Twitter to be Available @Anywhere

Rumor had it that Twitter was going to unveil its advertising strategy and platform at cofounder Ev Williams’ keynote yesterday at the South by Southwest conference in Austin. Wrong! Instead, Williams announced something called @anywhere. The Twiter blog post on @anywhere isn’t terribly explicit about what it is, but it’s at least a rough equivalent of Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect–a way for third-party sites to hook themselves into Twitter so that folks’ Twitter identities follow them across the Web.

@anywhere disperses the Twitter experience via Hovercards–the mini user profiles that pop up on Twitter itself–and site proprietors will be able to add it easily via JavaScript rather than through a more complex API. Williams didn’t mention when it would debut, but the blog post says “soon” and lists some impressive launch partners: Amazon, AdAge, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, eBay, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, Yahoo!, and YouTube.

More on this as Twitter discloses more details. I’m intrigued, at least–both as a Twitter user and as a publisher who might be interested in adding @anywhere to my site…

What’s Really Wrong With Bioshock 2′s Disc-Free DLC

A funny thing happened when players of Bioshock 2 began downloading a $5 package of downloadable content: They realized there wasn’t very much to download at all.

Turns out, most of the “Sinclair Solutions‘ content pack — a collection of characters, abilities and challenges for the game’s multiplayer component — was already on the disc. A community manager for publisher 2K Games confirmed that its customers were basically buying an unlock code. She explained that if the content wasn’t included on the disc, players who bought the DLC wouldn’t be able to play with people who didn’t.

Outrage in this situation easily turns to the obvious. If the content already there, why is 2K charging for it? It would be a valid question if downloadable content wasn’t already sandwiched against new releases, but publishers are increasingly relying on these optional extras to boost profits (for example, last year’s versus mode for Resident Evil 5 or the Warden’s Keep dungeon in Dragon Age: Origins). Not enough people voted against these extras with their wallets, and the rest of us lost the battle. Whether the disc actually holds the content is academic if it’s all being released at the same time.

I propose a different question: Why is 2K withholding a portion of the multiplayer that lets players progress further in the game? Among the pseudo-DLC’s contents, you get the ability to reach level 50, new ways to evolve your weapons and extra trials that give you more powers. It’s the multiplayer equivalent of stopping players before the last level of a game and making them pay $5 to see the conclusion.

I know, multiplayer isn’t plot-driven, and there’s no ending whether you buy the extra content or not. But it feels cheap to hit a ceiling in multiplayer that goes away if you pay up, especially considering that 2K didn’t announce this little trick until after the game was released.

Windows Phone 7 to Get Netflix

For some folks, here’s a fairly compelling reason to buy a Windows Phone 7 Series handset: Microsoft’s mobile OS is going to get Netflix Watch Instantly.

A Good Hire

Tim Bray, one of the smartest, most influential guys on the Internet, is joining Google’s Android team. Good for him; smart of Google.

First Impressions: Opera Mini on the iPhone

Here at South by Southwest Interactive, I finally got a little hands-on time with Opera Mini for the iPhone, which Opera started showing off last month at the Mobile World Congress Show in Barcelona.  The Norwegian browser company told me that it’s still putting the finishing touches on it and plans to submit it to the iPhone App Store real soon now.

On every platform it runs on, Opera Mini’s signature feature is that it’s speedy, thanks to server-side compression that crunches Web pages down before they get sent to the browser. In my extremely informal experiments here at SXSW, Mini didn’t feel particularly zippy. (Actually, it loaded the New York Times’ home page more slowly than Mobile Safari did.) But it may not have been a real-world test of how it’ll perform when Apple approves it (please!) and it shows up on the App Store: An Opera representative told me that the compression is still going on via servers in far-away Norway, which would tend to bog things down.

Continue reading this story…

Rhapsody Readies Offline Music for iPhone

I’m at the amazing South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, where I ran into a couple of folks from the Rhapsody music service who gave me a quick peek of something I’ve been waiting for since Rhapsody hit the iPhone in September: an update to the iPhone app that lets you download music over 3G or Wi-Fi to the phone so plays directly from the handset rather than streaming over the Internet. The company says it’s finishing it up and planning to submit it to the App Store shortly.

Caching music locally guarantees that a song won’t die in midplay if your Internet connection flakes out. It lets you listen in places where the Internet doesn’t go, like most airplanes. And it uses way less battery power. Basically, it should make a $15-per-month Rhapsody to Go subscription look a lot more attractive. (The usual rules of subscription music apply: You can listen all you want as long as you pay the monthly fee, but if  you cancel service all the albums you’ve added to your collection go away.)

Once Rhapsody for iPhone does offline music–I’m assuming Apple will approve it without delay–the one feature it’ll lack that you’d want is the ability to play in the background while you use another app. That’ll only happen if Apple enables third-party multitasking. But Rhapsody says that it plans to add music downloading soon to its Android app, which already runs fine in the background.

Here’s a video preview of the iPhone app from Rhapsody:

FCC Begins Benchmarking ISPs’ Broadband Claims

The Federal Communications Commission has begun to benchmark Internet service speeds across the United States to allow consumer to compare the real world performance of their ISP with its advertised speeds. I’d like to see some action.

The program is under the aegis of the National Broadband Plan, which was created with funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to accelerate broadband deployment in the United States. The FCC is gathering data down to the level of home address.

“The FCC’s new digital tools will arm users with real-time information about their broadband connection and the agency with useful data about service across the country,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement to Reuters. The benchmarks will be combined with other data and presented to Congress as part of the agency’s broadband proposal.

Consumers may visit the agency’s Broadband.gov Web page to run the rest from their PCs or download the FCC Broadband Test app for Android and the iPhone. (When I ran the test, a script froze Firefox 3.6 on my Mac to the point where I had to manually kill the process, but Safari worked without a hitch.)

The Broadband.gov test, which is powered by Ookla Net Metrics, mirrored the results given from other testing engines in my area. I have Time Warner’s Road Runner service in Manhattan. My results were: 9165kbps download speed/490 kbps upload speed.

Time Warner is cagey about putting its advertised speeds out on the Web. Its “Speeds Levels” page for Road Runner lists capabilities – not speeds. I had to look at the fine print for a comparison made with DSL services at the bottom of the page to see that it promises a standard download speed of up to 10 Mbps.

Typically, my speeds vary throughout the day. A Speakeasy speed test returned downstream results of 3.5Mbps yesterday afternoon. I informed Time Warner about the issue through its e-mail support, and received a boilerplate answer about resetting my modem and router as a response.

Hey FCC –how about some accountability with those benchmarks? Most Americans get broadband from regional monopolies or oligopolies, and I bet that their actual performance doesn’t always match what those providers advertise.

In October, the FCC concluded that open access to broadband infrastructure is a catalyst for competition and deals for consumers. That competition couldn’t come soon enough.

Now the FCC has the ammo to at least prompt better service levels. I am stuck with Time Warner. My only other option is Verizon, but my building isn’t wired for it–yet. More. Choice. Please.

Xbox 360 Games on Your iPhone? Yes. But Not From Microsoft

On Monday, Novell will demonstrate new technology that will allow Microsoft Xbox 360 games to be translated into iPhone apps. It also has the capability to be used to create Android games, potentially taking some Xbox games to the mobile masses.

Novell, a Microsoft frenemy, is making it possible for you to play Xbox games on other devices now, while Microsoft, which created the platform, will leave you waiting for Windows Phone 7 handsets, due late this year. For whatever reason, Microsoft has chosen to be less than aggressive in supporting two extremely popular smartphone platforms despite obvious consumer demand.

It is worth noting that Microsoft has partnered with Nokia to port Silverlight, a .NET technology, to Symbian phones. But there has been no word about porting Xbox games to Symbian. Thankfully, the Mono team has taken up the slack where Microsoft decides it isn’t going to play.

The iPhone app that Novell created is an open source derivative of an Indiana Jones games that Microsoft is showing off running on Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox. The game is built using Microsoft’s XNA framework, which is based upon its .NET Framework.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 will run XNA 4.0 games, enabling developers of those games to reuse their investment and programming skills for Windows Phone handsets.

Novell is supporting XNA in its MonoTouch technology, which enables developers to translate .NET applications into native code on the iPhone. It has also done something similar for Android, but that solution is in its early stages of development (rumor is Microsoft may be porting Silverlight). Who wants to wager that Novell will bring Xbox games to Android before Microsoft finishes Windows Phone 7?

Interestingly, Microsoft supports the Mono effort. I can vouch that it has a strong relationship with the Mono team, and it views Mono as an insurance policy to protect customers’ .NET and Silverlight investments. Does Novell benefit from that arrangement? Sure. It’s like Microsoft’s pilot fish; it gets the business that Microsoft doesn’t want.

However, Microsoft is losing developer mind share as more and more apps are created specifically for Android and iPhone. Will a broad library of indy Xbox games be enough to differentiate Windows Phone from the rest of the pack? That remains to be seen – we’re not talking Halo.

More Google Buzz Tweaks

One of Google Buzz’s major selling points is supposed to be its tight integration with Gmail. Over at Cnet, Stephen Shankland is reporting that Google is fiddling with the feature that ties them together. Users will have more control over when they get Buzz updates via e-mail, and it’ll be clearer why a particular Buzz item is showing up.

Google says it’s making the changes in response to feedback that Buzz is too noisy. Me, I don’t feel like I’m being inundated with Buzz–but I’m not sure why I’m getting the Buzzes I’m getting, and I wish it were easier to figure out what they are right from the inbox, without having to open them up…

Plastic Logic Postponed

Plastic Logic, which was planning to ship its Que e-reader in April, has concluded that it needs more time to put the finishing touches on its creation. It says it’s postponing release until summer in order to “further fine-tune features and enhance the overall product experience.”

If the delay indeed ends up being a few months at most, it doesn’t seem like that huge a deal. If I were a prospective customer, I’d surely prefer to wait a few months for a rock-solid Que than get a buggy one right away. Besides, a little extra time doesn’t mean much given than the company started previewing the Que in September of 2008 (and in fact was talking about using its technology to make e-readers as far back as 2000).

The real question about the Que and all other e-readers that use monochrome E-Ink screens is whether they’ll survive the technological sea change that seems inevitable when Apple releases the iPad on April 3rd. Even setting aside the fact that the iPad is a multi-function device with a color screen, it’s likely to have a major impact on folks’ expectations for tablet-type gadgets: Judging from demos, it’s is blazingly fast. no E-Ink-equipped device is anywhere near zippy, and the Que felt especially sluggish when I tried a pre-release version at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. (The software was still a work in progress at that point, so the version that Plastic Logic releases may be quicker–and the delayed releases makes all the more sense if the company is tweaking it for better performance.)

Unlike most e-reader makers, Plastic Logic is a real technology company with its own innovative manufacturing process and factory. It’s also got a unique focus–it’s catering to business professionals–and the slickest user interface I’ve seen on any E-Ink device to date. It’ll be interesting to see how Que fares–even if we have to wait a bit longer to find out.

iPad Reserved

At 5:38am this morning I reserved an iPad for pickup at my local Apple Store on April 3rd, the day Apple’s new gizmo becomes available. Hey, I was up anyway–in fact, I was onboard a plane at the time, heading home from Seattle. It went smoothly, except for one glitch on the login screen. But I liked the Jobsian-sounding error I got: “This is an error message. You have failed in some way.”

OnLive’s Cost Still Looks Like a Sticking Point

Now that OnLive has finally revealed some pricing details, the cloud gaming service is looking more than ever like a dubious proposition.

OnLive will cost $15 per month when it launches on June 17, but that price won’t let you play any full games. You’ll still have to rent or purchase games to stream to your computer in addition to the monthly charge, at prices that are still undisclosed. Even if it costs less to rent or play a game — and it probably will, given that OnLive promises lower distribution costs compared to retail — OnLive will have a tough time competing with actual hardware for all but the most dedicated gamers.

Let’s say you spend $300 on a new console every five years. That’s $5 per month, already less than a subscription to OnLive. Now, let’s say you buy one new game every two months, at $60 each (a very generous estimate given that average game ownership per console hovered around six games after 24 months in this generation ), you’re basically spending $35 every month. That means publishers have to charge $40 or less for a game through OnLive (which makes $70 every two months when you add in the subscription) to make the proposition worthwhile.

Even if publishers are willing to go that low, the consumer is making concessions. Yes, you get instant gratification and the ability to play anywhere, but you lose the ability to buy, trade or sell used games, and there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to play what you bought 10 years from now. If OnLive goes belly up, so does your entire game library. And I wonder, if you decide to stop playing games for a year or two (say, you’re raising a baby), can you recover your library when you’re ready to start playing again?

The prospect of game rentals raises more questions. How much will an OnLive rental cost and how long will it last? In other words, how long do you have to rent a game before it becomes more feasible to “buy” it? Will the amount you spent on the rental be credited towards the purchase price?

I’m still willing to give OnLive the benefit of the doubt that its technology will work (despite one rogue report), and that cloud gaming itself isn’t a bad idea. But on pricing alone it’s too early to call OnLive a console killer.

Article updated to fix calculations.

Video Calls at 30,000 Feet

My friend John Battelle (who is, among other things, CEO of Federated Media, Technologizer’s advertising partner) was on a cross-country United plane flight equipped with Wi-Fi last night. He used iChat to do a videochat with his wife and kids, who were back at home in the Bay Area. And John got busted–by a flight attendant who told him that video calls are forbidden for security reasons.

John says that there don’t seem to be FAA rules prohibiting video calls. Which sounds logical: Once a plane has Wi-Fi, I’m not sure if if there’s anything terrorists could do with video that they couldn’t do equally effectively with other communications means, such as IM. (Besides, they’d probably ignore any rules against video calling–hey, they’re terrorists.)

But there are at least two other plausible arguments against video calling in the air. One involves the people surrounding the folks doing the calling, who might find the call intruding on their personal space. (Probably depends in part on the courtesy of the person doing the calling, but I sometimes have a hard time dealing with gabby seatmates who are simply making phone calls before takeoff or after landing.)

The other issue is bandwidth: I don’t how much speed a service like Aircell’s Gogo has to share among everybody on a flight, but it’s not infinite–and consuming video might bog things down for everybody else. (Of course, video of any sort could do that–I wonder if Gogo does anything to block, say, Hulu?)

I have a hard time living without inflight Wi-Fi these days–I’m going to use it so much on Virgin America this month that I shelled out for a month-long pass–but I could tolerate with a ban on video. (Then again, if I was sitting next to John and noticed he was chatting with his family, I wouldn’t press the Flight Attendant button and squeal on him.)

Your take?

Finally, a Major New Reason to Use Blogger: Easy Custom Templates

At this point, blogging has been around so long that there’s nothing extraordinary about almost anyone–from an eleven-year-old to a grandma–having his or her own blog. One basic thing about blogging, however, remains surprisingly tough: gaining control over a blog’s look and feel. Automattic’s WordPress.com, Google’s Blogger, and Six Apart’s TypePad all provide plenty of off-the-shelf themes, but no simple way to create a truly unique skin for your blog.

Now Blogger–a venerable service that hasn’t changed much in eons–is doing something about it. It’s using its Blogger in Draft lab site to launch an ambitious template designer that provides point-and-click control over elements like colors, images, and layout. You can start with a canned theme, use the editor, and end up with one that’s unique to your Blogger blog.

So far, I’ve only seen the template designer in screen-image form–you can see some example shots after the jump–rather than getting hands-on experience. But it looks like a neat idea that could be a major new reason to consider using Blogger when you create a blog. It also looks at least a little like the customization options at SquareSpace, a less well-known blogging platform that emphasizes a blend of powerful features with a simple interface.

(UPDATE: Now that the template editor is live, I tried it. It is indeed nifty, especially in the way you see a live preview of the template as you change colors, fonts, and layouts. Wish every blogging platform had something like this.)

Blogger’s template designer will be available to all Blogger users today as an opt-in offering with fifteen starter templates; Blogger product manager Siobhan Quinn told me that Google wants to roll it out as a default feature as soon as possible, and that the final version will offer additional customizable versions of existing Blogger themes.

Here’s Blogger’s post on the new feature.

Continue reading this story…

5Words: New Netbooks, Reviewed by Gizmodo

Gizmodo reviews Pine Trail netbooks.

Barnes and Noble targets iPad.

New hard drives: XP beware?

A tablet. For $92. And decent!

Google’s fancy visual RSS reader.

TSA: employee attempted PC sabotage.

Should the feds snub iPhone?

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Playstation Move: Motion Control for Whom?

For too long this morning, I’ve been trying to think of something pithy to write about the Playstation Move, Sony’s newly-unveiled motion controller for the PS3. But aside from the facts — it’ll be out later this year, for $100 including one controller and a camera that tracks the controller’s movement — all I can spit out are conflicted opinions.

I’m somewhat excited for the Move, if only because it’s a more sophisticated version of Nintendo’s Wii, with its wand-shaped, button-laden controllers. The difference is that the Move uses an existing product, the Playstation Eye, to track the controller’s motion along three dimensions. This allows you to step closer or farther from the table in virtual ping pong, or make 360-degree turns in real space.

Cool technology, for sure, but is it a cohesive vision for motion control, or a half-hearted attempt to capture the so-called casual gamer? I can’t tell yet.

Take the games, for example. There’s the requisite Wii Sports Resort clone, but with more realistic graphics. There’s an on-rails shooter, but with a playful, arcade look and feel. There’s a pet-training game for children, but there’s also the military shooter SOCOM 4. Instead of showing off a killer app, Sony’s throwing pasta at the wall, hoping to find a target audience that sticks.

The Move has a controller issue as well. Some games will require you to wield two motion controller wands, while others will use a Wii Nunchuk-like secondary controller, with an analog stick. That means even if you’re playing solo, you’ll need three controllers for every possible scenario. It’s confusing, and it escalates the cost well beyond $100. Can this kind of set-up compete with the $200 Wii? Doubtful.

I think the issue is that Sony’s still in tech demo mode. I’m sold on the technology, but not on the product. This early look at the Move suggests that Sony wants to create both a Wii Sports killer and a Halo killer with motion control, but so far we’ve seen a controller that does neither.