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Bing: Am I Missing Something?

Posted by Ed Oswald on June 1, 2009 at 10:24 am

Bing LogoWell, the tech world is all aflutter over Microsoft’s Bing, which as Harry pointed out early this morning is live in preview mode. I have tried this search engine, and honestly I am not seeing what the big deal is over it.

Yes, this is a massive improvement over Live Search — I 100% agree with that. I don’t know what Microsoft may have been going for that other than to rebrand MSN Search after it went Live-crazy. I always found Live Search to be severely lacking in the results department.

Bing definitely improves on that. But I don’t see where it excels over what’s already available out there on the Internets. I’d argue that Microsoft’s latest effort for all intents and purposes merely matches Google, rather than surpassing it by any great distance.

In the end, is this enough to make people switch? I doubt it. Most of us are quite comfortable with using Google for our daily searches, cause it works well. Why would we want to switch to another that only seems to really “skin” what Mountain View was already somewhat doing?

This is not to say by any means that Bing will be a failure. #1, it will get a huge boost in the next month or two simply from interested surfers wanting to see what the buzz is all about. #2, it is an improvement, and not everybody is so tied to Google that they won’t switch.

For me however, Bing just isn’t it. I’m glad to see Microsoft is finally serious about search — but I don’t think matching your competition is going to win the day in the end.

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The Kindle DX Arrives Next Week

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 1, 2009 at 9:14 am

Amazon has announced that it’ll start shiping its jumbo-sized e-reader, the Kindle DX, on June 10th, a week from this Wednesday. On paper (ahem!), it’s not a breakthrough device–it’s pretty much the current Kindle 2, only more of it, with the capability to display PDFs. But the larger screen’s ability to display more words with less reformatting could make for a meainingfully more pleasing reading experience. Look for a review on Technologizer as soon as we can swing it…

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Look, Up in the Sky! It’s Wi-Fi!

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 1, 2009 at 7:15 am

Gogo LogoAt this very moment, I”m using inflight Wi-Fi for the third time in my life–and for the first time, it’s putting me in a good mood. The first time I did so was on a demo flight for the now-defunct Boeing Connexion service, and it essentially failed to work; the second time was on one of the last Connexion-equipped flights, and the fact that I knew it was going away put me in a melancholy mood. Even though Connexion, even when it worked, was kinda sluggish and kinda pricey.

This morning, however, I’m on a Virgin America flight with Gogo service. It’s six bucks for my flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and is quite speedy–YouTube is playing back more smoothly than it sometimes does via my home network. Virgin is the first carrier with an all-Wi-Fl fleet; it’s instantly become my default carrier on any route it travels. 

I should probably segue here into a sober rumination on the virtues of being disconnected and the downside of living in a world in which spending even 59 minutes (our flight time) without Internet access is a hardship. I’ll probably write one eventually, but for now, I’m happy. And it’s going to feel weird when I hear the plane’s wheels touch ground at  ourdestination and I have no need to seize my phone, fire up e-mail, and try to catch up…

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Bing is Go

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 1, 2009 at 12:53 am

Bing LogoMicrosoft’s new Bing search engine isn’t scheduled to officially replace Live Search until next Wednesday, but it’s now up and available in preview mode at Bing.com. If you try it out, let us know what you think; me, I plan to try and use it for a bit whenever I’d usually turn to Google, so my impressions are real-world ones based on my own everyday searches. I’ll share my impressions as I form them.

To recap, Bing attempts to differentiate itself from what Steve Ballmer would call “the market leader” in search by focusing on helping users with four common action-oriented search tasks: making a purchase, planning a trip, researching a health condition and finding a local business. Here’s what you get at the top if you search for mazda3–not a plain link to Mazda’s site, but a sort of mini-review with user ratings, links to specs and safety stats, and more:

Mazda3

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TWTRCON Wrapup: Good Show, Everybody!

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 1, 2009 at 12:30 am

TWTRCONA couple of months ago, I had an idle thought: Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a conference that brought smart people together to figure out what Twitter means for businesses of all sorts and all sizes? The folks at Modern Media took my question and ran with it, and today TWTRCON SF 09 happened at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco,. I’m biased, but I thought it was a hit; lots of folks who attended said they had a great time.

MC Hammer, Adventuregirl, and Gina SmithThe day was cohosted by Modern’s Tonia Ries and Gina Smith, and was packed with guests: prominent twitters like Laura (@pistachio) Fitton, MC Hammer, Guy Kawasaki, Dave McClure, Stefanie (@adventuregirl) Michaels, and Steve Rubel; journalists and writers including Shel Israel, Rafe Needleman, Jeremiah Owyang, Paul Saffo, and Kara Swisher; folks from Boingo, Cisco, Comcast, Dell, eBay, Intuit, Wells Fargo, and other major companies; Twitter companies such as CoTweet and HootSuite; Twitter’s Anamitra Banerji, and more. (That’s Hammer, Adventuregirl, and Gina in the photo at right, by Marie Domingo.)

Trending TopicsI had the interesting duty of being the conference’s official twitterer, and spent the day trying to convey the flavor of the event to those who couldn’t attend in person. I quickly discovered that I had lots of help, though–scads of folks inside the room and around cyberspace used the #twtrcon hashtag to share their thoughts on what the speakers had to say. The conversation was so spirited that our hashtag became the #1 trending topic on Twitter (see proof st right).

What did I take away from spending my Sunday thinking about Twitter? Lots of things, but here are some highlights:

  • It’s pointless to participate in Twitter unless you’re willing to be authentic and honest. And maybe a little funny, too.
  • For a business, participating in Twitter is an obligation; don’t do it unless you’re willing to dedicate the resources needed to do it right.
  • You’re not going to make money directly from Twitter. But you might engage your consumers (and mend fences with folks who don’t like your company) enough to see an impact on your revenue.
  • Twitter should ignore all the hubbub over whether it can make money and concentrate on growing, growing growing.
  • A few years from now, Twitter-like services may be so fundamental to communications that the notion of a conference dedicate to Twitter seems quaint.

Thanks to everyone who made TWTRCON a blast–organizers, speakers, attendees, and those who attended virtually via Twitter. Thinking of it was easy; you’re the guys who made it such a useful, engaging reality.

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Take Technologizer’s Apple WWDC Prediction Challenge

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 31, 2009 at 11:35 pm

Apple WWDC PredictionsAnalysts and other pundits do a lousy job of predicting what Apple will do next. Rumors about the company are often sheer fantasy. I’ve guessed wrong so many times that I’ve mostly given up trying. With Apple’s WWDC conference and its accompanying keynote a week away, what to do? Should we just swear off predictions altogether?

How about seeing if the collective Technologizer community–or any of its individual members–comes closer to telling us what Apple will unveil than your garden-variety professional Applewatcher probably will? That’s the idea behind our WWDC Prediction Challenge. Spend a few minutes taking our survey, and we’ll ask you about a bunch of possible announcements, including the likely (a new iPhone), the unlikely-but-tantalizing (a tablet), and the almost-certainly-not-for-one-reason-or-another (like new iPods). We’ll aggregate the results and see if there’s any consensus on what’s likely to happen, and publish a report before the keynote. Then we’ll publish another report after the keynote, grading the overall results. We might also mention any respondents whose predictions were eerily dead-on or otherwise interesting.

(Related shameless plug: I’ll be attending the WWDC keynote and will provide live coverage of what we learn as we learn it at www.technologizer.com/wwwdc09.)

The survey mostly involves multiple choice questions, but you’ll have the opportunity to make free-form predictions. For the most part, it involves matters other than the two topics which Apple has already told us it will discuss: the upcoming Snow Leopard OS and iPhone OS 3.0. Oh, and here’s one more incentive to participate: We’ll give one $100 Apple Store gift certificate away to a respondent in a random drawing.

Ready? Click here to take the WWDC Prediction Challenge.

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PSP Go is All But Official

Posted by Jared Newman on May 30, 2009 at 5:06 pm

playstation-logoMarketing photos, video and details on a new Playstation Portable have leaked three days ahead of Sony’s E3 press conference.

The source of the material is Qore, Sony’s official interactive magazine for Playstation Network members, so this was either an intentional leak to preempt the other console makers or a major foul-up. We’re beyond rumor territory now, but Sony will probably keep quiet on this news until Tuesday.

On to the details: The PSP Go includes 16 GB of flash memory and no UMD drive, Sony marketing executive John Koller said in Qore’s video interview. Of course, all the PSP Go’s content will be download-only, and a Memory Stick Micro slot boosts the potential capacity. The screen measures 3.8 inches, which is a half-inch smaller than the current PSP-3000, but the new model is 43 percent lighter. Bluetooth will be included for using a headset or tethering a cell phone, Koller said.

press-sony-psp-go-1

As you can see from the photo, the controls are located on a panel that slides out from the bottom half of the device. It looks the the control scheme of the old PSP will remain in this model.

Koller blabbed about a few big-name titles in the video, including previously unannounced versions of Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo. Whoops?

The PSP-3000 will stay on the market even after the Go’s fall release, Koller said. Smart move, because it’ll allow Sony to gauge the PSP Go’s success against a console that uses physical game discs. It remains to be seen how Sony will handle the release of UMD games versus digital downloads. Down the line, that ratio will probably be a good indicator of which direction Sony wants to go (no pun intended).

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Maybe They Should Call It “Windows 7 Grudging Acknowledgment of Reality Edition”

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 30, 2009 at 9:07 am

Windows 7 LogoPaul Thurrott had it right: Microsoft has decided to lift the three-apps-at-a-time limitation from Windows 7 Starter Edition, the low-cost, low-end version of the OS which will likely show up on a lot of netbooks beginning this fall.

The company announced the change in plans at the Windows 7 Team Blog, in a post that also detailed remaining limitations of Starter Edition, among them its lack of Aero effects, custom wallpaper (!),  Taskbar previews, Fast User Switching, Media Center features, and DVD playback. It also tries to dissuade folks from associating Starter Edition and netbooks too closely:

As we continue to say since we announced the Windows 7 editions in February, all editions of Windows 7 have been optimized to run on the broadest range of hardware ranging from small notebook PCs all the way up to high end gaming machines. Windows 7 Starter should not be considered “the netbook SKU” as most machines in this category can run any edition of Windows 7. Many of our beta users have installed Windows 7 Ultimate on their small notebook PCs and have given us very positive feedback on their experience.

The post’s right that netbooks can run beefier versions of Windows 7–actually, I’m typing these very words on an Asus Eee PC 1000HE that’s working just fine with Windows 7 Ultimate. But  it remains to be seen just  how many netbooks will ship with anything other other than Starter given the price competition in the category (which is fierce) and the additional cost to bundle higher-end versions of Windows (which will be substantial). Starter Edition exists only because Microsoft would otherwise have to cede the low-end netbook market to Linux; it’s a version of Windows that Microsoft is releasing only because it doesn’t have much choice.

So if you’re thinking about buying a Windows 7 netbook, would you opt for Starter, or would you be willing to pay extra bucks for Windows 7 Home Premium or another more full-featured edition?

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Sirius XM Set to Raise Rates Yet Again

Posted by Ed Oswald on May 29, 2009 at 11:58 pm

sirius-xm-mergerAlready peeved satellite radio customers will have one more reason to be upset with Sirius XM: yet another rate increase. While you were able to escape the last one by simply electing to forgo online access, this one is unavoidable.

Every subscriber will pay at least $2 more per month. The reason is this: beginning in August, the company would be able to raise rates to cover the costs of higher royalty payments to the record companies.

The royalty rate increases were allowed by the FCC as a result of a December 2007 agreement on those rates. The company was not able to pass along these increases due to the stipulations of the approval of the merger. However:

“After the first anniversary of the consummation of the merger, the combined company may pass through cost increases incurred since the filing of the combined company’s FCC merger application as a result of statutorily or contractually required payments to the music, recording and publishing industries for the performance of musical works and sound recordings or for device recording fees.”

That anniversary is coming up on July 29. According to unconfirmed reports, after this date a $2 charge on the primary radio, and a 97 cent charge on additional radios will be applied as a “royalty fee.” In other words, you will be paying at a minimum $14.95 per month for service.

People with knowledge of the situation are quick to point out that this isn’t an increase from Sirius XM per se, but rather a pass through of charges that were already being paid by the company because it can no longer afford them. You don’t say–after all its financial situation is pretty damn bad.

(See this link for a copy of the internal memo to customer service reps who are sure to be facing the brunt of yet more consumer dissatisfaction.)

Worse yet, this fee will increase by .5% per year through 2012. Thus it will be at least $2.10 in 2010, $2.21 in 2011, and and $2.32 in 2012. So much for those rate freezes eh?

This is really bad for Sirius XM. The Internets are flooded with consumer complaints about the service post-merger, and many are looking for a reason to drop sat radio like a rock.

I don’t see how the company doesn’t lose more customers over this. The company better get more responsive to programming complaints or there may be big trouble in sat radio-land.

Sirius XM customers out there — is this the last straw for you?

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