Technologizer

Flook, a Location-Aware Microphotoblogging App for iPhone

I’ve been playing with Flook, a clever new program that’s now available on Apple’s iPhone App Store. Conceptually, it’s very, very simple: You use it to capture images with your phone and attach brief titles and captions to them. Flook then turns the image, title and caption into a full-screen combo it calls a card, [...]

Resolved: The Best Gadgets Are the Work of One Company

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington is reporting that Google is absolutely, positively working on an Android phone of its own for release early next year. He seems to be confirming scuttlebutt from a month ago, and the only thing that’s changed is that the shipping schedule has supposedly slipped a bit. If Arrington’s right, Google may be about [...]

Stud or Dud? This iPhone App’s a Dud!

Back in September at the DEMO conference, public-information company Intelius launched DateCheck, an impish iPhone app that ran an instant background check to tell you if prospective dates had criminal backgrounds or other undesirable qualities. Now DateCheck has a competitor: Intelius rival PeopleFinders is introducing Stud or Dud?, another impish iPhone app that runs instant [...]

The Apple iPhone App Store Approval Process: A Really Inefficient Route for Getting to the Right Decision

Bobble Rep, the iPhone application that lets you find and contact your senators and members of congress and which depicts them as bobblehead dolls, is no longer an app non grata. After initially rejecting the program, Apple has done an about face and pushed it through to the App Store. (On my iPhone, at least, [...]

Verizon Wireless: The iPhone is a Misfit Toy

Once again, Verizon is bashing away at the iPhone in a commercial–one that places an animated iPhone lookalike on the Island of Misfit Toys from the classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV special: For entertainment value and diligent recreation of the Rankin-Bass studio’s stop-motion puppetry style, this ad gets an A. I [...]

iPhone Tethering on AT&T: One Year and Counting

Exactly one year ago, on November 6th, 2008, I was siting in the audience at the Web 2.0 Summit when AT&T Mobility President Ralph De La Vega shared good news from the stage: The company would “soon” be permitting iPhone users to tether their phones for use. I assumed he was a reliable source and [...]

5Words: Cheapie iPhone 3GS Coming Shortly?

$99 iPhone 3GS for Xmas? Droid: What you should know. Skype legal hassles over! Please? Twitter starts to test retweeting. Windows 7 outselling Vista handily. Band Hero sued? No doubt! Slacker radio hits Android phones. Orb media streaming for Macs. It’s Wikipedia in handheld form. Technology isn’t making us hermits. ________________________ Like 5Words? Subscribe via RSS.    

Is it Too Early to Start Designing the Verizon Droid II?

Verizon Wireless starts selling its first Android phone, the Droid (“by Motorola”) today. I’ve been using a unit loaned to me by Verizon for a week, and remain mostly impressed: The Droid couples impressive hardware with the much-improved Android 2.0 OS, and the result is the first Android phone that’s fully worthy of being compared [...]

Verizon’s Droid and the Importance of Pinching

When I compared the Verizon Droid to the iPhone 3GS last week, I said that the Droid didn’t have multi-touch input–based on the fact that I’d used it a lot and encountered no instances when it did. A commenter said that the phone did indeed support multi-touch, and I tweaked my item. Essentially, the phone [...]

Ribbit Introduces a Google Voice Competitor

VoIP company Ribbit is girding itself to compete with Google Voice, with a new service that’s quite similar in some ways and quite different in others. Like Google Voice, Ribbit Mobile is a sort of virtual receptionist: It can ring multiple phones at once, gives you Web-based access to voicemail, and can transcribe messages into text [...]

5Words: Sony Ericsson Does Android

Sony Ericsson’s first Android phone. Microsoft slashes hosted Exchange price. An imaginary Google Maps town. Hands on with Firefox 3.6. This handheld only does Twitter. New Chrome syncs browser bookmarks. Opera Mobile 10 for Nokia. Sprint: Pixi has Wi-Fi. (Not!) Spotify: the future of music? ________________________ Like 5Words? Subscribe via RSS.

PC vs. Phone: Which Matters Most?

Virtual file server company Egnyte is releasing BlackBerry and Android clients for its service, letting users of those smartphones get to the files in their online storage from their handsets. (The service already works on Windows PCs, Macs, and iPhones.) As part of the new rollout, the company commissioned a survey of small businesses about [...]

5Words: Want iPhone Flash? Blame Apple!

iDon’t Think the Droid’s iPhone Attack Will Work

Verizon is spending a lot of money advertising its upcoming Droid smartphone. It’s everywhere–from commercials on TV to bills posted on construction sites. But I question whether the iPhone-mocking focus of the ad campaign can generate broad appeal. The ads target the iPhone’s shortcomings, such as its lack of a camera flash and the rigid application development [...]

Verizon Droid: First Impressions

Verizon Wireless’s Droid won’t show up in stores until a week from Friday, but the company has shared loaner devices with technology journalists and bloggers, including me–PC World has a good roundup of the first reviews. After having spent a bit time with it, I’m not surprised that Verizon is trying to encourage hands-on coverage [...]

The T-Grid: Verizon Droid vs. iPhone 3GS

So Verizon’s Droid is official, and officially arriving a week from Friday.  I’m smart enough to know it’s pointless to call any phone an iPhone killer, or even a potential iPhone killer–and that competing with the iPhone is much more about software and overall integration than it is about hardware specs. (If you could kill the [...]