Microsoft’s Office Web Apps Are Open for Business

Microsoft has announced that the consumer versions of its new Office Web Apps–browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote–are now available to anyone who cares to check them out. They’re headquarted at office.live.com, and you need a Live ID to access them.

I wrote about the Office Web Apps when I covered Office 2010 a few weeks ago. Certain things about them are impressive–mainly the desktop-esque look and feel and much-better-than-average support for Microsoft’s own file formats. Overall, though, I found them frustratingly rudimentary: Years after Google and Zoho jumpstarted the category of Web-based suites, Microsoft is entering the market that lacks features as basic as the ability to move elements around on the page. They’re far more interesting as adjuncts to Office 2010–a pretty solid upgrade–than as a self-contained competitor to other online productivity packages. Maybe that was Microsoft’s intention all along.

If you give them a try, let us know what you think.

My Initial iPhone 4 Questions (Lots of Them!)

Apple holds the most carefully-choreographed product launches on the planet–but boy, did the gremlins in charge of messing up tech demos have fun with this one. The fact that much of the reality that Steve Jobs planned to distort was revealed a few weeks ahead of time was only the beginning. The presentation itself was interrupted by the same type of crippling Internet-access glitches I’m accustomed to witnessing at other industry events–such as last month’s Google I|O–but which Apple has seemed immune to until now.  (I always assumed it had a top-secret method for pumping a wired T1 connection directly into an iPhone.)

Given the circumstances, today’s WWDC 2010 keynote was…not bad. Nearly all the major news had slipped out via Gizmodo or other sources, but it was still worthwhile to actually see the dang phone–especially its super-high-resolution display–and hear Apple confirm every apparent fact about it. There were some medium-sizes surprises, such as the built-in version of iMovie and the gyroscope. And until today, all we knew about the app known as FaceTime was that the front-facing camera was a sure tipoff that it existed in some form.

As usual, I came out of the event with as many questions as answers, which I’m taking as a sign that today’s unveiling was more than an unavoidable formality. After the break, some of the items that are on my mind.

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The iPhone 4 Makes its REAL Debut

Just as expected, Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone 4 at WWDC. Not surprisingly, the phone looks much like the prototype that Gizmodo acquired, with a steel frame, glass accents, front facing camera, and a camera with included flash on the back. The device comes in at 9.3mm, about 24% thinner than the iPhone 3GS, and what Jobs called “the thinnest smartphone on the planet.”

Another major feature is the “Retina display,” Apple’s upgraded screen for the iPhone 4. The resolution comes in at 326dpi, which along with some software magic makes for clear, smooth fonts and more vivid images. Jobs said the resolution is actually higher than the human eye can see (exaggeration, perhaps?). Either way, Apple expects it to be “years” before anybody matches this display.

The Apple A4 chip will power the device and is much smaller than the chips that have powered previous devices. But that’s because the device needs a bigger battery for all these new features: 40% more talk time, 6 hours of 3G browsing, 10 hours of Wi-Fi browsing ,10 hours of video, 40 hours of music, 300 hours of standby.

A new gyroscope feature along with new core motion APIs will enable all different types of motion in games. The upgraded camera now takes 5 megapixel pictures, and will take HD video at 720p at 30 frames per second. With this new camera, it’s time for a new standard app, and that’s iMovie for iPhone.

It essentially works like iMovie for the Mac OS Desktop, allowing the user to add transitions, titles and effects to videos captured on the device. Geolocation functionality would also allow the video to be geotagged. Apple will make iMovie available on the App Store for $4.99, jokingly adding “if we approve it.”

Jobs Takes Issue with App Store Approval Characterizations

Standing on the stage in front of thousands of developers at the 2010 Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple CEO Steve Jobs seem to take issue with the medias often negative characterization of the App Store process. Apple has repeatedly been criticized for using what seems to be an uneven standard when selecting which apps make it through to the store.

Jobs was having none of that. He claims that Apple approves 95% of the apps it receives for inclusion, most in less than a week. Some 15,000 apps are sent per day, he added. So what happens to the other five percent that don’t make it? Jobs says these are either buggy and do not do what they say they do.

Doesn’t seem to address the actual problem in my opinion, but I guess you can give Steve Jobs credit for attempting to get out in front of the issue?

Apple WWDC Keynote Live Coverage

I’m at Moscone! Join me a bit before 10am and we’ll learn the news together.

HP’s ePrint: Print From Devices With No Printing Support

Major development this morning: The iPad can finally print! But this breakthrough isn’t being unveiled at Apple’s WWDC keynote. Apple can’t take any credit for it, either–and actually, the news also involves the iPhone, Android phones, BlackBerrys, other smartphones, and other devices that do e-mail and file attachments.

This Monday-morning eye-opener is being announced by HP printing honcho V.J. Joshi at an event in New York. It’s a new feature called ePrint that HP is building into a trio of all-in-one printers. The goal is audacious: enable printing from gadgets that have no built-in support for printing, without requiring so much as installing an app. It’s a logical one for HP to pursue, given that devices that can’t print can’t help consumers use up ink. And the way HP did it is surprisingly simple: It built drivers into the printers themselves, and gave them Wi-Fi networking and e-mail addresses.

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I Suddenly Qualify for a Subsidized iPhone!

A few weeks ago, MobileCrunch blogged that some of its readers’ AT&T upgrade eligibility had shifted to June, a shift that would allow them to buy a theoretical iPhone that might conceivably be released this month at the lowest subsidized price. When I mentioned that, AT&T told me it was nothing out of the ordinary.

Now AppleInsider is saying that folks are noticing they’re eligible for a new iPhone with subsidy. And this time, one of those people is me. A few days ago, my AT&T account said I could get the full discount in November. Now–boom!–I’m entitled to it right now, assuming I’m willing to extend my contract and pay an $18 fee.

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Still More on Android Fragmentation

In an item on his personal blog, Dan Morrill, the Google program manager who I thought was insufficiently concerned about Android fragmentation, has followed up on his original post. He mentions my take, and while he says he found it somewhat histrionic, that’s okay–he also says he liked it.

I still think Morrill in particular and Google in general are being too breezy in their dismissal of the complications for consumers stemming from the fact that it’s upgrading Android faster than handset manufacturers can keep up. Morill says that phone buyers are smart enough to understand the concept of “last year’s model.” But we’re not talking about phones from a year ago which have since been replaced by this year’s models–fragmentation, or whatever you want to call it, affects multiple phones released in 2010 which haven’t been replaced by anything.

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Tomorrow’s Apple News Today: Your WWDC Predictions

Twenty-four hours from now, I’ll be standing in the hallway outside the Moscone West auditorium in San Francisco, a half hour from the Steve Jobs WWDC keynote which I’ll liveblog at technologizer.com/wwdc2010. A couple of hours after that, we’ll know all the Apple news there is to know.

So here’s our traditional final jag of predictions: Yours, in the form of results from our survey.

As usual, I’m aggregating your collective wisdom into group predictions. On questions for which you were allowed multiple answers, it’s a prediction if the majority of you guessed that something will happen. On ones for which you were allowed only one answer, it’s a prediction if a plurality of you expect something.

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Name That iPhone

I’m compiling the results of our Apple WWDC predictosurvey and will reveal ‘em soon. But it just dawned on me that I should have asked you to guess what the name of the new iPhone–assuming there is one–will be.

So here’s a special election–could you please participate?

Thanks very much…

Apple WWDC 2010: Come Predict With Me

On Monday at 10am PT or thereabouts, Steve Jobs will take the stage at Apple’s WWDC 2010 conference and announce something. Maybe several somethings–including, just possibly, a new iPhone. I’ll be in the audience providing moment-by-moment live blog coverage at technologizer.com/wwdc2010, and hope you’ll stop by.

In the meantime, how about some predictions? Not by me–by you. Click here to take our short multiple-choice predictosurvey. [UPDATE: survey closed--thanks, everyone!] Before the keynote, I’ll publish your collective wisdom on what we’re likely to see. And then after Jobs has been heard from, I’ll revisit your guess to see how we did.

We tried this experiment at last year’s WWDC, and you guys made more accurate predictions than some big-deal pundits did. I have this weird feeling that you might find it even easier this year to figure out what’s in store, but let’s see…

No More Bing Cashback

When Microsoft started offering sizable kickbacks to people who used its Windows Live shopping features to buy stuff–via a feature called Live Search Cashback which later turned into Bing Cashback–I was instinctively skeptical. It sounded kind of like bribery, and the process of finding deals and collecting your rebate involved jumping through multiple hoops.

And then I decided to invest a sizable chunk of change in a Nikon D90 SLR, a camera that tends to cost about the same no matter which (reputable) dealer you buy it from. I bought one using Bing Cashback and got a crazy-good Cashback deal that saved me $150. Boom–no more skepticism. A hundred and fifty bucks felt like more-than-adequate compensation for the effort involved.

But now Microsoft is saying that Cashback is going away:

In lots of ways, this was a great feature – we had over a thousand merchant partners delivering great offers to customers and seeing great ROI on their campaigns, and we were taking some of the advertising revenue and giving it back to customers. But after a couple of years of trying, we did not see the broad adoption that we had hoped for.

I’m sorry to see it go–and glad to see Microsoft being up-front about its rationale for shuttering it.

Normalcy for Gmail?

As far as I can tell, there are two kinds of e-mail users in the world: Those for whom bundling up a thread of messages into a “conversation” makes perfect sense, and those who would much rather have an inbox sorted in strictly reverse-chronological order. The Business Insider’s Henry Blodget among the latter type: Yesterday, he posted a testy item (one of several he’s lobbed) begging Google to let Gmail users opt out of conversation view. Then he followed up with good news: Two Google executives, who he refused to name, had written him to say that Gmail will get a “normal” view in the next few months.

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The Physics of a Good Touchscreen Game

I don’t play many games on my iPhone, but occasionally come across one that proves compelling. A game called Toy Physics is my latest fixation. It drew me in, and is a great example of a multi-touch platform being put to its best use.

Toy Physics involves drawing flat or sloping lines to halt, accelerate, or slow falling toys. The objective is to steer the toys into moving bins. Varying objects make the toys’ fall less predictable, requiring the player to devise a different strategy to pass each level. It would not have been possible to really enjoy the game without the iPhone’s touch screen interface; it was a natural fit. The game is available for just a dollar.

Other iPhone games just don’t fit with the interface, and are better played on the desktop. (I stopped playing SimCity on my iPhone after the first play). Games should take advantage of the hardware, not simply be ports of the same old thing on a smaller scale. Perhaps Apple has a point in rejecting applications that weren’t designed with the iPhone in mind.

Choose Your Own iPhone Garden

Macworld’s Jason Snell has the solution to the whole iPhone openness flap that makes the most sense: Let each iPhone owner choose for himself or herself whether to live inside Apple’s garden.

Okay, AT&T Customers–What Plan Will You Choose?

Yesterday I asked you what you thought of AT&T’s new, no-longer-unlimited data plans. The majority of poll respondents think they’re bad news, either short-term or over the long haul.

The most meaningful opinions about the shift will come from those of us who are currently paying AT&T $30 a month for unlimited smartphone data. We’ll all get to vote on the change with our pocketbooks–by either choosing to grandfather ourselves into the unlimited plan or opting to switch to one of the cheaper, limited offerings.

So this silly little poll is for current AT&T 3G smartphone (iPhone or otherwise) owners: