Plantronics’ New Savi: One Headset to Rule Them All

The more phones you have in your life, the more you might be interested in Plantronics’ Savi 700 series of wireless headsets, which the company announced today. Unlike most headsets, the new Savis are designed to be used with mobile phones (via Bluetooth), work landlines, and PC-based VoIP services–and to let you roam between them, with a range of up to 350 feet.

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Maybe Bill Keller is Just Doing Twitter Wrong

So help me, I’m not the kind of person who insists that anyone who doesn’t like the things that I like is a dolt. Reasonable people can come to different conclusions; not everything that’s appealing to me is interesting to everybody. That’s fine. Makes the world a more interesting place, in fact.

But I’m still fascinated by New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller’s latest New York Times Magazine column. Keller isn’t a Twitter fan. Actually, he thinks that it–and Facebook–may be bad for humanity. A few tidbits from his piece:

But my inner worrywart wonders whether the new technologies overtaking us may be eroding characteristics that are essentially human: our ability to reflect, our pursuit of meaning, genuine empathy, a sense of community connected by something deeper than snark or political affinity.

My mistrust of social media is intensified by the ephemeral nature of these communications. They are the epitome of in-one-ear-and-out-the-other, which was my mother’s trope for a failure to connect.

Following an argument among the Twits is like listening to preschoolers quarreling: You did! Did not! Did too! Did not!

I buy the idea that Keller is describing the Twitter he experiences. One of the defining things about the service is that it’s all kinds of things to all kinds of people. It all depends on who you follow and how you follow them.

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WordPress for iOS Gets a Big Update; Basics Still Missing

In the past, I’ve said some nasty things about the WordPress iPad app. For the tasks I needed to do here and on other blogs — add and resize images, format text and link like crazy — the app’s barebones approach was simply inadequate. The app was also pretty buggy.

Today, WordPress released a big update to the app for all iOS devices. Most of the bugs are apparently gone, and there are some new features, including a quick photo button for camera-equipped devices, access to stats and support for 10 new languages.

Unfortunately, WordPress’ latest app update is still missing major features that no blogging tool should be without. That means I can’t use it for anything but rough drafts.
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T-Mobile Wants You (to Switch)

Hey, jt might be just about to be gobbled up by AT&T, but that sure isn’t stopping T-Mobile from sticking it to the big guys. As part of a push for its 4G services, the carrier is offering credits of to $300 on the trade-in of a competitor’s device.

There are a few requirements: you need to be a new customer (obviously), and the device needs to be fully functional and in good condition — free of either water or corrosion damage. In order to trade the device in, the consumer needs to visit a retail location.

In partnership with The Wireless Source, representatives have a list of values for current devices. The payment for the device comes in the form of a mailed check, so the savings on a T-Mobile device aren’t instant, infortunately unfortunately.

T-Mobile’s deal certainly seems good, but I think I’d echo most people’s concerns that one would have to wait for a mailed check rather than instant payment much like Radio Shack has begun to do. What happens if The Wireless Source doesn’t think the device is in good enough condition? Do you get it back? We really don’t have an answer to that.

[Hat Tip: TMoNews]

Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer’s Surprising, Cranky New Tone

Facing increasing criticism of his company’s handling of the PSN hack — and now apparently a new security issue — Sony’s CEO Sir Howard Stringer has suddenly become much more vocal in striking down critics. The company’s new logic appears to be that “no network is 100 percent secure,” and that the attack on its servers was “unprecedented.”

Stringer’s comments came in the form of interviews with several outlets, including Bloomberg, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, and others. He argued that the company’s notification of the hack within a week was faster than other companies have alerted their own users of data loss, sometimes months after the fact.

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You’ve Gotta Be Kidding Me: New PSN Exploit Surfaces

One of Sony’s new Playstation Network security measures has turned into another vulnerability.

As Eurogamer describes it: Anyone who signs into the Playstation Network after the outage is required to change his or her password. But with this exploit, all you need to make the change is the e-mail and date of birth associated with the account. This information was compromised during the PSN breach last month, which means hackers could use the vulnerability to take control of users’ accounts. The exploit was first reported by Nyleveia.com, and confirmed to Eurogamer with video evidence.

Of course, this isn’t a problem on actual consoles. A hacker on the other side of the world can’t change your login from your living room. But it does present an issue for Sony’s websites, where Sony has now shut down the login process entirely.

To be clear, the exploit has no impact on the Playstation Network itself, which was back online as of Saturday. And I doubt many people were affected, but if you were, you’d have received an e-mail from Sony saying your password was changed. If you’ve already changed your own password, there’s nothing to worry about.

Still, the exploit is another blunder by Sony, which spent four weeks rebuilding the Playstation Network to prevent future attacks, and brought in outside experts to make sure everything was clean. I guess they missed a spot.

Nintendo Takes Heat for 3DS Bricking Policy, Rights to User Content

A consumer advocacy group is giving Nintendo a hard time over the Nintendo 3DS’s terms of service, which allow the company to disable modded consoles and claims a license to all user-generated content.

Defective By Design, a campaign run by the Free Software Foundation, seeks donations in exchange for sending Nintendo a brick — symbolic of Nintendo’s ability to render devices useless.

I suppose the campaign has done its job, because I wasn’t aware of Nintendo’s 3DS terms of service until I read the coverage on BoingBoing and PC World. But while several sites reported on Nintendo’s anti-modding policy back in March, not much attention’s been given to the rights Nintendo claims on users’ activities, personal information and content.

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Netflix Now the Biggest Bandwidth Hog in US

Just how big is Netflix right now? Pretty darn big, if you believe the results of a study by “intelligent broadband” solutions provider Sandvine. During peak times, its streaming service accounts for a staggering 29.7 percent of all downstream Internet traffic, Sandvine says.

By itself, Netflix exceeds traffic for P2P file sharing, Web browsing, and real-time communications. By specific source, it far outpaces BitTorrent (at 11 percent) and YouTube (10 percent). Guess Comcast was throttling the wrong technology, eh?

Put that in perspective — that means one out of every four packets headed to an Internet user’s computer is delivering Netflix content, a pretty stunning ratio. It also is the biggest contributor to all real-time entertainment traffic, which is about half of all downstream data being delivered.

Could Netflix be ready to become the iTunes of streaming? I think so–and it may be all the more reason why Apple may want to throw its own hat into the ring.

With ISPs moving lately towards bandwidth caps, I wonder how much longer this growth in traffic from Netflix will be allowed to last. Executives were up in arms a few years back about how BitTorrent was clogging their pipes, but now it seems as if legal content is what’s now the biggest threat to bandwidth. Ain’t that ironic?

The State of Android Honeycomb Updates: Better, But Not Stellar

Joanna Stern at This is My Next has been getting the scoop on Android 3.1 updates for several Honeycomb tablets. The situation’s a lot better than it is on Android phones, whose updates are often set back by phone makers and carriers, but it’s not quite ideal.

Here’s the rundown on updates for existing Android Honeycomb tablets, from Stern’s report and elsewhere:

• The Verizon version of Motorola’s Xoom got the 3.1 update last week, after Google announced it at Google I/O. The Wi-Fi version, however, will be updated over the “next several weeks.”
• Asus and Acer both expect updates in early June for the Iconia Tab A500 and Eee Pad Transformer, respectively.
• LG and T-Mobile won’t give a time frame other than “coming soon” for the G-Slate.
• Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 Limited Edition, which was handed out to attendees at Google I/O, will get Android 3.1 in “in the coming weeks.”

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VMware Launches a Dashboard for Cloud Apps

This is a bit outside of Technologizer’s bread-and-butter coverage, but if I worked in a company of any size I’d be excited about it: Vmware is launching Horizon App Manager, a (mostly) cloud-based service that lets companies manage the cloud-based services. It allows them to set up a dashboard for the folks in the organization that looks a bit like the home screen on an iPhone or Android phone, with icons for Web-based apps used by the company (along with ones for more personal services such as Facebook, if the company desires). The cool part is that it uses technologies such as the OAuth and SAML standards to automate logging into the services; once you’ve signed into App Manager, you can then click through to services without having to log in again. Behind the scenes, it lets IT people do administrative such as like sign large numbers of people up for a cloud service in automated fashion and delete accounts for employees who have left the organization.

I have memories from my days as a worker bee of having no idea how to find or get into services such as ADP’s online portal (shown above). And of discovering that the person who’d set us up with a particular service had left the company before anyone remembered to ask him or her about how to administer it. As a lover of Web services, it’s heartening to see them matter enough that outfits such as VMware are turning their attention to them.

Android Security Problem Fixable With Update You Probably Don’t Have and Can’t Get Right Now

Here’s a problematic side effect of Android fragmentation: if there’s a serious security issue and it gets fixed in the new version of Android, the vast majority of users may have no way to get it.

Bing Adds Facebook Social Features

Microsoft’s search site Bing just got a whole lot more social with the addition of a bunch of new Facebooky features so you can “bring the Friend Effect to search” (Bing’s phrase, not mine).

What’s the Friend Effect? According to Bing, it’s the way that “90 per cent of people seek advice from family and friends as part of the decision making process.”

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At Last, Slacker Gets On-Demand Music (and a Neat iPad App)

Way back in March of 2010, nifty Internet radio service Slacker began demoing features for on-demand listening, putting it more squarely in competition with Rhapsody, Napster, and other all-you-can-eat subscription services. Today, it’s finally launching the service. It’s available in its browser-based version and iPhone/iPod Touch, Android, and BlackBerry versions–and also in a new iPad version.

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Zediva Defends Its Zany Movie Service With Big-Shot Lawyers

Zediva’s streaming movie service may seem too good to be true, but its legal battle with the movie industry will be no joke.

To defend itself from the Motion Picture Association of America, Zediva has retained a trio of laywers from Durie Tangri, a high-profile intellectual property law firm. The team includes Michael Page, who defended music-sharing service Grokster through to its loss in the Supreme Court; Joe Gratz, who won a case that allowed consumers to sell promotional CDs; and Mark Lemley, a Stanford University professor and IP expert.

The Motion Picture Association of America is bringing its own heavyweights from the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson. The team played a role in bringing down the music-sharing service Limewire, killing the music search engine Seeqpod and nixing RealNetworks’ RealDVD copying software. As PaidContent’s Joe Mullin puts it, this will be “quite the legal battle.”

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Sony’s PSN Apology Package Won’t Please Everyone

Poor Sony. In addition to rebuilding the Playstation Network and enduring weeks of well-deserved criticism for letting hackers through its defenses, the company faced one more unenviable task: creating a “Welcome Back” package that will actually pacify customers.

The result is rather generous. Playstation 3 users get to choose from two of the following: Dead Nation, inFamous, LittleBigPlanet, Super Stardust HD and WipeOut HD + Fury. PSP users get two games from another list: LittleBigPlanet for PSP, Modnation Racers, Pursuit Force and Killzone Liberation. Everyone gets a free weekend of selected movies, 30 days of Playstation Plus (or 60 if you’re already a subscriber) and 100 free items in Playstation Home. Music Unlimited users get 30 free days.

I assume most people are mainly interested in the free games, which make up the bulk of the retail value in this apology package. And while I have a hard time faulting Sony for giving away so much — the PS3 package has a maximum $60 value — I also can’t shake the feeling that Sony’s best customers are getting a raw deal.

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The Case Against the Chromebook

Mobile Opportunity’s Michael Mace has a wonderfully hard-nosed post up about Chromebooks and Google Docs and why he thinks that Chrome OS isn’t remotely ready to take on Windows:

In fairness, there are some things Google Docs is great at.  It’s fantastic for collaborative editing; using Docs plus a Skype session can be a thing of beauty for brainstorming and working through a list of action items.  But as a replacement for Office, the apps are so limited that using them is like watching a Jerry Lewis movie: you keep asking yourself, “why is this happening?”  I tried very hard to use Google Docs as the productivity software for my startup, and eventually I gave up when it became clear that it was actually destroying my productivity.