Gmail for iPad Becomes a Smooth Operator

Like it or not, technology has a vain side, one that strives to make things pretty as well as functional.

That’s the side Google is appealing to with Gmail for iPad’s new “stacked cards” interface. Now, when you select an e-mail from the left column, the message slides out into the right column with a smooth animation. Selecting more e-mails creates a pile of messages, like hastily stacked index cards (hence the name), which can be deleted, archived or moved in bulk.

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Fuji’s Second-Generation 3D Camera: Are You Ready to Give Your Pictures Another Dimension?

At a very interactive product launch, Fujifilm this week rolled out a point-and-click camera that lets people display 3D photos on either a 3D TV or a PC. If you own the right kind of laptop or desktop PC monitor, you don’t even need to wear 3D glasses to view the third dimension of your work, Fuji officials said at the event at New York City’s Museum of Natural History.

Nevertheless, the new FinePix Real 3D W3 digital camera comes with an HDMI interface for instant viewing of 3D pics on virtually any manufacturer’s 3D TV with the assistance of stereographic 3D goggles. The camera will compete with a couple of new Sony models which, like the W3, are due to ship next month.

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Is the Future of Mobile Broadband Pay As You Go?

Over the past few weeks, I have been considering a mobile broadband solution. My reasoning is two-fold: I’d like a backup in case my regular connection fails–Comcast here has become somewhat spotty as of late–and something for when I’m on the road at a conference and don’t want to depend on the available Wi-Fi, which is sometimes unreliable.

For the time being, I have settled on Virgin Mobile’s Broadband2Go offering (I’ll have a review of it coming in a week or two after I’ve put it through its paces). It’s cheap, the initial cost of startup is not high, and it’s now Mac compatible. But while at Wal-Mart, I was shocked to see Verizon and AT&T are now offering their own prepaid plans. I must have missed their announcements–and it’s kind of surprising to me that those companies be interested in getting into the game.

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Search Google Docs From Gmail

Small but useful new Gmail labs feature: the ability to search both Gmail and Google Docs with one click.

Bad-Taste Apps From an iPhone Good-Taste Cop

From Wired’s Brian X. Chen, interesting news about one of the guys in charge of keeping the iPhone app store classy.

Memeo Connect Ships, Adds iPhone App

Memeo Connect, 2.0 the Google Apps synchronization service whose beta I wrote about a couple of months ago, has been released in an official shipping version. And Memeo added an iPhone version to the mix. As with the existing iPad edition, the iPhone one only lets you view documents, not edit them–but it’s free, and unlike the Windows and Mac versions, it doesn’t require a paid Google Apps Premier account. (Boilerplate disclaimer: My fiancée performs work for Memeo on a contract basis.)

Can a Chrome OS Tablet Make It Without Apps?

The list of present, future, and speculative iPadversaries I compiled last week wasn’t comprehensive–for instance, I didn’t include Samsung’s Galaxy Tab. And it’s growing more incomplete every day. Download Squad, for instance, is reporting a rumor that Google and Verizon will release a tablet on November 26th. Unlike the scads of Google-powered tablets that will run the Android OS, this one is supposedly powered by the still-unreleased Chrome OS.

I don’t know if there’s anything to Download Squad’s story, but it would be stunning if Chrome OS didn’t wind up on one or more tablets in the next few months. When Google announced the OS thirteen months ago, it looked like a glimpse of one potential future for personal computing. But the intended hardware–clamshell case with physical keyboard–no longer feels like it’s part of the next wave of anything. And another aspect of the OS–its dependence on the Web–feels like it might be part of the next wave after the next wave, not the immediate future.

The obvious point of reference for a Chrome OS tablet is the iPad. But from everything we know about Chrome OS so far, there’s one crucial point of differentiation: iPads are all about local apps, and Chrome OS (like the JooJoo) is designed to subsist entirely on Web apps. (Google is readying a Chrome OS app store, but the apps in question will all live on the Internet.)

If Verizon is involved with a Chrome OS tablet, it’ll presumably have built-in 3G connectivity, which means that the notion of it living off Internet services isn’t completely screwy. But I’m convinced that when it comes to mobile devices, apps are where it’s at–for the next couple of years, at least–and that a platform that doesn’t even try to play catchup with Apple’s iOS would be operating at a severe disadvantage.

Your thoughts?

The Tragic Death of Practically Everything

Wired Editor in Chief Chris Anderson is catching flak for the magazine’s current cover story, which declares that the Web is dead. I’m not sure what the controversy is. For years, once-vibrant technologies, products, and companies have been dropping like teenagers in a Freddy Krueger movie. Thank heavens that tech journalists have done such a good job of documenting the carnage as it happened. Without their diligent reporting, we might not be aware that the industry is pretty much an unrelenting bloodbath.

After the jump, a moving recap of some of the stuff that predeceased the Web–you may want to bring a handkerchief.

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PS3 Bundle Speaks Volumes About Playstation Move

I’m not in Germany for GamesCom, but Sony’s big announcement from the video game trade show was a Playstation 3 bundle that includes the Playstation Move camera and motion control wand, one game and a 320 GB hard drive, for $400.

Interesting strategy. By opting for a motion control bundle with a bigger hard drive and price tag than the standard PS3 model, Sony is sending a clear message: This is motion control for the devoted gamer. Come for the roomier hard drive, stay for the fancy new peripheral that lets you play real-time strategy games on a console.

At least I hope that’s the message. After all, a $400 console is twice the price of Nintendo’s Wii, and $100 more than the Kinect Xbox 360 bundle Microsoft announced last month. Sony’s kidding itself if it thinks the occasional gamer is going to sink $400 into a game console, especially now that so many cheaper options exist.

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I, Robot: Life With a Remote Presence Bot

“Would you like to borrow a robot for a week?”

Would I like to borrow a robot for a week? There’s only one sane answer to that question: Of course I would. When can I get it?

The robot I was being offered was a beta unit of QB, the product of a Silicon Valley startup named Anybots. It’s a bot built with one purpose in mind: Letting remote workers such as telecommuters or folks in branch offices interact with colleagues at headquarters.

QB is essentially a remote-control Webcam on wheels–using a browser-based app, the absent employee can steer the robot around the office, see other employees, and talk to them. More puppet than independent thinker, it’s  not even as autonomous as a mere Roomba. Nor does it have any way of picking up or otherwise manipulating objects, although a built-in laser pointer lets it direct coworkers’ attention in a particular direction.

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Microsoft Flight Simulator: It Lives!

It was one of Microsoft’s oldest, most loved applications, and as of early 2009 it appeared to be dead meat. I speak of Microsoft Flight Simulator, which by Microsoft’s math launched 28 years ago. (I date its origins to an earlier non-Microsoft version called SubLOGIC Flight Simulator and therefore consider it to be thirty years old.)

Anyhow, among the news at the Gamescom conference in Cologne, Germany is that reports of Flight Simulator’s death turned out to be premature.  Microsoft’s bringing it back under the name Microsoft Flight. So far, it’s only teasing us about the details, but it seems to be aiming for a wider audience of non-flightsim geeks, and adding social features.

Here’s the preview:

I was never a serious Flight Simulator enthusiast, but this development still warms the cockles of my heart. A Microsoft exec I spoke with today didn’t spill any secrets about the new version–but he did say it’ll be a rebooting a la JJ Abrams’ Star Trek. How many technology products from the early 1980s are available in any form whatsoever?

Groveshark’s Brief App Store Stint is Over

The iPhone App Store now plays host to many kinds of subscription music apps, but Grooveshark is no longer one of them.

Apple brought the axe down on Grooveshark after five days in the App Store, and all it took was one complaint from Universal Music Group’s U.K. office, according to Grooveshark’s official blog. “This comes as an absolute surprise to us, and we are not sleeping until we figure out exactly how to fix this—and get Grooveshark for iPhone back in the App Store,” says the Grooveshark crew.

Grooveshark for iPhone was like a lighter, less-committed version of MOG or Rdio. For $3 per month, users could search for and play any song on-demand, and create playlists of their favorites, but the app didn’t allow users to create full music libraries, like you can with the aforementioned $10 per month apps. Grooveshark’s website does include these capabilities, and the ad-supported version is free.

Grooveshark’s rates are low because it doesn’t license music from any major labels except EMI, which negotiated a deal after suing the service. Instead, music is uploaded by users at their own risk and shared with the masses. I don’t know why Grooveshark has escaped the wrath of other labels, but I do know labels are particularly demanding with mobile phones. This is why Rdio costs $10 per month for smartphone access instead of $5 for PC-only, and why Napster acknowledged nearly a year ago that high licensing fees for mobile streaming would make its $5 per month plan impossible.

Curiously, Grooveshark remains available for Android, Blackberry, WebOS and Symbian phones. Maybe Apple was the only company Universal complained to, but unless the label thinks it can cripple Grooveshark without any further action, I doubt it will be the last.

Class of 2014 Lives in a Digital World

We’ve always heard from our parents about those “good ol’ days,” and how we just don’t understand how it “used to be.” Beloit College, a small Wisconsin school of about 1,250 students, puts together a list called the “Mindset List,” which attempts to understand how today’s youth thinks.

It was originally intended to act as a guidebook for the obviously much older faculty to avoid cultural references that their students may not understand when it was first introduced in 1998. Since then, it has become an interesting look at the changing dynamics of today’s society.

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RIM’s Torch Not Burning So Bright

If RIM was hoping its BlackBerry Torch would give it a much-needed boost in competing with Android and Apple, they better look somewhere else. Analysts are pegging debut weekend sales at around 150,000 — while a substantial number, its far below that of its competitors. Take for example the iPhone 4: it sold 1.7 million devices in it first weekend out.

While the phone is currently only available through AT&T for $199 with a two year contract, Amazon was noted to have taken the unusual step of slashing the price on a new phone to $99. Not a good sign for a device RIM once hailed as “the best BlackBerry ever.”

Windows Phone 7 Games List: A Complete Breakdown

As expected, Microsoft made a big announcement about Windows Phone 7 gaming this week, revealing the first wave of Xbox Live-enabled games that will be available at launch. The list includes 63 games, with more promised before Windows Phone 7′s holiday launch.

As I explained in my rundown of Windows Phone 7 gaming, these Xbox Live games will include achievements and leaderboards, and Microsoft says you can also try them before you buy. Not included in this lineup is the more open Windows Phone Marketplace, which won’t be curated by Microsoft and won’t have access to the Xbox features. Microsoft also didn’t say anything about the ability to play games across the phone, PC and Xbox 360.

Just how impressive is Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 gaming lineup? To find out, I made a big spreadsheet of every Xbox Live game announced, noting which ones are also available for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Palm Pre, PSP Minis, DSiWare and Flash. You be the judge of whether Microsoft’s flying out of the gate.

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More Google TV

ZDnet’s Sam Diaz attended Adobe’s Android Flash summit and saw a new preview of the upcoming Google TV.