Archive | February, 2011
Coming Wednesday: Live Coverage of Apple’s iPad 2 Event
Here’s San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center as I found it this morning went I happened to wander by on my way to a meeting. The gents on the platform were putting the finishing touches on Apple’s decorations. And Wednesday morning at 10am PT, I’ll be inside as the company introduces the second-generation iPad. As usual, I’ll liveblog the proceedings as they happen–come join me at technologizer.com/ipad2, won’t you?
Tomorrow morning, I’ll make a few predictions tell you what I hope will transpire on Wednesday morning, and ask you guys to participate in a traditional last-moment Technologizer survey in which we try to collectively do a better job than the big-name pundits at figuring out the likely outcome. But if you have any thoughts that can’t wait, feel free to share them as comments on this post.
Once Again, Facebook Will Share Personal Data with Third Parties
28. February 2011
Social networking site Facebook created quite a stir last month when it announced that it would share much more personal details of its users — such as addresses and phone numbers — with third party developers. The move was so controversial that the company quickly reversed its plans and delayed the offering while it weighed its options. It also attracted the ire of Congress.
In a response to Reps. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas), the company now says it plans to go ahead with offering the functionality. “We expect that, once the feature is re-enabled, Facebook will again permit users to authorize applications to obtain their contact information,” the company wrote, adding it was looking into ways to “further enhance user control.”
Drund: A Neat, Flawed, Web-Based OS
28. February 2011
Drund is the website equivalent of a two-way radio wristwatch. It’s cool in theory, but with everything else that’s available, you’ll have a hard time finding a use for it.
I’ve been playing around with Drund in a closed beta for the last couple of months. Starting today, Drund will allow up to 10,000 new users to sign up without an invitation.
Drund is a website that looks kind of like Microsoft Windows. There’s a desktop with icons for favorite apps and a start button on the bottom of the screen with even more apps and operating system functions, such as a file browser and settings. But unlike Windows, Drund stores nothing locally. Instead of a photos folder, there’s Flickr. Instead of Microsoft Office, there’s a suite of online productivity apps from Zoho. For entertainment, there’s an app that pulls in video from Hulu, Netflix and Amazon.
In a way, it all sounds kind of like Chrome OS, Google’s forthcoming attempt at a web-based operating system, but Drund is different because everything is self contained in a single browser window. The apps are specially-created representations of other web services, made to run in an operating system within an operating system. You could even run Drund within Chrome OS, as you could within a browser on any PC.
The question is, why would you?
Gaikai Launches a Streaming Video Game Sampler
28. February 2011
Gaikai, the yin to OnLive’s yang, has entered public beta with video game demos that are instantly playable in a web browser.
Like OnLive, Gaikai uses its own servers to perform the heavy graphical lifting that modern PC games require. Users play the game through highly compressed audio and video streams, which are capable of running on low-end PCs. But instead of selling games to consumers through a software client, Gaikai wants game publishers to serve instant demos on their websites or Facebook pages. All the player needs is Flash and the latest version of Java.
Demos are available for Mass Effect 2, Spore and The Sims 3. You can also play a demo of Dead Space 2 by taking a short survey. They’re all published by Electronic Arts, which entered a “multi-year” licensing agreement with Gaikai in June 2010.
MOG Mulls Higher Prices and Other Options as Apple’s Subscription Rules Loom
27. February 2011
With Apple declaring that subscription-based iOS apps must offer in-app sign-ups and hand over 30 percent of the subscription revenue, streaming music service MOG is considering every option — even a price hike.
MOG costs $10 per month for unlimited mobile access to its on-demand streaming music library, the same price as competitors Rdio, Napster and Rhapsody. After the music labels and publishers get their share, and after MOG pays other fees for things like bandwidth, hosting and reporting of listening data, the company will lose money on every in-app subscription if Apple takes a 30 percent cut.
“We don’t understand why Apple should get more from our business than we get,” MOG’s founder and chief executive David Hyman said in an interview.
iPhone Meets the BBQ; Hermetically Seal Gizmos
26. February 2011
You’re out there, wondering if I had any more CES products in the wings. (Actually, I just LOLed, thinking that maybe you’re not.)
It doesn’t matter, I still have some particularly juicy products to tell you about. And here are two more.
iPhone Meets the BBQ
Watch the roast with your iGrill
Have $100 to burn? (Gawd, I certainly don’t.) If you do, splurge on iGrill‘s fancy probe. It’s another thing specially designed for Apple aficionados.
Stick the iGrill’s probe into a leg of lamb, toss it on the barbecue, turn on your iPhone, and snap open another Anchor Steam. A connection’s made using Bluetooth between the iGrill and your choice of iGizmo — an iPhone, iPad, or iPod. You’ll be alerted when the roast’s done, or, I imagine, overdone, if you’re not paying attention.
Your Shot at an iPod Touch
26. February 2011
Quick reminder: We’re giving away the new iOS game Tapper World Tour–preinstalled on an iPod Touch. Go here for details on how to enter.
The State of Android Market for Honeycomb: Sloppy
25. February 2011
Earlier today, I put together a slideshow of 10 Android 3.0 Honeycomb apps for PC World. I don’t own a Motorola Xoom, so I used the Android Market website for research. It wasn’t easy finding apps that were designed with Google’s tablet OS in mind — there’s no dedicated section for them on the site — but I managed to eek out a list using a variety of search terms.
Then I noticed Kevin Tofel’s story for GigaOM on how the Android Market currently has 16 Honeycomb apps. He did it the easy way, by visiting the Market on a Xoom.
But here’s the problem: Kevin’s list doesn’t neatly overlap with mine. I found a few “3.0 and up” apps that don’t appear when you search directly on the tablet, such as TouchDown and Drawing Pad. I also missed a handful of apps that work fine on phones but are optimized for larger screens as well. Clearly, the system for finding tablet apps in the Android Market needs a lot of work.
Antennagate II: Consumer Reports on the Verizon iPhone
25. February 2011
Consumer Reports’ Paul Reynolds has blogged about the publication’s extensive tests of the new Verizon iPhone 4–and he says that they show that touching the gap on the lower left-hand corner of the case can cause reception problems, much as they may with an AT&T iPhone 4. (Last summer, when the topic was in the news, we all called it Antennagate.) Consequently, CR isn’t recommending the Verizon iPhone, despite being impressed with it in numerous respects. As with the AT&T iPhone, putting the Verizon one in an Apple “Bumper” or other case solves the problem.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been bumming around San Francisco and the Bay Area for the past couple of weeks with both an AT&T iPhone 4 (my own) and a Verizon one (loaned to me by Apple). Neither has been in a case. I haven’t done any methodical tests of any sort–and haven’t paid attention to how I’ve held the phones–but I haven’t lost any calls on the Verizon iPhone, including ones I’ve made in spots where the AT&T one is unusable. And while the AT&T iPhone 4 has been faster when reception has been good, the Verizon one has been far less likely to completely choke. I’ll share more thoughts on all this soon.
Win Tapper World Tour–and an iPod Touch to Play It on
25. February 2011
Tempest. Tapper. Rampage. Popeye. Dig Dug. Those are my five favorite classic arcade games, and I’m really not sure what order I’d rank them in. Tempest would probably come out on top–but Tapper would have a shot, too.
Tapper debuted in 1983 and existed in two versions. In one, you played the part of a bartender who served Budweiser beer, in an early example of product placement in games. The other edition was Root Beer Tapper–shown above–in which you were a soda jerk serving non-alcoholic refreshments. The gameplay was identical: You ran around tapping beverages and flinging them down counters at hordes of impatient customers in various settings. It was twitchy good fun, the graphics and sound were excellent for their day, and I know that the game has held up well–I played it, repeatedly, just a few months ago at the amazing California Extreme arcade mega-event.
And now there’s Tapper World Tour, a new version for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad from Warner Bros. and Square One. You may not be surprised to learn that the graphics are more ambitious this time around, and you serve drinks in a lot more settings. But the basic drink-flinging gameplay looks like it’s come into the modern era intact, as it should:
Lovers of 1980s gaming have another reason to be interested in this revival: Its graphics were designed by Don Bluth, whose animation studio produced the animation for Dragon’s Lair (1983) and Space Ace (1984), two games which used laserdiscs to provide astoundingly rich animation and audio for their era.
Interested in playing the new Tapper? It’s scheduled to show up on the iOS App Store in early spring. And courtesy of Warner Bros. and Square One, you have a chance at a free copy–and an 8GB iPod Touch to play it on. We’ll be giving an iPod Touch with Tapper World Tour preinstalled to one lucky winner.
Sony Slashes PSP Price to $130
25. February 2011
We have no idea at what point this year Sony will ship its next-generation portable game console, or NGP, but the PSP is already looking stale.
That might explain why Sony is cutting the PSP’s price from $170 to $130 on February 27. Sony’s also dropping the price of PSP Entertainment Packs, which include a game, a memory stick and a unique hardware color scheme, to $150. A bunch of new “Greatest Hits” games will sell for $20, including Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and LittleBigPlanet.
How Big a Deal Will Thunderbolt Be?
24. February 2011
The single most interesting thing about Apple’s new MacBook Pro models–by far–is their incorporation of Intel’s Thunderbolt (formerly code-named Light Peak), a new high-speed connection technology that has the potential to replace just about every other sort of computer connector. GigaOm’s Darrell Etherington does a good job of explaining why it’s not yet clear whether Thunderbolt will be a neat-but-nichey technology like FireWire or a truly universal connector that could someday replace USB.
MobileMe Refresh on the Way?
24. February 2011
Apple’s cloud-based service MobileMe could be close to a redesign. Company watchers note the boxed version of the service sold through the Apple Store is no longer available, and AppleInsider sources report that the Apple SKUs (product codes) associated with the product have been marked “end of life” by the company.
Typically in the days before a refresh or discontinuation of a product, Apple will do what it has done here with MobileMe. Its hard to believe that the company would discontinue the product outright — the “cloud” is the buzzword in tech right now–although it could be in for some fairly significant changes.
We Dare: The Brilliance of Horrible Marketing
24. February 2011
I don’t know if my Twitter feed is a good indicator of something going viral, but right now it’s lit up with people talking about We Dare, a Wii and Playstation Move party game that Ubisoft describes as “fun and flirty” and “sometimes kinky.”
A trailer for the game lives up to the creepy concept: Two guys and two girls huddle in front of the TV and play a bunch of mini-games with a sexual bent. In one instance, two partners gnaw at the base of a dangling controller to mimic waterless bobbing for apples. In another, one of the girls bends over her partner’s lap for a spanking, Wii Remote tucked into the backside of her skirts. All the while, the actors giggle with convincing awkwardness. (The trailer is embedded after the jump to protect the innocent.)
But here’s the rub: We Dare was announced a month ago, and the Internet barely noticed. Ubisoft’s disaster of a trailer has brought far more attention to the game than the concept itself.
LifeProof: A Really, Really Protective iPhone Case
24. February 2011
The most memorable demo here at Launch was for a product category which you might not think could inspire a memorable demo: a new iPhone case. A guy in a magician-like tux strode on stage to the strains of classical music, took an iPhone that belonged to a judge, put it in a case from a startup called LifeProof, dropped it repeatedly, squirted it with ketchup and mustard, doused it in dirt, then dumped it into an aquarium. Thanks to the case, the phone appeared to take the licking and keep on ticking. The presentation also included a video clip shot by an iPhone 4–an iPhone 4 that was being used underwater.
Durable phone cases are nothing new–hello, OtterBox!–but I don’t know of another one which resists shock, water, and other hazards while looking pretty much like a nicely-designed-but-otherwise-garden-variety iPhone case. (The most noticeable signs that LifeProof atypical: There’s a little plug that protects the headphone jack, and a flip-down cover on the dock connector.) LifeProof is thin, weighs an ounce, and lets you use the iPhone without removing it from the case or otherwise going through a bit of hassle.
The company is also doing an iPad case and one for the iPhone 3G and 3GS, and says that it’s working on versions for Android and BlackBerry phones.
I like the LifeProof concept–I’m enough of a butterfingers that I’d consider using one simply to protect my phone from Diet Coke spills, tumbles onto the pavement outside my car, and other hazards of suburban life. The price, however, feels a tad steep: The iPhone 4 version goes for $69.95, or roughly $40 more than a plain-vanilla iPhone case. (Then again, I’ve spent $50 on protective computer cases that are nowhere near as protective as LifeProof.) Are you tempted?
Room 77: Know Your Hotel Room Before It’s Your Hotel Room
24. February 2011
When I’m on the road and enter my hotel room for the first time, I turn on the light, survey my surroundings to mentally rate the quality of the accommodations for the price I paid, and then open the curtains so I can judge the view. So, I’ll bet, do you. But it always feels like a crapshoot–by the time I know much about the room, I’m in it and have agreed to pay for it.
Room 77–which was the first company to demo today at the Launch conference here in San Francisco–has a (potentially) better idea: It’s collecting and sharing information about individual rooms in specific hotels. It knows the features rooms have; it knows whether they’re corner rooms and how large they are; it uses Google Earth to generate simulated views as you’ll see them from specific rooms. If a particular hotel is in its database, you can judge its rooms from the comfort of home (or anywhere else–there’s an iPhone app).
Now on Technologizer...
History Needs Piracy |
7 PC Building Tips |
My Favorite PC, the iPad |
The First Microprocessor |
|
28. February 2011
3 Comments