Is Tethering Finally Coming for AT&T iPhone Users?

After promising that tethering would arrive for iPhone users all the way back when iPhone OS 3 was released, a new option in iPhone OS 4 Beta 4 seems to suggest that AT&T will finally get on the ball this summer following the official release of the OS.

MacRumors is one of several sites to publish screenshots of a new option within the Network section of iPhone’s settings which seem to suggest tethering will finally be a reality. Tapping “Set Up Internet Tethering” pops up a message stating that customers can either call or visit AT&T’s website in order to set up the feature.

Gregg Keizer at Computerworld contacted AT&T to ask about the status of tethering, but got nothing more than the that company had “nothing new” to share. Confusing, if you ask me. Why can’t the carrier just come clean on its plans? We’ve only been waiting for a year now, no?

It’s not like AT&T doesn’t do tethering at all–if you have a Blackberry, you can add the functionality to your plan for an extra $30 per month.

Goodbye Tweetie, Hello Twitter for iPhone

A little over a month ago, Twitter acquired Tweetie. Which was not only the best Twitter client for iPhones, but maybe the best way to use Twitter, period–and an exceptionally impressive piece of software, period. The company said that Tweetie would be relaunched as Twitter for iPhone–and the first (free) version under that name is now available in Apple’s App Store. It’s not just a moniker switcheroo: Tweetie’s last version was Tweetie 2.0, and this is Twitter for iPhone 3.0.

Continue reading this story…

Chrome to Open an App Store

More news from Google’s I|O conference: Google loves Web apps (surprise!) but thinks that they’re too hard to find. There’s no equivalent to the experience of walking into a well-stocked software store back in 1990, or going to Download.com. So it’s launching the Chrome Web Store, a service that lets you find, download, install, and pay for Web-based services.

Continue reading this story…

Google Wave Opens Up, Finally

At 2009′s Google I|O developer conference, the big news was the debut of the company’s uberambitious Wave workgroup service. And it was big news: I got all giddy and called it the new epicenter of the Google-Microsoft wars; my friend Jordan Golson, on the other hand, thought it was breathtakingly arrogant.

And then not a lot happened. The service stayed in private beta. It was a hot ticket for awhile, but a running gag quickly developed: “Hey, I got into Google Wave–now what?” References to chirping crickets were common. After a while, people stopped talking about Wave much, period. The world moved on to other subjects–like the vaguely Wavelike Google Buzz.

Continue reading this story…

Busting the Biggest Display Myths

My friend Dr. Raymond Soneira, founder of DisplayMate Technologies, knows as much about displays and what makes them look good–or bad–as anyone. And he’s written an eye-opener of a story for Maximum PC on the specs that display companies use to sell their products. Many of them are inflated, confusing, and/or just plain useless. Which isn’t clear to most people, since normal humans know very little about display technologies.

It’s all driven by marketing hype: Manufacturers figure you’ll buy the monitor with the most impressive-sounding sounding numbers. Tech companies have a long history of making claims about their products that devolve into deceptive gibberish, and this may be the most troubling current case. Ray proposes an Energy Star-like program for certifying displays using standards that really mean something, which is a fabulous idea.

The Future of Firefox

I sure hope that Blake Ross, Firefox’s brilliant co-creator, has it all wrong about the future of the browser he brought into the world…

Windows 7 Boosts Microsoft’s Rep

The University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) survey rates consumers’ opinion of a bunch of industries and major companies. Only one software outfit is big enough to receive an individual score. That would be Microsoft, and the report for the first quarter of 2010 has the company with its highest rating ever–76 out of 100. That’s a meaningful boost over its rating over the past few years, and the report’s analysis credits the improvement to the end of the Windows Vista era and the beginning of the Windows 7 one.

Note that the lowest Microsoft’s score got–69–was blah but not that blah: For instance, Comcast got a 61 this quarter. And while the 76 represents a nice bounceback, that score is also the average for the entire software industry. Which means that Microsoft’s result is, well, average.

Microsoft and Windows are close enough to being synonymous that it’s no shocker that the company’s reputation suffered the long national nightmare that was Vista–or that Windows 7 seems to be helping.

Your take?

Facebook, Zynga Buddy Up For an Internet Eon

It doesn’t surprise me at all that Facebook and Zynga have made amends.

A week ago, the respective giants of social networking and social gaming were at odds over of Facebook Credits, a form of online currency. Facebook wants 30 percent of all Facebook Credits revenue from developers, and Zynga, whose hit games Farmville and Mafia Wars rely mainly on virtual item purchases for revenue, was understandably miffed.

But because Farmville needs the daily traffic Zynga creates, and Zynga desperately needs Facebook’s existing social network, the companies worked out their differences. Facebook keeps its 30 percent cut, but sweetened the deal for Zynga with undisclosed perks.

What does surprise me is how long Facebook and Zynga agreed to stay together: Five years. Given the pace technology and the Internet have moved and continue to move, a half decade is, for lack of a better term, a ridiculously long time. Instead of breaking out the crystal ball, let’s put this in perspective by looking back.

Five years ago:

• Zynga didn’t exist.
• Facebook was still limited to college students.
• MySpace was the king of social networking as the 5th most-viewed website in the United States (now 12th to Facebook’s 2nd)
• News Corp. had not yet acquired MySpace (that happened in July 2005).
• World of Warcraft, the gold standard for online game addiction before Farmville, was not even a year old.
• Second Life was still blowing up. The virtual city’s population hadn’t yet topped 1 million, and Anshe Chung hadn’t yet earned $1 million selling virtual real estate. This trend story hadn’t been written.
• Monthly rentals were a dominant business model for mobile phone games. (If Farmville is playable on Android 2.2 phones, it won’t cost a penny.)
• To my knowledge, there was no concerted effort to kill Adobe Flash.

A lot can change in five years. Any bets on whether Facebook and Zynga will still be together in 2015?

Hands On Slacker 2.0 for iPhone (Caching!)

At long last, Slacker Radio 2.0 for iPhone is nearly here! Of course, the most notable and eagerly anticipated feature is the ability to cache stations for offline playback. Slacker’s updated app was submitted to Apple for review yesterday and, barring any show stoppers, should be available in iTunes in the next day or so.

Continue reading this story…

Webmail: Is It Ever Too Late to Switch?

The upcoming Hotmail upgrade looks like it’ll be the first Web-based mail client since Yahoo’s 2005 makeover with enough tangible benefits to make the idea of switching from another service worth contemplating, at least. Which got me to thinking: Do very many people really jump from one Webmail client to another these days?

Hotmail uses technology from TrueSwitch to import mail and contacts, so it should be possible for a Gmail user (for instance) to transition to Hotmail without too much in the way of technical challenges. Or you can use techniques such as POP access or forwarding to get e-mail from your old service into Hotmail without having to give up the old address.

Continue reading this story…

Meet QB, Your New Robotic Coworker

It looks sort of like a Segway that’s developed anthropomorphic characteristics. It’s really a high-quality videoconferencing system on wheels. It’s called QB, and if startup Anybots is successful, it could be coming soon to the conference rooms, offices, and hallways of businesses everywhere.

Continue reading this story…

Dreaming of the Superkindle

I’m pleased by the news–inevitable though it was –that Amazon is working on a Kindle app for Android phones. But I’m more intrigued by this Nick Bilton post at NYTimes.com on Amazon’s current hiring spree for its Kindle team. Amazon surely has a strategy in place for the future of its e-reader platform–one which must respond to the arrival of the iPad, even if it responds mostly by studiously ignoring it. It’s going to be fun to watch it unfold.

So What Will Bezos Do? The way I see it, Amazon has four major options.

Continue reading this story…

The Beatles on iTunes: No News is Bad News

When will the Beatles finally be available on iTunes, or anywhere else you can legally download music or stream it on demand? I’m beginning to think it’ll be when I’m 64–which gives the multiple parties involved in this saga until 2028 to get their respective acts together. Or at least this MG Siegler story at TechCrunch, covering recent comments by Sir Paul and EMI, provides no particular reason to expect any good news any time soon.

Kindle Enroute for Android Platform

Kindle fans with Android phones, your wait is over. Amazon has announced that it plans to release a version of its bookreading software for the platform. Currently, the book retailer has applications for Windows, Mac OS X, and several phone platforms including the iPhone. The applications allow for a subset of Kindle functionality available on Amazon’s popular reader devices.

As with all of its applications, Kindle for Android will include Whispersync — which synchronizes information including last page read, etc. across all Kindle applications and devices automatically.

Those wishing to use Kindle will need Android OS 1.6 or newer and an SD card. Specifically, Amazon has mentioned that the software would work on the Droid Incredible, Google Nexus One, HTC MyTouch, Motorola CLIQ, and Motorola Droid on a page announcing the launch of the application.

No specific details on availability have been announced, although a statement from the company says “this summer” — which could mean next month or September for all we know.

Hotmail Heats Up: Major Upgrade On Its Way

For several years, describing the competition between the three major Webmail providers as a race has failed to adequately capture what’s been going on. Google has been adding features to Gmail at a breakneck pace–sometimes several in one week–while Yahoo Mail and Hotmail have been ambling along as if they weren’t in it to win it. (At least in terms of quality–Yahoo Mail remains the most widely-used service in the U.S., with Hotmail in second place and the less-venerable Gmail still playing catchup.)

Now Microsoft is giving Hotmail–which is still the most popular service internationally–its first major makeover in a long time. The company expects to make the new version available in July or August; it gave me early access to a preliminary version. It’s not about aiming for feature parity with Gmail: The basics of Hotmail’s look and feel remain largely unchanged, and there are many, many useful Gmail features that have no counterparts, such as one-click archiving, a built-in task manager, and the ability to insert applets such as Google’s calendar gadget.

Judged on its own terms, though, this new Hotmail is appealing–and most of what’s new really is new, with no precise equivalent in Gmail. Hotmail also feels less densely packaged with stuff, I could see some folks preferring it to Gmail, which is beginning to flirt with bloat.  (Bonus point in Hotmail’s favor: You can now choose either a threaded inbox or a traditional flat one, a pleasant change from Gmail’s mandatory conversation view.) Continue reading this story…

Nintendo and Heart Association Team Up, Fall Short

The American Heart Association just gave Nintendo an encouraging slap on the rear by endorsing the Wii and a couple of games.

It’s a great development for Nintendo. The AHA will stick a stamp of approval on two of Nintendo’s in-house titles, Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit Plus, along with the console itself. The association will also showcase the Wii at “Find a Start! Heart Walk” events around the country. You can’t buy marketing like that (Update: Actually, you can. ABC News reports that Nintendo paid $1.5 million for a three-year endorsement).

The AHA’s gains from the partnership are more ambiguous. Exposure? The appearance of being on the cutting edge of fitness? Neither motivation would trouble me if the association were doing more than just declaring Nintendo to be its star player.

If I were an executive at Electronic Arts, I’d be livid. Last year, the publisher released EA Sports Active, a game specifically designed for exercise, unlike Nintendo’s fun-oriented Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit Plus. Beyond EA, there are plenty of other third-party games with an eye towards fitness, such as The Biggest Loser, Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum and Just Dance. Where’s the AHA stamp of approval for those titles? For that matter, should the AHA still pledge allegiance to Nintendo when Microsoft and Sony release their own motion controllers?

The AHA could be doing so much more with the active play concept. It could rate individual games based on the difficulty of their workouts. It could give advice on how to make the most of each exercise game. Heck, if the group really had some ambition, it could create an online metagame for people to share and track their progress through multiple AHA-approved titles.

As it stands, the partnership between Nintendo and the AHA is a gimmick whose value barely exceeds the bullet points on the back of game boxes. Once the Wii Fit Plus gets stowed away in a dusty corner, with no endorsed products to replace it, the stamp of approval is meaningless.