Comcast launched the Xfinity TV app to much fanfare this week, and though we knew it was coming, we didn’t know all the nitty gritty details until we got our own hands on. After a test run on the iPad, here’s my take on the good, the bad, and the future of the Xfinity app.
For all the cool stuff that’s going on with Web-based apps for smartphones and tablets, not much has happened yet with tools that let you edit documents right in your browser. But Google just added support for editing Google Docs word-processing files on Android 2.2 and iOS devices. (The Google Docs spreadsheet already has a somewhat peculiar editing mode.)
Here’s a video explanation:
Sadly, I’m at the Web 2.0 Summit, sans the one gizmo I really want to try this on–an iPad.
SlideRocket, the nifty Web-based collaborative presentation service, is built in Flash. But it’s rolling out an HTML5 player that lets people view SlideRocket shows on Flash-free devices such as the iPad. Here’s a video about the news from Robert Scoble.
RIM teases the BlackBerry PlayBook with a video that actually shows a real BlackBerry PlayBook.
We all know that the iPad is a magical and revolutionary product at an incredible price–Apple keeps reminding us. According to Nvidia’s CEO, the next wave of Android tablets will get the magical part right, at least.
I’m still not sure if RIM’s PlayBook Tablet will be any good. But it’s ambitious, and the specs are top-notch–and it will apparently sell for less than five hundred bucks.
Over at TIME.com, you’ll find my first take on Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, which I’ve been exploring since last Friday. Executive summary: It’s not an iPad killer, but it is the first legitimate iPad alternative; the hardware is nice, but the biggest downside is that the software makes it more of a giant-Android-phone-that-doesn’t-make-phone-calls than an all-new tablet.
I also blogged at Techland about Steve Jobs’ recent attack on the very idea of 7″ tablets. Spending time with the Galaxy Tab left me feeling like the size has possibilities, but simply cramming the iPad experience down onto a 7″ device would be a lousy idea which Apple won’t pursue.
I’ll have more to say about the Tab as I use it a bit more. At the moment, I’m having fun with it in a very real-world setting: I left for a business trip to New Orleans yesterday, and took it with me as my primary source of entertainment. (And mobile productivity, too: On the cab ride from the airport to my hotel, I sent an urgent e-mail using it.)
Got any questions about the Tab? Leave them in comments and I’ll try to answer ’em before I send it back to Samsung.
It’s become a bizarre rite of passage: Interesting apps for the iPhone and iPad keep appearing, getting attention, and then being literally overwhelmed by consumer response.
The latest example: Skyfire, the smartphone browser that lets you watch some Flash videos on an iPhone. It hit the App Store on Wednesday. Then throngs of people read about it and downloaded it. The app, which is as much a service as a piece of software–it relies servers which translate Flash video into an iPhone-friendly format on the fly–stopped working in any sort of satisfactory way, and its creators yanked it from the App Store.
Now it’s back, sort of –they’re letting in new users in drips and drabs by putting Skyfire on the App Store and then taking it down and then putting it up again. (It seems to be up at the moment.)
Remember the JooJoo, which seemed at least semi-exciting until the iPad came out? Cnet’s Rafe Needleman has an update on Fusion Garage’s plans for its tablet, which involve building an Android version with cloud-syncing capabilities.
