Author Archive | Harry McCracken

Yahoo-Microsoft Deal: It’s Nearly Official. Thank Heavens.

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 28, 2009 at 5:07 pm

BinghooMultiple reliable sources are reporting that Microsoft and Yahoo have finalized a deal to work together on search and advertising, and it’ll be announced tomorrow. It’s not the merger that Microsoft wasted an immense amount of time on last year, and it’s apparently not as sweeping an arrangement as some folks thought the company would strike. But it’s still a big deal.

For consumers, the major net effect will apparently be that Bing (or some variant thereof) will power Yahoo’s search. Unless you love Yahoo’s current engine or hate Bing, that’s nothing to fear, and it won’t have a major impact on your life. (Or any impact at all if, like the majority of folks, you do your searching at Google.)

For Yahoo, it’s yet another new search strategy. (Once upon a time, the company outsourced search to Google, then decided it was a core part of its business and built its own search engine; now it’s once again something it’s decided it can outsource.) For Microsoft, it helps scratch the must-take-on-Google itch that the company’s had trouble taking care of.

I still think that when the history of Microsoft is written ten or twenty years from now, it’ll be obvious that  search engines and Web advertising  were distractions that kept the company from focusing on its real businesses–operating systems, programming tools, productivity software, and a few other related related areas. For now, though, both Microsoft and Yahoo can end their odd tango and move ahead with a partnership. And we tech journalists who have spent a year and a half writing about all this get more time to devote to other, more concrete matters. Like, for instance, the existence or nonexistence of an Apple tablet that’ll be released either in September or sometime next year…

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Why Twitter Didn’t Conquer Comic-Con

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 28, 2009 at 3:25 pm

Action Comics #1Contrary to current received wisdom, Twitter doesn’t change everything. At least it appears not to have changed the venerable San Diego pop culture extravaganza known as Comic-Con very much. Variety’s Marc Graser is reporting that the Hollwood moguls who thought the con would be all a-Twitter with discussion of the blockbusters previewed to audiences of thousands were disappointed by the volume of movie-related tweetage that actually happened. Unlike South by Southwest Interactive, Comic-Con remained a largely real-world event.

I’ve been attending the convention off and on for more than twenty years, including this year’s edition, and I’m not surprised that it didn’t turn out to be that much of a tweetfest. Here’s why:

Comic-Con isn’t necessarily rife with technogeeks. Movie and comics geeks, yes. But in three days of con, I was the only person I spotted using a laptop in any of the panels and previews. Actually, I saw only about three or four computers, period. It’s true that the overlap between fantasy fans and Web addicts is large, but perhaps even Web-savvy congoers weren’t in technonerd mode last week.

Comic-Con itself isn’t that tech-savvy an event. Thanks to sponsorship by iGoogle, it did offer free Wi-Fi this year, but that fact wasn’t widely promoted. (Last year, Wi-Fi was pricey, and in years past the rates were designed to gouge exhibitors.) As far as I know, the con doesn’t do things like offer an iPhone application or send out the sessions as an RSS or iCal feed. It’s just not an event that puts the Internet front and center.

Comic-Con is incredibly jam-packed with stuff to do. There are dozens of things going on at any given moment, and the pace is far faster than the laid-back SxSW atmosphere. If you attend every preview, panel, and party you find enticing, there’s no time left to tweet.

Comic-Con doesn’t involve breaks. The previews and panels run back-to-back, and if you’re going to one of the most crowded events–which includes all the major movie previews–you’re lucky if you get in at all. You can’t tweet while you’re rushing down a hallway from one end of the convention center to another.

Actually, standing in one place at Comic-Con long enough to tweet is hard, period. The show floor, in particular, is one of the most bustling places I’ve ever been–if you stop moving, you’re likely to be flattened by a squadron of Stormtroopers.

Tweeting at the movie previews is tricky. They’re held in darkened halls, and the illumination of your phone might tick off nearby fellow attendees. The previews are also accompanied by repeated stern warnings about the prohibition of phototaking and audio recording; I’m paranoid, but I tend to keep my phone in my pocket for fear of being mistaken for a pirate and getting dragged off by San Diego Convention Center security goons.

Comic-Con is a sensory experience. South by Southwest Interactive is mostly conversational. Comic-Con involves movies and comics and people dressed as Batgirl and Boris Badenov, plus the opportunity to meet folks such as Ray Bradbury and Stan Freberg–neither of who, I’m guessing, spend much time on Twitter. It’s possible to tweet about it (I did some of that myself) but less satisfying than being there.

Will Twitter have more of an impact at Comic-Con next year? Maybe so–I’m guessing that we still haven’t seen the service peak as a cultural phenomenon. But the convention, at its best, is a pretty wonderful event even sans Twitter. Hollywood may be disappointed, but the low-volume tweeting may simply have been evidence that those 120,000 congoers were having a really, really good time.

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Sonos Upgrades and Downsizes Its Controller

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 28, 2009 at 12:41 pm

SonosSonos, the company whose multi-room music system is one the most thoughtfully-designed products in all of consumer electronics, just retired the remote control that’s been a part of its offering from the start in favor of an all-new design.

The old model worked well, but it was big and brick-like and maybe even a little clunky by Sonos standards, with a design that drew obvious inspiration from old-school iPods:

Old Sonos

The new Sonos controller performs the same functions as the old one, but it’s a pretty dramatic upgrade in terms of industrial design and user interface. It’s the size of a thick PDA, and sports an aluminum case that gives it an extremely solid feel. Most of the old controller’s buttons are gone–the new one features a 3.5-inch color screen and a touch interface that was snappy and intuitive when I tried it at a Sonos event last night:

sonoscontroller

The new controller goes for $349, and includes the dock; that’s a significant price break over the old model, which cost $399 and made you pay $40 extra for the dock. Owners of iPhones and iPod Touches can choose to control Sonos systems with the excellent free iPhone app instead. (Its interface isn’t exactly the same as the one on the new controller, but has a generally similar feel.) And with an 8GB iPod Touch going for $229, I’ll bet some cost-conscious Sonos buyers will get their systems sans controller and buy a Touch instea.

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Best Buy’s Interesting, Imperfect Experiment in Customer Service Via Twitter

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 28, 2009 at 12:09 pm

TwelpforceOver at Zatz Not Funny, blogger (and frequent Technologizer commenter) Dave Zatz has blogged about Twelpforce, Best Buy’s interesting experiment in aggregating the knowledge of hundreds of its “blue shirt” staffers into one Twitterstream of advice for Best Buy customers. Dave points out that some of the blue shirts’ tweets (both on Twelpforce and their own Twitter accounts, which you might stumble across while reading) are a tad odd. He also says that the Twelpforce feed’s method of aggregation eliminates the “in reply to” links that make it a lot easier to read a Twitter conversation.

Perusing Twelpforce led me to a couple of other conclusions:

1) It’s increasingly clear that Twitter sees the use of its service as a customer service tool to be one of the keys to its long-term success. But Twelpforce is, among other things, a reminder that Twitter just isn’t a very good platform for customer service. Even if it did preserve “in reply to” links, it would be tough to reliably follow a discussion, in part because Twitter still doesn’t provide true threaded discussions. Twitter is generally pretty guarded about telling the world what it’s up to, but I’m wondering if it plans to roll out the features that would make it easier for companies to help their customers via Twitter. (The fact that folks such as Frank Eliason and the @comcastcares team do so much is a testament as much to their hard work as the power of Twitter in its current form.)

2) It’s fascinating to see Best Buy let the blue shirts do their thing in an open, largely uncensored venue. Oddly enough, the blue shirts in Best Buy commercials are consistently smart, courteous, and generally with it; the real blue shirts I’ve dealt with over the years have been a lot less consistent. (I recently had a question about a car-stereo component at my local Best Buy. The guy in that department shrugged and told me he couldn’t help, and directed me to go to the installation center for assistance. Which was across the store, behind a locked door When I got there, another rep told me…to go back to the car stereo section and ask guy #1 for help.)

Up until now, customer service with Best Buy or any other retail chain has been an essentially private affair. (Unless you like to go to electronics stores and eavesdrop on other shoppers’ experiences…which, I admit, I like to do as a source of story ideas.) With Twitter, it’s all out in the open. A blue shirt who knows his or her stuff can become a star; one who’s clueless will embarrass him or herself in public. I’d like to think that over the long haul that might help improve the quality of customer service, period…

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Hey, iPhone, Are You a Computer or a Phone?

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 28, 2009 at 10:36 am

iPhone DecisionWhat a revoltin’ development this is. As my colleague Jason Meserve has written, TechCrunch is reporting that Apple has rejected Google’s Google Voice app for the iPhone, as well as a couple of unofficial Google Voice apps which Apple says duplicate standard iPhone features. The logical assumption is that Apple did so because AT&T is nonplussed about Google providing phone services. But as Daring Fireball’s John Gruber says, maybe Apple just sees Google as an Apple rival who it doesn’t want leveraging the iPhone platform.

In either case, one thing’s clear: These apps aren’t being kept out of the App Store in the interest of iPhone owners. Apple’s monopoly on app distribution means that iPhone owners who haven’t unlocked their phones simply don’t have control over their devices.

In most respects that matter, the iPhone is by far the best mobile platform that has ever existed. I keep telling people that it proves that it’s not going to be very long until we think of a Personal Computer as something we carry in our pockets, and even laptops begin to look like antiques. But an iPhone that’s deprived of apps that Apple and/or carriers dislike for competitive reasons isn’t really a PC. It’s just a phone that offers a heck of a lot of applications. And the App Store, like the crummy, self-serving download stores that carriers have put on phones, is a walled garden–just a really big walled garden.

For thirty years, PC owners have had the final call on what software they used. That’s why many people run Apple software on Microsoft operating systems and Microsoft software on Apple operating systems. It’s why people get to run Firefox and Chrome on Windows, even though they duplicate features in Internet Explorer. If it hadn’t been this way for decades, the growth of the Windows and Mac platforms would have been horribly stunted, and the computers we use today would be a lot less useful and interesting. And if Apple maintains these policies moving forward, the iPhone platform will be horribly stunted, and iPhones will be a lot less useful and interesting than they might have been.

I keep coming back to what Steve Jobs told us at the Apple event that introduced the App Store last year:

Jobs said that Apple wouldn’t distribute porn or malicious apps or privacy-invading apps, and said that Apple’s interests and those of third-party developers were the same. The slide also mentioned “Bandwidth hogs,” which apparently meant stuff like SlingPlayer, and “Unforeseen,” which I assumed at the time referred to other applications that put iPhone owners at risk in one way or another. What he didn’t do is say that Apple would reject software that competed with Apple or AT&T offerings.

I’m looking on the bright side: Apple’s approval process is capricious enough that it’s entirely possible it’ll change its mind and permit Google Voice apps on the App Store at some point. A couple of months ago, the company approved the excellent e-reader Eucalyptus shortly after rejecting it. Doesn’t that establish a precedent for quiet undoing of bad decisions?

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Tech You Can Wear. If You Dare!

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 27, 2009 at 11:33 pm

The World's Wildest Wearable GadgetsOnce upon a time, dressing like a geek meant using a pocket protector and taping the bridge of your glasses. Today, my friends, it can indicate that your shirt keeps you cool with USB-powered fans. Or doubles as a Wi-Fi finder. Or has a built-in spy camera. I’m pleased to announce that JR Raphael is joining Technologizer’s esteemed group of contributors with a look at high-tech clothing and wearable accouterments, from head (sunglasses with flash storage) to toe (Facebook-compatible shoes). There’s some pretty darn nerdy stuff in there, some of which I wouldn’t be caught dead in. But I confess that I’m taken with Timex’s prototype of a disposable translucent timepiece you wear fastened to your fingernail…

View World’s Wildest Wearable Gadgets slideshow.

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The Apple Tablet: Some Possibly Answered Questions

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 27, 2009 at 5:08 pm

Potentially Answered QuestionsAbout the only thing we know for sure about Apple’s allegedly upcoming tablet computer is that there’s definitely misinformation floating around at the moment. Last week, AppleInsider. Last week, AppleInsider was exceptionally confident that Apple will be shipping its long-awaited tablet computer in the first quarter of next year. This week the Financial Times (in a story co-reported by my very old friend Joe Menn) is confirming that the tablet is due in September of this year. Unless we’re talking two different tablets here, somebody is wrong. (Or everybody–no Apple product is a sure thing until somebody brandishes it onstage at an Apple event.)

Still, chances seem very good that Apple is indeed working on a tablet device, and I’m going to assume for the moment that the FT has it right and the tablet will be here in a few weeks. (In part because venerable and traditional media outlets have a better track record of being right when they declare something to be true, and in part because I’m tired of waiting.)

So I’m choosing this moment to publish what I’m calling a PAQ on the tablet. That stands for Possibly Answered Questions–there are no real answers in this story, just me trying to piece together rumors and semi-educated guesses into something that sounds logical. I’ll try to remember to go back and fact-check all this stuff once if Apple releases a tablet, but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if I get much or most of this wrong.

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Nicholson Baker vs. the Kindle

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 27, 2009 at 9:11 am

Nicholson BakerNovelist Nicholson Baker is an unapologetic friend of paper–and his book Double Fold* is an important expose of the mass dumping of bound newspaper volumes by libraries in favor of vastly inferior microform copies. So you gotta think that when The New York arranged for him to write about Amazon.com’s Kindle, it knew that it wasn’t going to get a love letter. It didn’t—but “A New Page” is as eloquent a bad review of the Kindle as you’re going to find. Even if you find much more value in the Kindle than Baker does, as I do, you may find yourself nodding as he makes the case for print and ticks off all of the Kindle’s downsides.

Other than…well, me, Baker is one of the few Kindle judges I’ve seen who doesn’t buy Amazon’s “reads like real paper” claims for the device’s E Ink screen:

The problem was not that the screen was in black-and-white; if it had really been black-and-white, that would have been fine. The problem was that the screen was gray. And it wasn’t just gray; it was a greenish, sickly gray. A postmortem gray. The resizable typeface, Monotype Caecilia, appeared as a darker gray. Dark gray on paler greenish gray was the palette of the Amazon Kindle.

Baker also points out rightly that the presentation of newspapers–at least all the ones I’ve seen–on the Kindle is pretty pathetic. It’s not just that they aren’t well done; they’re nowhere near as well done as they could be even considering the Kindle’s limitations.

Like me, Baker isn’t so sure that the conventional wisdom that an LCD screen such as that on the iPhone is harder on the eyeballs than E Ink is true. Actually, he’s pleased with the iPod/iPhone Touch version of Kindle as a way to quickly dip into a snippet of a book.

So am I–enough so that I’m flirting with the idea of selling my Kindle 2, since I do most of my Kindle reading on the go on my iPhone these days. I’ll let you know if end up parting with it.

*footnote: Baker’s takedown of the Kindle is available on the Kindle, which lets you subscribe to The New Yorker. And Double Fold (subtitle: “Libraries and the Assault on Paper”) is available as a Kindle book, too. In fact, Amazon seems to really want you to buy it in that form:

Double Fold

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Brilliant But Doomed: Technology’s Most Magnificent Failures

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 27, 2009 at 5:59 am

Brilliant But Doomed

Life, as John F. Kennedy once helpfully pointed out, isn’t fair. Neither is the market for technology products. There’s no law that says that the best products win: The history of tech is pockmarked with breakthrough hardware, software, and services that were dismal failures in the marketplace. (It’s also rife with mediocre products that became massive bestsellers–insert your own example here.)

Of course, not every innovative tech product deserves to be a hit. Some flop because they’re ahead of their time, which is kind of admirable; others bomb because they take too long to emerge from the lab and are obsolete by the time they do, which is simply embarrassing. And some products that are enticing on paper turn out to have fatal cases of Achilles’ heel in the real world. But they’re all valuable case studies in how good intentions can go awry.

For this article, I intentionally skipped some of the most legendary magnificent failures, such as the Apple Newton, Commodore Amiga, and Sony Betamax–they’ve been celebrated more or less continuously since their untimely passings, and I wanted to devote more space to lesser-known contenders. I figure you’re going to reminisce about your own favorites in the comments anyhow.

Thanks to my pals on Twitter (where I’m @harrymccracken) for nominating scads of products for this story. And yes, the title of this article is a homage to Brilliant But Cancelled, a retrospective of short-lived TV shows that appeared on the Trio cable channel…a channel which was itself both excellent and unsuccessful.

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