I’m typing this in Firefox on an HP Mini-Note netbook. In fact, I’m doing everything in Firefox on the Mini-Note at the moment, because I’m engaged in the experiment I call Operation Foxbook, in which I spend a few days trying to go cold turkey on desktop applications and my fancy MacBook in favor of working in a manner that’s as close to purely Web-based as possible.
How’s it going so far? Not bad, but not entirely free of bumps. A few notes on the Web-based applications I’ve been using:
A few weeks ago, many of us were marking Google’s tenth birthday and wondering how it would celebrate the event–and assuming it would decorate its home page with a special logo. (The one at left is my crude handiwork.) I’m still not sure if Google did a special logo or plans to, but it’s announced one celebratory initiative that’s way cooler: It’s holding a contest to find great ideas that can help as many people as possible, and has set aside $10 million to spend on making up to five of them into realities.
The company calls this Project 10 to the 100th, and has created a Web site to spread the word. It’s also produced a little music video, which is pretty cute and features a song I’m now going to have trouble getting out of my head:
The site has a submission form, and lets you upload your proposal in the form of a video (30 seconds max) if you choose.
Google says the ideas can be big or little, and don’t necessarily need to involve technology–it’s all about how big an impact they can have. I’ll be interested to see what folks come up with–and whether Google’s $10 million investment pays off. I’m glad it’s trying.
The company has launched a tenth anniversary site that’s worth a visit if you’re a lover of Googletrivia.
Oh, and I just checked the Google holiday logo site–and see no evidence that it’s done a tenth aniversary one. I’m still holding out hope…
So T-Mobile’s G1 has been unveiled. It looks neat–and it looks like the most serious rival to the iPhone yet, though the BlackBerry Bold could be a contender once AT&T starts selling the darn thing.
What the G1 doesn’t seem to be is transcendent–a phone that’s as impressive as the iPhone, but in different ways. And the world could use such a phone. Some stuff about the iPhone is a matter of personal preference: Lots of folks are OK with the onscreen keyboard, but there are at least as many hardcore smartphone users who won’t ever buy a phone that doesn’t have (to quote Steve Jobs) little plastic keys.
Then there are the things about the iPhone that may stress out even Apple’s biggest fans, such as the company’s monopoly on application distribution and its mysterious, troubling policies on what does and doesn’t get in. All in all, I think there’s an opportunity for somebody to build a phone that’s the opposite of an iPhone in some ways, and better than an iPhone in others, and maybe even open in ways that no phone has been to date. And Google’s Android OS seems like the best platform to build it on.
At the DEMOFall conference a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t see a single product that knocked my socks all the way off. But when I think back to last January’s edition of DEMO, one product leaps to mind instantaneously: Skyfire, a browser for Windows Mobile that delivered remarkably desktop-like browsing–which is another way of saying that it came closer to the iPhone’s Safari than any Windows Mobile browser I’d seen.
Skyfire has been in private-beta mode for months, but today it’s finally releasing a version that anyone can download. It’s still a beta–version 0.8–and it behaved like one on my AT&T Tilt, sometimes refusing to connect to sites until I fiddled a bit with it. But I remain extremely impressed. If the beta leads to an official shipping version that works out the kinks, it could be one of the best browsers on any phone platform. And with a new version of IE for Windows Mobile stll a ways off and the more ambitious Windows Mobile 7 delayed, Windows Mobile needs all the browser love it can get.
(Skyfire is also available for Symbian S60-based phones; this version is still at 0.6, with 0.8 on the way, and I haven’t tried it.)
We now know a heck of a lot more about T-Mobile’s G1–the first “Googlephone”–than we did last night. But the phone won’t show up for almost another month. So unless you’re lucky enough to be one of the few folks who has one now–such as Walt Mossberg–it’s impossible to answer the most important question about the phone. Which is, of course, “Is it any good?” (Actually even Walt is reserving judgement, although he’s pretty positive overall.)
That leaves plenty of time to ask questions about the phone and the Android OS it’s based on. Such as…
It was all but official for what seemed like an eternity. Now it’s just official, period: T-Mobile is releasing the G1, the first phone powered by Google’s Android operating system. It’s essentially impossible to not instinctively compare it to the iPhone 3G. With phones more than almost any other technology device, the devil is in the details, and the best thing about the iPhone–its incredibly refined user interface–needs to be experienced to be appreciated. So a real comparison of the two superphones will need to be a hands-on one.
Still, there’s some value in a simple features comparison. Here’s my first stab at one, with data from sources such as Gizmodo’s writeup of the G1. (What’s a T-Grid? It’s an at-a-glance comparison in this format, and we’ll be doing them on other topics as appropriate.)
[NOTE: A court has ordered Real to stop distributing RealDVD for the time being–details here.]
In one sense, there’s nothing the least bit new about software that can copy DVDs to a PC’s hard drive. Folks have been using applications such as DVDShrink and Handbrake to do the job for years–and the same people have moved movies to phones, media players, and other devices…as well as onto BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer networks, where they’re there for the taking by anyone who can figure out how to download them.
But because such applications decrypt DVDs, their legal status is the U.S., to put it politely, murky. Make that very, very murky, , considering that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act prohibits the circumvention of copy protection. That’s true even if you’re engaging only in the victimless crime of enjoying movies you’ve paid for on a device that doesn’t happen to have a slot for a DVD.
Enter Real Networks’ RealDVD, a Windows program that’s a breakthrough in one significant respect: It’s a DVD-copying program–a ripper, if you like–that doesn’t violate the DMCA. That’s because it doesn’t strip off the copy protection the DVDs came with. Matter of fact, it adds additional copy protection that prevents users from sharing the DVD copies they’ve made, or watching them on anything other than up to five Windows PCs per license; other types of computers and devices aren’t supported. Only a DVD copier that locks down its copies in this fashion could go on the market without risking Hollywood’s wrath.
But RealDVD, which Real says it’ll start selling by the end of this month, is more than a DVD copier that’s hobbled by the fact that it doesn’t flout U.S. law. It copies not just the raw video files from a DVD but the entire DVD experience–bonus materials and all–and recreates them on the PC. And as you copy movies, it identifies them (using GraceNote, the same service that powers the CD-identification powers of iTunes and other music apps), catalogs them using cover art images, and lets you browse them by title, genre, or star. It’s a little like a $30 software version of the $30,000 media server from Kaledescape, a company whose victory in a court case brought by the DVD Copy Control Association last year confirmed that DVD copying can be legal.
Over at Cnet News, Ina Fried has posted some news that I find both startling and pleasing: Microsoft has told her that Windows 7 won’t come with applications for e-mail or for editing photos and movies. Windows Mail (née Outlook Express), Windows Photo Gallery, and Windows Movie Maker will live on, but as free downloadable Windows Live applcations rather than bundled into Windows.
I think that’s potentially a very encouraging sign about Microsoft’s priorities for W7. Operating systems shouldn’t be about e-mail or photo tweaking or movie making–they should be about being a fast, reliable, and intuitive platform for all of those applications and thousands more. By insisting on making those programs part of earlier versions of Windows, Microsoft hobbled both the apps and the OS in multiple ways:
–There’s no way that applications that move at the speed of OS development can keep up with the rest of the world. Windows XP shipped in 2001; how could a photo app tied to it compete with services like Flickr that arrived years later, even if it received updates?
–Applications bundled with operating systems are destined for mediocrity–nobody pays for them, or even chooses to use them. They’re defaults–at best, they get good enough to be good enough. And then they stagnate.
–Bundled apps are just a distraction. There’s so much fundamental stuff that Windows could do better on every front, from performance to security to usability; why lard up the OS with apps that are clearly optional and which have strong third-party rivals?
I don’t think Microsoft would nod its corporate head in agreement with all of the points above, but some of the things it told Ina about its decision aren’t wildly different in terms of the bottom line. That’s a striking reversal from marketing for Windows XP and Vista, both of which often played up the bundled applications that came with the OS. Here, for instance, is the XP ad with Madonna’s “Ray of Light”:
It’s also strikingly different than Apple’s OS-application strategy. It too makes an operating system and creative applications, but OS X and iLife only get bundled together on a new Mac. iLife will only live as long as it’s compelling enough to get real people excited enough to pay real money for it. Otherwise, they’re standalone products that must be purchased separately. Good for OS X; good for iLife; good, ultimately, for Mac users.
I think Microsoft could go way further with this basic idea: Should it be a given that Windows comes with Windows Media Player or even Internet Explorer? Maybe Paint should be retired after 23 years? (That’s apparently not going to happen–actually, it’s apparently getting a major makeover, with the Office 2007 Ribbon interface and multi-touch support.) But losing some apps is a good start–and I think that Windows Mail, Photo Gallery, and Movie Maker all stand a better chance of being really competitive if they stand on their own and only get used by people who make an effort to find, download, and explore them.
I do most of my Technologizer work these days on a 15-inch MacBook Pro laptop that runs three operating systems (OS X, Windows Vista, and Windows XP) and a full complement of applications for wrangling words, pictures, and Web sites (Microsoft Office, Photoshop, CorelDraw, Dreamweaver, and whatever else I need at any given moment). It’s a great tool for the job.
But tomorrow I’m going to set it aside for a few days and launch what I’m calling Operation Foxbook–an experiment that involves doing as much of my work on the Web and inside the browser (a specific browser–Firefox) as I possibly can. I’ve wanted to try this for a while–I wrote about the idea of a “Firefox PC” back in this post. But when I was at PC World, I couldn’t truly go cold turkey from desktop software, since we used Adobe InDesign, a decidedly local application, to crank out the magazine.
Technologizer, however, is all Web all the time–and I know of nothing I do for the site that simply can’t be done with a Web app. And the notion of computers that serve largely as containers for a Web browser has hit the big time–there’s a whole class of inexpensive, small notebook known as netbooks. So I’ll use one such machine, HP’s Mini-Note, to do my Technologizer stuff, and will blog about the experience. I know some of the browser-based apps I’ll use: parts of both Google Docs and Zoho, for sure, and the excellent Picnik photo editor. And Gmail, too, even though I continue to both love it and hate it. I’m sure I’ll need to seek out other apps as I need them, too.
Stay tuned–I may need your advice and patience to get through to the weekend without grabbing the MacBook…
slotMusic is an innovative new format format for music distribution. The tried-and-true Compact Disc is a quarter-century old. I compared ’em point by point and found that the CD stacks up surprisingly well for an invention that predates memory cards, MP3s, iPods, iTunes, and music phones. Is it going too far to say that if the CD were introduced today, folks would hail it as a breakthrough. Maybe. But I know that if it went away right now, I’d miss it–and that I think it beats slotMusic hands down. Chart after the jump…
