I’m at the Los Angeles Convention Center for Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference, the programmber confab at which the company will first talk about Windows 7 in real detail. Day one’s keynote is about to start, and I’ll update this post frequently as it progresses, connectivity willing…
Author Archive | Harry McCracken
Google Earth…Now in Convenient iPhone-Size Form
I still remember the first time I saw Google Earth–back when it was known as Keyhole Earth viewer and wasn’t yet owned by Google–and how its intensely graphical virtual portal to the real world’s geographic richness knocked my socks off. Last week, Google gave me a sneak peek at Google Earth for iPhone and iPod Touch, which is live in the iPhone App Store in Australia now and due in the U.S. store soon And once again, I was dazzled.
The iPhone version of Google Earth is dazzling because…well, because it feels just like Google Earth, but it’s also very much an iPhone app. It begins with the same big-blue-marble view of the earth; enter any location, and you can fly there via smooth animation and high-resolution satellite imagery. Once you’ve landed somewhere, you can pan around, zoom in and out, and click on Wikipedia and Panaramio icons to read articles and see photos relating to local landmarks. In the hands-on time I got at Google’s offices, at least, everything was remarkably fluid and fast, just as with deskbound versions of Google Earth.
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Windows 7 Unveiled: Our Microsoft PDC Coverage
Just a quick note about the week ahead: Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference kicks off Monday morning, and by the time the whole thing is over we should know a heck of a lot more about Windows 7 than we do right now. I’m in Los Angeles to cover the event, and will liveblog both of the keynotes–yep, there are two of ’em. Keynote #1 is at 8:30am PT on Monday; keynote #2 is at 8:30am PT on Tuesday. I hope you’ll join us…and that whatever we learn leaves us looking forward to W7’s arrival, whenever that may occur.
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Is an iPhone 3G Unlock Imminent?
Have a hankering to unlock your iPhone 3G so you can run it on any network? You may be in luck before too long.
The iPhone Dev Team–the group of hackers who figured out how to unlock the first-generation iPhone–has cracked the iPhone’s baseband processor and can run applications on it. That’s a critical step–maybe the critical step–in figuring out how to unlock the phone, since the software that does the job will run on the baseband processor.
I’d love to have an unlocked iPhone 3G, partially for practical reasons (I’d like to be able to buy a cheap prepaid SIM when I travel internationally) and partially on the principle of the matter (when a phone is locked, it’s been intentionally crippled). And you gotta admire the technical chops of the iPhone Dev Team. But I’m not all that excited by its progress in unlocking the iPhone 3G. In the past, Apple has showed itself to be completely willing to foil people who do things to its products that it doesn’t want done. And it doesn’t want you to unlock your iPhone. So me, I’m not going to risk it.
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Microsoft: New Macs Are Pricey! And Deceptive! And Unfair! Even…Dictatorial!
Early last week, when much of the world thought that Apple might release a new, cheap MacBook, Microsoft launched a preemptive salvo that argued that Macs were lousy values compared to Windows computers. Some of the company’s points were perfectly reasonable–it’s undeniably possible to get Windows computer with better specs than Macs for much less, and that fact is one of the strongest arguments for buying a Windows machine–but its math also involved some aggressively slanted calculations, such as comparing the cost of Apple RAM to third-party memory upgrades.
The $800 MacBook turned out to be fantasy, but Microsoft has sent me (and, I presume, other reporters) an update with new thoughts and price comparisons between the new MacBook models that did arrive and Windows laptops. Shocker: The company still thinks Macs are overpriced. Even more overpriced than they were, given that the new MacBook starts at $1299, $200 more than the $1099 price that the old-style one had gone for. (The old white MacBook remains on the market, at a new price of $999.)
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Gmail Enters the Emoticon Wars, Inevitably
STOP THE PRESSES! The big news in tech this morning is that Gmail has introduced a feature I’m surprised it didn’t have already: emoticons. Lots and lots of emoticons. In two styles: squarish-headed and roundy-headed.
Here they are:
That’s a total of 148 emoticons, some of which are animated. (And yes, the last one in each set is…er, a pile of crap: I didn’t know that Google had a slightly off-color sense of humor, and I’m not sure if I’d want to be presented with that emoticon each time I wanted to insert a simply smiley, frowny, kissy, or weepy into my e-mail.)
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Yahoo’s Inquisitor: Better Searching With Fewer Clicks
We users of Firefox (and the Firefox-based Flock) are spoiled: It’s easy to slip lazily into the assumption that every cool browser tool premieres as a Firefox add-on. So I managed to remain ignorant of Inquisitor, an interesting Safari plug-in that brings features for speeding up Web searching directly to the browser’s search box. But as of today, Inquisitor is also available in beta versions for Firefox and Internet Explorer. And if you use either of those browsers, it’s worth a gander.
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So Who’s Visiting Technologizer?
One of the many cool things about running Technologizer is that I can sneak a peek at the site’s Web analytics and see what operating systems and browsers are used by site visitors. Doing so helps me figure out what folks might want to read about–we do a lot of Mac coverage in part because a lot of Mac types hang out here–but it’s also just plain interesting. At least I think so–and in case you do, too, here’s a quick snapshot. (These figures are for October to date.)
The browser wars are alive and well on Technologizer:
It pleases me to see that Firefox is the most popular browser, with 48 percent of visitors using it;
24 percent use Internet Explorer (66 percent IE 7; 30 percent IE 6; 2 percent IE 8);
17 percent use Safari;
5 percent use Google Chrome;
4 percent use Opera (not huge, but around 5X the usage on the Web at large);
2 percent use something else.
Then there are operating systems:
62 percent of us come to the site via a Windows computer;
27 percent are on a Mac;
8 percent are using Linux;
2 percent are using an iPhone (!);
1 percent are using something else (like the 149 visitors who are on a T-Mobile Sidekick)
These stats show us to be a pretty diverse bunch–we’re far more likely to be using an alternative browser or an underdog OS than Internet users at large. They are, however, subject to change–and if I see any striking changes one way or another, I’ll report back here with an update. (For one thing, I’m curious to see if Chrome usage grows rapidly, and if so, at which other browser’s expense…)
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Technologizer Community Tip: Start Your Own Blog
Just a quick shameless plug: Among the benefits of being a registered member of the Technologizer Community is the ability to start your own blog right here on the site. I provide more details here. I hope you give it a try; I’d love to read the thoughts of community members in blog form, and to be able to link to the most interesting stuff from my own posts…
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Resolved: The Best Versions of Windows are the Minor Ones
When will Windows 7 arrive? Maybe sooner than just about anybody expected. All About Microsoft’s Mary Jo Foley has an interesting post over at ZDNet in which she sees signs that the next version of Windows could arrive as soon as mid-2009. Given that the company hasn’t released any beta versions of Windows 7 yet, that would leave a small window (pun unavodiable) for the company to test the OS widely, receive feedback, fix problems, and get the product out the door.
Evidence is starting to suggest that Windows 7 may not be a radically different operating system from Windows Vista in terms of features, functionality, and overall goals. Yes, Steve Ballmer maintains that it’s a “major” release of Windows, but he’s also describing it as “Vista, only a lot better.” Microsoft is keeping its hype machine under control and doing doing mundane but sensible things like stripping out Vista’s photo and video editing tools. You get the feeling that W7 might end up being a do-over–a chance for Microsoft to release a Windows that catches up with initial claims for Vista and fixes the biggest problems with it.
And that would be okay. Actually, it might be great.