Motopalm? Or Palmorola?

Om Malik thinks that Motorola should buy Palm. My heart is with Palm staying independent and thriving, but (A) it’s hard to be a relatively small smartphone company; (B) Motorola could really, really use an operating system as impressive as WebOS that it controls; and (C) I suspect that Palm’s investors intend to seek a return on the money they put into the company by selling it sooner or later.

If Palm must be sold, Motorola is the most logical buyer I can think of–and some neat phones could emerge from the deal.

5Words: The Next Firefox Nears Completion

Firefox 3.6 release candidate available.

Is the Android Marketplace secure?

Droid lock feature is flawed.

Nexus One gripes pile up.

USB 3.0: really, really fast.

LG’s Wii-like HDTV remote.

Make your iPhone a plane.

Definition of “e-reader” is changing.

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Why Adobe’s Bum Rush of the iPhone Doesn’t Matter

Apple has done all it can to keep Flash off the iPhone. It has used about every excuse in the book — too memory intensive, a drain on battery power, what have you — even though Adobe has pretty much addressed most of these issues. Flash is ready for the iPhone but Apple is not ready for Flash.

Either way Adobe is not going to wait much longer. It’s Creative Suite 5 product, now going through private beta, is going to include functionality that will automatically convert Flash applications to ones that are compatible with the iPhone.

This has the potential to be quite the step forward in iPhone development. TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld seems to even go as far as suggesting this as some kind of game changer. CS5 has the potential to expand the developer far beyond the 125,000 iPhone developers out there today, considering there’s about two million Flash developers worldwide.

I hate to rain on anyones parade, but not so fast.

For all that we know of this functionality, it appears to just be a port. Essentially the Flash code is translated into what the software believes is the closest match in iPhone code and goes with it. Like we’ve found out in the past with “WYSIWYG” HTML editors such as Microsoft’s popular FrontPage product, this isn’t always a good thing.

What’s the result? Bulky, slow running applications. In the dog-eat-dog world that has become the App Store, that’s just not going to fly.

I highly doubt that Flash developers that have gone to great lengths to create great Flash apps would allow these same apps to become subpar just to get on the iPhone. While no doubt there will be a subset of Flash developers that will use this feature, it’s not going to be as many as people think.

Bottom line? If these developers want to develop for the iPhone, then they should do it the right way.

What, Exactly, is a Slate PC?

Last Wednesday at his CES keynote, Steve Ballmer showed off three examples of what he called “Slate PCs,” from Pegatron, Archos, and HP. He said they were “perfect–perfect–for reading, for surfing the Web, and for taking entertainment on the go.”

Continue reading this story…

Job Postings Suggest Twitter Looking to Generate Revenue

Twitter has long been derided by those interested in the financial side of tech as a money pit. The service really does not have a way to make money, although it was able to pull a profit this year thanks to content syndication deals with both Microsoft and Google. Thus several job listings on its website seem interesting considering the ever so common criticism.

Of the roughly two dozen listings, four include the word “monetization.” Those jobs would involve working on projects — seemingly as yet unreleased — which would give Twitter its much needed revenue stream.

Analysts told Reuters last week that its fairly likely that making money is a priority for the service in 2010. One analyst suggested that in order for Twitter to be successful in the long term, it has to start generating revenue in the short term.

Makes sense: you just can’t keep on losing money forever.

I am curious to see what Twitter does. We have seen that the company is open to some type of premium services, ones that would likely be sold to businesses. The commercial sector has increasingly turned to Twitter to supplement its customer service options, and going after these folks first seems like the most logical choice.

Electronic Guitars Battle for Music Game Supremacy

You know how musicians like to moan about how music games don’t inspire people to play real instruments? I wonder how they’d feel about Inspired Instruments’ You Rock guitar and Gambridge’s Z-1 Hybrid guitar.

Both axes, on display at CES’s gaming showcase, are MIDI guitars that also work as controllers in Guitar Hero and Rock Band. They’ve got actual, strummable strings for your picking hand and plastic frets that respond to the touch. Along several frets, there are also color-coded bars, marking them as buttons for music gaming.

I’m a guitarist and a gamer, so I couldn’t wait to give You Rock’s capable hired musician a rest and to try both guitars on my own. One thing’s for sure: Playing Guitar Hero on these instruments was considerably more fun than using the actual game’s paddle-and-buttons guitar controller. Being able to jam on strings brings the experience closer to real life (but still pretty far off, of course).

Playing the guitar wasn’t half-bad either. You definitely lose some important abilities, like bending strings and full control over muting, and it takes a little getting used to, but I was able to kick out some blues without too many problems. I actually preferred Gambridge’s guitar as a musical instrument, as it felt more responsive to muting and sliding, and its frets have a little give, making them feel more like real strings. But it’s heavier and its design isn’t as sleek.

It’s probably a good thing that there are two companies pursuing this, because it increases the chances that the product will get to market. The $179 You Rock guitar is available for pre-order online with ship date unknown (you’ll also need a $25 Bluetooth dongle for your game console of choice, available in Q1 for Playstation 3 and Wii and Q2 for Xbox 360), and the company is hoping to land retail deals at CES. Gambridge is shooting for a September launch with the $199 Z-1, whose prototype works with the Playstation 3 only (Gambridge eventually wants to support all consoles) via wired USB.

Would I buy one? Maybe, as the ability to use these guitars as instruments in Garage Band sweetens the deal if you’re an actual musician, but if I was looking to teach a Guitar Hero enthusiast how to play, I’d probably opt for a cheap starter electric guitar instead.

Update: I’ve clarified that the You Rock guitar can mute and slide strings, but it felt a little more natural on the Z-1 in my brief time with both.

USB Drives in Disguise

I’m usually immune to the charms of novelty USB drives, but I really like these Transformers ones being shown at CES–the result of an entertaining partnership between Toshiba and Hasbro…

Oh the Indignity

The more you love Polaroid, the sadder it is to see its name slapped on products like this.

Wi-Fi that Goes the Distance

When I use my laptop in a hotel, I’m used to it finding dozens of Wi-Fi networks belonging to random strangers. When I turned on my trusty Asus X5 this morning at Harrah’s on the Las Vegas Strip, it pulled up a network belong to a friend: Xavier Lanier of Noteboks.com. I was amused. And then I was startled–Xavier told me that he wasn’t staying at Harrah’s at all, but in the next-door-but-still-far-away Venetian. His Apple Airport Express just has remarkable range. More details here.

3D TV for the Rest of Us? Maybe Next Year

When Las Vegas cab drivers start asking you about the 3D TVs at CES, you know 3D is a big deal. The question is, how soon will it become a real deal for most of us?

There’s no question that 3D content is coming. Last month, the Blu-ray Disc Association announced the specs for 3D content on Blu-ray; ESPN plans to broadcast 85 events this year over a new 3D channel; Panasonic and DirecTV announced 3D delivery plans, as did Sony in conjunction with the Discovery Channel and IMAX.  Everyone is buoyed by the phenomenal success of Jim Cameron’s 3D blockbuster, Avatar, which is introducing many to the artistic possibilities of today’s sophisticated technology. “This is not your father’s 3D” was a mantra for attendees at a CES panel called 3D: Hope or Hype?

Continue reading this story…

ioSafe’s Solo SSD Survives One Disaster After Another

The most spectacular demo I’ve attended at CES this year–or, maybe, any year–didn’t involve 3D glasses or showgirls or a guest celeb such as Lady Gaga (who showed up at both the Monster Cable and Polaroid booths on Thursday). Actually, it was held in the chilly early evening at the parking lot of a sports bar off the strip, by ioSafe, a maker of rugged disk drives designed to protect essential data from fire, floods, and other disasters.

The product being demoed: The company’s new Solo SSD, its first drive incorporating a solid-state disk rather than a traditional rotating one. To show how disaster-proof it is, ioSafe subjected it to an extended physical assault that might have freaked out even David Blaine.

After the jump, the demo in photos. Warning: It isn’t pretty….

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iType. In One App

Okay, I should have known that it isn’t really possible at this point to build a practical external keyboard for an iPhone. Hope Apple helps make it possible at some point…

Too Many eBook Readers

The Las Vegas Convention Center is bursting at the seams with new e-readers, and for every one with a high profile. there seem to be seventy-three anonymous ones from companies you’ve never heard of. Hanvon had rather feral-looking pseudokindles and fauxsonys, and that slogan-”New Book, New Life”–kind of scares me…

Ballmer References Technologizer

At Steve Ballmer’s Wednesday night CES keynote, he quotes our Windows 7 satisfaction survey as evidence of Windows 7′s strong start. (He merely called it “a recent survey,” but note the attribution in tiny type at the lower right-hand corner…)

A Full-Sized iPhone Keyboard

I’ve craved an external keyboard for my iPhone for awhile now, but assumed that the phone lacked the technical hooks third-party manufacturers needed to make a keyboard talk to it. Here, however, is the first iPhone keyboard I’ve seen. It’s not the folding Think Outside-style model I’ve been envisioning, but I’m going to try and check it out here at CES.

Have You Been Entertained and Informed by a Ford Lately? Should You Be?

Earlier today, I lounged in the passenger seat while a Ford employee sat behind the wheel and showed me MyFord Touch–the upcoming radically upgraded version of the digital entertainment/information platform that the company began offering a couple of years ago as Ford Sync. The new version has a speedometer that’s flanked by two LCDs, and a jumbo color touchscreen, and it lets you do a gazillion things–from listening to music to getting directions to adjusting mood lighting in the car to turning your auto into a mobile hotspot. I loved it. And the chances of the Ford rep getting distracted and causing an accident were…well, nil, because we were sitting in a fake car interior inside a conference room in the Las Vegas Convention Center here at CES.

I’m impressed by MyFord Touch, which will start to appear in cars later this year–price TBA–and which Ford plans to roll out to eighty percent of its line within five years. It–and/or stuff like it–will be a factor the next time I plunk down money for an automobile. But this New York Times story reports on concerns that the new generation of Internet-connected car computing systems simply demands too much attention from drivers. One of the naysayers is U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, who’s presumably in a position to do something about them if he so chooses.

Your opinion, please.