Last Call for Apple Tablet Predictions

Final note: If you go here and spend a few minutes helping us guess what Apple’s tablet will be like, we’ll enter you in a drawing for a $100 Apple gift card. We’ll tally up your entries into an aggregate tablet prediction, and publish it next week before Apple’s event (which we’ll be covering live).

5Words: Nexus One Gets Multitouch Hack

Multitouch hack for Nexus One.

Twitter improves suggested users feature.

Lenovo’s Android phone for China.

Windows 7 is selling briskly.

Steve Ballmer signs a Mac!

YouTube builds a music player.

Wish list for Apple tablet.

Buy Pre Plus, Free Pixi.

_______________________

Like 5Words? Subscribe via RSS.

Nokia: Free Navigation for All!

That Nokia event I liveblogged Thursday morning? The cryptic invitation made it look like it might involve some major new product, which it didn’t. But it did bring some good news: The company is bringing free GPS navigation–for drivers, pedestrians, and takers of public transportation–to users of its Symbian-based smartphones. The navigation offering covers 74 countries, and lets you download the necessary maps onto your phone so you don’t need a live Internet connection to route your trip–a particularly useful feature if you’re roaming in another country where you don’t have all-you-can-eat data.

The Symbian user interface still has some odd, outdated artifacts–you must scroll through lists with Windows-like scrollbars, not by merely swiping the list itself–but the OVI Maps application looks full-featured and fun. Pedestrians get some particularly nice features, such as shortcuts that drivers can’t take, and there are 3D models of landmarks.

The no-cost navigation is an obvious rejoinder to Google’s version of Google Maps for Android–as seen on the Droid and Nexus One–which also includes navigation with spoken turn-by-turn directions for free. Let’s hope everybody else in the smartphone biz feels like they need to match the Nokia and Google freebies…

Firefox 3.6 is Here

Today, Mozilla released Firefox 3.6, a new version of the world’s most popular alternative browser. (Come to think of it, though, the concept of “alternative browser” is stale–for one thing, on many sites, including Technologizer, Firefox is the most popular browser.)

On the grand continuum from inconsequential bug fix to massive upgrade, Firefox 3.6 isn’t a biggie. But it could be very worthwhile: Mozilla is claiming a 20 percent speed increase (including faster startup and JavaScript improvements) and more stability. I haven’t played with 3.6 enough to form my own conclusions other than “so far, so good,” but just about the only things I don’t like about Firefox are that it feels slow to load, sometimes seems to bog down, and freezes and/or crashes more than it should.  A smoother-running Firefox could get me back on that browser more or less full time.

Continue reading this story…

The Press Tries OnLive, Results Not Stellar

Almost a year after OnLive promised to uproot everything we know about game consoles and PC rigs, a journalist broke into a closed private beta and reported his findings. The results leave something to be desired, but they also don’t give OnLive a fair shake.

OnLive shocked the games industry last March by announcing a cloud gaming service that could run even the most demanding PC games. The idea was to process games on remote servers, equipped with the latest technology, then send compressed data to the player, who would need only a low-end PC. Since then, no one in the press has been allowed to try the service, but PC Perspective’s Ryan Shrout gained unauthorized access through “a friend of a friend of a friend.”

The bad news? Games don’t look as good as they would on a high-end PC. Resolution topped out at 1280-by-720, and games looked sharper and cleaner on the local system than they did over OnLive, even when reduced to that resolution.

The really bad news is latency, which Shrout said was noticeable at best and terrible at worst. While the racing game Burnout: Paradise felt okay, the first-person shooter Unreal Tournament 3 was unplayable due to its reliance on lightning-quick reflexes.

There is, however, a big caveat to this experiment: Shrout was playing from outside the southern California area, where beta testing is happening, and OnLive showed a warning message saying he was experiencing high latency. He claims that lag measured 85 ms. OnLive once said that 35 ms to 40 ms is typical, and 80 ms is on the high-end.

Shrout also acknowledges that lag becomes less noticeable when using a game pad instead of the mouse and keyboard. Combine that with lower latency, and you might have a service that passes muster.

Though I’m somewhat skeptical about lag, OnLive’s business model has always worried me most. Word is that the service will combine a base subscription with individual game purchases, but we’ve yet to see actual numbers. Until we can measure how OnLive’s price measures up to the status quo, I’m not convinced it’ll revolutionize anything.

Should I Dump AT&T? And if So, What Next?

Earlier this week, I sought your advice on whether I should get rid of cable TV, and many of you responded with useful feedback.  Now I need your thoughts on an equally major dilemma: Should I dump AT&T and give up my iPhone 3GS?

So help me, I’m not an AT&T hater. My iPhone is my primary phone, and it works fine most of the time–including at home, where audio quality is good and calls rarely if ever die. I’m aware that AT&T 3G, when it works, is speedy, and that simultaneous voice and data is a benefit. I also understand that other carriers are far from perfect, and that it’s not a given I’d be happier with something else.

But…

This morning, I was on an important call that went fine until the significant part started. Then the connection died. And no matter how many times I redialed, it died again without getting through. Even though the phone claimed it had a full five bars of coverage plus 3G. Eventually, I lunged outside (into the pouring rain) and ran to my car. Sitting in there, I was able to get through.

I wasn’t really surprised: I spend a lot of time in the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco, and for the most part, my AT&T iPhone is an outdoor phone there. Indoors, it’s an utter crapshoot whether I’ll be able to make and take calls. I’ve lived with the situation for a year and a half, but I’m growing weary, and I have no idea when or if the situation will improve. (We know that AT&T Mobility President Ralph De La Vegas is not a reliable source of information on what to expect.)

(I also have no idea whether the iPhone itself deserves any of the blame–there are those who say that poor reception is at least partially the phone’s fault.)

Anyhow, for the first time, I’m seriously considering switching to another carrier–which most likely means using another phone as my primary handset. (Full disclosure: The iPhone is one of the most newsworthy platforms of any type we cover, so I’d keep the phone and wouldn’t cancel my AT&T account…but when I just wanted to get stuff done, I’d use a different phone.)

Here are the options I’m currently contemplating:

Verizon Wireless: I’d buy a Droid or the soon-to-be-available Palm Pre Plus. The Droid, however, is no longer the coolest, most advanced Android phone– the Nexus One, which is really a T-Mobile phone, is. The new Pre Plus, on the other hand, is the newest Web OS phone, and WebOS is an OS that speaks to me. It also works as a MiFi-like wireless router, which might let me get rid of my EVDO adapter. On the other hand, the WebOS app library remains skimpy, and Engadget’s review of the Pre Plus leaves me worrying about its battery life. And the Pre, like the iPhone, now feels like a last-generation phone when it comes to screen resolution and camera specs.

Sprint: I could buy a (no longer the latest and greatest) Pre from these guys, too, and their service-plan pricing is aggressive. I also know of folks who are fans of Sprint’s coverage and reliability.

T-Mobile: I’d get the Nexus One. (Actually, I’d spring for the $529 unlocked model so I wasn’t committed to T-Mobile for two years, and could use it overseas for cheap with a pay-as-you-go SIM card.) It’s a good phone with a good OS and lots of apps (including Google Voice!) and its future seems bright.

Wild card: I could unlock my iPhone and use it on T-Mobile, right?

Weird wild card: I could get a MiFi pocket router from Verizon, use it with my iPhone, and make calls via Skype over Verizon’s network, right?

None of these options is without its pitfalls, but if I had to do the deal today, I’d get a Verizon Pre or a T-Mobile Nexus One.

Or I might just stick with the iPhone and AT&T. If carrier support wasn’t an issue, I’d still choose the iPhone. And like I said, AT&T works fine most of the time. It’s just that when it doesn’t, that “More Bars in More Places” tagline feels more like mockery than a promise.

What would you do?

[UPDATE: Let's turn this into a poll!]

Envision Apple’s Tablet, Get a Shot at a $100 Apple Gift Card

With less than a week to go until Apple (probably) tells all about its tablet, time is rapidly running out to discuss it without really knowing what the heck we’re talking about. So while you still can, please participate in Technologizer’s Apple Tablet Prediction Project. Just spend a few minutes answering multiple choice questions about what you think Apple is geting ready to announce. We’ll tally up the responses into an aggregate prediction, and compare it to the real thing next week–assuming it shows up. And we’ll choose a name at random from the entries and award that person a $100 Apple Store (U.S.) gift card.

We were originally going to wrap things up at 5pm PT today, but what the heck–let’s leave the survey open until 5pm PT tomorrow. Please enter, tell your pals, and have fun!

Our Ever-More Electronically Connected Kids

Parents these days seem to complain more and more about their kids being online too much, and a recent study by by the Kaiser Family Foundation indicates that they may spend nearly a third of their day — which in many cases is probably half their waking hours — using some form of technology. Among those between the ages of 8 to 18, 7.5 hours is spend feeding their electronic habits.

This is up over an hour from five years ago, when the foundation suggested that media usage could not rise much further. Well, it has.

Add to this the 90 minutes a day kids spend texting, and another half-hour they spend on the phone that wasn’t included in that figure, and you must think they’re never putting their gadgets down.

Kaiser’s findings are sure to add to those who subscribe to the “turn on, tune it, drop out” theory when it comes to technology. Nearly half of the heaviest users )16 hours plus) had grades of C or lower — essentially failing school — and that number dropped to under a quarter among the lightest users (3 hours plus). We should note here that while these hours sound too high, most media consumption among teens is done through multitasking, requiring far less time.

“The amount of time young people spend with media has grown to where it’s even more than a full-time work week,” KFF president and CEO Dr. Drew Altman said. “When children are spending this much time doing anything, we need to understand how it’s affecting them – for good and bad.”

Is it really technology’s fault, however? I’d argue that it isn’t. Parents must take responsibility in limiting their children’s media usage. Arguably in many cases we’re using video games, television, and other forms to “babysit” our kids, and its forming these bad habits and addictions.

Google’s Tiff With Apple Opens iPhone to Microsoft

It’s no secret that Apple and Microsoft have one of the stranger relationships in tech. While Microsoft has produced software such as Office for the Macintosh platform, and Apple has opened its doors to Windows with its switch to Intel, they still are highly competitive with each other. But Cupertino’s relationship with Google is souring far faster, which is the perfect opening for Microsoft when it comes to the iPhone.

Apple is apparently in discussions with Microsoft to give the Bing search engine the top spot for search on iPhone, which currently belongs to Google. These talks have been underway for several weeks, BusinessWeek reports, but nothing as of yet has been finalized.

Getting on the iPhone as the default search engine would be a huge win for Bing. I regularly search for things on my iPhone, so just the boost there in search queries would help Microsoft overall in gaining some search share, something it sorely needs. It’s not clear whether any search deal would also extend to the Safari browser, available on both the Macintosh and Windows platforms.

Either way, its pretty likely that Google wouldn’t be completely erased from the iPhone. YouTube is a popular application. Apple would probably also let users switch back to Google in settings just like it already does now if users wish to search using Yahoo. Bing Maps could replace Google Maps, however.

What are your thoughts on the increasingly hostile relationship between Apple and Google? Who stands to benefit most here? We’d like to hear what you think.

YouTube Tries Out a New Look

Has YouTube ever done a truly sweeping redesign? If so, I don’t remember it. Mostly, I think of the scads of features the site has added–many of which are useful, but all of which have led to a cluttered experience.

Today, YouTube is launching a major makeover of its video playback page, based on feedback from users. For the moment, it’s not replacing the old one–it’s an opt-in feature which you can get by going here. The company says the plan is to get further feedback from users and tweak it further before it becomes the default interface

The major goals were to reduce the amount of wordage and graphics that weren’t completely necessary; to make the most popular features easier to find; and to keep the emphasis on the video being viewed (which could be either hilarious or sobering) rather than the interface. Even the site’s “Broadcast Yourself” slogan is gone in the interest of streamlining.

Also gone in the new version: star ratings. (Instead, you give a video a “Love It” or (“Thumbs Down”) rating. All in all, the site looks much more like a product of its parent company, Google.

Here’s the new look:

And here’s the older, busier version:

The company says that for this first version of its new look, it tried to err on the side of taking things away and removing labels–even the comments no longer have a header explaining that they’re comments. If they get feedback that any of the changes went too far, they may backtrack a bit.

YouTube hasn’t completely redone the other important part of the site–search results–but it is experimenting with a new format that leaves the video you’ve been watching onscreen in a smaller window when you search for something new:

It’s going to take a while for me to get used to some of the changes–like the information about the video’s uploader moving from the right-hand side and being split up into chunks above and below the video–but overall, this looks like good stuff. It’s certainly less claustrophobic than the old version.

If you check it out, let us know what you think.

Box.net Gets a File Viewer

Online storage and sharing service Box.net has added a feature that’s sure to become one of its most popular, and which sets it apart from the competition: built-in file viewing that lets you see the contents of files right in your browser. Based on technology that Box acquired last year when it bought a company called Increo, the file viewer is nicely integrated with the rest of Box, sporting the same dead simple, streamlined user interface.

Continue reading this story…

Kindle is Now a Platform

Amazon.com has released a Software Development Kit for its Kindle e-reader, allowing third-party developers to create apps for it. Amazon will distribute programs and give their creators 70 percent of the profits. The Kindle’s slow monochrome screen limits what developers will be able to do: Other than the e-reader functionality, the best-known Kindle app to date is Amazon’s own Web browser, which remains a crude “experiment” after two years on the market. But one app that’s already been announced–Zagat’s user reviews–sounds like a good example of something that can make sense.

You think it’s an utter coincidence this interesting news came out one week before Apple will apparently tell the world about its tablet?

Nokia Event Live Coverage

Quick reminder: I’ll be liveblogging the Nokia press event that’s being held in San Francisco on Thursday morning at 9am–and which apparently has something to do with the company’s OVI services platform. Join us at www.technologizer.com/nokia, and I’ll tell you what we learn as quickly as we learn it…

YouTube Does HTML5

YouTube, the Web’s biggest video destination, has started supporting the Web’s newest way to watch video: HTML5, the nascent standard that includes video features that eliminate the need for Flash or other plug-ins. It’s so nascent that YouTube’s experimental implementation only works in Chrome and Safari, but if you use either of those browsers and are intrigued by the idea of Flash-free video, check it out.

Palm Pre Gaming to Bulk Up Soon

During CES, I missed the news that Palm plans to release a development kit for 3D video games (as in, games from a 3D perspective, nothing stereoscopic) on its WebOS phones. At the time, Palm also announced a line-up of 3D games including the racer Asphalt 5, a hang-gliding game called Glyder 2 and The Sims 3.

Now, the folks at PreCentral have spotted Palm in the presentation line-up for March’s Game Developers Conference. “An Overview to Creating Games with Palm’s Plug-in Development Kit (PDK)” will be a technical session for game developers, teaching them how to make 3D games for WebOS.

The news fits in nicely with two other developments with Palm: Updated versions of the Pre and Pixi are coming to Verizon Wireless this month, and the WebOS software development kit is now open to the public. That means many more apps are on the way, especially if Verizon’s status as the nation’s largest wireless carrier boosts Pre and Pixi sales, luring in more developers.

Those two developments apply to more than just games, but Palm’s got the right idea by presenting at GDC. Surely, the company sees how games dominate the iPhone’s App Store, and wants gaming to play a big part in the WebOS App Catalog. Check out the landing page for Palm’s list of mobile WebOS applications: 3D games are front and center.

Obviously Palm has a long, long way to go before matching the iPhone’s library of games, so don’t expect Palm to diss Nintendo and Sony anytime soon, as Apple has. But competing with Android on the quantity and quality of games offered seems more realistic. At the very least, WebOS doesn’t suffer from a fragmented market of operating systems and phones, so it’s less likely to draw ire from game developers as Palm bulks up its library.

BumpTop Arrives on the Mac

When the file-management utility known as BumpTop arrived on Windows last year, I somehow missed it. Today the company released a Mac version, and I’ve been playing with it and enjoying it.

BumpTop substitutes its own desktop for the standard one you get in OS X or Windows, and the most instantly striking thing about it is that it’s in 3D: You can drag (or just toss) icons off the “floor” in the center of the screen onto a wall, or even knock them into each other like pool balls. I’m instinctively skeptical about 3D interfaces–software companies have tried them for years without proving they’re more than a gimmick that saps resources. BumpTop’s version isn’t bad, though–at worst, it’s inoffensive, and at best it’s a cool effect that might help you tidy up your desktop by letting you place different sorts of files on each wall.

More important, the 3D stuff is only part of what makes BumpTop interesting. It also lets you auto-stack similar files (such as JPG images) to clear up desktop space. You can shrink and grow icons individually, letting you make important items humongous and minor ones teeny-tiny. BumpTop Pro, which goes for $29 also lets you flip through stacks of items, use multitouch gestures to perform tasks such as resizing icons, create unlimited sticky notes, and find files by typing their names.

The basic version of BumpTop is a free download–and if it sounds at all intriguing, it’s worth your time. The desktops of my computers tend to be appalling messes–a trait they share with my real desks. So I’m attracted to anything that might help me keep them in some semblance of order, and I’m keeping BumpTop on my Mac and planning to try out the Windows version.

If you give either or both of ‘em a try, let us know what you think.