A Bluetooth Keyboard for Your iPhone 4

Speaking of inventive input devices, here’s an iPhone 4 case with a built-in, slide-out Bluetooth keyboard, effectively turning your iPhone into something along the lines of the original Droid. I’m not sure how well it works, but I’m glad someone tried to build it.

Bluetooth? No Thank You!

This sounds neat: HP has announced a wireless mouse that uses Wi-Fi, so it works with any Wi-Fi-equipped computer–no dongle or Bluetooth required.

Hands-On With Google Music Beta

While many of us Google I/O attendees were unsurprised by yesterday’s announcement that Google was launching its own cloud-based music service, we were excited to learn that every one of us would be getting a priority invite to the service. As a big music nerd, I was excited to give it a test spin. Can Google do music? Read on to find out.

What It’s All About

Music Beta lets you upload your personal music collection to the cloud for streaming to your computer and other Android devices. Sound kind of familiar? You might recall that Amazon also rolled out a music player this year, Cloud Player. But unlike Amazon’s service, Google’s Music Beta does not sell music. So what’s the appeal? It’s simple and if you do everything through your Google account anyway, you might as well add music management to the mix. Furthermore, Android has always had a miserable music organization system so Music Beta is definitely a welcome addition to the platform.

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Google Lobbies Nevada to Pass Robot Car Bill

Google is lobbying the Nevada legislature to pass legislation that would make it the first state to allow the operation of robotically controlled cars on its roads. The company wants to be at the forefront of this: Harry’s post from last October reported on Google’s efforts to develop self driving technology.

It’s not really clear what business a search company has in developing robotic technologies, but hey, nobody ever said that Google shouldn’t attempt to expand its business. It needs the go-ahead by public officials before anything could happen.

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Visa Close to a “Digital Wallet”

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the so-called “digital wallet” — take, for example, the amount of coverage on Technologizer (see here, here, and here) — ut most of it has revolved around NFC. Of course, you need an NFC-capable device to take advantage of that.

Visa is working on a non-NFC solution that aims to make the process of online purchases both from the desktop and mobile phone a lot easier, the New York Times’ Digits blog reports. Essentially, Visa would associate a consumer’s credit card number with a set of credentials. These would be valid across any participating site.

Consumers would only need to sign in to pay for their purchases. It’s not clear whether Visa’s payment offering would also negate the need to enter address information as well; that would certainly be nice.

The service is set to be launched by the end of the year, likely first in social and online gaming, and then to traditional e-retail later on. The move also will likely dovetail with the credit card provider’s efforts in NFC, and its already announced service to send payments to any Visa card electronically.

Like I’ve said before, 2011 appears to be the year of NFC and mobile payments. It’s just a matter now of actually getting one of these services live and available to the general public.

Apple’s E-Book Policy Claims an Early Victim

In a venomous blog post, a startup called BeamItDown Software says it’s going out of business, and squares the blame entirely on Apple’s in-app purchase policy.

BeamItDown’s iFlow Reader, a digital reading app for iOS, relied on e-book sales for revenue. But because Apple takes a 30 percent cut of anything purchased within an app, and e-book publishers only give 30 percent their revenue to the book seller, iFlow Reader would actually lose money on every book sold.

“We put our faith in Apple and they screwed us,” BeamItDown’s blog post says.

BeamItDown may not be the last victim, either, because the policy that caused this small company to go out of business may soon be unavoidable for major e-book players like Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

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Twitter for the Mobile Web, Reimagined

Twitter’s mobile Web version–the version you get if you go to Twitter.com in your smartphone’s browser–has long been very, very plain. Now the company’s rolled out a much slicker version–one that looks a lot like an app, although you can’t upload photos.

John Gruber on Chrome and Android

So true:

Chrome feels like Google’s natural platform — all web, only the web. Android feels like an independent Google subsidiary.

Are Chromebooks from the Past or the Future? I Still Can’t Tell

A year and three-quarters ago, Google announced that it was working on Chrome OS, an operating system that was just a browser (or, if you prefer, a browser that had evolved into an operating system). That was a long, long time ago. In mid-2009, netbooks were trendy. The iPad didn’t exist. Android was merely a phone operating system, and one that was still just getting started at that.

This operating system thing turned out to be tricky: Chrome OS-based computers were supposed to hit the market by the end of 2010, but the schedule slipped, so the only one that met that deadline was Google’s own experimental CR-48. At today’s Google I|O keynote, however, Google laid out the basic info of the first two “Chromebooks” (a term I’ve been using for awhile and which Google is now championing) that will go on sale.

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Google I/O Keynote #2: Join Me Live This Morning

At yesterday’s Google I/O keynote, the company announced Android Honeycomb 3.1, another upcoming Android version code-named Ice Cream Sandwich, a home-networking platform called Android @ Home, a system for building peripherals compatible with all Android devices, a plan to deal with Android fragmentation, a movie service, a music service, and several things I’m forgetting about right now. But there’s more news to come–presumably including non-Android developments like Chrome OS netbooks you can rent for twenty bucks a month–at this morning’s second-day keynote. I’ll be covering it live from San Francisco’s Moscone Center, with guest color commentary from Techland’s Doug Aamoth. You can join us at technologizer.com/googlekeynote2, and I hope you will.

Google Music and Movies: Your Questions Answered

That little green robot must be struggling to catch his breath.

In addition to unveiling two significant updates to its Android operating system on Tuesday – Android 3.1 and the next-generation Android Ice Cream Sandwich – Google took the wraps off its long-discussed Google Music service and launched a new movie service for Android, too. It was all part of Google’s annual I/O conference for developers, taking place this week in San Francisco.

So what are Google’s new music and movie services all about, and how will they work for you? Here are answers to all your burning questions.

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DOJ Asking to Make iPhone-like Tracking Legal?

At a congressional hearing about complaints over phones storing the location of their users, you certainly wouldn’t expect a government agency to request such activity be made law. But that’s exactly what the Justice Department did Tuesday in Washington, D.C., asking lawmakers to consider such legislation.

The DOJ’s reasoning for it is to be able to track the whereabouts of criminals. Obviously, whether law enforcement wants to do this for sanguine reasons or not, it’s likely to ruffle the feathers of privacy advocates — and probably some in Congress.

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Rumor: Camera May Return to iPod nano

When Apple redesigned the iPod nano last year, the camera it had only added a generation before went away. It likely had a lot to do with the new Nano’s size — and the fact the Cupertino company decided to put a clip on the device.

In retrospect, that probably was a wise move — the nano has pretty much replaced the Shuffle as the music player of choice in most gyms these days. But if a report on the site Apple.pro is any indication (translated verison here), Apple may be tinkering with things a bit.

The seventh-generation nano is said to keep the sixth-generation model’s smaller design and touch interface. However, it will lose the clip, making room for an apparent 1.3-megapixel camera, the site reports.

So should we believe these guys? According to AppleInsider, they’ve got a fairly decent track record. Each machination of the nano has been correctly reported by the site. Want another teaser? Blogger “Anthony” says that he will have information to share on the iPhone 5 shortly. Since I’m due for an upgrade soon, I eagerly wait this post…

Microsoft’s Skype Buy Creates Conflict for Rdio [Update]

All Things D’s Peter Kafka picked up on an interesting wrinkle in Microsoft’s Skype acquisition: Subscription-based music service Rdio may be in trouble.

Skype has a $6 million investment in Rdio, thanks to some lawsuit madness involving Skype’s founders and several Silicon Valley players. Kafka said he’s “pretty sure” Skype and Rdio were planning to deepen ties and drum up more users for the music service.

But Microsoft has its own music service, Zune Pass, and it seems unlikely that the company will want to manage a competitor. For now, neither Microsoft nor Rdio are commenting. (UPDATE: See the end of the post for Rdio’s statement.)

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Microskype: The Optimistic View

GigaOm’s Om Malik thinks that Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype could turn out to be smart–and does a good job of laying out why.

Google Releases Android 3.1, First Major Update to Honeycomb

Google today announced its first significant update to Android 3.0 Honeycomb. Google will roll out the update to Verizon Xoom 3G users today, and to other Honeycomb devices over the next couple of weeks.

The announcement was made during today’s keynote address at the Google I/O developers’ conference in San Francisco.

What I find most interesting are the things Google focused on here at the keynote. Namely, that the improvements mentioned, though welcome, don’t seem to address many of the issues I’ve already identified in Android 3.0. At the forefront: The image rendering glitch that’s very obvious in the Gallery app, where images appear fuzzy and lack detail as compared with their original versions.

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