Open Sarcasm Picks a Bone With SarcMark

A month ago, a company called SarcMark began selling a special punctuation of the same name, intended to denote Sarcasm. As some of our commenters pointed out, punctuation shouldn’t cost money, and SarcMark was charging $2 for the privilege.

Now, a group called Open Sarcasm is staging a protest to crush SarcMark and replace it with an upside-down exclamation mark (¡), which text fields already recognize and doesn’t cost a dime. Open Sarcasm’s organizer even came back to our original blog post to let us know about it.

The group says “¡” is graphically indistinguishable from Temherte Slaqî, an Ethiopic symbol that comes at the end of a sentence, used to indicate an unreal phrase or a sarcastic tone in editorial cartoons. No joke, Open Sarcasm pulls the idea from Wikipedia’s page on sarcasm, which sources a document (PDF) from the 15th International Unicode Conference.

Despite the subject matter, Open Sarcasm appears to be dead serious, writing a manifesto that specifically calls out the SarcMark, starting a Twitter page and opening an online merch store. Of course, the group is also accepting donations, for what I’m not sure.

I still don’t think punctuation for sarcasm is necessary — words alone leave plenty of room for nuance in tone — but a movement to liberate sarcastic punctuation from commercial gain is admirable, at least.

How Big a Deal is Skype on Verizon?

I’m not sure if this is just an intriguing partnership or a major moment in phone history. But at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, Verizon Wireless and Skype announced that they’re working together to bring Skype to nine BlackBerry and Android phones on the Verizon network. A version of Skype Mobile will be available next month, permitting free Skype-to-Skype calls, chatting, and Skype Out calls to any phone number, including cheap international rates. And it’ll all be done using flat-rate data plans rather than phone minutes.

There’s nothing inherently historic about Skype being available on phones–it’s on the iPhone (albeit over Wi-Fi only right now) and I first used the service on a Windows Mobile handset years ago. (Only briefly, though–it taxed the phone to the breaking point, and voice quality was pretty miserable.)

But a major carrier such as Verizon not only grudgingly permitting Skype but buddying up with it as a selling point for its phones is an interesting twist. I look forward to trying Skype Mobile on my Droid when it’s available. And I have a few questions in the meantime…

Continue reading this story…

The Many Names of Microsoft’s Mobile OS

I’ve given up making fun of Microsoft’s product-naming habits–oddly-clunky, frequently-changing monikers are just part of what makes Microsoft Microsoft. The company knows its branding practices are fodder for humor (here’s a famous self-parodying video it made) and yet it doesn’t change them. Either it likes it this way, or can’t help itself, or both.

But as I mulled over Windows Phone 7 Series–which looks neat–I was moved to try and document the many names Microsoft has given its mobile version of Windows and devices that ran it. It’s not easy, in part because there have been times when the OS and the devices had different names, and times when they shared branding. And Microsoft has wavered between playing up the notion of a distinct mobile version of Windows and treating Windows as one universal platform. But here’s a quick chronology of everything I remember.

Continue reading this story…

Decent Browser Coming to BlackBerries

More news from Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress: At a keynote by RIM’s Mike Lazaridis, he says that BlackBerries will get an all-new Web browser based on the same WebKit rendering engine used by the iPhone, Android phones, and Palm’s Web OS. It’s due later this year.

This demo shows both that the new browser looks like giant leap over RIM’s current, rudimentary one–and that the fact that most BlackBerries have small, non-touch screens still impacts the usability of browsing.

5Words: It’s an Aluminum Unibody Android!

This Android phone’s distinctly Macbookesque.

Like Nexus One, only better?

RIM unveils BlackBerry WebKit browser.

Google: Buzz testing was insufficient.

Steve Jobs helps with biography?

Do-it-yourself MiFi alternative.

Hack iPhone, get Apple ban?

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Windows Phone 7 and Xbox Live: A Feature Wish List

It was only a matter of time before Microsoft brought Xbox Live to a mobile device, as it will with Windows Phone 7 Series. Still, Microsoft hasn’t described this feature of its upcoming mobile OS in detail. All we know is that Windows Phone 7 will be able to play select Xbox Live games, view friends’ avatars and check in on profiles and achievements. I hope there’s more in store than just a few board and card games, plus a native replica of the 360 Live iPhone App. Here’s my unsolicited wish list for Xbox Live on Windows Phone 7:

The following Xbox Live Arcade Games: Braid, Marble Blast Ultra, Trials HD, Castle Crashers, Peggle, Worms 2: Armegeddon, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved and Catan. All would translate well, or at least well enough, to a virtual joystick, touch buttons or accelerometer controls, and they’re great games.

Xbox Live Game Room: This is the virtual arcade Microsoft introduced at CES this year, to launch this spring. You’ll already be able to play the classic games on either the Xbox 360 or Windows (for an extra charge, unfortunately), so why not throw the third screen into the mix?

1 vs. 100: The massive multiplayer quiz show seems perfect for mobile devices. Imagine getting a text message before one of the live shows, and being able to participate from the road.

Bonus content for Xbox 360 Games: Here’s an idea floated by Gizmodo’s Mark Wilson. Instead of isolating retail Xbox 360 games from Windows Phone 7, Microsoft should include extras for people who own both products. A game like Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies would be so much better if it were tied to the Xbox 360, or bundled with its parent console game.

Windows Phone as Xbox 360 controller: Microsoft already plans to reach a casual gaming audience this year with Project Natal, a 3D motion-sensing camera. Adding a touch screen controller for media and an occasional gaming seems like a natural fit. It’d at least be cooler than the button-driven interface of Sony’s Remote Play for Playstation 3 and PSP.

Finally, a Meebo iPhone App

Meebo, long the leading Web-based multi-network IM service, finally has an iPhone app. (It’s had a pretty good version that works in Mobile Safari for a long time.) The app looks slick and fast…

Symbian 3 Preview

Speaking of phone operating systems getting major makeovers for Mobile World Congress, here’s Nokia’s demo of Symbian 3, due in phones later this year. I want Symbian to flourish–back in the 1990s, I was a fanatical user of the Psion palmtops whose OS evolved into Symbian, which sported features I still miss. This video, however, suggests that the new version may mostly be about catching up with other phone OSes rather than racing ahead of them….

The Olympics: Big Screen Edition

Sure it’s 2010 and you can now get your Olympics fix online (albeit with some headaches), but if you’re home in front of the big living-room screen, why not take advantage of the all-HD experience? NBC Universal is offering coverage on NBC, USA, MSNBC, CNBC, and Universal HD, and, as in years past, the broadcast company has made deals left and right with pay-TV operators to provide on-demand content.
Continue reading this story…

Adobe’s Mobile World Congress News

More phone software news from Mobile World Congress: Adobe announced AIR for Android and FlashPlayer 10.1, fleshing out its “everywhere but iPhone” strategy.

Windows Phone 7 Series: Microsoft Starts Over

It doesn’t look or work like Windows Mobile 6.5. It’s not an iPhone OS knockoff. Instead, Windows Phone 7 Series, which Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled today at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress show, looks more like the Zune HD than anything else. And it looks…exciting.

For the first time I can remember, Microsoft is scrapping a major platform and starting from scratch. Windows Phone 7 Series–yes, the name includes a completely superfluous “Series”–isn’t compatible with Windows Mobile. And while Microsoft has always pitched the sheer variety of Windows Mobile phone designs as a primary advantage, Windows Phone 7 devices, which are supposed to show up for the holidays, will apparently be more similar to each other than different. (Microsoft is specifying one CPU, screen resolution, and set of buttons, for instance.)

The 7 interface involves titles that dynamically update themselves with new information, Zune HD-like menus with oversized text, and lots of fluid animation; there are Xbox Live gaming features, and the entertainment capabilities seem to be Zunelike.

It’s dangerous to have your socks knocked off by a demo video, which is all I’ve seen so far, since I’m not in Barcelona. But here is one:

Gizmodo has a good summary of what’s new in the new OS–and like everyone else who’s seen it close-up and blogged about it, Giz is enthusiastic.

Microsoft’s decision to reboot its phone OS was the right one–the only possible one, probably–and if Windows Phone 7′s interface is anywhere near as good as the one on the Zune HD, it’ll be impressive.

I already know I like the fact that it doesn’t look much of anything like Windows 7–for years, Windows Mobile has been inherently hobbled by Microsoft’s insistence that a mobile version of Windows should have a Start Menu and System Tray-like icons and other features which just won’t work well on a teeny-tiny screen.

More thoughts to come…

Five Sites Beyond Google

[NOTE: Here’s another story I wrote for FoxNews.com. This one’s on cool ways to find information that go beyond Google, and mentions Aardvark.I wrote it last Monday and it was was published on Tuesday–and on Thursday, TechCrunch broke the news that Google was buying Aardvark.)

How much do I love Google? Thanks to the stats provided by Google Web History, it’s easy to quantify: Over the past four and a half years, I’ve Googled for information 43,295 times. That works out to about one search per hour, 24/7/365. If that doesn’t indicate passion for the world’s most popular search engine, I don’t know what does.

But I’d never argue that Google is always the fastest, most effective way to find facts, seek advice, take actions, or simply satisfy your curiosity about the world around you. Actually, there are more viable Google alternatives than ever. For the most part, they don’t compete by trying to out-Google Google at basic Web searching. Instead, they do useful things that Google doesn’t.

I’m nowhere near as dependent on any of these five free services as I am on Google — but I use and recommend them all.

Continue reading this story…

Verizon, Skype Cozying Up?

Skype may finally be making some headway in the cell phone industry, as the company announced along with Verizon later on Friday a press conference scheduled for Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The two companies are expected to announce a deal that would put the Skype software on Verizon’s cellular phones.

Mobile carriers have generally pushed back in allowing Skype usage on their phones, fearing consumers would use the service to save money by negating the need for more minutes in their voice plans. Even AT&T up until the most recent SDK for the iPhone was giving the VoIP provider the cold shoulder. However, with consumers increasingly using their data side of their plans over the voice side, now may be the time to relax these restrictions in favor of generating more revenue.

The first carrier to allow Skype onto its phones was Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa, whose 3 subsidiary began adding Skype in 2007. The addition of Skype has been said to have attracted “hundreds of thousands” of new customers to the service.

Google Responds to Buzz Privacy Issues. Again

Google has taken another pass at addressing privacy concerns over its new Buzz service. The big change involves the autofollowing feature that made lists of Buzz users’ most-contacted e-mail acquaintances public: The following is no longer quite so automated. Instead, Google will show new Buzz users a suggested list of people to follow, allowing users to follow all of them, some of them, or none of them.

I haven’t seen the revised Buzz startup process in action yet, but judging from the above screenshot, I’m not sure that Google’s done everything in its power to ensure that nobody will be startled by the contents of their public list of followers. Google still seems to pre-select people to follow rather than making you check them off yourself one by one. And it doesn’t explain on this screen that the list of people you follow will be public unless you suppress it.

Still, this is close to the solution I suggested in a post yesterday: Making the whole follow-your-friends process optional. The company says it’s also ending Buzz’s initial practice of automatically linking to activities in users’ Google Reader and Picasa accounts; from now on, you’ll have to turn on these options. And it’s adding a Buzz tab to Gmail’s settings to make it easier to tweak Buzz-related options.

It’s good to see Google prove so willing to perform major surgery to a new service so quickly. I’m not sure if this will quell all reasonable concerns about Buzz, but I hope so: The service is both promising and full of other quirks which I’d love to see Google get to work addressing.

Macworld 2010 Recap

As I write this, Macworld 2010 is wrapping up over at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. As everyone who cares about the conference knows, it was the first edition since Apple pulled out–which meant no Steve Jobs and no Apple space on the show floor.

How’d the event survive the big transition? Well, there’s no doubt about it: A Macworld with Jobs unveiling something interesting onstage and Apple employees demonstrating stuff in the hall would have been better than this one. On the other hand, some of the most bustling, vibrant Macworld Expos I ever attended were held in Boston in the late 1980s, when Apple itself was sans Jobs and not releasing anything terribly exciting. And when Apple said it decided to leave the show in part because it could interact with its customers at Apple Store locations, it was a rational explanation even if you didn’t like it. One of the largest Apple Store locations is a few blocks from Moscone, and basically amounts to an Apple Macworld Expo booth that’s open year round. When I walked by it last night it was mobbed–with conventiongoers, I assume. Continue reading this story…

Bioshock 2′s No Friend of the Colorblind

When I was in college, my buddies brought an old Nintendo Entertainment System to the dorm hall, and nightly matches of the primitive hockey game Blades of Steel ensued. But when my best pal stepped up to the controller, certain combinations of teams were off-limits; his red-green colorblindness often made it too difficult to distinguish between the game’s two-tone uniforms.

Now, an aspect of the newly released Bioshock 2 has colorblind gamers furious. They say the game’s hacking segments — minigames that allow players to overthrow mechanical enemies for a tactical advantage — are nearly impossible. When hacking, a cursor slides back and forth along a pattern of colors, and the player must press a button to stop the cursor on the correct color. The problem for red-green colorblind gamers is that landing on green completes the hack, but landing on red hurts the player and triggers an alarm.

In other words, if you’re colorblind, it’s impossible to distinguish between good and bad. Check out Negative Gamer’s comparison after running a screenshot through a color contrast analyzer. Players with deuteranopia (6 percent of men, 0.1 percent of women) or protanopia (1 percent of men, 0.01 percent of women) will have a tough time hacking. Also, the 0.01 percent of players with tritanopia, a type of blue-yellow color blindness, will have trouble distinguishing between a successful hack and an extra bonus; not as critical, but still worth noting.

Bioshock 2′s not alone — see this feature by Destructoid’s Anthony Burch on the troubles of being a colorblind gamer – but this is certainly one of the peskier cases in recent memory. Developers needn’t constantly watch themselves to make sure they’re not mixing red and green, but in cases of straight-up color matching, they should know to include some other type of queue. At least in Blades of Steel, the difference between teams was only cosmetic.