Roku Developer Contest Winners Announced

I helped to judge a cool contest for developers of channels for Roku’s Internet TV box–and Roku has announced the winners. (I judged the screensaver category, which was won by a nifty one which displays your Picasa Web Albums photos.)

A More Mac-Like Skype for Mac

A beta of Skype 5.0 for Mac is out, and looks promising.

It’s All Mobile Now

Mike Elgan is right: There’s no reason anymore to specify that any technology product is “mobile.”

Jawbone Jambox: Little Bluetooth Box, Big Sound–and It’s a Speakerphone, Too

Aliph–the maker of those stylish, noise-reducing Jawbone headsets–is announcing its first product that isn’t a headset. It is, however, something with close technological ties to its other products: a small stereo speaker system which connects via Bluetooth to phones, computers, and other devices, and which doubles as a speakerphone. It’s called the Jawbone Jambox, and it’s a really interesting alternative to the tinny speakers that are built into gadgets.

The $199 Jambox is 5.9″ by 2.2″ by 1.6″–not pocket-sized, but close, and certainly briefcase-friendly. It comes in four colors (“Black Diamond,” “Blue Wave,” “Red Dot,” and “Gray Hex,” each with its own grille design, and all with a rather classic look (by design guru Yves Behar) that reminds me of vintage transistor radios. (If anyone had made Bluetooth speakers in the 1950s, they would have looked like this.) The case houses tiny stereo speakers and a rechargeable battery that Aliph says is good for up to eight hours.

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A Second Display for Your Android Phone

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Sony Ericsson LiveView micro display

Price: About $85

Everyone likes Android phones with humongous screens, right? Sony Ericsson is betting that some folks who own those phones would like to keep them in their pocket or purse and control them with the LiveView, a tiny squarish display that can communicate with several of the company’s Xperia handsets via Bluetooth. It can display information such as incoming calls, Facebook and Twitter updates, and “now playing” details on music, and you can wear it on a clip, fasten it to your keychain, or even strap it on like a wristwatch.

The LiveView automatically scans your Xperia phone for compatible applications, and will be available in “selected markets” by the end of this year.

Two Ways to Find Where You’re Going–Including One With Satellite Messaging

Last Gadget Standing Nominees: DeLorme Earthmate PN-60W and Earthmate PN-60

Price: $549.95 (PN-60W); $399.95 (PN-60)

The Delorme PN-60W is the first handheld GPS with Type & Send outbound text satellite messaging, enabling users to stay connected with friends, family, and emergency services, from locations around the world. They can pinpoint their position on DeLorme’s included maps of North America. If their adventures take them beyond cell phone range, they can still send their text messages to recipients’ cell phones and email addresses, and to social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Fire Eagle, SpotAdventures.com, and Geocaching.com. In addition, family and friends can track a user’s progress via Google’s free online maps.

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A Politician’s Facebook Friends a Bellwether of Electoral Success?

Facebook seems to think that if you’re a politician running for political office, the number of friends you have may correlate to your electoral success. In statistics provided by the social networking site on Wednesday, it found that among 98 hotly contested races, in 69 of them the winner also had more friends than the losing candidate.

In the Senate, the correlation appears even more strong: in the 34 races in which a winner had been declared, 28 of them also won the Facebook friends rate. Such evidence may point to the increasing power of social networking when it comes to voter outreach, and more importantly “GOTV” (Get Out The Vote) efforts.

While I used Facebook in my own run for local office — it was such a tiny sample that I can’t really speak from experience that it actually worked to help me win. What I can say is that I certainly believe my online presence — even for a hyperlocal political office like borough councilman — certainly helped me to get the word out.

Either way, in an age where political campaigns are becoming ever more expensive, and probably even more so in the wake of the Citizens United decision, GOTV efforts through social networking become a quick and inexpensive way of getting the word out.

New Twitter for Android

The new version of Twitter for Android (thankfully) looks a lot more like the iPhone one.

Eating Words: Kinect and Move are Looking Like Hits

In the past, I’ve been a skeptic of Kinect for Xbox 360 and the Playstation Move, Microsoft’s and Sony’s respective motion controllers. The prospect of selling the public another Wii, I thought, was hopeless without killer software. So far, it looks like I’m wrong.

Microsoft has raised its sales expectations for Kinect from 3 million to 5 million, Bloomberg reports. That’s based on pre-sales, retail orders and consumer interest for the motion-sensing camera, which launches November 4. To put this in perspective, Microsoft has sold 44.6 million Xbox 360s since the console launched in 2005.

The Playstation Move, a Wii-like wand tracked by a set-top camera, is also doing well so far. The controller officially launched on September 19, and Sony sold 2.5 million of them between the United States and Europe in one month. Lifetime Playstation 3 sales are at 41.6 million.

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Skyfire Brings (Some) Flash Video to the iPhone

[UPDATE: Skyfire has been pulled from the App Store. Engadget says that Skyfire did the deed itself because demand for it was crushing its servers--and here's the official word.]

Wanna watch Flash video on your iPhone? If you sit around waiting for Apple and Adobe to make nice isn’t worth the effort, you’re going to grow moss. But a partial solution is available today: Skyfire, a browser that can play some Flash-based video that’s not otherwise available on iOS devices. Apple has approved it, and it’s now on the App store for $2.99.

As with the Android version that came out last spring (before FlashPlayer itself shipped for Android), the iPhone edition of the browser scans Web pages for Flash-based video. In many–but not all–cases, it’ll pop up a thumbnail video icon, which means that it can play a version of the video converted into the iPhone’s H.264 format. Click on the icon, and Skyfire will buffer and play the video.

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T-Mobile Ad Attack

T-Mobile runs mean (if funny) anti-AT&T ad, decides its souped-up 3G network is a 4G network after all.

The Facebook Phone is…Every Phone

Okay, it sounds like we can stop wondering if Facebook is about to launch a “Facebook Phone.” At this morning’s press event at Facebook headquarters, founder Mark Zuckerberg kicked things off by saying that the company has no interest in doing so. What it does want to do, he said, is to make everything more social–including all phones.

So all of today’s news involved stuff that applies to multiple existing phone platforms, and most of it was totally platform-agnostic. A quick recap after the jump.

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The End of In-Flight Wi-Fi? Oh, Come On

“Aircraft bomb finds may spell end for in-flight Wi-Fi.” That’s the headline on a New Scientist story about last week’s discovery of bombs packed into laser-printer cartridges which were sent from Yemen and apparently intended to blow up airplanes. The point of the story is that terrorists might use in-flight Wi-Fi to communicate from the ground with a cell phone that had been rigged to trigger a bomb aboard a plane, a possibility so risky that it might lead to the abolishing of in-flight Wi-Fi, period.

The article doesn’t really live up to the headline: The closest it gets to evidence that Wi-Fi “may” be banned is a reference to an alarmed explosives expert saying it might be too dangerous.

Seems like a ludicrous overreaction to me. The in-air Wi-Fi I’ve used–Gogo–requires the user to log in and enter a CAPTCHA, and while I don’t discount the possibility of terrorists being smart enough to build a Wi-Fi-based bomb triggering device that can autonomously log into an in-flight network designed to be accessed by humans, it seems like it would require an awful lot of work on their part. Wouldn’t a plain old-fashioned timer produce much the same results with far less effort and technical knowledge required, and less likelihood that the device would fail or be detected?

Remember when a bunch of news organizations suggested that laptops might be banned from airplanes, period? Let’s hope this theory is just as solid as that one…

Facebook Has Mobile News

I’m headed to Facebook this morning for a press event at 10:30am PT which the company says has a mobile theme. (It would be cool if it involved the Facebook phone which may or may not exist, but who knows?) I’m going to tweet highlights via my Twitter account, and will report back here later.

How 42-Year-Old Porn Might Screw Video Games

“Censors are, of course, propelled by their own neuroses. That is why a universally accepted definition of obscenity is impossible. Any definition is indeed highly subjective, turning on the neurosis of the censor.”

So said U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Douglas in 1968, arguing against most of his colleagues who felt that selling nude magazines to minors should be a criminal offense. The courts, he said, should not decide what’s suitable for people to read. That decision is best left to parents or religious groups.

As today’s Supreme Court grappled with the legality of selling violent video games to minors, Douglas’ dissent in Ginsburg v. New York seemed as relevant as ever.

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Microsoft. Mojo. Discuss!

My weekly Technologizer column for TIME.com is about Microsoft, and whether it can regain the mojo it had back when the tech universe unquestionably revolved around the PC. The jury is still very much out. But between Windows 7, Windows Phone 7, Bing, and Internet Explorer 9, the company is less the sleeping giant it was a few years ago, and more of a giant running at a decent clip–for a giant, I mean–and in the right general direction, at least.

Of course, I could have written another seven hundred words on stuff Microsoft apparently hasn’t figured out yet. It hasn’t articulated a plausible strategy for tablets, for instance–by which I mean that “Windows 7 is the best tablet operating system” just isn’t going to cut it. (In this case, I suspect there’s a very strong chance that the company is closer to having its act together than its public statements would suggest, and just doesn’t want to say much until it has more to show.) I also think that the company is still struggling with the whole concept of low-cost browser-based Office suites; it doesn’t want to be the company that proves it’s possible to build one so good that traditional desktop-based Office looks unnecessary.

Anyhow, here’s a silly little poll. Please take it and share further thoughts in the comments…