Archive | June, 2011
Skype Video Chat Now Works on Android Phones (But Probably Not Yours)
At last, Skype’s Android app supports video calling, but it’s only available on four phones for now.
Video calling works over Wi-Fi and 3G, and is supported on the HTC Desire S, Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo, Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro and Google Nexus S. The common thread among these phones is that they all run Android 2.3, but a Skype representative told me that the company’s working to make video chat available on a wider range of devices shortly after launch.
My Favorite Google+ Feature: It Pesters
30. June 2011
I haven’t spent a lot of time with Google’s new social networking project, Google +, but little by little, it’s drawing me back. That’s not because of the dozen or so people I’m following, or because of the promising 10-way video chat, or even because of the new approach to privacy that makes you sort contacts into groups.
No, my attraction to Google+ lies mostly in the fact that it won’t go away. Every time I run a Google search or check my Gmail, Google+ lurks in the top right corner of the screen, alerting me to new activity and letting me post status updates. The bare essentials of Google+ are embedded in every service that Google offers.
This might sound a little odd, but I like the fact that Google+ bothers me.
New Flipboard: Even Better!
30. June 2011
My iPad is bursting at the seams with wonderful applications. If I had to pick just one of them as the romantic ideal of what a tablet app can and should be, it would be Flipboard. This “social magazine”–which brings together stuff from Facebook, Twitter, and the entire Web into a wonderfully browsable package–simply couldn’t have existed in the pre-iPad era. And its user interface is a thing of wonder: an amazingly polished, fun experience that both feels like a magazine and like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It’s not just the best one I’ve seen on an iPad app; it’s one of the best ones I’ve seen on anything.
Can you tell that I kind of like this program? Well, now I like it even more. The company is rolling out an update today, and cofounder Mike McCue briefed me on it last week and gave me the chance to spend a couple of days with it before it hit the App Store.
Flipboard hasn’t changed radically, but there are a bunch of improvements that make it even more….well, Flipboardy.
“Why Should Anyone Buy the HP TouchPad Instead of the iPad?”
29. June 2011
My review of HP’s TouchPad is up over at TIME.com. My take is pretty much the same one as the consensus of the crowd that’s published reviews tonight: very nice interface, aging hardware (even though it’s a brand new device), too many bugs, and too few apps. And definitely not as good as the iPad 2.
Last week, I blogged that for the time being, every new tablet introduction is about one fundamental question: “Why should somebody buy this instead of the iPad.” If the TouchPad doesn’t take off–at least without significant software updates–it’ll be because it failed to provide a coherent answer. And that raises a whole bunch of other questions.
Google Plus: The Early Reaction
29. June 2011
I’m in at Google+, Google’s new offering that’s less of a monolithic “Facebook killer” and more of a loose network of socially-oriented services. Right now, Google has opened it up to only a small number of folks: it’s an odd world in which nearly everyone is a journalist, a blogger, or a Google employee. But it’s engaging in ways that Buzz and Wave never were–thanks in part to an inventive interface designed by Mac legend Andy Hertzfeld.
(“Often inventive” is probably the better way to put it–there are also parts of + that are borrowed directly from Facebook, like the organization of the home page.)
This post isn’t a Google+ review–I’m cranking away on an unrelated deadline which I’m behind on, in part because I keep taking breaks to check out +. For the moment, here are some other folks’ impressions, most of which are guardedly positive. (The “guardedly” is pretty much a given, considering Google’s patchy reputation when it comes to anything relating to social networking.)
Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan: “…this is a much better and more thoughtfully designed product than Buzz.”
TechCrunch’s MG Siegler: “I’ve spent the last several hours using Google+. That’s a good sign.”
PCWorld’s Megan Geuss and Mark Sullivan: “In general we thought the service borrowed some good ideas from the reigning king of social networks, Facebook, but also offers some cool new approaches to sharing content and managing privacy.”
PCMag’s Mark Hachman: “Put simply, Google+ is a social network for geeks.”
More thoughts to come…
World of Warcraft Joins the Free-to-Play Craze
29. June 2011
Why, it was only last week that I wrote about how Valve and several other big video game publishers are lovingly embracing the free-to-play business model. Now you can add Activision-Blizzard to that group, because World of Warcraft is going free-to-play.
The new program is called World of Warcraft Starter Edition, and lets players explore the massive multiplayer game for as long as they want. Eventually, they’ll hit restrictions that can only lifted with a full, paid account. Those restrictions include a level cap of 20, a gold cap of 10, a trade skill cap of 100 ranks, no trading, no guilds, no public chat and no voice chat.
HTC Evo 3D Review: Average Phone, Cheap Trick
29. June 2011
If you’re thinking about buying the HTC Evo 3D on Sprint, the first thing you should do is ignore the 3D.
The phone’s namesake features — a glasses-free 3D display and dual cameras to shoot your own 3D content — amount to little more than a cheap party trick. And with a dearth of 3D movies and games to enjoy on the smartphone, the Evo 3D’s design and performance in two dimensions is far more important.
Strip away the gimmicks, and the Evo 3D is just average among high-end Android handsets. It’s a phone that provides lots of power through a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, but falters on design.
Compared to the graceful curves and smooth materials of HTC’s newly-launched Sensation 4G, the Evo 3D’s figure is no triumph. It’s not uncomfortably large despite a 4.3-inch, 960-by-540 resolution display, but its boxy shape and considerable weight lack elegance.
Office 365 Ships
28. June 2011
Microsoft has officially shipped Office 365, its new offering that’s less of a product and more of a customizable set of building blocks that lets businesses assemble productivity suites that include both desktop software and Web-hosted components, and then pay for them month by month rather than in one big chunk. InfoWorld’s Woody Leonhard compared it to Google Apps and gave Office the edge. But I’m struck by how different the visions presented by Microsoft and Google are. Microsoft has no particular desire to encourage companies to ditch desktop software, but knows that the cloud is important. Google would love it if companies abandoned desktop software, but acknowledges that even most companies that see a world beyond Office aren’t ready to quit it cold turkey. More thoughts on this in a project I’ll tell you about in a little bit….
Google Goes Social (Again) With Google+
28. June 2011
Google has announced its most ambitious Facebook killer clone rival alternative to date. It’s called Google+–which is kind of confusing since it’s not the same thing as Google’s +1–and unlike the unfortunate Google Buzz, it’s not just one thing. It’s a bunch of services–both desktop-based and for phones–and it sounds interesting, at least. I can’t get in yet, so I’m reading up on it via Danny Sullivan’s coverage. If you’re in, let us know what you think.
Supreme Court Strikes Down Violent Game Law, Hopefully Stops the Madness
27. June 2011
When the U.S. Supreme Court agreed last year to rule on a California law that would restrict the sale of violent video games to minors, I was relieved. Finally, I assumed, the nation’s highest court would rule that violent video games should get the same First Amendment protections as movies and books, instead of being regulated like pornography.
Turns out, my assumption was correct. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down California’s violent video game law for good, with seven of nine justices in agreement. If you love video games and despise the way they’ve been demonized by politicians, read the first couple pages of the decision. It’s quite cathartic.
Microsoft’s Facebook Investment: Crazy Like a Fox
27. June 2011
Back in 2007, Microsoft paid $240 million for 1.6 percent of Facebook, putting the three-year-old startup’s valuation at a cool $15 billion. People thought Microsoft was crazy. What’s Facebook’s valuation in June 2011? An even-cooler $70 billion.
“It’s Getting Awfully Lonely in PC Land”
27. June 2011
Are consumers starting to lose interest in the PC as we know it? News about the components that go into PCs may provide clues.
Wand-Based Computing
24. June 2011
TechCrunch’s MG Siegler is excited over what might be the most Minority Report-like interface to be commercialized to date.
Team Fortress 2 Goes Free to Play, As Does the Rest of the Games Industry
24. June 2011
The free to play gaming craze has suddenly swept through some major players in the video game industry.
Valve announced that its popular first-person shooter Team Fortress 2 will now be free forever through the company’s Steam PC gaming service, with some optional premium perks for players who spend money on anything in the game. This is part of Valve’s of larger effort to bring free-to-play games to the Steam service.
But Valve is hardly going against the grain here. Last month, Ubisoft announced its first free-to-play foray with Ghost Recon Online. Electronic Arts, which has dabbled in freemium for years now, added its popular Battlefield franchise to the mix this year with Battlefield Play4Free. In March, Sony’s Free Realms became the first free-to-play title for a home game console.
Google Phases Out Google Health, Google PowerMeter
24. June 2011
Even Google can’t use information to change everything about life all at once. It’s discontinuing Google Health (which has made little or no news since it launched more than three years ago) and the power-management service known as Google PowerMeter.
Benj Edwards’s Oddities: The Box Set!
24. June 2011
Yesterday, we celebrated the twentieth anniversary of Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog series by publishing Benj Edwards’s Sonic the Hedgehog Oddities–a retrospective not of the speedy little critter’s greatest moments, but of his oddest ones, from his ill-fated collaboration with Michael Jackson to his work as a spokesbeast for ketchup and canned pasta.
You might almost have been able to predict that Benj would compile such a tribute and that we’d publish it–for more than two years now, we’ve been marking major anniversaries of big-name products (especially game-related ones) this way. They’re among the most popular things we’ve ever published. So here’s a box set for you–with all of Benj’s Oddities slideshows to date. Click on the images below to enjoy them again for the first time…
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30. June 2011
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