Jimmy Kimmel Does Entire Show On a Webcam

Late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t about to let a power failure cancel his show Monday, so he whipped out his MacBook and taped the entire show using Photo Booth. The power problems began affecting the studio Monday evening right around the 7pm taping time, and lasted through nearly to the live air time, which prompted ABC to show a rerun of an older show anyway.

The network isn’t letting Kimmel’s ingenuity go to waste: it plans to show the episode as shot by Kimmel tonight at his normal airtime of 12:05am. While the quality of the audio and the video isn’t going to be too hot, from what is being said about the episode it should be pretty interesting.

The guests booked still get interviewed, the musical guest still plays — just with a lot less videographic pizazz. Kimmel also apparently walks around and interviews staffers in an attempt to salvage the show. Kimmel says he blames the electrical problems on BP.

“I’m sure they’re responsible somehow,” he quipped. He also added that the stunt wasn’t an intentional plug for Apple, and added he’s actually hoping the company would not be upset with it.

How could they though? They just got free promotion for saving a network show. That’s gotta count for something.

Borders Sort of Responds to the E-Reader Price Wars. You Out There, Sony?

As of Sunday night, the Kobo e-reader sold by Borders was a $150 gadget that dramatically undercut the $259 pricetag on Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook. Then B&N cut the Nook’s price to $199 and introduced a $149 model, and Amazon responded by knocking the Kindle down to $189. The Kobo is still a cheap e-reader, but not strikingly so–especially considering that it has neither a 3G connection nor Wi-Fi.

So Borders has taken action, but not in the form of a straight price reduction: It’s including a $20 gift card with purchase of the Kobo, reducing the effective cost of the e-reader to $129. I don’t think Kobo matters enough (at least not yet) for Amazon or B&N to feel forced to react to this price cut. But I suspect that before all the product introductions and price reductions are done with, we’ll see three standard price points for e-readers: $200 or thereabouts for 3G models, $150 or thereabouts for slightly less fancy ones, and $99 or thereabouts for basic models that you might still plausibly want to own.

Still to be heard from: Sony, whose $169.99 Reader Pocket Edition and $199.99 Reader Touch Edition are now a tad pricey–and whose already-big-ticket $349.99 Daily Edition is totally out of whack with the e-reader economics that Barnes & Noble and Borders established yesterday,

iPhone 3G Users: Quit Complaining

Sometimes it is difficult to discern whether complaints are coming from actual users or are a product of blogosphere hyperbole, as was the case yesterday when the iPhone 3G didn’t get all of the new features available in the iOS 4 upgrade. One thing is for certain: had those customers received those features there would be real cause for complaints.

iOS4 performance on the iPhone 3G is a mixed bag, according to tests compiled since its release. That’s without all of the bells and whistles such as backgrounds and multitasking. When a Gizmodo reader e-mailed Apple CEO Steve Jobs asking why backgrounds were not included in the update, Jobs replied, “The icon animation with backgrounds didn’t perform well enough.” If that’s the case, just imagine the performance hit that multitasking would take.

The iPhone 3G’s hardware is substantially less powerful than the 3GS and iPhone 4. Had Apple chosen not to omit those features, many more people would be complaining about bad performance and being “forced to upgrade.” A phone should be snappy– not slow like an old PC overloaded with new software. Anything less is unacceptable. Apple did the correct thing by its customers.

Were  many people complaining about not having wallpaper before yesterday’s free upgrade? Absolutely not. If you liked your iPhone yesterday, there are no fewer reasons to enjoy it today. If you don’t like your phone, sell it, and find something that better meets your requirements. You can get good money for it on trade-in sites.

Let’s Compile an iOS To-Do List

Compared to most cell-phone software upgrades, Apple’s updates to its iOS (née iPhone OS) are low on suspense and uncertainty. You don’t need to sit around wondering if your device will run iOS 4, and when your carrier might make it available–if you’ve got any iPhone or iPod Touch except the first-generation models, you can do the upgrade yourself. Now. It’s a major advantage of the fact that Apple controls its own hardware, software, and mechanism for delivering OS updates.

Compared to most phone upgrades, though–including previous iPhone ones–iOS 4 is also more the beginning of a process than a self-contained leap forward.  Thanks to Apple’s Benjamin Button school of software design, it adds numerous features that feel like bare necessities even though we haven’t had them until now. (My two favorites: the integrated multi-account Mail inbox and the ability to organize apps into Folders.) Apple is finally done feeling filling in major holes, I think–although you may feel free to disagree.

But here’s why iOS 4 feels like the start of something rather than a conclusion: Its flagship feature is unquestionably multitasking, which provides major benefits only when developers enable it by updating their applications.  And the OS includes a dizzying 1500 new APIs that provide developers with new capabilities. So about 75 percent of my excitement over iOS 4 involves its potential as a platform, not the features that are available right now. I’m pleased that a Pandora that can play in the background is already here, for instance…but I’ll be more enthused when Slacker can do the same.

In the meantime, my mind is already racing ahead to the features I’d like to see in iOS 5, and I thought I’d record some of them here–and ask you to list the stuff you’re still waiting for. (But let’s not talk about Flash. I’m tired of talking about Flash on the iPhone.)

Continue reading this story…

Google Voice Opens Up

I kind of assume that anyone who’s reading this and wants Google Voice long ago figured out a way to wangle an invite. But just in case: You can now sign up immediately, no invitation required. It’s not perfect, but it’s among Google’s best offerings…

Hey, Free iPhone 4

Call me paranoid, but I have this weird feeling there may be some sort of virus going around Facebook that spams people’s walls with an unsavory message about how to get a “free” iPhone 4…

The iPhone 4 Arrives June 24th. Or June 23rd

Yesterday, i got a message from Apple confirming that the iPhone 4 I reserved will be ready on Thursday:

But as Engadget’s Ross Miller is reporting, at least some of the people who ordered iPhones 4 for delivery rather than reserved them for pickup are getting e-mails saying they’ll arrive tomorrow.

Unless those e-mails are a massive mistake (seems unlikely!) the mail-order iPhones will be in consumers’ hands before the retail ones will.

In the past, waking up at 3am so you could be in line at 4am at an Apple Store that opened at 7am was an onerous but effective way to get an iPhone a few hours before those who stayed home and waited for Fedex to knock on the door. This time, however, there seems to be no benefit to the retail route–unless you need help transferring contacts and setting up e-mail. Which I don’t.

More on the iPhone 4 on Thursday–unless there’s a second mysterious wave of e-mails telling us to show up tomorrow.

Old iPhones Outshine the iPad

TechCrunch’s MG Siegler makes a good point: The new features in iOS 4–like multitasking, quick app switching, and folders–are so welcome that they make an old iPhone with the new OS a better productivity tool than a brand-new iPad in some respects. iPads won’t get iOS 4 until the fall; I wonder if Apple has long-term plans to sync up the schedules so that iPhones, iPods Touch, and iPads all get updates at the same time?

Nook Pricing Conundrum

As of today, Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-reader costs $199. Yesterday, on Father’s Day, it was still $259, but with a special offer. My old pal Brad Grimes continues, in a comment from our post today on Amazon’s Kindle price cut:

I bought a $259 Nook yesterday (Sunday) as a gift for my father, enticed by an offer for a “free” $50 gift card. When I saw the price today, I called to see if I could get the difference back. I was told I could get only $10 back. It turns out, after looking at my receipt, they didn’t charge me for a $259 Nook and then give me a “free” $50 gift card, as advertised. They gave me a $209 Nook and charged me $50 for the gift card. Was I just shafted by Barnes & Noble? Harry, help an old friend!!!

Continue reading this story…

Microsoft Debuts Windows Live Messenger for iPhone

Surprising as it may seem, Microsoft is pretty darn good at creating iPhone apps. It’s latest entry, Windows Live Messenger, became available as a free download in the iTunes App Store on Monday.

Although the central premise of the app is to stay on top of your Windows Live network and chat with your buddies, the company has added a few additional features sure to please any Live user.

Microsoft has also enabled push notifications, which will alert the user to new IMs when the app is closed. As long as your buddy has connected his or her Live account to other social networking sites, you will be able to see what he or she is sharing on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, among others on the social stream screen which greets users as they load the application.

Hotmail access in-application is also provided (you can see it in the screenshot, its the glowing orange icon in the upper right hand corner), although there is no link provided from the bottom menu. That’s a bit of a shame but definitely could be added in a future release.

Messenger is the fourth iPhone application to be released by Microsoft. The company’s first application was Seadragon Mobile, a Photosynth viewer released in December 2008. This was followed by Microsoft’s Bing search app in March, and then Tag, a reader for its proprietary QR code-like offering in May.

I am fairly impressed with the app, and it seems like with each one coming out of Microsoft, the company gets better and better. I’m now wondering if the folks they have developing these should be giving some advice to the rest of the software developers at Redmond on how to design functional apps without the clutter…

Amazon Responds

Well that was quick! For a few hours this morning, Barnes & Noble’s 3G Nook cost $70 less than a Kindle. Now the Kindle is ten bucks less than the Nook. Wonder what the chances are that B&N will match or undercut the Kindle’s new $189 pricetag? (It may not need to, given that it’s also announced a $149 version of the Nook.)

iOS 4 is Go

Apple has enabled downloads of the iPhone’s software update. More thoughts soon–let us know what you think…

AT&T Looks to Repair Image Through Social Networking

AT&T is following Comcast’s lead in turning to social networking in order to repair its tarnished brand and reach out to its customers. The company is making a full court press to counter some of the negative publicity that it has received across Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube by building a support staff devoted to answering customer concerns on popular social networking sites.

That group now numbers 19, and almost half of those reached through social networking respond to the team. AT&T is also planning to actively promote the company’s participation in social networking on its bills and websites in an effort to get even more customers to use the service.

Airing customer concerns in public may seem like counter-productive to repairing the bruised image of a company, but it’s not. In the standard phone-based customer service, nobody really sees the work the company does to fix the issue except the caller and the representative. Here in the open, everyone sees it.

While the only fixes for AT&T’s problems really lie in infrastructure improvements, any effort to quell the angst of its customers will go a long way to improving its image. The media has certainly pummeled the company (and rightly so) for its missteps in recent years, especially with the iPhone. Appearing as if it cares may buy it a little more time with consumers to get things right.

[Hat tip: AdAge]

E3 in Images

Jared Newman, Technologizer’s intrepid gaming correspondent, spent much of last week at the E3 conference in LA. He cranked out some great stories. And now he’s shared some of his photos from the huge, exciting, weird, and occasionally disturbing bash in a slideshow. Here’s “E3 in Photos: Blood, Sweat, and Hardware.”

E3 in Photos: Blood, Sweat, and Hardware

The Floodgates Open

I’m no veteran of E3–this was my second show–but I know that this year’s major video game expo was profoundly different from the year before. There were tons of games to play, but hardware was the big attraction, with the Nintendo 3DS, Playstation Move and Kinect for Xbox 360 making their debut on the show floor. A large portion of these folks are headed straight for Nintendo’s booth.

FiOS Goes Month-to-Month

Looking to better compete with cable, Verizon has announced that users will be able to sign up on month-to-month plans for its FiOS Internet, cable, and phone service. A contracted option would still be available, which would lock in prices for the duration of the contract. The move is aimed at eliminating one of the criticisms cable providers have leveled against it in advertising.

The cost to go month-to-month would be no more than having a contract, the company said.

Cable companies are looking to stoke the flames of resentment against the concept of early termination fees, which have become increasingly unpopular thanks to overzealous cell phone companies. There is good reason to fight back hard against FiOS: anecdotal evidence suggests cable rates decrease when FiOS is also available in the same area.

People are also looking for another option. In the places where it operates, on average FiOS holds a 25 percent market share.