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  • Google Readies Its E-Book Plan, Bringing in a New Sales Approach

    WSJ: Google says users will be able to buy digital copies of books directly from its site. It will also allow book retailers—even independent shops—to partner with Google Editions on their own sites, sharing the revenue. and While Mr. Palma didn’t go into details, users of Google Editions would be able to read books from…

    WSJ:

    Google says users will be able to buy digital copies of books directly from its site. It will also allow book retailers—even independent shops—to partner with Google Editions on their own sites, sharing the revenue.

    and

    While Mr. Palma didn’t go into details, users of Google Editions would be able to read books from a web browser— meaning that the type of e-reader device wouldn’t matter. The company also could build software for certain devices like an iPhone or iPad.

    The first quote is killer, if Google say let people self publish ebooks, sell them through Google and got 60% of the revenue – this is how Apple got the App Store so damn popular. They made it easy for creators to sell to consumers.

    The second part though – well no one wants to read an ebook on their computer, let alone in a web browser. The typography would be terrible, Google needs to integrate this with Android and Chrome OS to win some market share.

  • Exploring iWork for iPad

    Robert Mohns: We’re not fans of the huge, side-scrolling “My Documents” view. It’s a gratuitous waste of screen real estate, and doesn’t scale well past a handful of documents. What happens when a user has created twenty or thirty documents? Or a hundred? It’s not far fetched, yet Apple doesn’t seem to have considered that…

    Robert Mohns:

    We’re not fans of the huge, side-scrolling “My Documents” view. It’s a gratuitous waste of screen real estate, and doesn’t scale well past a handful of documents. What happens when a user has created twenty or thirty documents? Or a hundred? It’s not far fetched, yet Apple doesn’t seem to have considered that obvious scenario.

    That never once crossed my mind as a problem, but I can see it happening very quickly.

    The final factor is this: If you want to author documents, spreadsheets and presentations on iPad, quickly and easily, and today, Apple’s iWork trio is the only game in town.

    That is the same conclusion a lot of people are coming to. There will be updates that will make these apps shine, and there will be more third party offerings. But neither are here right now.

  • HP refreshes PC lines, tries to copy Apple

    Gabriel Madway: HP launched new notebooks for its high-end Envy brand, with slot-load optical drives and back-lit keyboards, and cut the entry-level price to $999 from $1,299. Sounds like they are taking some of the nicer features from Apple’s notebooks. Can’t blame them there.

    Gabriel Madway:

    HP launched new notebooks for its high-end Envy brand, with slot-load optical drives and back-lit keyboards, and cut the entry-level price to $999 from $1,299.

    Sounds like they are taking some of the nicer features from Apple’s notebooks. Can’t blame them there.

  • Intel Throws its hat into the ring, again

    Tarmo Virki: Intel said it has been able to cut the amount of power the chip uses on standby, between tasks, by more than 50 times and Chandrasekher told Reuters last year the power consumption is “very close” and almost matching that of rivals. Competition is almost always a good thing for consumers. My fear…

    Tarmo Virki:

    Intel said it has been able to cut the amount of power the chip uses on standby, between tasks, by more than 50 times and Chandrasekher told Reuters last year the power consumption is “very close” and almost matching that of rivals.

    Competition is almost always a good thing for consumers. My fear would be that Intel tries to monopolize the market much like they did with the PC industry. It would seem to me that if Android or WebOS ran on any mobile chip, that it would take one step closer to being the Windows of the mobile market.

  • TED's OpenTV Project Announced

    Emily McManus: The TED Open TV Project has already signed up dozens of broadcasters around the world, whose collective audience numbers in the hundreds of millions. Built in response to strong demand from TV station managers around the world, TED’s Open TV Project allows broadcasters to air TEDTalks for free, and encourages them to create…

    Emily McManus:

    The TED Open TV Project has already signed up dozens of broadcasters around the world, whose collective audience numbers in the hundreds of millions. Built in response to strong demand from TV station managers around the world, TED’s Open TV Project allows broadcasters to air TEDTalks for free, and encourages them to create custom programs for their communities.

    TED Talks are great, I love watching these videos, so naturally I think this is a great move. TED has some of the most thought provoking and inspirational videos on the web.

  • Take a Walk, Recharge Your iPhone

    Sarah Kessler: After an early wave of enthusiasm for bulky backpacks with solar-powered chargers, the new bet is on kinetic energy, or energy that can be generated from movement, including the stride of a walker or the turn of a bicycle wheel. The beauty of kinetic energy is that the more something weighs and the…

    Sarah Kessler:

    After an early wave of enthusiasm for bulky backpacks with solar-powered chargers, the new bet is on kinetic energy, or energy that can be generated from movement, including the stride of a walker or the turn of a bicycle wheel. The beauty of kinetic energy is that the more something weighs and the faster it moves, the more energy it can generate.

    25 minutes walking to charge and iPhone = sign me up.

  • I Agree With One Thing Paul Thurrott Says (But Only One Thing)

    Paul Thurrott: I know that, internally at Microsoft, many people do not agree with the direction the company is going. And all you have to do is read the tech press and, heck, the mainstream press, to see who’s getting all the press these days. It ain’t you, Microsoft. And that is indeed bad news.…

    Paul Thurrott:

    I know that, internally at Microsoft, many people do not agree with the direction the company is going. And all you have to do is read the tech press and, heck, the mainstream press, to see who’s getting all the press these days.

    It ain’t you, Microsoft. And that is indeed bad news.

    I have to agree with that whole heartedly. Microsoft for all intents and purposes has dropped off the radar of the press. This is never good for a company, even when Apple is in lock down developing a new product there is still tremendous buzz about the company.

    But Thurrott had to go and say this:

    And if you’re looking to copy Apple’s success–and you are–then at least do it right. It’s not about the products at all. What Apple does right is marketing. It’s form over function, plain and simple. How else could the world be so excited over an unnecessary over-sized iPod touch? Because it’s from Apple, that’s how. And the press markets it for them, and makes people believe that this is somehow a big deal. It’s a self-replicating back-patting, buddy system, plain and simple.

    And you’re not part of the circle, Microsoft. How else can you explain the ginormous Windows 7 sales that get no attention, and certainly no love from Wall Street? You’ve sold over 100 million licenses of this thing in record time and all anyone can talk about are lost iPhones and the iPad. I mean, give me a break.

    Actually it is about the products, marketing will sell your products initially, growth comes from having a great product. This is how you explain Apple’s success, amazing marketing to get the early adopters to buy and then the product will carry it the rest of the way. The iPhone / iPod / iPad sales are nuts, and growing still.

    Windows 7 has been a financial success I am sure (compared to Vista) and it has sold a lot of copies. That does not make it good however, because unlike with the iPad or iPhone people are not buying it because they want it. People are buying Windows 7 because they don’t want to use a slow, 9 year old Operating System. That and the fact that all new PCs comes with it helps.

  • Central Desktop for Office

    From the Website: Central Desktop for Office enables multiple users to simultaneously co-author Word, Excel and PowerPoint files in real time, eliminating the need to upgrade to Microsoft SharePoint/Office 2010 for the same functionality. I am pretty surprised that it took so long for this to come to Office. Looks like it could be pretty…

    From the Website:

    Central Desktop for Office enables multiple users to simultaneously co-author Word, Excel and PowerPoint files in real time, eliminating the need to upgrade to Microsoft SharePoint/Office 2010 for the same functionality.

    I am pretty surprised that it took so long for this to come to Office. Looks like it could be pretty neat for those that need this level of collaboration. I would think though that their user base is very limited in size. Be sure to check out the video for a better understanding of what the software allows.

  • Electronic medical orders may save lives

    Frederik Joelving: Despite the encouraging findings, Longhurst said he was concerned about President Obama’s call for rapid implementation of the electronic system. “It should be rolled out by experienced experts,” he said. “And there are only so many experts in this country.” I too agree that it should be rolled out by very experienced people.…

    Frederik Joelving:

    Despite the encouraging findings, Longhurst said he was concerned about President Obama’s call for rapid implementation of the electronic system.

    “It should be rolled out by experienced experts,” he said. “And there are only so many experts in this country.”

    I too agree that it should be rolled out by very experienced people. I think the bigger picture with regard to digitizing the healthcare system in hospitals is going to be privacy and security. I think in general everyone agrees that better information (getting all the medical charts at once with computer alerts to allergies) will save lives.

    The real question is what the cost to our privacy will be.

  • The iPad – One Month In

    Monday April 5th, 2010 at approximately 10:30a I received my 16gb Wi-Fi only iPad. I had just gotten off a plane in Portland, OR – a red-eye from Honolulu to Portland – and drove 2 hours and 30 minutes to Tacoma, WA to pick up my iPad waiting at my office for me. Then I…

    Monday April 5th, 2010 at approximately 10:30a I received my 16gb Wi-Fi only iPad. I had just gotten off a plane in Portland, OR – a red-eye from Honolulu to Portland – and drove 2 hours and 30 minutes to Tacoma, WA to pick up my iPad waiting at my office for me. Then I drove another 44 minutes home.

    I unpacked from being gone for two weeks, played with the cat and ate food. Then I did the ceremonial opening of the iPad and plugged it in to my Macbook Pro. Now came the longest hour and a half of my life as I synced the iPad and put music and videos on it.

    For the next week of my life and really took the iPad everywhere with me, showing it off and using it for every possible thing I could. We have all read those reviews, some are great and some leave you scratching your head. I thought it would be useful for people to get a look at how I am using the iPad one month into it. I have broken my usages down by the time of the day as that seems like the best way to go about this.

    Pre-Work (5:45a – 7:30a)

    After I check some websites on my Mac, I read through my RSS feeds (Fever°) and save the ones I want to read to Instapaper. From there I grab my iPad and head to the couch (I don’t like to look at Fever° on the iPad as it is still a little problematic, but usable). Once I hit the couch I go through my apps, here is the order that I read the apps and email links to Instapaper:

    • TWC Max+ (weather info)
    • NYT Editors Choice
    • USA Today
    • BBC News
    • Guardian Eyewitness
    • Reuters Galleries
    • Reuters News Pro

    When I see an article I want to read in any of the above I email the link to Instapaper for reading later. If I have time left before I need to leave for work I try to read articles in Instapaper.

    Work (8:15a – 4:45p)

    This is the period of the day that I rarely use the iPad. Not that it doesn’t have its business uses, just my work day is not tailored towards those uses. I rarely go to meetings – which is a place where the iPad shines. Most days I will use the iPad as a scratch pad (Penultimate) while on the phone and will take it with me to different places I go. If I find myself with some downtime I will flip on the Verizon MiFi and catch up on some Instapaper reading.

    After Work (5:30p – bedtime)

    The iPad shines during this period of time. Spend a lot of time on different websites, reading in Instapaper / iBooks / Kindle / Zinio. I post to WordPress, play games, and control VLC on my Mac mini (hooked to the TV). The entire night is spent on my iPad, rarely do I touch my Macbook Pro.

    Weekends

    Take Pre-work and After work and press them together omitting the ‘work’ stage. That is my weekend usage. 10% is on my Macbook Pro and the rest is my iPad with about 0.5% being my iPhone.

    Would I do it again?

    One thing I think is most telling about a new gadget is to ask yourself if you would purchase it again given what you know today. The answer to this for me is an overwhelming ‘yes’ I would buy the iPad again no regrets. I also would not buy the 3G, nor do I need any more space than 16gbs affords.

    The key to my enjoyment of the iPad is that after work period of time, whereas before the iPad I used to use my Macbook Pro until my wife got annoyed and then just my iPhone. With the iPad it is all sorts of different. I can turn the iPad off and on to start and stop what I am doing in an instant – allowing me to stop reading and focus on a conversation with my wife, picking it up again easily. With a laptop there is always a lag between sleeping and waking the computer – a lag that becomes annoying once you use an iPad.

    Favorite Feature

    Hands down the battery. Apple was not joking when they rated it at 10 hours of battery life. This device has an outstanding battery. While the life is nice, what the battery really means for the user is:

    • No carrying a charger
    • Doing what you want when you want it – you don’t have to save the last little bit of battery life for something that may be important later, because you always have battery life.

    Wireless devices are great so long as the battery is charged. They are worthless once the batteries are dead, or you have to us them tethered to a charger. The iPad makes this a non-issue.

    Worst ‘Feature’

    I had a lot of trouble deciding what I think the worst feature to be, but I think I finally discovered. Lack of privacy is the iPad’s worst feature. I think Craig Hockenberry said it best:

    The iPad was naturally passed around amongst the partygoers. Many people interacted with it during the evening, and I lost track of who had it at any given time. And therein lies a fundamental problem.

    My iPad has a lot of personal information on it: email, business documents, and financial data. When you pass it around, you’re giving everyone who touches it the opportunity to mess with your private life, whether intentionally or not. That makes me uneasy.

    I could not agree more so be sure to read that whole post to get the entire picture. We need better security when we show / share these devices with others.

    Favorite App

    Instapaper. Hands down, the reading, usability, speed are all top notch. This is the best app on the iPad no doubt about it.

    Worst App

    I can’t speak for all the apps, but of the ones that I have tried I hate the Wall Street Journal app the most. This has nothing to do with the subscription pricing, and everything to do with the look, and usability.

    Why do I have to download the entire newspaper for the hour / day? Why does it take forever to download it, NYT and USA Today reloads quickly. Why do you feel the need to nag me all the time to subscribe when I already said no? Not to mention the giant pop up ads. Such an annoying app.

    Moving Forward

    I really am looking forward to the future of the iPad, more so than I am with the iPhone. I think OS 4.0 is going to give quite an amazing boost to the iPad. I think that future hardware updates are only going to make an already fast iPad into an instant iPad.

    Also on another note the iPad has made me want an SSD drive for my Macbook Pro more than ever.

    That’s my iPad take after one month of using it.

  • A Rapid Security Check Could Be Revived at Airports

    Brad Stone: The idea of a monthly subscription service that allows people to jump to the head of airport security lines by submitting to a fingerprint or iris scan may be getting another chance. If I traveled even 5 times a year on planes, I would pay for this in a heart beat. Why we…

    Brad Stone:

    The idea of a monthly subscription service that allows people to jump to the head of airport security lines by submitting to a fingerprint or iris scan may be getting another chance.

    If I traveled even 5 times a year on planes, I would pay for this in a heart beat. Why we don’t have faster screening methods after nines years of the TSA is dumbfounding. Let’s get moving on this people.

  • Why Do Banks Insist Upon Internet Explorer?

    I was just informed by a friend of mine that he has not been able to login to his online banking with Harborstone Credit Union for all of 2010. The problem is that Webkit was updated and now no longer works with the banks system. He has reported the problem and the bank is more…

    I was just informed by a friend of mine that he has not been able to login to his online banking with Harborstone Credit Union for all of 2010. The problem is that Webkit was updated and now no longer works with the banks system. He has reported the problem and the bank is more than aware of it, however he was told:

    We use a third party company for our online banking, and they have not been able to fix it yet.

    Why the hell not? This is not 10 years ago, the Mac is very popular and gaining in popularity. IE’s market share is now below 60% and you don’t support two very popular web browsers? (Safari and Chrome both use Webkit’s engine) If you think for one minute that it is really not that big of a deal then you are an idiot.

    Last October I decided it was time to switch banks – I made that decision because the Internet banking at my bank (Rainier Pacific Bank, now Umpqua Bank) was ungodly slow.

    So I switched to USAA.com impart because they have a nice iPhone app, and also because I have never heard a complaint about them. They have a phenomenal internet banking service, it is fast and works on everything from my iPhone to Macbook Pro.

    It is not a matter of technical hardship, or not being able to do anything about these changes. It is a matter of companies not caring to help their customers.

    This day and age you should be looking to support Firefox, Chrome and Safari, then Internet Explorer.

    Harborstone, tell your third party company that you want it fixed this week or you are leaving them. Because either you leave your software supplier, or your customers will start leaving you.

  • Disposable Content On The Non-Disposable iPad

    MG Siegler: Again, this is still the early days for all of this. And I do believe these publishers (moreso in the magazine industry, but we’ll give the newspaper industry some time to catch up) are onto something. All I know is that I haven’t read this much print media in years. Or, let me…

    MG Siegler:

    Again, this is still the early days for all of this. And I do believe these publishers (moreso in the magazine industry, but we’ll give the newspaper industry some time to catch up) are onto something. All I know is that I haven’t read this much print media in years. Or, let me rephrase that: I haven’t paid to read this much print media in years. And yet I’m happy to do it. It’s a weird feeling.

    This is a very interesting take on the direction that magazines are taking with the iPad. I for one use Zinio Reader to subscribe and read magazines on my Mac and iPad. I have been using it for years now. That said it is not that great of a reading experience (basically a PDF version of the magazine), so if Magazines started releasing apps that I could subscribe to them in – well I would be all for it.

    That being said I am not paying $4.99 an issue. Get it to the same price as paper subscriptions and we can talk.

  • AT&T's Insane International Data Rates for the iPad

    When I traveled to Japan a few years ago we took an AT&T data card with us and enabled the international plan. The fees were horrendous and almost made it cheaper to lose business than to pay AT&T to stay connected. Now with the iPad AT&T is charging $200 a month for a lowly 200mb…

    When I traveled to Japan a few years ago we took an AT&T data card with us and enabled the international plan. The fees were horrendous and almost made it cheaper to lose business than to pay AT&T to stay connected.

    Now with the iPad AT&T is charging $200 a month for a lowly 200mb of data. That is absurd.

    Especially considering this tidbit from John Brownlee:

    What’s most absurd is that since the iPad is sold unlocked, you should be able to just travel abroad, pick up a 3G micro SIM from a local carrier and use their iPad 3G at local rates without a contract. Who is AT&T trying to fool here?

    That would seem logical, and if you have tried this please be sure to write and let me know if it works.

  • Stephen Hawking talks about Time Travel

    Stephen Hawking: The slowing of time has another benefit. It means we could, in theory, travel extraordinary distances within one lifetime. A trip to the edge of the galaxy would take just 80 years. But the real wonder of our journey is that it reveals just how strange the universe is. It’s a universe where…

    Stephen Hawking:

    The slowing of time has another benefit. It means we could, in theory, travel extraordinary distances within one lifetime. A trip to the edge of the galaxy would take just 80 years. But the real wonder of our journey is that it reveals just how strange the universe is. It’s a universe where time runs at different rates in different places. Where tiny wormholes exist all around us. And where, ultimately, we might use our understanding of physics to become true voyagers through the fourth dimension.

    Also I love this line:

    If I had a time machine I’d visit Marilyn Monroe in her prime or drop in on Galileo as he turned his telescope to the heavens.

  • MarsEdit 3 Arrives

    This release adds support for custom fields on WordPress installations: For WordPress and other blogs that implement the WordPress API, you can configure custom fields in MarsEdit to customize the post editing interface. This is something I have been waiting for, and I am so happy that it has now been released. MarsEdit is the…

    This release adds support for custom fields on WordPress installations:

    For WordPress and other blogs that implement the WordPress API, you can configure custom fields in MarsEdit to customize the post editing interface.

    This is something I have been waiting for, and I am so happy that it has now been released. MarsEdit is the best blog posting software you can get for the Mac, this release only ups the ante.

  • Government Weighing Possible Apple Antitrust Probe

    Nick Bilton: Both agencies have received complaints about Apple’s new iPhone policy, according to a person briefed on the matter, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak about it. In such situations, the agencies typically negotiate with each other to determine which one will initiate an inquiry. I saw rumblings…

    Nick Bilton:

    Both agencies have received complaints about Apple’s new iPhone policy, according to a person briefed on the matter, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak about it. In such situations, the agencies typically negotiate with each other to determine which one will initiate an inquiry.

    I saw rumblings of this yesterday on the NY Post, but the Post being what it is I had decided not to post it. Now the NY Times and WSJ are reporting this. Don’t be too concerned as these are lengthy processes and do not always result in anything happening.

  • Very Personal Computing

    Jean-Louis Gassée: The upstart doesn’t signal the end of the previous generation. We still have mainframes, and we’ll have PCs for a long time. But give it time and, as stated at the beginning of this note, the Center of Money will shift as customers become more comfortable with the new, lighter, sexier model, as…

    Jean-Louis Gassée:

    The upstart doesn’t signal the end of the previous generation. We still have mainframes, and we’ll have PCs for a long time. But give it time and, as stated at the beginning of this note, the Center of Money will shift as customers become more comfortable with the new, lighter, sexier model, as the nascent devices gain muscle and polish. This is the future Google and Apple have in mind for their Android/Chrome and iPhone platforms.

    Indeed, after using the iPad for as long as I have, it is becoming clear that for a great many people there is no need for anything more than an iPad. Once OS 4.0 hits the iPad will be a great only computer for a great many people.

  • Can We Stop Bombs Made From Hardware Store?

    David A. Graham With so few effective tactics for preventing low-tech attacks, the major consolation is that these measures seem to have driven attackers away from more lethal explosive devices, which are more easily detected, and toward primitive incendiary devices, which are more likely to fail and less deadly. This is good news indeed. A…

    David A. Graham

    With so few effective tactics for preventing low-tech attacks, the major consolation is that these measures seem to have driven attackers away from more lethal explosive devices, which are more easily detected, and toward primitive incendiary devices, which are more likely to fail and less deadly.

    This is good news indeed. A month ago I was coming back from Canada with a couple of friends at the Major crossing on I5 into Washington. One of my friends had under went medical testing 4 days prior, that require a radioactive isotope to be injected into his blood stream. Within 30 seconds of getting into the area where the explosives detectors are housed there was an Customs Agent out with a Geiger counter. We were stopped brought inside, my friend was questioned and they verified the medical testing. Took us an extra 15 minutes, but was still one of the most impressive things I have ever seen.

  • SteriPEN AdventurerOpti & Water Filtration

    The Gear Junkie: Traveling in Nepal last month, the AdventurerOpti was constantly at my side. The product is small, easy to use and quick: Press the button, dip the lamp into your drink, and wait 90 seconds to purify a liter of liquid. As a hiker we take water filtration and purification for granted. In…

    The Gear Junkie:

    Traveling in Nepal last month, the AdventurerOpti was constantly at my side. The product is small, easy to use and quick: Press the button, dip the lamp into your drink, and wait 90 seconds to purify a liter of liquid.

    As a hiker we take water filtration and purification for granted. In the grand scheme of things these little devices are amazing, and hopefully we can get them into the hands of more people who need them on a daily basis.