“A Series of Tubes”

RIP former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who was responsible for one of the most notable quotes in tech history…

Blockbuster Guns for Gamefly’s Turf

Blockbuster is finally taking its mail-order game rental service nationwide, and I’d be a little more excited if the pitch wasn’t slightly misleading.

On Blockbuster’s website, the movie and game mail-order service seems like a knockout. For $9 per month, you can rent one disc at at time. That’s the same price as Netflix, and although there’s no streaming video, you can rent video games and Blu-ray discs for no extra charge. Two discs per month costs $14, and three discs costs $17.

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The Droid 2 is Official

The Android-handset trend is clearly moving away from physical keyboards, but I’m glad that the Droid 2–which Verizon and Motorola announced today–offers one. It’s impossible to tell from a photo how good a keyboard is, but this one looks like it might be better than the so-so one on this first Droid…

Microsoft’s Latest PC-Mac Comparison is…Almost Reasonable

For years, Microsoft’s marketing efforts for Windows ignored the fact that Macs existed. That changed last year. In the wake of rising sales for Apple’s computers, Microsoft went on the offensive. But the case it made for Windows PCs and against the Mac was touchy and evasive. It ran PC ads that knocked Macs as overpriced but couldn’t find anything nice to say about Windows. It got pointlessly insulting about Mac users. And it commissioned a white paper on the “Apple tax” that was rife with fuzzy math and bizarre errors.

All that stuff happened in the late, not-at-all-lamented Windows Vista era. Back then, you could understand why Microsoft would be crabby about the whole subject of Windows vs. Mac–especially since Apple was repeatedly sucker-punching Vista in the face, via the meanest ads ever in its long-running “Get a Mac” campaign.

Today, however, is a new day. Vista has been replaced by the vastly superior Windows 7. Apple seems to have ditched the “Get a Mac” campaign in favor of a much lower-key, lower-profile Mac/PC comparison section on its site. And now Microsoft has responded in kind with a “Deciding Between a PC and a Mac” section on the Windows 7 site.

As with much of Microsoft’s consumer marketing for Windows, this new comparison is aimed at teeming masses of folks who don’t know a whole lot about computers, not geeks and enthusiasts. It clearly strives to come off as calm and reasoned, not snarky and emotional. There’s as much boosting of Windows as there is knocking of the Mac, and the whole thing is free of name-calling.

Let’s look at Microsoft’s claims, section by section. I understand that Microsoft isn’t going to make a balanced comparison of pros and cons here; you won’t hear about the hassle of dealing with Windows security, or the fact that few PCs come standard with creativity software to rival the iLife suite that’s bundled with every Mac. But checking out Microsoft’s case for Windows in the age of Windows 7 is a worthwhile exercise. And it’s reasonable to expect that even marketing copy should contain no gross mischaracterizations or factual errors, right?

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Enough With the Coffeehouse Wi-Fi Ban Stories, Already

Full disclosure: Sometimes I blog from the coffee shop near my apartment, one that is supposedly bucking the trend of skimping on free Wi-Fi.

At least you’d think coffee shops sans Wi-Fi were the latest fad after reading a recent Los Angeles Times story on the subject. Shop owners want to reconnect with their customers, says the Times, or they want to give customers a place to unplug. Or more likely, they want to keep out the moochers who buy one cup of coffee before claiming an entire corner of the cafe for hours of laptop work (guilty!).

I don’t doubt that these places exist. The problem is that they’ve existed for years, and the only trend staler than coffee shops banning or restricting Wi-Fi is newspaper trend stories about these businesses.

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Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Breaks the $200 Superphone Barrier

Apparently Sony Ericsson didn’t get the memo that you’re supposed to charge $200 for high-end Android phones.

Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X10, which has been sold unlocked to U.S. customers since at least March for $1,000, and now $550, finally got its first subsidy from AT&T. And unlike other Android phones with big screens, fancy cameras and fast processors, the Xperia X10 costs $150 with a two-year contract.

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A Silly Little Quiz

Which classic computer are you? Find out at this quiz on Facebook, which I created with a nifty service called FanAppz. (I, of course, am a TRS-80…)

AT&T U-Verse iPhone App Allows TV Viewing

AT&T has launched an app which would allow U-Verse customers to schedule programs for recording on their DVRs as well as downloading and watching programming on their iPhone. While satellite TV provider Dish had announced last week that it was developing a Sling-based iPhone app that would allow for similar functionality, AT&T is the first to actually release one.

A Wi-Fi connection would be needed to download the programming, as obviously these files would be too big to download over 3G. The app and its use would be free, but would require a U300 package or higher, the company said. To entice users to subscribe, new U-Verse customers would receive a $75 iTunes gift card upon registration.

There is a caveat to downloading, it appears. AT&T selects the content from which you can download, which only includes select networks. Thus, the programs available may not necessarily match those that are recorded on your DVR. In this case, Dish’s planned app seems to be the better deal.

BlackBerry users, don’t fret: AT&T plans to offer a version of its app compatible with the upcoming BlackBerry Torch, due out on the company’s wireless arm on August 12. In addition, iPad support would also be available once AT&T can work out the content deals with the various content providers, it said.

Google and Verizon’s Network Neutrality Negotiation

The rumored deal between Google and Verizon over Network Neutrality issues isn’t a deal–it’s a joint proposal to the FCC. It recommends rules that would prohibit the favoring of certain traffic over other traffic on the wired Internet. But Dan Gillmor, who knows way more about this stuff than I do, isn’t thrilled with the companies’ suggestions. And the proposal is pro-Network Neutrality only for wired traffic, not wireless data. Isn’t that a little bit as if it had advised for consumer-friendly regulations for dial-up–but not for broadband–in, say, 2000?

Inside Volkswagen’s Silicon Valley Gadget Lab

Volkswagen never wants you to forget that its cars are engineered in Germany–hey, its current slogan is “Das Auto.” But cool Web tools,  innovative gizmos, and digital entertainment aren’t exactly synonymous with German engineering. It’s Silicon Valley that’s the world’s headquarters for that stuff. And so it’s not that startling that much of VW’s work on new and future electronics, gadgetry, and interfaces happens at its Electronics Research Laboratory in Palo Alto, California, in close proximity to electronics engineering talent the company might want to hire and tech companies it might want to work with. The ERL is also a quick drive away from Stanford University’s Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab, where VW collaborates with university students and researchers on new technologies. (I wrote about VAIL’s self-driving Passat a few months ago.)

As part of VW’s press event for the 2011 Jetta, I took a tour of the ERL last week. Herewith, some photographic highlights.

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The Hottest New Game Controller

I always liked the idea of Logitech’s now-defunct Chillstream, a gamepad that blasted cool air into your sweaty palms. But a controller (not from Logitech) that heats up when the on-screen action gets intense? Thanks, but no thanks.

Can Blizzard Build Another World of Warcraft?

As the most subscribed-to massive multiplayer online game in the world, World of Warcraft is a tough act for any game developer to follow, let alone the company that created it.

But in a recent earnings call, Activision-Blizzard chief executive Bobby Kotick revealed that Blizzard is indeed working on something new. He didn’t reveal much about the game, but said it will be an entirely new intellectual property, which means no Starcraft, Diablo or Warcraft branding. That’d be the easy way out.

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Jailbreak Your iPhone, Get Flash with Frash

Our regular readers will probably remember my post last month on Frash, a Flash plug-in being developed for jailbroken iPhones. Well, it is now available for download. Comex, the same hacker who developed the Jailbreakme.com website jailbreak, has uploaded the application to the Cydia app store.

Frash would be compatible with the iPhone 4, the iPhone 3GS, the third generation iPod touch, and the iPad. Be forewarned however that the app — which enables Flash in Mobile Safari — will only support basic Flash animations, but not Flash video. It’s a start however, and those who really want the support on their iOS devices are probably not going to mind the drawbacks.

I would be interested in hearing from anyone who’s daring enough to install this on their device on how the experience is.

Send us your Google Voice Bloopers, Flubs and Fails!

If you’ve ever used Google Voice to transcribe your voicemail, you’ve probably noticed that the service has good days and bad days, and at worst, the transcriptions can be mildly amusing to downright frightening.

I’m trying to put together the definitive list of awesome Google Voice transcription bloopers, and you can help. Send your best to me at newmanJB@gmail.com or drop me a line on Twitter. Mere jumbles of incongruent words are okay, but the best bloopers have a little something extra, like an awful innuendo or accidental death threat. I’ll be posting the best, along with other gems from around the web, in the next week or so. Thanks!

Wowd: A Faster, More Powerful Way to Explore Facebook

Facebook describes itself as “a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers.” True enough, but there’s one basic problem: The more friends, family, and coworkers you communicate with, the less efficient Facebook is. That’s because it offers surprisingly few features for navigating your way through the surging sea of updates you get if you have more than a handful of connections. Once an item scrolls off the front page of your news feed, chances are pretty good that you’ll never see it again. And interesting nuggets can get lost among stuff you couldn’t care less about.

Enter Wowd, a real-time search engine that aims to help Facebook be better at living up to its own mission. It’s introducing a new version with something it calls a “social discovery client for Facebook” today. I got a sneak peek before it opened the tool up to the masses.

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iPhone Manufacturing Head Leaves Apple

Apple manufacturing honcho Mark Papermaster leaving the company obviously has nothing to do with the iPhone antenna–I mean, it’s better than the antenna on other smartphones. Right?