Film is No Longer Film

Salon’s Matt Zoller Seitz reports on yet another analog artifact that’s given way to a digital substitute: Movie cameras.

Theaters, movies, moviegoing and other core components of what we once called “cinema” persist, and may endure. But they’re not quite what they were in the analog cinema era. They’re something new, or something else — the next generation of technologies and rituals that had changed shockingly little between 1895 and the early aughts. We knew this day would come. Calling oneself a “film director” or “film editor” or “film buff” or a “film critic” has over the last decade started to seem a faintly nostalgic affectation; decades hence it may start to seem fanciful. It’s a vestigial word that increasingly refers to something that does not actually exist — rather like referring to the mass media as “the press.”

Hey, Let’s Start Planning iOS 6

In a strange way, there’s something exciting about the fact that mobile operating systems such as iOS and Android are relatively immature, and still lacking some features that people really want. If nothing else, it certainly allows their makers to release upgrades that are a big deal, since there’s no lack of worthwhile stuff to add. (With Windows and OS X, there are far fewer obvious holes; a cynic, in fact, might contend that those OSes would benefit from having fewer features.)

I’m enjoying iOS 5 on both both my iPhone 4 and iPad 2. But as I use it, I’m also reflecting on the missing features I still crave. (One example: More serious font support, such as the ability to add my own typefaces.) And over on Twitter, I asked my pals for their iOS 6 wish lists, and got lots of nifty nominations–most of which sounded like things that Apple might plausibly add, and only a few of which were (coughcoughFlash) painfully obvious.

After the jump, a few dozen of them–thanks to all who participated in this brainstorming exercise.

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Microsoft Does Another Deal Over Android

Microsoft has struck a deal with Quanta, the giant contract manufacturer, to license its patents which may be violated by Google’s Android and Chrome OS. (I knew that Microsoft had been doing these pacts for Android, but wasn’t aware that it thinks that Chrome OS also rips off its intellectual property.)

Jay Green of Cnet reports:

As Android has grown and surpassed Microsoft’s mobile-phone operating systems in the marketplace, the company has targeted handset and tablet makers that use the Google operating system. It’s racked up a laundry list of licensees in a little more than a year, starting with longtime partner HTC. Just last month, Microsoft reached an Android licensing agreement with Acer.

I’m not criticizing Microsoft for its dealmaking. For one thing, I’m not a patent lawyer, so I don’t have a stance on the legitimacy of its claims against Google’s products. For another, aggressive licensing is probably less depressing than what the rest of the industry is doing: Attempting to sue everybody else’s pants off. But considering the company’s lack of success with Windows Phone so far, the possibility exists that it’ll slowly devolve from a product company into a patent-licensing one–and that would be sad.

Modest Can be Magnificent

Over at TIME.com, my latest Technologizer column is about why “minor” upgrades such as the iPhone 4S and Windows 8 are at least as important as biggies like the iPhone 4 and Windows Vista.

Woz Speaks

Dan Lyons of Newsweek has a good, unedited interview with Steve Wozniak:

I took a year off from college to earn money for tuition. I was working as a programmer and I told the company that I knew how to design minicomputers. This exec said “If you can design one, we’ll get you the parts.” So I designed a very simple computer, and they got me the chips. I was working on it with a friend, Bill Fernandez. We were in his garage building this thing. Bill said “You should meet this guy Steve Jobs, he’s at our high school and he knows about this digital stuff. And he’s played some pranks too.” So Steve came over. We talked about what pranks we had done. Then we started talking about music. I was turned on to Dylan, reading the words and analyzing them. We agreed Dylan was more important than the Beatles because he had words that meant things. He was serious. He was not just about enjoyment. We started going to Dylan concerts together. We would go through music stores looking for Dylan bootlegs. We found some pamphlets with Dylan interviews, and then we drove down to Santa Cruz to meet the guy who wrote the pamphlets. He showed us some rare pictures of Dylan and we listened to some rare music of Dylan.

iOS 5 is Great. Don’t Rush to Get It!

One of the top two or three advantages that the iPhone has over Android handsets has nothing to do with new handsets. It’s the fact that when a new iPhone is imminent, owners of old iPhones can upgrade to the new version of iOS as soon as they like. Lack of fragmentation is a wonderful thing.

Apple released iOS 5 on Wednesday. It’s excellent–and Dan Moren’s Macworld review is an excellent summary of what’s new and worthwhile. If you have a recent iPhone and/or an iPad, get it–the new notification features alone are a huge deal, and they’re just the beginning. But taking your time about the upgrade is a perfectly rational strategy.

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RIM’s BlackBerry Outage is Getting Worse, Not Better

The BlackBerry e-mail outage that has been impacting parts of Europe and the Middle East for days has now crept into the U.S. Here’s Ina Fried’s report on a conference call RIM held to (sort of) explain what’s going on.

I’m not an expert on e-mail back-end architecture, and it’s possible that BlackBerry’s overall uptime remains excellent. But these sweeping outages have happened before. Isn’t it a major problem for RIM customers who run their own BlackBerry servers that they’re still so dependent on things working properly up in Canada?

Sony, Bring This Android-Powered Walkman Over Here

One of the ongoing mysteries of consumer electronics is why the enormously popular iPod Touch has its market–touch-screen media players that can run apps–pretty much all to itself. (I still think you could make a nice Windows Phone-powered Touch competitor; Microsoft apparently isn’t interested.) But at Sony’s booth at CEATEC in Tokyo last week, there was a row of Walkman devices–and one of them, the NW-Z1000, is the Touch alternative I’ve been wondering about.

It’s got a 4.3″ display and runs Android–and while the user interface is in Japanese, limiting my ability to judge it, it looks quite nice. It’s coming out in December in Tokyo, but Sony apparently doesn’t have any plans to bring it to the U.S. I’d love to see see it get here, if only to see how it would fare against the iPod Touch.

Sony Attacked, Not Hacked

Sony has another security headache on its hands, but don’t call it a hack.

According to the official Playstation blog, some entity was trying to sign in to users’ accounts on the Playstation Network, the Sony Entertainment Network and Sony Online Entertainment, using “a massive set” of login data obtained elsewhere. The attackers likely got a hold of a large username and password database, and were trying to see if any of those logins worked on Sony’s networks.

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Google+: The Honeymoon is Over

I’m still having fun over on Google+, but boy, is it suffering from a run of bad press. First, there are stories about its traffic plummeting after the site went open, suggesting that real people are trying it and then losing interest. And now a Google engineer wrote a blistering Google+ critique for his colleagues–and then accidentally shared it with everybody on Google+.

iPhones: Always Evolutionary

“…really just a minor improvement…”

“Trust me, Apple won’t maintain its lead in the market if it continues making iterative updates.”

“But one thing didn’t happen today: We weren’t blown away. We weren’t surprised. We didn’t jump up and down, screaming. We don’t even know if we’ll rush right out and get one.”

Boy, people really aren’t all that giddy over the iPhone 4S, are they? It’s not like the old days, when every iPhone upgrade prompted hooting, stomping, and cheering by throngs of grateful Apple fans. Apple should be worried. Very worried.

Except: Those quotes above aren’t about the iPhone 4S. They’re about the iPhone 3G, 3GS, and 4, and you can read the stories they came from here, here, and here, respectively.

I dug those sound bites up as I thought about some of the initial commentary that declared the iPhone 4S to be a snooze compared to earlier upgrades. I had a nagging suspicion that a fair number of people always say that about new iPhones. And in fact, they always do.

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Scribblenauts, a Cool Nintendo DS Game, Heads to the iOS App Store

Scribblenauts was one of the most innovative Nintendo DS games. To solve platform-style puzzles, players typed the name of any object they could imagine, and that object would come to life on the screen. Nearly any noun in the dictionary–provided it was appropriate for all ages–was recognized by Scribblenauts and could interact with the game world.

Now, a version of that game, Scribblenauts Remix, is coming to the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Scribblenauts Remix costs $4.99, and includes 20 levels from the original game, 20 levels from Super Scribblenauts and 10 new levels. It also supports iCloud syncing, so players can continue their game across any iOS device.

In 2009, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime brought up Scribblenauts as a defense against supposedly inferior iOS games. Paraphrasing Fils-Aime, the Washington Post’s Mike Musgrove wrote:

“And have you tried Scribblenauts? It’s a cool new game that has received acclaim from all corners. The title’s unique feature, which has players writing words on the screen that the game brings to life, couldn’t be done in an iPod.”

A direct quote from Fils-Aime follows: “That’s a fabulous experience that can only be brought to life on the DS.”

Uh oh.

Home Automation for the Masses, Maybe?

Home automation means different things to different people, but generally speaking it covers remote control and monitoring technologies that most of us don’t have, either because they’ve been too expensive or too complicated to install and use. That may be changing: Verizon is launching a $10-a-month (OK, $9.99) service that will support scores of devices, from webcams to thermostats.

The service, initially available only to Verizon’s 4.5 million FIOS subscribers, will empower customers to use mobile devices (such as cell phones and tablets), computers, and/or FIOS TV to monitor and manage equipment based on Sigma Designs’ Z-Wave technology. Z-Wave devices use wireless mesh network technology (not Wi-Fi) to communicate with a base station or gateway that interfaces with the outside world through a broadband network.

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Seen at CEATEC, Tokyo’s Big Gadget Show

I had a good time last week visiting Tokyo to attend the CEATEC show. Back here in the states, most people don’t know what that is–and I explain that it’s similar to CES and IFA the biggest consumer electronics exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe, respectively. But that doesn’t fully describe CEATEC, which is a smaller show (though still pretty expansive) and focused on the Japanese market rather than a global marketplace.

The best way to convey what it’s like is to share some of the photos I snapped. So here we go.

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The Early iPhone 4S Reviews Are Here

I don’t have an iPhone 4S yet, so I’ve been reading the first round of reviews from folks who got them ahead of the handset’s release this Friday. I don’t see any stunning conclusions. Everybody likes the phone either a lot or a lot, everybody’s impressed by the Siri voice assistant and likes the improved camera, and nobody’s overly traumatized by the fact that the case design hasn’t changed. As per Hallowed Technologizer Tradition, let’s look at the final paragraph (or two) of some of the reviews, which is the place where most reviewers finally tell you what they really think.

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Microsoft on IE9: Perfectly Safe!

ZDNet’s Ed Bott reports on a new Microsoft site designed to educate people about browser security (and convince them to upgrade from old versions of Internet Explorer). Shockingly, it gives IE9 a perfect security score.