty. (The device has been seen repeatedly in all its full-frontali glory in public, but I’m assuming the final industrial design has been kept under wraps.)

Plastic Logic says it’ll say how much Que costs and when it’ll be available at CES; the company obviously doesn’t have any issues with discussing a product long before it’s available, so it’s not a given that next January’s unveiling is proof positive that the device will go on sale in early 2010.

When Plastic Logic started touting its e-reader, its only real competition were the original Amazon.com Kindle and the Sony Reader. The industry’s undergone radical change since then, with the release of the Kindle 2 (recently further revised) and Kindle DX and multiple new Sonys, Best Buy’s rollout of the iRex, and the apparent imminent announcement of a contender from Barnes and Noble. By the time it shows up, it may even be compared to an Apple tablet.

The Plastic Logic device seems to have evolved in response to all this competition even before it ever shipped–for instance, it’ll have 3G connectivity via AT&T, a feature which the company didn’t mention at first. But the Que’s original signature feature was its 8.5″-by-11″ screen and PDF support, and Amazon has already matched those features with the DX. Amazon’s U.S. and International Wireless version of the Kindle 2, like the Que, uses AT&T. And it looks like the Que will find itself competing with the company that’s powering its bookstore: Barnes & Noble.

One thing that hasn’t changed about Plastic Logic’s device is its emphasis on business user. It’s coined the term “proReader” to describe the Que, says it’ll support PDF, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, and promises unspecified “powerful tools for interactive with and managing the content.” It sounds like a logical way to differentiate the product in what will be a rather noisy market, mostly populated by products from companies larger than Plastic Logic. But I’ll still be glad when it’s finally possible to judge the Que in the only way that’s truly satisfying: In our own hands, with our own eyes.

What, Exactly, Does It Mean to Go Google?

Back in August, Google launched an advertising campaign aimed at business customers called Going Google. It involved billboards in four major U.S. cities and defined “Going Google” thusly:

Tonight, it’s expanding the campaign by bringing the ads to airports, train stations, and other locations in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Singapore, the UK and the US. But here’s how a new video defines Going Google:

Google’s enterprise products, as defined by the video, include not only Google Apps but also the Google Search Appliance device and its Postini e-mail security/management service.

The expanded definition doesn’t seem to have affected how many companies Google defines as having Gone Google–it said 1.75 million had done so in early August, with 3,000 more doing so every day, and now claims 2 million such customers–about what it should have after another couple of months of growth. But the notion of doing some enterprise business with Google is less intimidating than “switching to Google Apps.” In the new campaign, Google says that sixty percent of the Fortune 100 and sixty percent of the world’s top brands have Gone Google, a claim which is impressive but also suggests that Google decided to define Going Google loosely enough that it’s not a weird exception to the rule but something that the majority of major companies have done.

I wonder whether any of the companies Google now says have gone Google–Genentech, Motorla Mobile Devices, Northwestern University, New York Life, the Onion, Rentokil Initial, Telegraph Media Group, and others–are Search Appliance or Postini customers but not Google Apps users. It’s also worth noting that the first two organizations Google mentions as having Gone Google are ones with deep Google ties: Genentech’s former CEO was a member of Google’s board until last week, and Motorola’s Mobile Devices division is a major Google partner via devices such as the Cliq and Droid.

Earlier, Google claimed that 1.75 million companies had “switched to Google Apps.” Switching suggests a 100% transition from another product–ya think it might be Microsoft Office in this case?–but given that most of Google Apps only works when you have an Internet connection, and none of the apps have every feature every power user might want, I have a hard time believing that any company of real size doesn’t have copies of Office (or another traditional suite such as OpenOffice.org) floating around. Maybe lots of them.

My sense is that Google still thinks that dealing with the innate conservatism of big companies is one of the biggest challenges it faces with its business products and services. That’s why it’s making the point that it’s got a lot of business customers, including some big names. And it’s why it took the idiosyncratic-but-simultaneously-realistic step of releasing software that lets Microsoft Outlook serve as a client for Gmail and Google Calendar.

Mind you, I’m a Google Apps fan myself, although I haven’t exactly Gone Google: Depending on what I’m up to, I use Google Apps, Zoho, Sliderocket, Microsoft Office 2007, and Apple’s iWork–a sort of suite of suites. I’m just one guy, and Google Apps doesn’t have enough stuff to make me 100% happy 100% of the time, so it’s neither surprising nor embarrassing that the current version isn’t anywhere near ready to eradicate Office from typical large companies.

We’re nearing the end of the first phase of the Google Apps vs. Microsoft Office war–the period during which Google Apps is a service and Office is a piece of software. Next year, Microsoft will release the first true Web version of Office, and while I don’t expect it to be a massive game changer–Microsoft keeps insisting it’s a complement to the traditional Office apps, not a replacement for them–I can understand why Google would like as many companies as possible to Go Google before they have a new reason to Stay Microsoft.

Droid Attacks iPhone

Verizon Wireless, which recently announced it was hopping on the Android smartphone OS bandwagon big time, has started whetting our appetite for its first Android phone. It’s launched a TV ad for the phone, the Droid, and a teaser site. And so far, it’s mostly promoting the phone by bashing the iPhone, with pseudo-Apple text pointing out that “iDont” have a physical keyboard, (third-party) multitasking, a five-megapixel camera, much in the way of customization options, widgets, “open development,” the ability to take photos in the dark, or a removable battery. The Droid (whose name is licensed from Mr. Lucas) presumably has all of the above.

It’s an entertainingly combative ad, and a pretty effective one given that it doesn’t even show the phone (which apparently looks like this). Of course, the fact that the Droid beats the iPhone on a number of spec- and feature-related fronts doesn’t make it a breakthrough. It’s quite common for smartphones to theoretically trump the iPhone in multiple ways, but the iPhone’s level of hardware/software/service integration and the vast quantity of available apps remain unique. No other phone is going to catch up with the iPhone’s software catalog anytime soon, so if I were an Apple competitor, I’d concentrate on trying to vaunt into the same league in terms of integration. Not that that’ll be easy. The Droid arrives next month, so we won’t have to wait long to judge it.

The other interesting question about the Droid commercial is this: Does all its cheeky iPhone-bashing signal that Verizon has no plans to sell the iPhone anytime soon? It not only mocks the phone but mocks Apple in a way that suggests that it doesn’t plan to go into business with it, despite rumors. I took the implied message of the ad as being something like this: “Yes, we know that a lot of people want a Verizon iPhone, but hold on–we’re going to have a smartphone that’s better than an iPhone.”

(Then again, I’m fascinated by this Verizon ad that says a non-Verizon BlackBerry is a paperweight–it might be an effective ad, but it seems like an odd thing to do to BlackBerry maker and Verizon partner RIM.)

Anyhow, here’s the “iDon’t” ad: