Dave's Download
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No Skype for Palm Pre
Continue reading… 12 CommentsSkype has no plans to write software for the Palm Pre, a company exec said today. The Internet phoning company says it has plenty on its plate with this week's launch of an iPhone app, and one coming for the BlackBerry in May.
"We want to see how that device sells," COO Scott Durchslag told reporters. "If [the Pre] takes off, it's something we'll consider."
From initial impressions of the iPhone app, the company does have its hands full. Reviews are mixed, with many early users reporting crashes. My own experience was smooth, although call quality varied markedly.
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Evoke Might Be Motorola's Best Touch-Screen Phone Yet
Continue reading… 6 CommentsThe struggling wireless division at Motorola may be getting renewed traction. A new cellphone called the Evoke QA4 is making a good impression in anticipation of its launch next quarter.
The handset is a sleek touch-screen model with a slide-out dialpad. That makes it look vaguely like the upcoming Palm Pre, though the Pre's slider is a full Qwerty keyboard. The Evoke isn't yet a fully powered smartphone, though it has a customizable home screen. It includes widgets that link to MySpace, YouTube and RSS feeds.
Intriguingly, the phone could get added smarts.
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Conficker PC Virus Unlikely to Attack on April Fool's
Continue reading… 9 CommentsThere is a lot of consternation about the threat of the latest big computer virus . Hand wringing about the Conficker virus and the malware it has deposited reached a new heights when 60 Minutes on Sunday reported on the malicious little bug.
The show mentioned that many investigators fear a widespread attack on April 1.
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Shoot-'Em-Up Video Games Improve Vision
Continue reading… 0 CommentsA recent study has shown that playing video games can improve vision. And not just any video games. Researchers found the benefit came in action-packed, first-person shooter games like Call of Duty 2 and Unreal Tournament 2004 -- in Death Match mode.
Playing Sims 2, well, not so much. Those players were the control group in the study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
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Apple iPhone and BlackBerry Users to Get Skype
Continue reading… 3 CommentsiPhone and BlackBerry users will get to end-run charges for cellphone minutes with free software coming from Skype. The popular service already provides millions of users with cheap Internet voice calls over desktop computers and other handsets, including Nokia and Windows Mobile models.
Reports say the Skype software will be available Tuesday at the iPhone App Store. The BlackBerry version is expected in May.
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Google's Cloud is Safer Than My Den
Continue reading… 1 CommentA privacy group is asking federal regulators to force Google to take down its Web-based storage, including the hugely popular GMail. Google should have to prove the data that it stores is secure, says the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
The privacy group cites several known breaches of Google's security, including one this month that exposed some Google Docs to people without permission to see the files. Google had said the breach only affected a sliver of the documents stored and only among users who had previously shared files.
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Apple iPhone 3.0 Update Looks Underwhelming
Continue reading… 13 CommentsMaybe it's unfair to expect more groundbreaking news from Apple's iPhone. But I'm underwhelmed by the updates coming to the smartphone's software.
Most of the iPhone 3.0 changes will make current users happy by keeping their handset competitive. But there didn't seem to be anything particularly new or trendsetting.
The big additions for consumers include cut-and-paste editing, multimedia messaging, system-wide search, and wireless networking directly between iPhones. Other key changes benefit developers for iPhone apps, which already number more than 25,000. More power for developers will mean more power for the phone.
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Dell Adamo Laptop Ill-Timed in Targeting Stylish Buyers
Continue reading… 0 CommentsFlicking concerns about the economy aside, Dell is launching its high-end Dell Adamo laptop later this month for $2,000. The super-thin notebook is clearly more about style than value, a point driven home by its Italian-sounding name and a Website filled with chic models in moody photos.
The Adamo earns a claim to being the world's thinnest notebook, with the Apple MacBook Air a tenth of an inch thicker at its thickest point. Like the Air, the Adamo's frame is cut from a single piece of aluminum. While the Adamo can claim to be thinner in height, the MacBook Air is smaller in width and length.
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Audio: Windows 7 Looks Like a Winner for Microsoft
Continue reading… 5 CommentsMicrosoft has suffered from bad PR, some fair and some unfair, surrounding its last major upgrade to the Windows operating system. Windows Vista was incompatible with some old hardware and software, wouldn't fully run on some hardware touted as "Vista ready," and otherwise left users disappointed and frustrated.
From early testing, many of those problems appear fixed for the next version, Windows 7. I spoke this weekend with WTOP about the promise of Windows 7 from my own experience and the generally upbeat reviews of others.
Windows 7 Looks Like a Winner
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Upgrading an operating system always presents hurdles and unpleasant surprises. Anyone comfortably running Vista, or perhaps even Windows XP, might find nothing compelling about the new system. But perhaps it won't frustrate those who get it pre-installed on a new computer, where it will begin appearing as soon as this fall.
For those who choose to upgrade, this version of Windows 7 may prove value enough to be worth the cost and hassle.
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McCain to Get Interviewed on Twitter
Continue reading… 0 CommentsIn a recent presentation to a conference, Twitter co-founder Evan William noted how President Obama's groundbreaking use of Twitter had fallen off in recent months. And how John McCain's had picked up.
We'll see if McCain truly gets Twitter in an interview to be conducted over the short-form service. He'll answer questions from ABC's George Stephanopoulos for the Sunday morning show, This Week.
Most of McCain's recent Tweets have been about his daily schedule, which amounts to a yawner for most of us. I don't have high hopes for tomorrow, either, recalling my disappointment in another political experiment on Twitter. That debate last summer between Obama and McCain aides hardly left me panting for more.
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Vudu Adds Pandora Music Streaming
Continue reading… 1 CommentVudu said that the music-streaming service Pandora is available on its TV set-top box. Vudu customers can create new music channels and personalize them by adding Pandora's genre picks and "thumbing" songs up and down as they play.
Pandora on Vudu also supports multiple accounts. That enables family members to set up their own Pandora stations and control them with Vudu's nifty remote. It's all part of Vudu's effort, launched late last year, to open its box to other Web-based services as Vudu competes in the increasingly crowded field of streaming Internet entertainment.
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Report That Netflix is Throttling Streams Seems Off the Mark
Continue reading… 1 CommentAn analysis suggests that Netflix is throttling its video streams to his PC, says Riyad Kalla at the Break it Down blog. He suggests Netflix has business and technical reasons for throttling PCs and not Xbox 360 users, which is the case in his experiment.
A wave of comments elsewhere suggests it's an isolated glitch. Or maybe Kalla's Internet provider is limiting the streams.
I'll add my voice to the chorus: Netfix is streaming nicely to our PC. An episode of 30 Rock that we played over the weekend hadthe best-looking Netflix stream that we've seen yet.
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How to Kill the Buzz: Say-Nothing Briefings for the Palm Pre
Continue reading… 2 CommentsAt best, Sprint and Palm left journalists baffled after a webcast that said virtually nothing new about the Palm Pre. At worst, the companies fueled doubts that the phone will live up to the hype.
The partners revealed that the Pre would work with Sprint's usual service plans. That was about it. Yawn. They did also reiterate that the Pre would arrive sometime before July.
Maybe they felt compelled to do so after recent rumors the phone would be delayed. But those reports had quickly faded, anyway.
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Roku Player to Soon Search Amazon, Add 10 Sources by Holidays
Continue reading… 5 CommentsThe Roku Player recently added Amazon Video on Demand. I've now tried it and can say it works as smoothly as the box's original Netflix streaming. But it can be cumbersome to find a title among the 40,000 available from Amazon. Roku feels our pain and will soon add a search function to enable users to pull out a specific movie or TV show.
That's just one of the changes coming to the Roku box in the coming months, says Tim Twerdahl, the company's VP of consumer products. The device maker is working with several other content providers and expects to start unveiling new partners this summer. Roku expects to add about 10 new "channels" by the holidays, turning its device into a wide-open conduit for delivering Internet entertainment to the TV.
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Dell All-in-One PC Takes Aim at the Family Hub
Continue reading… 3 CommentsThe kitchen is becoming a popular target for PC makers, as Dell joins the hunt with an all-in-one aimed at being the new family hub. Dell's offering falls between a high-end model from HP and budget counter-top PCs from netbook makers like Asus.
The Dell Studio One 19 adds some style with a widescreen monitor surrounded by a colored frame. Playing to Dell's strength, the PC offers a range of options including processor, memory, and graphics. Other choices include wireless networking, webcam and Blu-ray Disk player.
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New iPod Shuffle Uses Voice to Take the Shuffle Out
Continue reading… 0 CommentsApple unwrapped an update to its Shuffle music player. That it is smaller with twice the capacity is pretty much progress to be expected. The bigger news is that the new Shuffle uses voice to finally bring a bit of organization to all those songs.
A computerized voice can announce which song and artist is playing. That's nice enough -- but a user probably knows the songs they've loaded. The voice is more useful in enabling the Shuffle to handle playlists, allowing listeners to organize their favorite tunes by mood, style or even person for a shared Shuffle.
It's just one of a crop of tiny devices turning to voice for navigation. Unlike others, including the BlueAnt Bluetooth headset, the Shuffle only speaks and doesn't respond to voice commands. At least not yet.
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Apple iPhone to Help Keep Wozniak Cutting the Rug
Continue reading… 0 CommentsSocial networking can help with more than social lives, with campaigns promoting bands, celebrities and even everyman careers. Apple pioneer Steve Wozniak is tapping Facebook and Twitter to keep him on Dancing with the Stars, where his initial appearance was panned by the judges. Soon up is an iPhone app for voting, reports Sharon Gaudin at Computerworld.
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Audio: A Home Office on the Cheap
Continue reading… 3 CommentsIt no longer costs a bundle to set up a home office. That's particularly good news in a hard economy, where newly unemployed find themselves having to look for a job or take on freelance assignments at home. Free software and Web services are just a few of the ways that tech can save us money these days.
A Home Office on the Cheap
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I spoke this weekend with WTOP about a couple of places to find free replacements for Microsoft Office. My favorites include Lotus Symphony from no less than IBM, and one assembled by volunteers called OpenOffice.
Other free options include Google Docs and Zoho, which offer online software that does just about everything a job seeker would need. Also online are free fax services, including Faxzero and K7.
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Legacy Locker Frees Digital Assets from Password Purgatory
Continue reading… 2 CommentsPasswords and usernames are the worst part of digital living. They're even worse when it comes to digital death. All those multiple accounts get locked in password purgatory -- and sometimes worse. They can permanently shut out family and friends from crucial assets and communications after someone dies.
So it's easy to get the idea behind the new Legacy Locker service that will launch next month. The service goes beyond the typical lists of accounts and passwords that many of us might keep (sticky notes, anyone?). Legacy Locker actively manages the list by periodically accessing accounts, alerting users when it fails and prompting them to update the username and password they have on file.
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Boxee Viewers Again Left in Dark by Hulu, For Now
Continue reading… 0 CommentsThe Boxee effort to connect its service to Hulu videos appears to have stalled with Boxee viewers left in the dark. Hulu cut off a Boxee work around late last week. A back-and-forth ensued as the two sites tussled, with Hulu apparently getting the leg up late Sunday.
At least that's how things played out in a special Twitter feed where you, too, can follow the spat.
