Goodbye, Gears (Sniff!)

Earlier today, I wrote about the almost-here beta of Google’s Chrome browser for OS X, and mentioned that it doesn’t support Google’s Gears technology for making Web services such as Gmail, Google Docs, and Remember the Milk work without the Web. Turns out the bad news may have less to do with Chrome and more to do with Gears.

The L.A. Times’ Mark Milian has blogged about the lack of Gears in Mac Chrome, and the fact that the upcoming, still-unfinished HTML5 standard will feature Gears-like offline features. Milian got a quote from an unnamed Google spokesman:

We are excited that much of the technology in Gears, including offline support and geolocation APIs, are being incorporated into the HTML5 spec as an open standard supported across browsers, and see that as the logical next step for developers looking to include these features in their websites.

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Nokia N900 Plays NES Emulators? You Never Heard That.

The first rule of classic console emulation is that you don’t talk about classic console emulation, but that’s exactly what Nokia did to promote its new N900 smartphone, and now the interest of Nintendo’s legal team is piqued.

According to The Independent, Nokia posted a video clip of the N900 running Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros. 3, among other classics, using emulators. The official video and accompanying Nokia Conversations blog post have since been removed, but I’ve found what appears to be the same video here, for now. It mentions how some emulators let you tweak the N900′s controls for the best set-up, while others even take advantage of the phone’s touch and tilt capabilities.

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Five Digital Photo Gifts for 2009

My favorite digital photo sites have some new surprises for 2009, and I’ve checked out a couple of new-to-me sites with holiday goodies too. If you’ve stocked up on digital photos all year, here are five gift ideas that take advantage of your personal image archive.

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Department of Misleading Headlines

Scott Moritz, at TheStreet.com:

Um, read the story, and you’ll find it presents no evidence that Apple is contemplating a T-Mobile deal. All you get is an analyst speculating that Verizon isn’t going to get the iPhone soon, and speculating that if Apple wants to end AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity it might logically cut a deal with T-Mobile. But it’s all guesswork.

The analyst says that he expects that a Verizon iPhone will appear only in 2011, and that it’ll use a 4G LTE data connection rather than Verizon’s current EVDO network. Sounds logical enough. If you assume that Verizon’s current spree of iPhone bashing means it’s not going to announce an Apple deal immediately, it feels more and more likely that Apple and Verizon will skip the dead-end technology an EVDO iPhone would bring and jump directly to an LTE model. And it’s going to be 2011 before an LTE iPhone makes sense.

Or so I think. I cheerfully concede that I could be wrong. Which is why this post isn’t titled “No Verizon iPhone Until 2011…”

Yes Microsofties, Apple In-Store Sales May Be Down, But…

Microsofties could barely contain their glee when this video made the rounds of the Internet over the weekend. As you can see, it shows a tale of two stores: the Mission Viejo Apple store practically barren while the Microsoft Store in that mall (yes, the one with the dancing employees) is buzzing with activity.

Some of us probably brushed this off as an isolated incident, as Apple really does not have a blockbuster product this holiday season to draw the crazed Black Friday masses in. But according to Piper Jaffray Apple analyst Gene Munster, his research is showing that slowness at Apple Stores may have actually been the norm.

About 8.3 Macs per hour were sold at retail that day at stores visited by Munster’s team, well down from the 13 per hour rate last year. However, it would be fair to note that Best Buy’s Apple “store-within-a-store” has expanded significantly and a few more Apple Stores have opened since last year.

(Some of Apple’s partners were also offering much better discounts on Apple products than the company was, too…)

Before Redmond starts dancing in the streets, take this into account. Analysis of Apple’s online store performance shows 39 percent year over year growth in sales. This outperformed the entire e-commerce sector by three times. Munster says that this online jump should be more than enough to offset any losses at retail.

5Words: Google Phone Definitely Coming. Maybe!

Rumor: Google Phone “a certainty.”

Stewart Alsop hates his Droid.

Amazon: Kindle selling like gangbusters.

Nook’s store debut: slightly delayed.

This phone is a projector.

Manufacturers lose interest in MIDs.

Hints about next-generation iPhone.

A 4G Verizon iPhone, maybe?

I sorta like this NokiPhone.

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Faded Chrome: Google’s Incomplete Mac Browser

If you use a Mac and have been looking forward to an OS X version of Google’s Chrome browser, your patience is about to be rewarded. As TechCrunch’s MG Siegler reports, the Chrome team is stomping out the final handful of bugs it’s planning to eradicate before it ships its first OS X beta. I’ve been waiting for the beta for fifteen months, since the arrival of Chrome for Windows and the first word that a Mac version was in the works.

But MG’s story left me feeling kind of glum about Chrome for OS X. He details some of the features that the first beta will lack, at least in complete form:

• The bookmark manager
• App Mode, which lets you launch Web apps such as Gmail in streamlined browser frames from a desktop icon
• Gears, the Google technology that lets Gmail, Remember the Milk, and other Web services work even when you’re disconnected from the Web
• Full-screen mode
• Bookmark syncing
• Extension  support

And I’ve already grumbled about the fact that Chrome for OS X inexplicably needs nine menus to accomplish what Chrome for Windows does in two of ‘em. Basically, it looks like multiple things that I thought made Chrome Chrome will be missing from its Mac incarnation.

I don’t mean to be too churlish–especially since some of the missing stuff may get added back in before Mac Chrome leaves beta status and becomes an officially shipping project. I’d love to see Chrome reach feature parity on both platforms soon, in the way that Firefox is just Firefox, whether you’re in Windows, OS X, or Linux. Or at least to get the word that parity is the long-term goal.

For now, Chrome is my main browser when I’m in Windows (which I am the majority of the time at the moment) and I’ll still reach for Safari when I’m on a Mac. I’m okay with that, since I tend to be a promiscuous browser user anyhow. (I’ve also gone through Firefox and Flock periods recently, and dabble in Opera from time to time.)

But if you’d told me fifteen months ago that it would still be unclear in late 2009 when Mac users would get all of Chrome’s goodness, I would never have believed you…

CrunchPad, We Hardly Knew Ye

Weird! Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch and father of the CrunchPad tablet computer, has blogged that the CrunchPad project is dead. He says that the manufacturing partner in charge of building the CrunchPad attempted to seize control of the device and cut TechCrunch out of its plans. Joint ownership of the project means that it can’t do so, but Arrington says it’s all over.

Mostly though I’m just sad. I never envisioned the CrunchPad as a huge business. I just wanted a tablet computer that I could use to consume the Internet while sitting on a couch. I’ve always pushed to open source all or parts of the project. So this isn’t really about money. It was about the thrill of building something with a team that had the same vision. Now that’s going to be impossible.

The news of the CrunchPad’s death comes a few weeks after rumors of…the CrunchPad’s death. But according to Arrington’s post, the project began to fall apart after the rumors of early November appeared, for a different set of reasons. (The stories had the CrunchPad being too costly to manufacture to be sold at a reasonable price.)

Arrington has always said that the CrunchPad sprung from his own desire to have a “dead simple” tablet he could use to get online from his couch. I get his desire. Well, mostly: I’ve never been entirely clear why the CrunchPad would be a better couch computer than a more typical, versatile cheap portable computer. (I’ve owned a bunch of my own personal CrunchPads over the years–they’ve just been clamshell shaped, had keyboards, run Windows, and come from companies such as Apple, Asus, and Sony.)

If the CrunchPad was really as close to being ready for prime time as Arrington says–he writes that its makers were about to start taking orders–you gotta think there’s a decent chance that it’s not really dead–only resting. Would you buy a CrunchPad, or something vaguely like a CrunchPad, if it were to come to market?

The State of Windows 7 Satisfaction

Windows 7 is scarcely more than a month old. Most of the people who will eventually use it haven’t gotten around to trying it yet; those that have are still settling in. And the Win 7 experience will change rapidly as remaining bugs are squashed, missing drivers arrive, and compatibility glitches are ironed out. Even so, it’s not too early to start gauging what real people think of Windows Vista’s replacement.

So to riff on Ronald Reagan’s famous question from his 1980 debate with Jimmy Carter, Are Windows users better off today than they were a few weeks ago, back in the Vista era? We decided to ask the Technologizer community, a group of tech enthusiasts with a high propensity to acquire new operating systems quickly and push them to their limits. Starting on November 16th, we surveyed our readers (and Twitter followers) about their experiences with Windows 7. Our goal: to do a reality check on the mostly favorable initial reviews of the new OS (as well as our own survey of largely enthusiastic Windows 7 beta testers back in March).

The 550+ Windows 7 early adopters who took our survey mostly echo the positive response that the upgrade has received from professional reviewers, pundits, and users of pre-release editions. A sizable majority say they’re extremely satisfied with the OS and rate it as a clear improvement on both the beloved Windows XP and the widely-panned Windows Vista. Crippling installation problems–the bane of every upgrader’s existence, and always a legitimate reason to postpone switching OSes–were rare.

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Psystar Thought It Could Sell Twelve Million Mac Clones a Year

Fascinating coda to the story of Pystar, the unauthorized maker of OS X computers which Apple is trying to put out of business: Gregg Keizer of Computerworld has reported on the sales projections that Psystar made to to prospective investors.

Under its conservative projections, Psystar told investors it would sell 70,000 computers in 2009, 470,000 systems in 2010 and 1.45 million machines in 2011. The firm’s aggressive growth model, however, put those numbers at 130,000, 1.87 million and 12 million during 2009, 2010 and 2011, respectively.

By comparison, Apple sold 10.4 million Macs during its 2009 fiscal year, the 12-month span that ended Sept. 30, 2009.

Psystar wasn’t just telling investors it could succeed: It was telling them it could get roughly fifty percent of the market for OS X computers, despite having a business plan that guaranteed a bruising, pricey, possibly-fatal legal battle with the company that made the OS it used.

As Keizer notes, an economist working for Apple can identify only 768 computers that Psystar has sold. Um, that’s a shortfall from even its “conservative” projection of 70,000 systems in 2009, right?

Psystar’s online store remains open as I write, but with Apple seemingly on the verge of scoring a knockout punch that will end Psystar’s OS X sales, I’d love to know if anyone who knows what’s going on is plunking down money for its Open line of pseudoMacs right now.

As long as I’m talking Psystar: Here’s the best behind-the-scenes story I’ve seen about the brothers behind the company. It’s by Tim Elfrink of the Miami New Times.

How I Accidentally Agreed to Pay $300 a Year to a Company I’d Never Heard of, for a Service I Didn’t Want

On Tuesday, I mentioned that I’d recently purchased a background check from Intelius and found that I’d unwittingly become a member of something called SavingsAce, a shopping club that costs $24.95 a month. I said that the Intelius customer service rep I’d spoken with had denied that the company had given my credit-card info to SavingsAce.

After I wrote that piece, I contacted a public-relations person at Intelius. She said that the service rep had given me faulty information: Intelius had indeed given my information to SavingsAce. But only after I’d granted permission, she said.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Here in the U.S., it’s Thanksgiving Day, so I’m (A) taking most of the day off, and (B) feeling thankful. And since I’m visiting Des Moines–which was my grandparents’ home, but a place I haven’t been to at all in a decade–one of the things I’m feeling grateful for is instantaneous access to information.

When I picked up my rent-a-car the clerk asked me if I needed a map, and I took one. But I’m not sure why: My iPhone contains all the data I need to find my way around town, determine which businesses I remember from my childhood are still here, and otherwise get my bearings. Ten years ago, I barely owned a cell phone, let alone one that puts the Internet in my pocket, and which is smart enough to figure out where I am in relation to where I want to go.

(Yes, yes, I’m far more thankful for family, friends, and good health–but I’m still grateful for the tech in my life, and I’m still startled to remember that most of the stuff that seems indispensable is so new.)

A peaceful and pleasant Thanksgiving to all of you, and a question: What tech-related matters are you thankful for this year?

Try a Secret New Google

Google guru Philipp Lenssen has a cool tip on his Google Blogoscoped site: He shows how to turn on an experimental version of Google by pasting a URL into your browser. It’s got a number of minor visual tweaks, including a much cleaner version of the Google logo (it even skips the TM sign).

But for me, the real treat of the new version is the fact that it turns the Google Search Options left-hand filters on as a standard part of the default search-results view. I’ve been hooked on them since they showed up last May, especially for restricting my results to a specific time frame. And as far as I can tell, there hasn’t even been a way to tell Google that you’d like to leave the Search Results panel open permanently–it’s required a click every time I’ve wanted to use it.

Google’s instinctive desire to keep its pages from getting cluttered up is one of the company’s most admirable traits. But I hope it decides that the Search Results are worth the real estate they occupy–and that this new design becomes the default view real soon now.

EFF Outlines “Terms of (Ab)Use”

Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a consumer watchdog, embarked on a new project called Terms of (Ab)Use. Terms of (Ab)Use is the EFF’s attempt to enable people to understand what their End User License Agreements (EULAs) mean.

The EFF views EULAs as private contracts that enable online service providers to circumvent existing law and dictate their legal relationship with customers. They are frequently written to be one-sided in favor of the service provider, and are “designed to be beyond judicial scrutiny,” it said.

The organization’s objective is to cut through confusing legalese, and state what the contracts say in plain language. That goal is laudable, and could lead to greater transparency, but I wonder whether it is a problem that end users actually care about.

Do the majority of people even read EULAs before they click “Accept”? It’s doubtful. People just want to use the service, whether it be Gmail or an online game, and the provider determines how its service should be used.

The EFF needs to communicate the value of what it is doing to the public in order to be successful. Unfortunately, it is facing an uphill battle.

If a bridge collapsed, people would demand consequences. Yet, software failures are accepted, and the cost of those failures is passed onto consumers. With the exception of businesses that have iron-clad service level agreements, we are accustomed to a one-sided relationship with software vendors. There is no real framework for liability in the software industry.

It takes a group like EFF to stand up for users’ rights.

We May Need a New Name for Smartbooks. (Good!)

Smartbooks are an emerging class of computing devices that, basically, are to netbooks what netbooks are to notebooks: smaller, cheaper, less powerful, and (possibly) handier. They’re an idea being promoted by chipmakers Qualcomm and Freescale, whose CPUs will be inside the machines (which won’t run Windows).

Trouble is, there’s already a smartbook. It’s a German company, and as TechCrunch’s Robin Wauters is reporting, it’s decided to protect its trademark by going after use of the term to describe these mini-netbooks.

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Coda: Gameloft Loves Android After All!

The developer behind mobile phone versions of Assassin’s Creed and Brothers in Arms isn’t as anti-Android as its finance director led us to believe.

Less than a week after Gameloft financier Alexandre de Rochefort said the company has “significantly cut” investments in Android, Gameloft issued a press release saying, essentially, that it still loves Google’s mobile platform, and wants to make sweet, sweet “High Definition games” on it.

In particular, Gameloft will develop titles for second-generation Android phones such as Motorola’s Droid and Sony’s Ericsson Xperia X10.

When I previously outlined the problems with Android gaming, I said there’s room for improvement, particularly with multi-touch technology in the Droid. It’s worth noting that both the phones Gameloft mentions allow for 3D games as well — something Gameloft excels in with the racer Asphalt 5 and the Grand Theft Auto clone Gangstar: West Coast Hustle.

So it appears that Rochefort’s statement about Android investment was misinterpreted, but remember that he also knocked the Android’s ability to actually sell games. His words: “It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue.”

That issue isn’t addressed in Gameloft’s latest press release, but I imagine there’s a chicken-and-egg theory in play. If developers take the first step of making high quality games on Android, phone manufacturers can market gaming as a key feature in their products, attracting more game sales, which in turn brings in more interest from developers. So I’m glad Gameloft isn’t bailing out on a mobile gaming platform that has potential to grow.