Gmail for Android Gets Priority Inbox (Sorta)

I’m still deciding how I feel about Gmail’s Priority Inbox. But it’s good to see some of its functionality migrate to Google’s Gmail app for Android. (Now Google just needs to deal with the absurd fact that Android has one e-mail app for Gmail and another for everything else–each of which has only some of the features you want.)

New Adobe’s Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements For Windows…and Mac

For years, Adobe’s Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements have had a simple, appealing modus operandi: Provide a surprisingly high percentage of the features from full-strength Photoshop and Premiere with an easier interface and more features aimed at amateurs, at an affordable price. Adobe is rolling out Photoshop Elements 9 and Premiere Elements 9 today: They’re $99.99 apiece ($79.99 after $20 rebate) and can also be bought in a bundle for $149.99 ($119.99 after rebate). A $179.99 version ($149.99 after rebate) includes both versions, 20GB of online storage for photos and videos, and additional training materials and art.

The Elements strategy still works, and these new versions are reasonably meaty upgrades. I tried the OS X versions.

OS X versions? In the past, only certain um, elements of Elements have been available for Macs: Adobe shipped the OS X version of Photoshop Elements with the industrial-strength Bridge media management tool rather than the more consumery Organizer, and didn’t bother with Premiere Elements at all. The biggest single piece of news about the Elements 9 apps is that they’re available for Macs in forms nearly identical to their Windows counterparts.

Continue reading this story…

Internet Explorer 9: Finally, a 21st Century Browser From Microsoft

My Technologizer column for TIME.com is up: It’s a look at the Internet Explorer 9 beta:

Last week, Microsoft unveiled the first beta release of Internet Explorer 9, or IE9 for short. It’s easily the most impressive browser upgrade to hail from Redmond, Wash., since the original skirmishes with Netscape. And I don’t think it’s mere coincidence that it’s the first one the company has hatched since its scariest current competitor, Google, got into the browser business by launching Chrome two years ago this month.

Read the whole column here.

Twitter’s Security Mess

Looks like I should be glad I slept in this morning: I managed to miss what sounds like a nightmarish period of worms gone wild on Twitter. (Ars Technica’s Peter Bright has a good recap of what happened, and why.) In retrospect, it looks like the culprits took advantage of a ginormous Twitter security flaw; it’s surprising it took this long for something like this to happen.

Here’s Twitter’s own account of the mess, and an apology for it.

Energizer Sides With Qi, Looks Like a Winner

Inductive charging is increasingly gaining traction, and several companies have stepped forward to attempt to stake their position in the expanding market. Energizer has debuted its entrant, using technology from the Wireless Power Consortium called Qi (pronounced “chee”). From what I’ve seen and gathered, it looks like the company has the upper hand on its competitor.

Duracell also has its own option, called “MyGrid,” but it requires a an attachment or case to be attached to the device. The difference with Qi is that the technology would be built into the devices itself, and could charge any device requiring less that five watts of power.

Representatives from Energizer tell me that they expect Qi-equipped mobile phones to hit the market as soon as this holiday season. Of course, there’s going to be your holdouts — Apple the most high profile (shocking right). For those there would be cases much like previous solutions. But the aim here is for true wireless charging without any attachments.

Continue reading this story…

A Video Recap of Appnation

David Spark is a veteran tech journalist and the founder of the firm Spark Media Solutions, which gives voice to companies by building their media network. Spark appears on the last episode of Cranky Geeks tomorrow, and blogs regularly at Spark Minute. Follow him on Twitter @dspark.

I spent much of last week at the Appnation conference in San Francisco, an event for companies that create, distribute, and (try to) monetize mobile apps. (I was reporting on the event for Dice, the online job board for tech jobs). I shot a ton of videos at the event, but here are a few of my favorites.

Continue reading this story…

Hotel Wi-Fi: Still Not a Given

USA Today has a trend story about upscale hotels hawking two price tiers for wi-fi, with the lower tier sufficient for e-mail and web browsing, and the higher one suitable for video and other high-bandwidth services.

As with the recurring story of wi-fi-free coffee shops, i’m not sure this one is fresh. In my experience, two-tiered wi-fi dates back at least a couple years, and the story presents only anecdotal evidence that the trend is growing: One upscale hotel chain, InterContinental, is testing the concept in three locations, and another, Four Seasons, has expanded two-tier Wi-Fi after testing began last year. InterContinental charges $10 per day for basic access and $15 for higher speeds.

The more surprising part of the story, I think, is that hotels, especially upscale ones, are still charging for wi-fi in the first place.

Continue reading this story…

PS3 Plays 3D Blu-ray Movies

Good news for folks who aren’t completely jaded with 3D TV: Sony’s Playstation 3 is a 3D Blu-ray movie player as of today’s firmware update. Now, if only you could find some movies that aren’t exclusively tied to new television purchases.

Oh, Ashok…

I was about to make some pithy comments about the latest rumor du jour surrounding the next generation iPad — which now apparently is a 7-inch model with a camera — and its source, the attention-crazy Rodman & Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar — but Daring Fireball’s John Gruber beat me to it . Let’s face it, Kumar’s track record in predicting anything about Apple sucks, and that’s putting it nicely.

As just a recap of what this guy has predicted or said, and gotten wrong, in no particular order: Verizon and Apple teaming up on a tablet; Qualcomm’s chips were to power the iPad; the iPhone was a dud; ah well, I think you get the point.

Continue reading this story…

Toshiba Gets Into The 3D HDTV Fray

Although I don’t understand why 3D HDTVs have become all the rage lately — I have yet to be impressed by one — it’s not preventing everyone from jumping into the fray. Toshiba is the latest, releasing two models as part of its Cinema Series line.

Now 3D aside, the picture quality from these televisions are top notch from what I saw. They include Toshiba’s ClearFrame technology which prevents some of the loss of clarity in fast moving pictures that plague your everyday LCD set, and 1080p resolution. The set also includes built in Wi-Fi, and features Yahoo Connected TV technology.

Two sizes are available, a 46 and 55 inch model, which would retail for $2,599 and $3,299 respectively. The company also includes a lower end version without 3D in the same sizes, at prices of $2,299 and $2,799. The glasses would be sold separately which run about $170 a piece.

Continue reading this story…

Napster is (Allegedly) Available for iPhone

The original Napster was a scandalously easy way to get music for free. I’ve just been trying to use the new iPhone app from the latter-day, not-free service that carries the Napster name–and so far, it’s proven to be an annoyingly difficult way to pay for music.

Actually, I haven’t gotten it to accept my money at all. I began by downloading the iPhone app from the App Store and trying to upgrade my existing Napster event to the $10/month plan needed to stream and cache unlimited music on an iOS device. The app sent me to Safari to do the upgrade–and when I got there, I was greeted by an error message.

I tried doing the upgrade on a PC. Same error. Figuring that something might be wrong with my aged Napster account, I started to sign up for a new one, and didn’t see the $10 iOS plan among my options.

Then I noticed that there was no mention of iPhone compatibility on the Napster site. Scratch that–there is a reference to it…one that says that full-blown Napster doesn’t work with Apple devices.

I see no reference to an iPhone app on the Napster blog or in its press releases, so I wonder if the software wandered onto the App Store a bit ahead of schedule.

Maybe some of the dozens of folks who wrote about Napster for iOs today were able to get it up and running, but I’m giving up. With MOG, Rhapsody, Rdio, and Thumbplay already offering worthy on-demand music services for iOS, Napster is pretty darn late to the iPhone game. (Me, I’m currently partial to Rdio.)

If you’re able to make Napster work on an iOS device, lemme know what you think…

The “Facebook Phone” I Want is a Facebook iPhone

The weekend’s big tech rumor was the possibility that Facebook was working on a Facebook-branded phone of some sort, presumably one with super-tight integration with the social network’s online services. Seems utterly plausible–the scuttlebutt came from decent sources such as TechCrunch and Cnet, and Facebook’s denial was artful rather than comprehensive. Could be cool, too: Joe Hewitt, who’s supposedly working on it, was responsible for the excellent Facebook app for iPhone until he quit that project in disgust over Apple’s App Store policies.

Thinking about Hewitt, though, made me ponder the current state and future of the Facebook iPhone app. It’s seen some tweaks since he left for less restrictive pastures, but nothing radical. And there’s just a ton of undone stuff left that could make Facebook better on an iPhone.

Continue reading this story…

Two Monitors? Heck, Make It Three!

Listen to this concession: “Okay, yes, once you’ve used a two-monitor setup, going back to a single monitor sucks.”

That from my wife who last year resisted using a second monitor. It’s so darn quaint when she admits she’s wrong.

Judy found that out when I brought home a friend’s PC for repair, needed a monitor, and borrowed hers. (First rule of computing: Use someone else’s equipment whenever possible.)

The repair was taking longer than I expected — funny how computers do that to you — and, my pobrecita was feeling deprived.

Continue reading this story…

Coming Soon: Google Docs Editing on iPad, Android

The Google Docs experience has always been hobbled on mobile devices — you can’t create new documents, and editing is limited to spreadsheet cells — but that’s about to change, for Android and the iPad, at least.

Slipped into Google’s announcement of two-step Google Apps verification was news of Google Docs editing for Android phones and the iPad. Google Enterprise President Dave Girouard said the much-needed feature is coming in a few weeks.

Plenty of questions were unanswered. Why is the iPhone left out? What about Blackberry and WebOS, for that matter? Is this just an enterprise feature, or will Google Docs editing become available to everyone? And my favorite question: What the heck took so long?

Continue reading this story…

Got Any Questions for Zappos’ Tony Hsieh?

I’m not a customer of shoe/fashion/housewares superstore Zappos, but I’ve never met anyone who was and didn’t rave about the site. So I’m pleased to have been invited to guest-tweet a live Webcast with Zappos founder/CEO Tony Hsieh this Friday, September 24, at 2pm PT.  I’ll watch, listen, and tweet some thoughts as I do.

The topic of the Webcast is “Service and the Evolution of the New Customer,” and I doubt that there’s a merchant on the Web who knows more about the subject than Hsieh. (He recently wrote a New York Times bestseller about it.)

You can participate (and share your own questions and impressions via Twitter) by joining us here on Friday. In the meantime, if you’ve got any questions for Hsieh, feel free to share them as a comment on this post–we’ll round ‘em up for the Webcast.

(Full disclosure: Like other Webcasts I’ve observed and tweeted, this one is sponsored by HP and hosted at one of its sites. The hashtag for the event is #hpio.)

Goodbye GOG, For Now

Good Old Games, or GOG, a website that sold classic PC games without digital rights management, is gone as we know it. The site is apparently undergoing some kind of radical transformation, which will be announced this week.

On the website, GOG offers cryptic reasoning for the change. “We have recently had to give serious thought to whether we could really keep GOG.com the way it is,” the site says. “We’ve debated on it for quite some time and, unfortunately, we’ve decided that GOG.com simply cannot remain in its current form.” A solution for people to re-download their games will be added this week.

One rumor has it that the closure is just a marketing stunt. Another unconfirmed report says GOG will be swallowed up by Steam, the juggernaut of online PC games distribution. Either way, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a fundamentally different GOG emerge this week. From what I’ve seen in digital games distribution, the strategy of offering one niche product is not enough to succeed.

Continue reading this story…