AllThingsD » The Mossberg Solution

A Textbook Case of iPad Fun With Studying

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 01:40:16 +0000

As a kid, I was lucky to have a dad who was a top-notch book-cover maker, wrapping my school textbooks in brown paper bags that he transformed into precisely folded, sharp cornered, blank canvases.

But even Dad’s covers couldn’t fix everything: Some books showed their age with dog-eared pages, highlights, tears and leftover love notes. Plus, they weighed several pounds each, tugging down my JanSport backpack.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I tested a one-stop solution to much of that which ails textbooks: Apple’s iBooks 2. This redesigned iPad app offers enhanced educational textbooks that are, for now, focused on high-school students and cost no more than $15 each. Apple’s smallest and least expensive iPad can store roughly eight to 10 textbooks, along with other content. (High schoolers have an average of four textbooks a year, according to Apple.) The iPad itself weighs just over one pound.

These electronic textbooks include interactive materials that seem like they should’ve been available long ago: multiple-choice questions that can be answered with taps on the screen, embedded videos, dynamic diagrams that change with touch gestures and flash cards for studying important terms in a book.

The big catch is you need an iPad to read these textbooks, and schools or parents may have trouble budgeting for these devices. The least expensive iPad costs $499. Apple argues the low cost of books will offset the cost of the device.

Currently about 1,000 of the iBooks 2 books, 11 of which are textbooks, have new enhancements such as video, dynamic diagrams and study flash cards. A pinch gesture will restore a zoomed-in image to its place in a book.

Also, some people have trouble reading long passages on the iPad’s backlit screen, or find it uncomfortable to hold. In the sun, its reflective surface makes reading nearly impossible.

Currently about 1,000 books, 11 of which are textbooks, have the new iBooks 2 features. These include titles from well-known publishers like Pearson Education, Dorling Kindersley and McGraw-Hill; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt books are coming in time for the start of the next school year.

But the books also include published works from teachers, experts and regular people who used Apple’s new iBooks Author app to create a book. This is a free app for Macs for creating and publishing content. User-created books are approved by Apple and then made available in the iBooks store for free or for a price.

I downloaded several of the new iBooks textbooks onto my iPad, including “Biology,” “Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life,” “Chemistry” and “Life on Earth.” I also downloaded an older AP Biology title without enhancements: Zoomed-in images weren’t in focus, and the book lacked interactive materials.

Delightful animations and gestures abound in these enhanced e-books.

Tap on any image to see it larger and tap different parts of the image to see animations, like an electromagnetic spectrum diagram in a science textbook that showed frequency and wavelength as I tapped on images of infrared lamps and lasers. A two-finger pinch returns the image to its place in the book with a playful animation.

Highlighting works in several colors and readers just hold down a finger and start dragging that finger along text to highlight.

When these books are read with the iPad held in landscape (horizontally), visuals take up large portions of the screen. But when the iPad is in portrait mode, text takes center stage, with smaller representations of each image appearing in the margins. This option to focus on reading could be a real help for kids who are easily distracted. Some titles, however, may only be readable in landscape view.

Study cards, a digital version of the 3-by-5 index cards you used to spend hours making by hand, are a huge timesaver. Every term in a book’s glossary generates its own study card. The front shows the word, and a tap on its corner flips the card to show its definition.

Even highlighting is easier and looks better in iBooks 2: It works in several colors, and rather than turning on highlighting first, readers simply hold down a finger and start dragging that finger along text to highlight. Study cards also are created for every passage you highlight.

But I found a few bugs. The new iBooks 2 app crashed several times and an Algebra 1 book froze in mid-download. The download didn’t complete because my iPad was full, but a notice about this didn’t appear, even after rebooting, until several hours later.

Apple later reported that the file I was trying to download was corrupted, and replaced the file.

And there are other curious omissions. Some parts of these books, like blank lab charts and chapter review questions, didn’t offer a built-in place to enter answers.

For that, I had to create and add a digital note in the book (using the iPad’s on-screen keyboard) or do the unthinkable—use a pencil and paper.

An Apple official said all notes are text-based and there are no current plans for finger or stylus input.

In addition to iBooks, Apple revamped its free iTunes U app, which used to be limited to audio and video lectures for higher education.

Now, iTunes U is available for students in kindergarten through 12th grade and can include all sorts of course components like the new iBooks textbooks, outlines, Web links and apps. This content is free, except for in-app materials including things like textbooks or apps. I downloaded Duke University’s “Introductory Chemistry” in iTunes U and it contained 567 videos, books, documents, apps and Web links.

If anyone can move textbooks into a new realm with interactive, smart gestures, it’s Apple. But iBooks needs to work out a few kinks before it can be used as a full replacement for physical textbooks.

Email katie.boehret@wsj.com.

App Makes Readers' Thoughts an Open Book

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:26:09 +0000

Even the shyest airplane passengers are hard-pressed to remain mum when a seatmate pulls out a book with a familiar cover. Now, thanks to the popularity of e-books, these once visible book covers are shrouded in the nondescript cases of Kindles, Nooks and iPads.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I tried Subtext, a free iPad app designed to enable and encourage conversations based on e-books—not necessarily with fellow plane passengers, but among readers within digital books themselves. A revamped version of Subtext, originally released in October, is available in Apple’s App Store Tuesday.

On the Subtext iPad app, a reader’s profile page, with her shelf of books.

Like Amazon’s Kindle already does, Subtext gives anyone who reads an e-book the ability to make notes, highlight passages and to keep private or share those notes or highlights with other users. But this app goes much further: It also lets readers post questions, polls, quizzes or even Web links that are noted in the margins of the book. Other users respond to these posts and start mini book discussions that can continue indefinitely. Subtext content can be kept private, made visible to all users or made visible only to a user’s friends. Along with comments from fellow readers, Subtext users can see comments marked in blue that are made by a book’s author or other experts.

Unfortunately, Subtext smacks of immaturity when compared with other reading apps like Amazon’s Kindle app and Barnes & Noble’s Nook app. While those work on several devices and operating systems, Subtext works only on Apple’s iPad. It only runs with books from Google Books or those in Adobe’s ePub format, and the process for getting the latter—emailing the book to oneself or downloading the file from a website to the iPad—is clumsy and not intuitive. Co-founder Rachel Thomas said Subtext is actively developing for other platforms.

Another issue is that Subtext is only as good as its users’ involvement. The more people comment and create discussions, the more interesting it will be for others. For this to happen, the app has to lure readers away from the devices and apps they’re already comfortable with, like the Kindle or Nook, or the Kindle, Nook and Apple iBooks apps on the iPad.

I got an early look at the new version of Subtext and found it more self-explanatory than its predecessor. I signed in using my Google account, though users can sign in using a Facebook account or explore the app as a guest. By signing into my Google Account, my shelves were populated with the Google e-books I already purchased. Previews of books give users a sense of what the app does.

A Discussions section neatly organizes all social interactions about books in one place.

Users can tap on any book cover to see all content and social information related to that book. Likewise, tapping on any user profile image lets you visit that person’s shelf. A Featured Shelves section suggests different categories of books like Critics Picks 2011 and 2011′s Most Social Books.

As I used Subtext for the first time, small hint windows floated onto the iPad screen at certain points to demonstrate how things worked. One encouraged me to tap and hold my finger on the screen at a favorite book passage to see options for adding notes to that passage. I tried this a few times, including while reading a line in Tina Fey’s “Bossypants” about working moms with kids. I highlighted this passage and posed a question to all Subtext users: How many kids does Tina Fey have? Someone, who I later found out was Subtext’s co-founder Andrew Goldman, answered about an hour later, saying Ms. Fey has two daughters—a 6-year-old and a 6-month-old.

The Discussions section of the app neatly organizes all social interactions in one place, so people don’t have to skip back through books to see the continued conversations surrounding a question.

I like the way Subtext subtly notifies readers that notes exist: by showing a tiny thumbnail image of the user who posted the note in the margin of a book. Tapping on that image opens the note. I commented on some existing discussions by tapping the Reply button.

I created a note for one book passage using a related Web link, and the steps for doing this were clear and understandable. I kept this visible only to myself; other times, I made notes about passages and shared them only with my friends who I could invite to use Subtext via Facebook or email.

But what’s to stop someone from posting something inaccurate or abusive? Users can flag any note as inappropriate or as a spoiler, and the note is reviewed by the company. Users can vote on others’ comments, and over time, comments with more votes will be more broadly distributed.

As of now, authors and experts have enhanced just 18 books in Subtext, though users have left thousands of notes across books. The few books enhanced by authors or experts were fun to read. Steven Levy remarked on a line in his book, “In the Plex,” that described his travels from San Francisco to Tokyo, Beijing, Bangalore and Tel Aviv: “Newsweek paid for my trip, shelling out over $10,000 for my expenses. Kind of ironic because a couple of years later, Newsweek itself sold for $1.”

Picking the Brightest, Most Efficient Bulb

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:41:30 +0000

The light bulb used to be one of the simplest hardware-store purchases. Now a walk down the lighting aisle prompts an assortment of questions. Is it energy efficient? Will it switch on fast? Can I put it on a dimmer? What is a lumen? How long will it last? Why so pricey? Why is it a weird color?

[ See post to watch video ]

Here’s a brief guide to some bulb basics, with help from Consumer Reports ratings, and a peek at what the future holds for the light bulb (hint: lower prices and remote control).

The Big Three Plus One

Bulbs can be divided into three main categories: incandescents, compact fluorescents (CFLs) and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). We’re most familiar with incandescents, which make use of technology from over 100 years ago. These cost the least, but emit heat and use up the most energy. An incandescent lasts an average of 1,000 hours, or 125 days when used for eight hours a day.

Lighting Science Group’s World Bulb uses less than 13 watts and will cost less than $15 a bulb.

More recently, halogen incandescent bulbs have become popular. The bulbs, which cost as little as $3 for two, look and behave like incandescents by dimming and turning on immediately, but use less energy. The Philips EcoVantage line, which became available in April, uses 28% less energy: A 72-watt bulb replaces a 100-watt, and a 43-watt bulb replaces a 60-watt. Halogen incandescents last as long as a traditional incandescent bulb.

Compact fluorescents, the spiral bulbs that became popular about five years ago, use less energy than incandescents but made a rough first impression. Compared with incandescents, compact fluorescents can appear harsher in color and most don’t turn on immediately. They’re made of glass, like incandescents, cost about $5 to $10 each and have an estimated average lifespan of 10,000 hours, or about 3½ years at eight hours a day. They contain a small amount of mercury and can be recycled at stores like Home Depot.

LEDs, which look roughly like the incandescents we’re used to, are the latest hit in energy-efficient bulbs. They’re also the most expensive, costing around $20 to $60 a bulb, though this will drop in coming months as they become more prevalent. These bulbs, which don’t contain mercury, turn on immediately, even in cold weather. Some are made of a durable plastic and many can be dimmed. Their light-emitting surfaces remain cool to the touch. The hue of light from these LED bulbs appears more like that of the traditional incandescents. They are estimated to save up to 85% more energy than standard incandescents, with a lifespan of 20,000 to 50,000 hours, or 20 to 40 years. At seven hours a day, one bulb could last an average of 17 years.

New Labeling Explained

For years, we’ve measured light bulbs by watts, which indicate how much energy a bulb uses. But bulb brightness is measured in lumens. Many of the new light bulbs’ boxes list lumens and include helpful notes about how the bulb compares with the wattage you are looking to replace. An incandescent 40-watt bulb gets replaced with a 450-lumen bulb; a 60-watt bulb with a 800-lumen bulb; a 75-watt bulb by a 1,100 lumen; and a 100 watt by a 1,600 lumen.

The Philips L Prize Bulb consumes less than 10 watts and has a lifespan of more than 25,000 hours.

More light bulbs are now packaged with a “Lighting Facts” label. Besides lumens, this may include factors like lumens per watt (bulb efficiency); watts (energy used to make the light); correlated color temperature, which indicates cool or warm color (about 2700 Kelvin replicates what we’re familiar with in a traditional incandescent); and a color-rendering index (the measurement of a light’s appearance on objects).

Best in Show

Consumer Reports recently tested several bulbs for factors like brightness, warm-up time, light distribution and actual lumens. The $10 GE Energy Smart SAF-T-GARD earned the highest overall ranking for 60-watt equivalent spiral CFL bulbs.

The $25 Philips AmbientLED 12.5W ranked best overall in the 60-watt equivalent A19 style (the typical pear-shape found in incandescent bulbs) covered bulb category.

Future Is Bright

Lighting Science Group Corp., maker of Home Depot’s EcoSmart bulbs, unveiled its sub-$15 World Bulb in December. This is a redesigned, 60-watt-replacement LED bulb that uses less power than the 13 watts of the company’s current equivalent bulb. It’ll be available in India in February and later this year in the U.S.

Lighting Science Group also has paired with Google to create the Android@Home Intelligent LED bulb, which people will be able to control using an Android smartphone, tablet or a computer. The bulb, which is expected to come out before June, will have an embedded chip and works with a gateway box that hooks into a router.

By June, Philips Lighting North America will debut its L Prize Bulb, an LED bulb that was the first to win the Department of Energy’s “L Prize,” an award for energy efficiency. Designed to replace a 60-watt incandescent, the LED bulb consumes less than 10 watts, according to Philips. In rigorous testing, the Energy Department said, the bulb had a useful lifetime of more than 25,000 hours. The bulb will likely start out at about $50.

Picking a Bulb

Light-bulb savings calculators found online, like one from National Geographic, give people a rough idea of how much they may save over time with incandescent, compact fluorescent and LED bulbs.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com

Digging Deeper Into Roots With Spruced-Up Ancestry.com

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:59:53 +0000

When my great grandfather signed his World War I draft registration card in 1917, I’m pretty sure he never imagined I’d be examining it 95 years later with a touch screen sitting on my lap.

This week, I took a fresh look at this and several other gems from my family history with help from a company that has led the charge in online genealogy for 15 years: Ancestry.com. Thanks to mobile apps, other users and a new ability to synchronize content between the Web and desktop software, Ancestry has grown into a robust tool.

The World War I draft card for the author’s great grandfather.

Since I last tested Ancestry in 2006, the company has revamped its desktop software program, Family Tree Maker, so the program can synchronize with Web-based data on Ancestry.com. It’s now available as a mobile app for the iPhone, iPad and Android phones. And the site holds over eight billion records, including content from a partnership with the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

The addition of mobile apps plus the syncing feature make Ancestry.com more useful and will bring me back to the site more often. I found several new things on Ancestry this time around, including more census data, ship manifests for two cruises an aunt took, and more suggested family-tree data from other users.

I tested Ancestry.com, its iPhone and iPad apps and the Family Tree Maker desktop software on a Mac. I found a computer to be the best tool for inputting family information like names, birth dates, death dates and locations using Ancestry.com and the Family Tree Maker software. The iPad app was the most enjoyable way of exploring my family-tree records. The site’s pricing can be confusing given the various membership and access levels.

A simple right-to-left swipe on the iPad screen shifted my view of the tree from one branch to the next. In four swipes, I dove back in time to read about my mother’s father’s mother’s mother, Florence Antonia Ford, and her family in the 1910 Census record. Using the iPad on my lap, related records from Ancestry felt more personal than seeing them on a computer. A pinch-to-zoom gesture let me clearly read names and details in each record. (Records can be magnified on a computer screen as well, which is helpful when studying small cursive writing or type, like a 1935 passenger list for a cruise to Bermuda that included my Great Aunt Romayne’s name.)

I was delighted to find data I entered on Ancestry.com six years ago was still in my account, which saved me the trouble of inputting everything again. A new feature called TreeSync let me synchronize all of my family-tree information over to my Family Tree Maker desktop software, and vice versa. After using the Ancestry app on my iPad and adding records to my family tree, I easily synced that data with my desktop software by clicking a top-right button when I next opened the Family Tree Maker.

Users who have spent years on Family Tree Maker software, which has been around for 23 years, will be able to sync data from their PCs to the Web version of their family trees. They can now opt to make their trees public for all Ancestry users to access, thus growing the online database.

I found the desktop software to be more heavy-duty than the website and mobile apps, but its interface is a bit antiquated in comparison.

Winston Churchill’s family tree seen via Ancestry.com’s app on the iPad.

Whenever Ancestry.com has a “hint” to show you about a name you entered on your tree, a green leaf appears beside that name. Selecting that leaf lets you see anything in the Ancestry database that may be associated with that name. These could include paper records scanned in by Ancestry.com or content entered by other people. You can view these hints and, if applicable, merge that data with your own after viewing a side-by-side comparison of your information and the new information.

You can share your findings with friends via Facebook, Twitter or email. When I saw my grandfather’s signature on his World War I draft card, I clicked one button and shared this digitized memento from 1917 with friends and family on Facebook. Content shared from Ancestry.com can be seen by other people, even if they don’t have an account, for up to 14 days. You also can keep everything private.

I know quite a bit about my family history, thanks to work my grandfather did years ago, and this helped me with entering names and knowing which hints were relevant or not. For example, an Ancestry-suggested hint that a record for Florence Ladley was for Florence Antonia Ford in my tree wasn’t accurate. I made the most progress when I called my parents for more names and dates.

Ancestry.com offers a free 14-day trial, after which fees range from $13 to $35 a month, depending on six-month or monthly memberships and whether a person is paying for U.S. Discovery (all records in the U.S.) or World Explorer (unlimited access, including records from other countries) access. The Family Tree Maker software, which starts at around $32, can be downloaded to Macs or Windows PCs or bought in stores. Combined pricing for the desktop software and access to the website starts around $40.

Email katie.boehret@wsj.com.

Using Another Screen to Interact With the TV

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 23:56:27 +0000

This week families will gather to celebrate the holidays over home-cooked meals, gift exchanges and fights over the TV remote.

That last annual tradition may be dying off, thanks to changing technology habits. More people now watch TV while simultaneously using second screens like tablets, laptops and smartphones. A recent Nielson study showed 70% of tablet owners and 68% of smartphone owners said they use their devices while watching television.

[ See post to watch video ]

I, too, find myself watching TV in this multi-tasking mode. This week, I’ve been testing three free apps that aim to get viewers more engaged in shows as they watch them on TV. Ironically, these apps require people to look away from the TV and at their second screens, but in my experience, this actually worked. I tried Yahoo’s IntoNow, which runs on iPhone and iPad and Android smartphones; Showtime Social, which works on the iPad; and Shazam, which works on nearly all mobile platforms, including Apple, RIM, Android and Windows Phones.

I had fun with these apps, and each uses a different method to draw in users. IntoNow and Showtime Social poll viewers during shows, Shazam displays behind-the-scenes footage, and IntoNow displays related social-network updates and live discussions. The apps virtually introduced me to fans of shows I liked, reminding me of my freshman year of college when I piled into a dorm room with 20 people (many of whom I didn’t know) to watch the series finale of “Felicity”: The show got more interesting in the company of other fans.

The Showtime Social iPad app polled ‘Dexter’ viewers to gauge reactions to the show.

Unfortunately, some aspects of these apps aren’t designed to work with pre-recorded shows—and more viewers, especially the ones likely to use a second screen, are recording their TV these days. Showtime Social must be used as a show airs. Shazam works with pre-recorded TV shows, but to work with commercials, it must be used live or for as long as an ad campaign is still running. And though IntoNow will work with a pre-recorded show, discussions and related Twitter content aren’t live when you use the app after the show airs.

I started with Yahoo’s IntoNow app on the iPad. It has a green TV icon in the top left corner that, when I tapped it, listens to whatever is playing. Using its patented SoundPrint technology, IntoNow figured out what was on by matching it against a database of over 160 million hours of TV.

I hesitated to use IntoNow while watching my pre-recorded shows, especially the season finale of “The Amazing Race,” for fear of accidentally seeing something that would spoil the ending. The app asks users who contribute to discussions to mark their comments with a spoiler alert symbol, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

While watching a football game, IntoNow provided expanded statistics and other team news.

IntoNow was a real help while watching football: Statistics showed up in Game Info, and other team news appeared in an Around the League section. It also brought in Twitter updates from the @NFL_Football Twitter account. But when I paused the game for 20 minutes to fold laundry, I didn’t want to look at the app because it showed the live score.

IntoNow failed when I turned on CNN for news of Kim Jong Il’s death. The app thought I was watching the regularly scheduled program, a show called “Black in America.” IntoNow’s vice president said the app has trouble with unplanned programming, something the company is addressing.

The Showtime Social iPad app only works when a show is airing, and it prompts viewers to share their reactions to the show. I watched an episode of “Dexter” with this app opened, and questions popped up every so often, polling the audience. These questions were playful enough that even someone like me, who hadn’t watched “Dexter” in two years, could answer them. More thought-provoking questions delved into symbolism and future predictions.

When Showtime Social wasn’t asking polling questions, it prompted me to comment on how the show made me feel. I tapped on an icon under the “I am…” description and chose from happy, shocked, sad or angry. A drop-down menu within each emotion offered several iterations; the “angry” category had 13 emotions to choose from.

Viewers using Shazam could buy things that they saw on USA Network’s ‘Covert Affairs.

Shazam is an app known best for identifying songs as they play, but it also works with movies, TV shows, ads and music videos to display extra features. To use it with TV, the Shazam logo appears on screen during shows to remind users that they can use the app with a tablet or smartphone; in the case of short commercials, this moment passes quickly.

Since many shows are on hiatus around the holidays, it was hard to find live examples for testing this app. But past examples include the Shazam logo appearing in an Old Navy commercial, and people who used Shazam while watching could get a free pair of jeans. It also worked with Oxygen’s “The Glee Project,” showing viewers the full version of judge’s deliberations if they tapped the Shazam button. And when Shazam was used with USA Network’s “Covert Affairs,” viewers could buy things that they saw on the show.

Instead of just watching TV, these apps help you get a lot more out of a show—as long as you’re watching live.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

The Shazam app works with pre-recorded TV shows throughout the show. An earlier version of this column said Shazam only works when its logo appears on a TV screen.

A Few New Reasons to Reunite With Twitter.com

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:36:41 +0000

Twitter is making a bid to lure us all back.

[ See post to watch video ]

Like many of the 100 million monthly active Twitter users, I tweet all the time, but I stopped doing it through Twitter’s own site, Twitter.com, ages ago. That’s because tons of desktop and mobile apps, such as TweetDeck and even Twitter for BlackBerry, are simply more feature-filled and easier to use.

Now Twitter has revamped its website, deconstructing its menus to be more approachable and easier to use, even for Twitter newbies. So I returned to the site and found three features that make a big difference. Meanwhile, two features I hoped would, by now, be available on the site still aren’t.

Twitter is a short-messaging social network that limits each user’s posts, or tweets, to 140 characters. Some people tweet such mundane things as what they ate for lunch, while others tweet play-by-play accounts of live events or links to news stories. You’ll only see someone’s tweets if you “follow” them, and followers can retweet, mark as a favorite or reply to a tweet.

The new Twitter is slowly rolling out to all users over the next few weeks, and will automatically replace the old version of the site.

Easier on the Eyes

The first thing people will notice about the new Twitter is that everything that was once hugging the right side of the screen has shifted to the left. A black banner across the top gives users the feeling of being anchored—an improvement over the past, lost feeling. The Twitter app for iPhone and Android devices also has this black banner.

Twitter ‘Stories’ helps users keep up with news.

Better Reading and Browsing

Two features (one new and one improved) found under Twitter’s Discover tab solve the problem of what to read given the overwhelming number of choices in this social network.

The Stories feature, though in its infancy, has the potential to become the first thing people skip to when they open Twitter.com. Here, Twitter displays 10 stories it thinks you’ll want to read. These are curated using an algorithm: Twitter studies the accounts you follow and serves up similar stories. Twitter also considers your location and which stories you interact with so that, over time, it will give you more personalized offerings.

Done right, Stories could solve the problem of missing news on Twitter, where tweets speed by in an ever-changing stream and can be missed unless users look at the site all the time.

Browse Categories is a redesigned, improved version of Browse Interests. It groups people you might want to follow by category. For example, Entertainment includes Tom Hanks, Chelsea Handler and the Twitter account for the movie reviews website Rotten Tomatoes. This will be a help for people new to Twitter, as it can be hard to figure out how to get started.

Following the Tit-for-Tat

Conversations on Twitter can be hard to follow. That’s mostly because when people reply to a tweet, only that response—not the original tweet—gets sent to followers. Now, users can catch up on entire conversations by clicking on any tweet to read the back-and-forth between two people.

Feeling More Popular

Social networks are, of course, far more interesting when people actually interact with you. Unless you’re famous, an avid Twitter user with plenty of followers or both, Twitter can feel a bit stale after a while.

The Connect tab has two subcategories: Interactions and Mentions. Interactions is a new feature that displays more of the hidden activities related to your Twitter account, making you feel more engaged with the network. These Interactions list whenever another user mentions your username, “favorites” one of your tweets, retweets one of your tweets, follows you or adds you to a public list.

As always, Mentions still includes only the tweets in which your username is mentioned. Some people will be frustrated that the new location for this category is less prominent than in the old version of Twitter.com.

Short on URLs

Twitter has always lagged behind other sites and apps when it comes to URL shortening—taking a long, messy web link and automatically shrinking it down. Most people think that Twitter doesn’t shorten URLs at all. That’s in part because it only shortens them to 20 characters (still too long) and doesn’t obviously notify users that it’s doing this.

Also, the tweet-composing box doesn’t show a preview of what the shortened URL will look like before you share it with followers. Without a smarter built-in URL shortener, Twitter forces people to use other services, like bitly.com, to shorten links.

Retweet, But No Comment

Twitter still doesn’t let its users retweet, or share someone else’s tweet to their followers with their own added comment. (Some apps refer to this as quoting a tweet.) This means I can only re-share exactly what someone else posted—there’s no way to include what I think of the tweet. Almost all of Twitter’s apps enable adding comments in retweets. A spokeswoman for Twitter says this feature is often requested and the company is actively considering it.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com

In Your Hands, Just What You Want to Read

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 05:05:09 +0000

Personalized-reading apps save you from pawing through the Web for news and bring you more of what you want to read. Until now, these have been mostly found on tablets like the iPad, but Wednesday, the first of those apps moves to the smartphone for reading on the go.

[ See post to watch video ]

A new personalized-reading app for the iPhone is being launched by Flipboard, the design-centric company that led the customized-news charge with its app for iPad. News can be rapidly browsed with a thumb flick from the hand holding the iPhone, like a digital Rolodex. It’s the kind of thing you’ll want to show off to friends.

Flipboard’s iPad rivals aren’t far behind in the jump to phones, though each take a unique approach in how to a user personalizes content. Zite is an algorithm-generated personalized-magazine app for the iPad that plans to release an iPhone app very soon, perhaps even this week. A phone version is planned for AOL Editions, a personalized news magazine delivered to the iPad once a day. Yahoo’s Livestand app for iPad will expand next year to additional platforms, including Android tablets and possibly phones, according to a spokesman.

Flipboard for iPhone app

Google has been working on a personalized-reading app that individuals close to the company say will run on Android tablets and phones, the iPad and the iPhone. It will be released this month with the ability to use multiple accounts, offline reading and over 100 partners, according to the individuals.

For the past week, I’ve been testing a pre-release version of Flipboard for iPhone. I’ve also revisited Zite, AOL Editions, Yahoo Livestand and Flipboard on the iPad to check out some updated features in these apps. You may like one more than another depending on how much tweaking you want to do to the app’s settings. Most allow for users to take an active role in helping the app decide what kinds of things they want to read. Others, like Zite and AOL Editions, add an automated method to the process.

Flipboard for iPhone is enhanced by Flipboard Accounts, which was added to the iPad app last month. The feature lets families sharing iPads give each person an account that saves personalized settings and account information—including from Facebook and Twitter. The first time I signed into my Flipboard account on the iPhone made my phone feel a lot more useful. As I waited in line at Starbucks, I flipped through dozens of news bits and images from Flipboard partners like Bon Appetit and ProPublica, Facebook updates from my friends and tweets I follow. The bottom of each screen looked like a page flapping in the breeze—Flipboard’s playful way of reminding you to page forward for more content.

Zite’s iPad app

A lot is packed into each Flipboard nibble, though I never felt a screen was too crowded. A tap on each tweet pulled up a cartoon word bubble from which I could opt to mute tweets from someone, re-share content or star it as a favorite. Facebook updates displayed who else “liked” a status and let me add comments. A mini version of the red Flipboard ribbon, which opens settings on the iPad app, appears on the iPhone.

The Zite app for iPad curates its magazine content by studying a user’s reading behavior, though readers also can make manual tweaks. Zite can study who users follow on Twitter to generate a magazine filled with similar content. I’ve used Zite almost every morning for months without having to make any adjustments.

Starting this week, Zite has its first branded channel: Lululemon Athletica, which offers health articles and fitness tips. Zite also has multiple accounts for those who share an iPad.

AOL Editions

AOL’s Editions iPad app is a digital magazine that publishes once a day and has a beginning and an end. This means you can read the entire thing each day—a rarity in the online world of continuous updates. But it also means content can feel outdated at the end of the day. AOL Editions takes an algorithmic approach that can be helped manually. It incorporates Facebook and iCal calendars, so the first page shows calendar events and birthdays. As of October, it can now be read in landscape or portrait view.

Yahoo’s Livestand feels sluggish, with spinning circles appearing on the screen almost every time I tapped on something. The home screen is clearly focused on Yahoo content, according to the large Featured on Livestand section that takes up most of each screen. Even when I selected content I wanted in my Livestand, it was buried in a book labeled Personal Mix, and then I had to dig through sections within this book.

This month, Yahoo will add Twitter sharing (users can currently share to only Facebook or via email), and early next year Livestand will incorporate personal Twitter and Facebook feeds as topics. A subscription model is planned for certain publications.

Yahoo Livestand

Personalized-reading apps can change the way you consume information on the iPad—and they’ll soon start changing the way you consume information on smartphones.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com.

Hotel Booking for Procrastinators or the Picky

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 23:39:55 +0000

After a long Thanksgiving weekend spent with family, the idea of booking a hotel for a Christmas and/or a New Year’s Eve getaway may sound better than ever.

[ See post to watch video ]

For the past few weeks, I’ve been testing two digital tools that use distinct criteria for booking hotel rooms: HotelTonight and Room 77. HotelTonight aims to get people into rooms no matter how late they book, and Room 77 wants to get people into the specific room they want.

HotelTonight is a free app that works strictly for same-day hotel bookings. Once installed on an iPhone or Android smartphone, it will display about three steeply discounted hotel rooms per city after noon local time each day, when hotel representatives know what will be available that night.

Right now, the app can find hotels in some 28 cities, as well as several nearby getaway destinations (like Cape Cod for Boston). HotelTonight plans to add more cities like Tampa, Fla., and Palm Springs, Calif., and will expand in existing cities. An iPad app is planned for early next year.

HotelTonight’s deals for San Francisco hotels.

HotelTonight seems more serious about getting guests in beds than big-name rival sites. Many competitors, including Travelocity and Hotwire, offer same-day hotel bookings, but they don’t reveal the name of the hotel or its location until you book it. HotelTonight shows all information about a hotel. Another difference is HotelTonight lets people snag rooms until 2 a.m., instead of the usual cutoff time of 11 p.m.

But HotelTonight users can’t specify the type of room or bed they want. All rooms are just guaranteed to sleep two adults.

Using the HotelTonight app on an Android device and an iPhone, I found good hotel deals in my home city of Washington, D.C., as well as other cities like Boston. A categorization system labels each hotel as basic, hip, classic, boutique, elegant, luxe or solid.

Among the deals were the Washington Court (classic), very close to D.C.’s Union Station for $99 instead of $147; Chicago’s Wyndham Blake Hotel (solid) for $379 rather than $455; and the Langham (luxe) in Boston’s financial district for $199 rather than $275.

One getaway near Washington, D.C., was the famed Inn at Perry Cabin in St. Michaels, Md. The deal offered rooms for $195 a night rather than $215, and guests could stay up to five nights starting on a Monday.

Room 77 is a free website and an app for iPhone and Android that gives guests the inside scoop on hotels and rooms before they book. It looks at some 750,000 rooms and offers details like size, views and which floors are the quietest.

The website’s “Heard in the Lobby” offers tips from the concierge and hotel staff. Having stayed at the Garden Court Hotel in Palo Alto many times, I agreed with one tip for that hotel that said, “Light sleepers should request a room facing the Borders’ parking lot or Cowper Street to avoid any noise that might float up from the courtyard.”

Room 77 shows detailed information on hotels, including sample views, such as those from rooms in a hotel in Hawaii.

What I found most useful on Room 77 was that some hotels include floor maps that let you see more clearly how the hotel is laid out. By selecting a room on the floor map, you can see Google Earth images of the views from that room.

You can narrow room choices to floor (high or low), view (important or not important), elevator (near or far) and connecting room (yes or don’t care). A data sorter on the left of the screen lets you narrow hotels to those with free Wi-Fi, free parking (a big plus in cities), free breakfast or free hotel shuttles.

I used Room 77 to investigate the Hilton Riverside in New Orleans, where I’ll be staying for a wedding in March. I narrowed my search to rooms on high floors that had views of the Mississippi River and were far from the elevator.

Unfortunately, the wedding-party discount couldn’t apply on Room 77, so I couldn’t actually book through the site.

(While Room 77 doesn’t offer steep discounts on rooms, it displays beside each hotel prices offered at big-name sites like Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, Hotels.com, Booking.com and others.)

If you do use Room 77 to book, a feature called Room Concierge asks you to fill in your room preferences, including specific room numbers (if applicable). The largely automated service informs hotels of your request and follows up until a room that best matches your preferences is found, all the while sending you updates on the status of your request.

Room 77 is exploring ways people who book hotels elsewhere can use its room-finding service.

Email Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com.

A Kindle Swipes Fine, but Still Hooked on a Nook

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 23:23:22 +0000

Despite the advantages of full-featured touchscreen tablets like the iPad, plenty of people opt for e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle, finding them more comfortable in the hand and easier on the eyes.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I tested the new Kindle Touch in a head-to-head comparison with Barnes & Noble’s Nook Simple Touch. The Kindle Touch includes several features that Kindle fans have been waiting for, particularly better navigation. The Nook Simple Touch, which came out last summer, dropped in price to $99 and received a software update last week.

Navigating these touchscreens is a breeze, and you’ll be happy reading with either the Kindle Touch or Nook Simple Touch. Both feature E-Ink, nonreflective screens without backlights—great for long stretches of reading. These smaller devices are also lighter than a tablet.

Overall, I prefer the Nook for its better price and usability.

The Nook

Each e-reader costs $99, but the Kindle Touch comes pre-loaded with so-called special offers—ads that take over the device’s screen when it’s in sleep mode and appear whenever you touch its Menu button. A Kindle Touch without on-screen ads is $139, or $40 more than the ad-free Nook. A Kindle Touch with a 3G Internet connection costs $149; Barnes & Noble doesn’t offer a 3G Nook Simple Touch.

Physically, the Kindle Touch is a bit taller, while the Nook is slightly wider with a contoured back that’s easier to hold. The Kindle Touch relies solely on tapping or swiping on the left or right of the device’s touchscreen to turn pages. Nook users can turn pages using these methods or physical buttons on the left and right sides of the screen.

I prefer the option of physical buttons so I can hold the device and not move my hand each time I want to turn the page. These buttons are also handy at times when touching the screen isn’t ideal, like after using suntan lotion at the beach.

Though the Kindle does a lot of the same things the Nook does, Amazon’s clever terms make these same actions sound more whimsical. When using the cloud to sync content and page location across devices, Amazon calls this Whispersync. Amazon’s community-generated encyclopedia is named Shelfari.

Three notable new features work with Amazon’s Kindle Touch.

X-Ray is a feature that displays book-report-like data points when someone taps the screen at any point while reading one of “thousands” (Amazon wouldn’t give a more specific number) of titles.

The Kindle

This could be a real boon for non-fiction readers, but since I don’t read a lot of non-fiction, X-Ray wasn’t too useful in my books. While reading John Grisham’s “The Litigators,” I used X-Ray to read Wikipedia descriptions of Chicago and Big Pharma. This data can also come from Shelfari.

The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is available to Amazon Prime members—Prime costs $79 a year—and lets users borrow from over 5,000 titles. People who use this can borrow one book each month with no due date. I tried this and found books in the Kindle store listed with “borrow for free” icons where a price would normally display. I tapped this option beside “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins, and the book was sent to my Kindle. An on-screen message notified me that I couldn’t borrow again until Dec. 1.

Finally, Kindle users can borrow books from their public library via easy, wireless downloads, though these are bound by the same lending rules as physical library books. I borrowed a book from my Washington, D.C., public library by browsing available Kindle books on the library’s website and virtually checking out a book after entering my library card number. I followed a link from there to Amazon.com, where I selected the “Get Library Book” box, which appeared where “Add to Cart” is normally found. Your Kindle must be using a Wi-Fi connection—not 3G—to get these books.

The Nook can only load library books via a clumsy USB cord transferring process. A Barnes & Noble spokeswoman said the company plans to offer Wi-Fi downloading of library books early next year.

If you’d rather lend books to fellow e-reader users, Kindle and Nook can do this. Books can be lent to friends for 14 days, during which time the book’s owner can’t read them.

The latest Nook software update makes improvements like the ability to turn pages faster. Both devices enable highlighting passages, though the Nook doesn’t allow public highlighting like the Kindle, which shares highlights with other readers. Both can send book details to friends via Facebook and Twitter. Kindle offers a text-to-speech function for books, which Nook lacks.

The Kindle Touch is a huge improvement on Amazon’s last Kindle, but Barnes & Noble’s Nook Simple Touch maintains its lead in this category.

Write to Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com.

Snip and Save or Put a Pin in It: Two Ways to Share Web Faves

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 23:15:30 +0000

I remember something better if I write it down and I draw maps when I’m giving directions. I’m a visual person.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I focused on two websites made for people like me: Pinterest and Snip.it. If you see content on the Web, you can opt to “pin” those things to a pinboard on Pinterest, or “snip” them to a specific collection on Snip.it. There are plenty of companies that save websites or lists, but Pinterest and Snip.it display content in a pleasing, easy-to-digest manner that can be shared with others.

Pinterest is a favorite site of design enthusiasts and do-it-yourselfers. The site launched in March but is still only accessible by invitation, though you can get an invitation at http://j.mp/vMMaau. Snip.it, which launched Tuesday, encourages more sharing of news content and user opinions in a format that resembles a personal blog. People add content to these sites by clicking on a browser tool.

The trouble is many of us already suffer from social-network fatigue. We keep up with Facebook and maybe one other network, like Twitter or Google+. But maintaining our presence on these sites and browsing through shared content can feel like a chore. So are Pinterest and Snip.it worth the additional commitment?

A look at Snip.it founder Ramy Adeeb’s collections of stories he is following.

Snip.it focuses on sharing stories from the Web about social and political issues, technology, business and travel. And it displays these stories with categories listed at the top of the page. The headline, original sharer’s commentary, time of sharing and source for each story are posted along with an image from each story. This adds up to a lot of text and makes the site look cluttered.

And sharing news with friends and creating mini blogs as Snip-it encourages, is something I do with Twitter. Though Twitter isn’t nearly as visually arresting or as verbose.

Snip.it users can log in via Facebook or create an account. If they use Facebook, Snip.it will scour past shared content on Facebook to share on Snip.it, thus starting accounts with shared collections. The site asks users to select a few topics they care about and then leads them to related collections, to which they can subscribe and see on their Snip.it home pages.

The coolest feature is a banner running at the top of the browser as you’re reading an article someone shared. This banner contains other stories shared by the person whose article you’re reading. This gives people the ability to read curated collections of related stories.

A pinboard of Quirky Little Things at Pinterest

Pinterest is easy on the eyes and is packed with clever ideas for the home (storing folded sheets in their matching pillowcases), fashion (the trick for tucking jeans into boots) and recipes (making egg sandwiches in muffin pans). It’s available as an iPhone app, and an iPad app is in the works.

Pinterest displays pinned content from people I follow, including people who Pinterest suggests share interests with me, on one seemingly endless page of images. Scrolling through these images has the elegant feel of paging through a glossy, high-end magazine with the ability to pin any of these images to my own pinboards.

Co-founder Ben Silbermann describes Pinterest as uniform enough to browse, but still serendipitous.

Each pinned image displays the name and tiny thumbnail of the person who shared it, as well as comments from others and the number of likes and re-pins it got. The text is small and doesn’t distract from the page. Once in a while, images are repeated if several people you follow all re-pin an item, but Mr. Silbermann says this will be fixed with collapsing pins.

When I started using Pinterest about two months ago, I was quite sure I wouldn’t keep it up. But I check it every day and have started using it to make visual reminder lists, like “To Read” and “Brunch Spots I Forget About.”

Of my 25 Facebook friends who use Pinterest (the site can mine Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and Gmail to find people you know who are on the site), just two are men. I think there’s plenty on the site that would appeal to guys, but it’s understandable that a site with images of ruffled pea coats and Balenciaga purses has more appeal to women.

With its attention to artistry and design, Pinterest is a welcome respite from those busy websites that try to push too much at you at once. Snip.it tries using the same format with different content, but looks congested—at least for now. As a new site, it could quickly improve.

Write to Katherine Boehret at Katie.Boehret@wsj.com

Focus! No Willpower Required.

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 22:30:44 +0000

Sitting at a computer and trying to concentrate can be nearly impossible between incoming email alerts, ever-changing Twitter feeds, new instant message notifications and Facebook lurking a click away in the browser.

Sorry, what was I talking about again?

Sixty-two percent of teens who go online think that the Internet keeps young people from doing more important things, according to the Pew Research Center. And Americans spend more time on Facebook than any other website, says Nielsen.

This week I took a closer look at a few methods to avoid distractions while on the computer. They range from Web browser tools to computer software programs to controls built into the operating system.

Of course, these are of little use if you don’t banish received email. Still, the computer remains the place where people do most of their work. With a little help from one of these tools, you might be startled by how much more you can get done.

Cutting the Cord (Sort of)

Several solutions make computers behave as if they’re not connected to the Internet. Some can be set to a certain amount of time, while others limit social networks and still others limit specific websites.

A software program called Freedom works on Windows PCs and Macs and is free for up to five users. After that, it costs $10 for one copy that works on all computers with the same operating system (like a household with four Macs).

Each time it’s used, Freedom can disable your computer’s networking for up to eight hours. Since most people will try to turn this off, perhaps to quickly check something online, Freedom is designed so it can’t be disabled once a session is started unless a person reboots the entire computer.

Most people won’t do this, because they have several windows and other programs opened and don’t want to take the time to shut down and start up the computer.

In one of my tests, I set a Freedom session to last one hour. I was given the option to maintain access to my local network for things like connecting to a printer or another computer, but I opted to go whole hog. After entering my password (Freedom requires administrator access) and starting the session, I was startled by how much I use the Internet without thinking about it while working.

A $15 program called Anti-Social, made by the same man who created Freedom, specifically turns off social components of the Internet for certain amounts of time. These include Facebook, Twitter, and other programs you name like Skype and email. Anti-Social is currently only available for Macs, but a Windows version is expected to be available in early 2012.

StayFocusd is an example of a free browser extension that limits the time you spend each day on certain specified websites. It works exclusively with Google’s Chrome Web browser. Users can designate how much time each day they want to allow themselves on certain sites.

Setting this up seemed to take a little too much work. For those in need of extreme measures, StayFocusd’s Nuclear option blocks all Internet connections. It can only be disabled by performing a challenge, like correctly retyping a long, heavily punctuated phrase.

Help Has Already Arrived

Some programs that you may already use offer built-in ways of aiding concentration. One example is Microsoft Word for Mac 2011. When used in Full Screen View, all distracting alerts—including pop-up email or instant message alerts, TweetDeck notifications, and even the computer’s clock—are hidden from view. I use this regularly when I’m writing for work, and it helps me a lot.

The Windows and Mac operating systems have built-in parental controls that can limit the amount of overall computer time used by each family member each day. Neither operating system can be set to limit just the amount of online time each family member uses. But both operating systems can be set to limit access to certain websites and programs, so you could potentially set your computer up to disallow access to distracting sites, like Facebook.

Big Brother Is Watching

Another solution is to install monitoring software that tracks behavior and shows you the results. It works a bit like keeping a food journal: Seeing the raw data can shock you into changing your behavior.

I tried RescueTime, which I installed on my PC (it works on Windows or Mac) and it kept a log of the amount of time I spent with each program, including specific websites.

RescueTime sends weekly email summaries, or users can select the program’s icon at any time to see current stats. It collects user data anonymously and reveals how your productivity compares with other users of the product.

RescueTime is offered in a free version and a version that costs $72 a year or $9 a month.

Not everyone will respond the same way to the same distraction-proofing program, but using these types of programs could be the first step toward feeling more productive and in control of your work time.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katie.boehret@wsj.com

A Gadget for the Home Learns by Degrees

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:40:44 +0000

There are few technology products less inspiring than the thermostat. Yet for the past week, I’ve been more captivated by a thermostat than I ever thought possible.

It’s a thermostat called Nest from iPod inventor Tony Fadell’s new start-up, Nest Labs. And like Apple, Nest Labs has taken something you use every day and made it simple and delightful to use.

Nest operates with the same genius wheel user interface as the original iPod, with a digital screen in its center. It connects to your Wi-Fi network, allowing you to control it remotely via an iPhone app or the Web. And its stylish design made of brushed stainless steel is a showpiece.

[ See post to watch video ]

What makes Nest stand out from other programmable thermostats is that it learns your behavioral patterns and creates a temperature-setting schedule from them. Nest has six sensors that can determine things like when you’re away from home.

Suddenly, I can’t imagine my house without a Nest.

Up front, it’ll cost you. Nest will be $249 when it’s available the week of Nov. 14. Installation costs $119 for the first unit and $25 for each additional unit. You can opt to install it yourself, but I strongly suggest ponying up for a professional installation unless you or someone you know has electrical expertise.

Installation took me an hour and a half, including removing my old unit and unplugging six wires, pushing anchors and screws into my wall, attaching the Nest base, clipping and stripping six wires to fit the new system, and using all manner of tools to fit the wires into the base. (Nest comes with four screwdrivers but no needle nose pliers, which are a big help.) After all this, my Nest didn’t run properly. The company sent someone to fix it, who discovered that only three of my system’s wires were attached, mimicking a working system without a fan.

The Nest thermostat.

Setting up Nest’s software was a breeze. Elegantly animated menus and instructions walked me through each step, including setting up my Wi-Fi network, setting my highest and lowest overall temperatures and entering my ZIP Code.

I entered data on my Nest by turning its outer ring left or right to skim through letters, numbers and symbols, and pushing in the center of the device to select each one. A gentle clicking sound — like the old iPod wheel — can be heard as you turn this ring and pass over each character.

At first, Nest doesn’t do much because it’s waiting for you to use it so it can learn your preferences. Turning the outer ring right or left adjusts the temperature. Cranking up the heat several degrees turned the Nest screen red; turning down the heat made the screen blue.

A little green leaf appears on the screen if an adjustment you make sets your system into energy-conserving mode relative to your normal behavior. This tiny symbol made me feel like I earned a gold star at school for good behavior.

Another way Nest teaches people is with on-screen messages that say how long it will take to get to a desired temperature. For example, if I turn my heat up two degrees from 72 degrees, a message on the screen may say, “In 30 minutes,” with a 74 below this message. This data is meant to deter people from making drastic temperature changes.

After two days of use, a message appeared on my Nest saying, “Initial heating schedule learning complete.” If the device’s sensors detect that no one has walked by the Nest in the past two hours, it goes into Away mode, automatically adjusting to the most energy-conserving temperature, set ahead of time.

Nest operates with the same genius wheel user interface as the original iPod, with a digital screen in its center.

If I didn’t agree with any of these learned behaviors, I could tweak the temperatures to my liking, and Nest adjusted to these corrections. After I adjusted the temperature two nights in a row so the house would be cooler when we were sleeping, Nest learned this and automatically adjusted temperatures around 11:30 p.m. We like heat in the morning, so Nest had the heat going when I hopped out of bed.

Nest.com, the website where people can control their device and review schedules and behavior, wasn’t yet live when I tested. The site shows a summary page of your Nest account, which reflects how much time your heat or air conditioning was used per day. A green leaf is awarded to the days on which the least energy was consumed.

To use the Nest app, you need only hold your iPhone in landscape view, and as long as it’s running on the same Wi-Fi network, the thermostat’s account is automatically set up on the iPhone. The iPhone app let me adjust temperatures from afar. One chilly day at work, I opened the Nest app and turned up my heat just before I went home.

People with more than one thermostat in one home can use more than one Nest, and they’ll all communicate with one another, though each can be adjusted to different temperatures. People with multiple homes can put all of their Nests on the same account.

Nest can get automatic software updates that the company says will let it do things in the future like adjusting temperatures according to current local weather and showing how much money temperature adjustments will save on utility bills.

A Device for When You're Hurt, Lost or Feeling Scared

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 22:48:28 +0000

Two weeks ago, alone in a hotel room 3,000 miles from home, I suddenly felt an intense pain in my head, stronger than any headache I’ve ever experienced. Light was unbearable, I felt too dizzy to stand and the nausea was overwhelming. I called my husband in Washington, D.C., and whispered my symptoms, which I now know were most likely the signs of a migraine.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I tested a product I could have used during that scare: the 5Star Responder from GreatCall Inc., a sort of portable OnStar. It’s a 1.8-ounce gadget with a speaker and microphone that clips onto a keychain or shirt. One large center button calls an always on-duty concierge, who knows information about each caller—like medications, preferred hospitals, emergency contacts and the caller’s location (using built-in GPS). Once the situation is assessed, a nurse can speak with the caller, emergency services can be dispatched or, in less urgent scenarios, the agent can stay on the line with the caller.

GreatCall’s 5Star Responder is one of the first truly portable emergency-call devices. It runs on Verizon’s network, giving it coverage anywhere a Verizon phone works. Other emergency-call devices like Medical Alert by LifeStation work in the home and are geared toward seniors who rarely go out.

The 5Star Responder has a speaker, microphone and a button that calls an agent or 911.

The 5Star Responder will be available Wednesday from GreatCall.com and in stores like Wal-Mart and Sears on Oct. 23. It’s $50, plus a $35 activation fee—or $25 if you sign up online. A $15 monthly service fee is applied, with additional family members paying $9 monthly. Also on Wednesday, 5Star Urgent Response will become available as a $15 iPhone app in Apple’s App Store, though the monthly service fees still apply. The website, MyGreatCall.com, where users set up their personal data, also launches.

When It’s Handy

Still, the 5Star Responder is yet another thing people will need to remember to plug in and charge (one charge lasts roughly three days in standby, the company estimates). It also felt noticeably heavy on my keychain. Yet 5Star Responder could really make a difference in situations where people don’t call 911 because they don’t believe they have an emergency, like not taking the symptoms of a heart attack seriously.

The 1.8 ounce device can fit in a small purse or clip onto a keychain.

The device isn’t just for seniors with health problems. Take a child who is too young to have a cellphone and gets separated from his family at a festival. When he presses the 5Star button, an agent determines his location and gets parents on a conference call with the child via the device’s speaker.

The device also could be good for a runner who doesn’t want to carry a heavy smartphone and collapses in pain during a run. Or a person walking in a sketchy neighborhood who wants the agent to talk to him until he gets to his car.

The device will call 911 directly if you hold down the call button for five seconds. If the Responder’s center button is pressed and a caller can’t respond, the agent will try to call the device back and an alternative phone number, such as an emergency contact, before finally dispatching emergency personnel.

Like the Real Deal

To test the 5Star Responder and a prereleased version of the iPhone app, I “suffered” through a variety of pretend scenarios. These included revisiting my above-described migraine, walking alone at night in an unsafe neighborhood, heart-attack-like symptoms and reporting a break-in at my house in the middle of the night.

I informed the agent on each call that this was a test case. They still acted like it was a real call, doing things like asking me to hold while they contacted paramedics, simulating the time it would take to dispatch emergency personnel.

Walking Alone

In one test, I told the call agent that I was walking in a neighborhood that didn’t feel safe, and he offered to call the police to come to my location. I told him I wanted to stay on the line with someone as I walked and he spoke with me for another five minutes until I got to my destination.

Once, I pressed the call button but hung up in the middle of the first ring.

Seconds later, the 5Star Responder device rang, and when I pressed the center button to answer, an agent told me he was calling back to make sure everything was safe and secure.

When I called to report someone in my house, the agent asked me to hold while she sent police. When she got back on the line, I asked her to connect me with my emergency-contact person, and she initiated a call to my husband.

When I called and described my migraine experience as if it was really happening, the agent suggested sending emergency-medical personnel, but I asked if I could speak to a nurse.

My agent transferred me to GreatCall’s LiveNurse service, which took about 40 seconds before that service’s operator transferred my call to an actual nurse. Before talking with me about my situation, the nurse asked me to spell my name and give my birth date.

This relatively lengthy process could be problematic in some scenarios. When I was suffering from my migraine, I could barely say a sentence on the phone with my husband because even the sound of his voice in my ear was excruciating.

In the end, the nurse suggested sending paramedics because I reported shallow breathing and an irregularly fast heartbeat.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com

Apple Helps Devices Get Their Heads in the Cloud

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 01:00:59 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Apple devices can be addictive: People buy one tiny iPod, fall in love, and end up with three or four other Apple products. Now if only they could see all their data on all those devices simultaneously.

Starting today, they can.

ICloud is designed to store and replicate documents, music, apps and 1,000 photos on PCs, the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. It also syncs contacts, calendars and email so all your machines and devices have the same data and content. It will back up five gigabytes of data, but certain types aren’t counted against that total. The best part: It’s free.

Thanks to iCloud, the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch all have the same document with no work on the user’s part.

I’ve been testing iCloud’s sync ability between a MacBook Pro, iPhone 4S and iPad 3G. I also accessed and added content using iCloud.com. At first, I ran into a few hiccups with syncing photos, but an Apple spokesman explained that the company’s servers were occasionally down while they were being prepared for Wednesday’s iCloud launch. After that, iCloud worked without a hitch—well enough that I stopped thinking about which device held what since they were all updated with the same content.

Over the weekend, I imported 300 photos my parents took on a recent trip to Italy, forgetting that my computer was set up with iCloud. When I picked up my iPhone later, the Grand Canal in Venice and the Duomo in Florence were staring back at me in Photos. Same with my iPad.

On the downside, iCloud doesn’t automatically sync videos to other devices. In WiFi, it won’t sync edited photos if edits are made on a device after its camera app is closed. (This includes removing red eye, cropping and auto-enhancing images.) And document sharing on iCloud is focused on sharing with oneself, not with other people, unlike the document-sharing solutions from Google and Microsoft.

I found iCloud’s most useful feature to be Photo Stream, which automatically sends images captured by an iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch up to iCloud and replicates them on all other iCloud devices, one by one. Watching these photos pop onto the screen of my computer, iPad or iPhone was nothing short of delightful.

Photos are pushed via iCloud to the Mac and PC in their full resolution and sent to the iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone in a resolution that’s optimized for those displays.

Photo Stream sends images captured by mobile devices, such as the iPhone and iPad, up to iCloud and replicates them on all other iCloud devices.

By default, any images imported to a PC or Mac are automatically sent into Photo Stream, though this setting can be turned off. Devices need only be powered on and in WiFi to receive images from Photo Stream.

Each photo remains in Photo Stream for 30 days, and only the last 1,000 are saved there. Photos moved into albums on devices will be kept permanently, while Macs and Windows PCs have no photo limit because of their larger storage capacities.

A WiFi network is also required for Backup in iCloud, which backs up purchased music, TV shows, apps, books, device settings, app data, messages, ringtones and images in Photo Stream. Only documents and email count against a person’s five gigabytes of free iCloud storage.

Higher storage capacities are available for an annual fee: $20 for 10 gigabytes, $40 for 20 gigabytes or $100 for 50 gigabytes.

Not Just Photos

Documents can be synced to all devices through iCloud using iWork apps. These include Pages, Keynote and Numbers, and each costs $10 in the App Store. I tested this with ease, creating documents—like a flyer I made using a photo of a church that I took with my iPhone camera—that synced with my iPad and vice versa. Changes to documents appeared the same across all devices and at icloud.com almost instantly.

To get an iCloud account, you’ll need either a Mac that’s running OS X Lion, Apple’s latest operating system, or a mobile device with iOS 5.

Starting Wednesday, when users can install the newest software on one of these machines, they will be prompted to set up iCloud. Once you have this account, iCloud will work with a Windows PC running Vista or Windows 7; instructions explain how to set up and use iCloud on Macs or Windows PCs. ICloud is also accessible via Web browser at icloud.com.

If you have an account with Apple’s MobileMe email and storage service, the company will offer to integrate it with your iCloud account. (MobileMe will be discontinued after June.) If you don’t have a MobileMe account, on-screen prompts will walk you through setting up a free me.com email address from any iOS device or computer. I did this in seconds using my MacBook, and noticed that my Mail and Notes were immediately replicated on all devices through iCloud.

Match That Tune

ITunes Match, an important piece of iCloud, wasn’t available for testing yet. To make sure your music library has a high-quality recording of each song, iTunes Match will scan your library for anything not purchased from Apple and then give you access to the high-quality iTunes track in the cloud and on all other devices. Match will be available at the end of this month for $25 a year and will work with up to 25,000 tracks.

Another interesting feature that wasn’t available for testing was Find My Friends, a free app that works with iCloud and is Apple’s answer to Foursquare. It will let iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users find another user’s location—in list or map view—as long as they accept an invitation. Temporary location sharing will be possible with this app, enabling sharing with a specific number of people for a specific amount of time. This might come in handy during a family vacation or at a day-long music festival with friends.

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Email Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com.

Keeping Family, Sitter and Car on One Calendar

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:31:47 +0000

Sometimes, too much technology can be a bad thing. Busy families struggle to coordinate schedules among all the devices they have using Microsoft Outlook, Web calendars and a multitude of apps. Yet, no single program unites all of these calendars in one place.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I tested something that attempts to do just that. I’ve been using Skedi, a $10 app for the iPhone and iPod touch made by Rodax Software. It imports third-party calendars, lets family members create activities to which they invite or delegate one another (or other people, like a baby sitter) and it syncs Skedi events back to other programs, like Google Calendar. The best feature of Skedi is that it displays family members’ availability, much like Microsoft Outlook, so a person can see when others are free or busy.

As dreamy as this app sounds, it needs work. It’s only accessible on the iPhone and iPod touch and won’t work with Microsoft Outlook calendars. It also needs more adjustable settings. Future iterations will make it more accessible via other devices as well as the Web, according to Rodax. An Android app is planned for this year and an iPad app is expected this year or early 2012.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve come to really appreciate the value of an app like Skedi. My husband has been at a conference in California and I’ve made several attempts to make plans with friends for when he returns. One by one, I’ve had to cancel a Friday night dinner, a Saturday night concert and an attempted Sunday night rescheduled dinner because I made the mistake of thinking that no news of plans meant he had no plans.

Unfortunately, my husband couldn’t step away from the conference to test Skedi with me. (I tested it with a colleague.) This brings up another matter: Scheduling is a participation sport. The more people who use a scheduling app, the more useful it’ll be.

Skedi gives different people different permissions. Kids aren’t required or even asked to respond to an event, which is fine for younger kids whose parents plan their schedules. (The term “parents” can be used loosely; a grandparent or friend can be added as a “parent.”) One prompt encouraged me to add a car in the “kid” section so it was automatically reserved for an activity.

Left to right: The Skedi app lets you create an event, respond to the event and see when family is busy.

To set up Skedi, I created an account using my email and a password, and then followed prompts to add other parents, kids, baby sitters and friends to the account using their names and emails. People who are invited to Skedi get an email with a link that walks them through setting up an account. But they’ll each have to buy the app for their devices if they want to use it. The Rodax Software website suggests using Apple’s workaround for this: signing into each device with the Apple ID originally used to buy the app, but this can be a pain.

After adding people, I was prompted to add my calendars, though only calendars that follow an Internet standard called CalDAV will work. These include the Apple Calendar and MobileMe, Google Calendar, Yahoo and AOL. I added Google Calendar by entering my Google account email and password. In the final setup step, I told Skedi to use my Google Calendar as the default calendar for adding events.

Once setup is complete, Skedi doesn’t let users add or remove people from accounts. Rodax’s president and founder, John Boyer, said that fixes over the next two weeks would enable making these and other changes to calendars.

Skedi looks a lot like iCal on the iPhone, including “+” icons in the top of the screen that add events. Skedi is divided into three sections: Family Calendar, My Calendar and Notifications. Family Calendar shows an overall view of each person in the account, and color-shading—blue for parents, tan for kids and brown for baby sitters—on calendar dates represents when people are busy.

If someone in your Skedi account imports a calendar to his or her account, like her work calendar, appointments on that calendar are represented with the colored shading but are marked as Private. This lets family members know the times aren’t free but prevents them from seeing the details of that work calendar.

I created events by giving them titles, adding a location, specifying the start and end times, designating a person in charge and selecting the people in my Skedi account who I wanted to join. Skedi checks each person’s availability so I know who’s busy or free. Even if a person is busy, Skedi still lets me add them to the event.

The Notifications section tells you if someone has invited you to an event, delegated you in an event or canceled an event. Alas, these alerts are only accessible through the app, though Mr. Boyer said email alerts will be available in the next two weeks.

Back at my computer, I opened Google Calendar on my Web browser and saw events other people in my account and I had added using Skedi. A “booked by Skedi” note beside each event clued me in on how these events were added. This is especially helpful for people who add events on the go and forget they did it.

The current iteration of Skedi has too many kinks in it, and the app will be much more useful when it’s accessible by means other than the iPhone and iPod touch. Still, the idea of saving time by automatically showing family members’ availability is a big plus.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com

Google Mobile App Aims To Turn Phones Into Wallets

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 22:54:10 +0000

Would you rather leave home without your wallet and be penniless all day, or leave your phone at home and be out of touch all day? Many people would rather be penniless. If only phones could be used to pay for things, it would be easier to leave a wallet behind.

Enter Google Wallet, the search engine’s answer to this problem. This mobile app uses a chip in the phone so it can be waved in front of payment stations to buy things. Users set it up by registering a credit card to the phone or loading a Google Prepaid Card with a credit card. A four-digit password enables payment transactions. Google Wallet is rolling out this week to Sprint’s already available, $50 (after $50 mail-in rebate and with a two-year contract) Nexus S 4G phones by way of an Android operating-system software update.

A phone with Google Wallet and a payment terminal.

I’ve been trying Google Wallet in Washington, D.C., and Palo Alto, Calif., and I find it delightfully easy to use. Though still in its infancy, it isn’t hard to imagine digital payments catching on and becoming commonplace. But there are plenty of caveats.

Google Wallet works only with phones with an NFC (near field communication) chip, which allows secure digital transactions over a short distance. In Japan, millions of cellphone users have been using mobile wallets with NFC chips, but the technology has been slow to catch on in other countries. For now, the Nexus S 4G is the only phone in the U.S. that works with Google Wallet, though more phones are expected soon.

Paying with Google Wallet is possible only at stores that offer MasterCard PayPass. In Washington, D.C., near my office and home, these included Sunoco, McDonald’s, CVS and Papyrus; other stores include Home Depot, 7-Eleven, Best Buy and OfficeMax. A MasterCard PayPass finder is built into the app and displays nearby locations where PayPass works. These can be viewed on a map, in a list or filtered by category. For now, only 150,000 merchants have the equipment in stores to use PayPass.

Citi MasterCard is currently the only credit card that can be directly added to Google Wallet, but the Google Prepaid Card can be loaded with other credit cards. Google said it will also work with Visa, American Express and Discover cards, but couldn’t say when.

Several other companies are planning their own digital-payment solutions. Last week, PayPal said it would launch pilot programs at the end of this year for a cloud wallet, usable by entering a phone number and a PIN at the register. Square has launched Square Card Case, a free app available on Android and iPhone that works on the idea of paying with virtual tabs, like starting a tab at a bar. Both ideas from PayPal and Square would avoid the need for phones with NFC chips.

Next month, Google Wallet will let people register their store loyalty cards and gift cards in the app so a Wallet purchase at CVS, for example, would recognize my CVS ExtraCare card. Registering a gift card from, say Macy’s, saves the trouble of carrying the card at all times. (Currently, only American Eagle Outfitters allows loyalty cards and gift cards with Google Wallet in some of its New York stores.)

People also will be able to search for more store coupons on Google’s search engine and click to add them to their Google accounts for synchronizing with Google Wallet.

My first Wallet purchase was at CVS, where I picked up two boxes of tissues and a pack of AA batteries. I waited in the checkout line in anticipation of paying with just a casual wave of my phone. But when the checkout person asked if I had the CVS loyalty card, I still had to dig the card out of my wallet to swipe it for discounts. Once that was done, I waved my phone at the payment terminal, entered my four-digit security code and walked away.

When I bought lunch at McDonald’s, a woman nearby was in awe of my wave-to-pay method and said she couldn’t wait to get it. At 7-Eleven, the man working the register seemed startled by how quickly I paid for a bottle of water, especially after the guy in front of me had spilled several coins and bills on the counter to pay. I used my Google Prepaid Card at CVS and used my registered MasterCard at McDonald’s and 7-Eleven. Each card is represented in the app with an image of a credit card. My Citi MasterCard was the right blue hue and even had my name on it, with just the last four digits of the card number visible.

I added my Citi MasterCard to Google Wallet by entering my credit card information and creating a nickname for the card. After waiting a few seconds for the app to verify my information with Citi, an on-screen message said my card had a $100 limit, but that I could activate my full credit line using a code sent via text message to my cellphone number. This also allowed me to see more data about my account like my last statement balance, current balance and the last payment due date.

If a phone’s screen is in sleep mode, a user must wake it in order for transactions to work. This step was purposely added so people don’t unknowingly buy something when they walk by a PayPass terminal. The four-digit security code has an adjustable time-out period that can last for as little as one minute or as long as 30 minutes. I adjusted my code time-out to 15 minutes and was able, in two tests, to swipe my phone without entering the code.

Google Wallet can’t hold your driver’s license or other official forms of identification, so even if it takes off and works everywhere, you’ll still have to carry your license with you.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katie.boehret@wsj.com.

A Tablet Children Can Grow Into

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 22:13:52 +0000

The crowded tablet market now offers a number of devices in various weights, screen sizes and operating systems. But are there any tablets built to withstand tough treatment from kids?

This week, I tested a tablet aimed at ages 4 through 9: the $100 LeapPad Explorer from LeapFrog Enterprises Inc., a company known for its educational children’s toys. This tablet, which is available in green or pink, has a built-in microphone, camera, video recorder and kid-size stylus for writing and drawing on its five-inch touch screen (a finger also works).

It was designed with tough plastics, a sheet of Mylar over its glass screen and an extra metal frame around the screen to withstand physical abuse. This tablet can be used for reading e-books, playing games and running through digital flashcards.

The LeapPad Explorer is the latest in LeapFrog’s gadget lineup, which started with the original LeapPad educational toy in the late 1990s and more recently continued with the Leapster Explorer hand-held game in July 2010.

[ See post to watch video ]

The Explorer tablet for kids works with over 40 downloadable apps and has a topside slot for running older game cartridges. A spokeswoman said the company expects to offer more than 70 apps by the end of this year, and has no plans to stop selling cartridges. Cartridges cost $25 each and downloadable activities—including games, apps, flash cards, videos and eBooks—range from $5 to $20 each.

While using the LeapPad Explorer, I discovered plenty of features that would appeal to young kids like fun sounds, on-screen graphics and a sense of accomplishment while progressing through books, games and activities.

The main appeal of the LeapFrog products is the company’s focus on personalized education. When children set up the Explorer, they enter their grades, ranging from prekindergarten to sixth grade. The device’s activities then automatically tune to a child’s capabilities. This means that if a third-grader is performing at a higher level than is expected for that age, the Explorer adjusts to a slightly higher level, and the child is notified and congratulated. However, if a child is progressing at a lower level, the system adjusts to a slightly lower level without notifying the child.

A feature called the LeapFrog Learning Path lets parents digitally track their child’s progress. Whenever the Explorer is plugged into a computer, details about the child’s time on the device are transferred to the PC so a parent knows how the child is performing and can get tips on how to help the child improve.

LeapPad Explorer comes with three apps and a free app of choice.

The activities address spelling, phonics, math, creativity, science, music and geography. And because of LeapFrog’s partnership with Disney-Pixar, kids will likely recognize characters from movies in the Explorer’s games and books.

My favorite app was the Ultra eBook, “Cars 2: Project Undercover.” LeapFrog’s ultra eBooks are like eBooks on steroids. They let kids record themselves reading an entire book and play it back. They’re animated and have six built-in comprehension activities and three games. They offer stories written at three text levels and they use a visual dictionary for vocabulary development. “Cars 2: Project Undercover” is the only Ultra eBook currently available, but LeapFrog plans to add six more to its app store before the end of the year.

LeapFrog designed the Explorer tablet with certain features that keep its cost down, and some also solve child-safety concerns. For instance, the Explorer lacks a wireless connection, so kids can’t get online without plugging the tablet into a Windows PC or Mac. Downloading apps also requires a parent’s password.

Another example is that the LeapPad Explorer runs on four AA batteries rather than the rechargeable lithium ion batteries found in most regular tablets.

LeapFrog’s spokeswoman said this keeps the cost low and noted that Li-Ion batteries can leak, making them unsafe for kids’ toys. Kids can plug the Explorer into the wall with a $10 AC adapter.

The Explorer is a far cry from popular tablets. The device’s one-inch thickness makes it chunkier than most grown-up tablets and its screen is of a lower quality than that of iPads and Android tablets. Its built-in camera has resolution of less than one megapixel. I found the tablet’s response time to be a bit sluggish, but doubt most kids under 9 would.

Each Explorer tablet comes loaded with three apps and a free app of choice (eBook, game or video) from the LeapFrog Connect app store, accessible via computer once the tablet is plugged in via USB cord. Preloaded apps include a pet game, which gives kids a pet to care for, Story Studio for creating stories with photos, voice-overs and art, and Art Studio for drawing and painting with various colors and stamped images.

Though the LeapPad Explorer looks a bit chubby compared with regular tablets, its features will be adequate for kids. Its ability to grow over time with more downloaded apps makes it a smart investment for parents.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com

Facebook Updates Help Users Share Better With Others

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 23:03:19 +0000

On a recent vacation to Aruba, I had to smile when I saw that each of the computers in the hotel business center had Facebook.com saved in their Internet bookmarks. Even people in a tropical paradise are anxious to check Facebook.

For all of Facebook’s popularity, many of its users are still nervous about how to maintain their privacy on the network. Google’s rival social network, called Google+, answered the call for easier sharing control: Each post clearly shows which groups of friends will see it, and these groups are privately named by users.

This week I’ll dig into the latest updates on Facebook, which aim to ease the process of controlling one’s profile and privacy. An upcoming Facebook developer conference in two weeks is expected to reveal additional changes.

[ See post to watch video ]

Show Me the Viewers

One of the interface changes on Facebook is its more obvious way of showing users who will see their posts. Facebook takes a page from Google+ by better revealing sharing: It uses a drop-down menu beside each post that, by default, checkmarks either Public, Friends or Custom, and sharing can be changed with each post. The Custom setting can exclude or include certain groups, but people still must open it to adjust customized sharing. With Google +, though, all groups with whom content is shared are constantly visible underneath the post.

Facebook’s own blog hints at future improvements to this sharing awareness, saying that this drop-down menu will grow to include smaller groups of people with whom you may want to share so as to make it easier to choose the audience you want for certain posts, which sounds a lot like what Google+ offers.

Now, you can change the sharing settings associated with a post after it publishes to your profile. In the past, a post’s sharing settings were permanent once it was published, and changing it required deleting the entire post and re-posting with different sharing settings.

Location, Location, Location

A handy new feature in Facebook is the ability to add one’s location to each post. This feature was once limited to the Facebook app on mobile devices. Adding a location to a post like, “heading off for lunch with friends,” gives the post more contextual information. By tagging the photos I share on Facebook from my recent vacation with “Aruba,” I save myself the trouble of creating an Aruba album or adding a caption to each photo that says where it was captured.

Tag, You’re It

When Facebook first enabled tagging people in posts, a method used for mentioning someone so other people know that person is with you, numerous friends asked me how to do this since it wasn’t obvious. Before now, the way to tag someone was by placing the “@” symbol before a friend’s name while mentioning that friend in a post, or simply typing his or her name. Now, a small symbol below the window where users type posts shows an icon of a person with a “+” symbol. Clicking on that lets users type other people’s names to add to the post.

Facebook now lets you tag people in photos and posts even if you aren’t Facebook friends with them—and vice versa. Previously, you could only tag people if you were already Facebook friends.

Also, any post or photo in which you’re tagged by someone who isn’t a Facebook friend must first be approved by you. And Facebook takes this a step further by now letting you opt to review and approve any tag someone else tries to add to one of your Facebook posts or photos.

Before, any other Facebook friend could tag you or other people in your photos without your say-so. This content tag review isn’t on by default, so to turn it on, select Account (in the top right corner of your Facebook page) and then Privacy Settings. Next, edit the settings in How Tags Work and turn Profile Review on.

My Profile, My Way

One of my favorite new features is that it’s now easier for me to tweak my own profile page to include content I want on it. For example, a friend tagged me in one of her photos and one of my eyes was closed. Rather than un-tagging myself from my friend’s photo, which totally unidentifies me in the photo, I can now just remove the photo from my profile.

To do this, I clicked on the icon that appears at the right side of each post and selected Remove Post in the drop-down menu. This lets my friend keep the photo tagged with my name, but the photo doesn’t appear with my profile. The same is true for non-photo posts that include my name.

The Change-Up

Not all new features in Facebook will be well received. A former feature that let people click a “Link” button in a post to add a URL is gone as part of an effort to streamline the network. People can still share links in posts by pasting a URL into a post, but this doesn’t automatically remove the long URL, like that “Link” button did. Facebook is weighing whether to add the link capability back in posts.

Facebook isn’t currently as good as Google+ when it comes to showing users exactly which groups of friends will see their posted content. But many more people use Facebook—and social networks work best when the people you want to socialize with are using them—so Facebook currently maintains its go-to social-network status. With Google+ nipping at its heels, Facebook will surely further improve the way it displays sharing options.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katie.boehret@wsj.com.

	BEFORE	NOW
Tagging people in posts	Type ‘@person’s name’ or just type the person’s name.	Select icon below text box to tag people; @ and typing name still work.
Add link to post	Click ‘Link’ to add Web link without also displaying long URL.	‘Link’ button is gone, so must paste URL into post.
Sharing with certain people	Groups of people with whom posts were shared couldn’t be changed after posting.	Sharing permissions for any post can be changed after posting.
Tagging people who aren’t friends	Impossible	Can tag other Facebook users even if they aren’t a friend. They must approve this tag.
Remove photo or post from profile	Only possible by untagging oneself.	Drop-down menu beside a tagged photo or post removes it from profile, keeps name tagged.

A New BlackBerry That Pushes Few Buttons

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 22:15:46 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Finally, Research In Motion has its first true touchscreen BlackBerry without a keyboard.

This smartphone, called the BlackBerry Torch 9850, improves on past BlackBerry models like the Storm, which nixed a physical keyboard but required users to press down on its screen as well as touch its glass, and the Torch 9800, which offered a real touchscreen but maintained a slide-out keyboard.

I’ve been testing the Torch 9850 over the past several days and while its looks will lure you in, its place in the mobile-app ecosystem will push you away. This device, which uses an upgraded 7.0 version of the aging BlackBerry operating system, becomes available from Sprint on Sunday.

The Torch 9850 is the first BlackBerry with a true touchscreen. Above, the Torch in camera mode.

It costs $150 with a two-year contract and after a $50 mail-in rebate that comes in the form of an American Express rewards card.

Two other new BlackBerry models with touchscreens and physical keyboards will be out on Sunday: the $250 Bold 9930 from Sprint—a Verizon model is available online now—and the $50 Torch 9810 from AT&T; all prices require two-year contracts.

Neither device has a remarkably different design from its predecessor; rather, they have better processors and run the 7.0 BlackBerry operating system.

Big Screen Display

The Torch 9850′s thin, tapered design houses a gorgeous 3.7-inch, high-resolution touchscreen—the largest display yet on a BlackBerry.

One end of the device holds the four familiar shortcut buttons and small optical trackpad, which is a huge help for precisely selecting a word or object on the screen. And the 9850′s speedy processor gives it fast, responsive performance.

BlackBerry users who are tired of feeling like they’re behind the times whenever they pull out their smartphones will surely save face with this model.

Indeed, the appeal of this new Torch is mostly superficial. The user interface of RIM’s new 7.0 operating system isn’t noticeably different from its predecessor, 6.0. What’s worse is that the selection of apps that run on this new operating system is even smaller than the number of apps available for older BlackBerrys.

A RIM spokesman would only say that “thousands” of apps currently work on the 7.0 OS and that the number would steadily grow. But the overall BlackBerry App World holds 35,000 apps, while Apple’s App Store offers 425,000 apps and Google’s Android Market offers over 250,000 apps.

Waiting for an Upgrade

RIM fans are holding out for a BlackBerry that will run QNX, the company’s next-generation operating system that could give BlackBerrys an operating-system overhaul with a dramatic new user interface. But Mike Lazaridis, RIM’s co-CEO, announced that a BlackBerry with QNX won’t be available until early 2012. People hoping to upgrade their current BlackBerrys in the meantime will be disappointed to hear that none of the BlackBerrys released before this group can be upgraded to the 7.0 operating system.

The device’s home screen

The first thing hard-core BlackBerry fans will ask is how the on-screen keyboard on Torch 9850 works. I was skeptical throughout my first day with it.

Like all on-screen keyboards, using this one requires an adjustment period, and I felt much more comfortable using it after several days. But even after that adjustment period, I still reached for my old BlackBerry with the physical keyboard to compose long emails. New Torch users should consider going cold turkey with a physical keyboard to prevent such relapses.

RIM’s SureType technology tracks users’ typing patterns and frequent-word occurrences to smartly predict what they’ll most likely be writing, so the Torch’s touchscreen keyboard does get better the more a person uses it.

An Email Machine

Email has always been a strength of the BlackBerry, and the Torch 9850 is no exception. Enhancements in its new operating system include smarter handling of Gmail messages by stacking messages according to conversations. If you read the most recent message in a conversation thread but there’s a message further back in that same thread that you haven’t read, a yellow glow appears below the icon representing the top message. Emails can also be starred, like in the Web version of Gmail, but can’t be automatically sorted into categories of “Important and Unread” and “Everything Else” like the Web version.

Each model in this new crop of BlackBerrys has what RIM calls Liquid Graphics technology, a feature that intends to deliver fast and smooth touchscreen performance. I found the performance to be noticeably better than any previous BlackBerry, but it didn’t feel dramatically faster than an iPhone 4 or new Android device.

Likewise, the Web browser on the new 7.0 operating system felt speedy and did a good job displaying Web page contents, but it didn’t play Flash videos.

Universal search was already enhanced in the BlackBerry 6.0 operating system, but in 7.0 it now works with voice searches. I tried this several times with good luck.

One-Step Picture Sharing

I used the Torch 9850′s five-megapixel digital camera to capture handsome photos, quickly uploading them to social networks like Twitter and Facebook in one step. The Torch 9850′s fast processor speed really shined when I restarted the BlackBerry after installing an updated version of an app—something that usually takes several minutes took seconds.

If you’re wedded to the BlackBerry and you’re eager to upgrade, the BlackBerry Torch 9850 is a slick device that’s fast to respond in various tasks. But the scant number of apps available for it will be a real drawback and won’t satisfy BlackBerry fans looking for an iPhone equivalent.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com

The New Smartphone That's Easy to 'Like'

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 22:11:24 +0000

One of Facebook’s greatest strengths is its ability to make hundreds of friends seem only a few keystrokes away. Now, a smartphone is trimming those few keystrokes down to one.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I tested HTC’s appropriately named Status, the only smartphone in the U.S. with a dedicated Facebook button, located just below its QWERTY keyboard. This button is designed to make Facebook easy to access no matter what you happen to be doing on the phone. The button even glows when users are doing something on the phone that they could potentially share with their Facebook friends, such as visiting a website.

The Status costs $50 with a two-year AT&T contract, and monthly data plans for the phone cost $15 for 200 megabytes or $25 for two gigabytes; monthly voice plans start at $40. The Status runs the latest version of Google’s Android operating system and has HTC’s Sense user interface, which gives the phone a polished overlay and some extra options for personalization. An HTC spokesman wouldn’t say whether the company was making other devices for other social-networking services like Twitter or Flickr.

But does this Facebook button make a big difference? It certainly lessens the steps for certain Facebook tasks on a smartphone. Take “checking in” to Facebook Places, a way of tagging oneself in a geographic location and also seeing who else checked in there or who else “likes” the place on Facebook. This process usually requires opening a phone’s Facebook app, opening the Places tab in that app and waiting as the nearby Places list is populated before choosing one and checking in.

HTC Status has a Facebook button below the keyboard.

With the HTC Status, a list of nearby Facebook Places appears after just one long-touch of the Facebook button, so people can check in faster. I found that I was more inclined to check into places using this button—or I would at least hit the button to quickly see what check-in points were nearby.

Other aspects of this Facebook button are little more than parlor tricks. For example, each time I opened a new website in the HTC Status’s Web browser, the button glowed a few times to remind me that I could hit it and immediately share that page’s URL to my Facebook wall. Strangely, this happens only on the main website pages, like WSJ.com or CNN.com, rather than on individual articles within those websites. I’m much more likely to share a single story with friends rather than a news site’s home page, so the glowing button seems pointless. I could still hit the Facebook button while reading each article to share it with friends.

If you’re a super sharer who wants every photo captured on your phone to be sent directly to Facebook, the HTC Status has you covered—without even touching the Facebook button. A settings menu within the phone’s camera lets people choose if they want images automatically uploaded, whether on Facebook or Flickr and when to share—immediately, daily or only in WiFi coverage areas (to save on data usage). I tested this by taking photos, and they instantly appeared on my Facebook wall.

If you’d rather not have your photos automatically uploaded to Facebook, a touch of the Facebook button when one photo or video is selected uploads just that photo or video to your Facebook wall.

Other functions of the phone’s Facebook button include its ability to share song information—album, track title and artist—with friends on one’s Facebook wall. The phone’s Facebook button glows when a song is playing to remind users that this one-touch sharing is possible. If the song can be bought on Amazon, a link for people who want to buy the song will also appear in that Facebook post.

To quickly jump to a friend’s Facebook page, I tapped the Status’s Facebook button while looking at a friend’s contact card on the phone. To post a regular status update to Facebook from the phone, a quick tap on the Facebook button opens a dialogue box for posting updates on your own wall.

Facebook button aside, what else about the HTC Status is noteworthy? I really liked the full QWERTY keyboard; its large keys were a pleasure to use for typing.

Still, since the Status’s physical keyboard doesn’t hide under the phone’s screen, the screen is only half the size of the device, or 2.6 inches.

And even though its touch screen is capable of multi-touch gestures, like flicking to scroll and pinching to zoom, this small surface will feel restrictive for people who are used to larger touch-screen surfaces.

The Status has a 5-megapixel camera with a flash and autofocus, as well as a front-facing camera. Calls on it sounded fine, and its tapered build and light, 4.57-ounce weight made it easy to hold and carry.

If you’re a heavy Facebook user—especially if you frequently share content with others—the HTC Status will make those updates easier and faster. But its overall approach isn’t startlingly different enough to make people give up their current phones.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com

Group Messaging for the Rest of Us

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 04:03:21 +0000

It’s rare to hear BlackBerry users brag about having better smartphone features than their iPhone and Android-phone brethren. Yet when it comes to group messaging, BlackBerry has led the way for years with its BBM, or BlackBerry Messenger.

BBM’s features include individual or group messaging, as well as the ability to tell when another user is idle or typing. And it’s not limited to 160 characters, like text messages. This fall, Apple will launch its own similar messaging program called iMessage, which will work on iPhones, iPads and iPod touches. Yet, as BlackBerry maker Research in Motion has faltered and iPhones and Androids have soared ahead of BlackBerrys, BBM buddies are harder to come by.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I tested a new service, called GroupMe, which enables group messaging on any phone that can text—regardless of who makes it or what operating system it runs.

Starting today, GroupMe’s newest Android app is available to download. I got a sneak peek at the app to see how well it worked, using GroupMe to create chat groups with friends who use a range of devices including basic cellphones, BlackBerrys and iPhones.

GroupMe messages aren’t limited to 160 characters, like text messages.

The new GroupMe app replaces an existing, less sophisticated version. A new iPhone app is expected soon, and GroupMe apps for BlackBerry and Windows Phone will be updated this fall, according to a spokeswoman for GroupMe.

There are three notable features in the new GroupMe app for Android: It’s programmable and usable through GroupMe’s website, so groups can be set up there and group conversations can be continued there; it lets users directly message just one person in a group for more private messaging; and its app for smartphones now works around the world in 90 countries with 900 carriers. GroupMe still offers smart features that were available in its previous release, like the simple way anyone can instantly remove himself or herself from a group by typing #exit in response to a group text as well as sponsored groups for building buzz around an event or TV show.

But the downside to group chats is that not everyone in the group will want to share everything they say with everyone else. Another trouble spot I found was that the groups I created included people who used texting differently. Some could text while at work, some couldn’t. Some had unlimited texting, some didn’t, and asked to be removed from the group. Some people just don’t text as much as others, but still receive all of the group’s messages, by default.

GroupMe falls into the same trap as Facebook Groups and Google Circles, which operate on the notion that everyone wants to be added to a group or circle and they can later opt out if they so choose. People who are added to a GroupMe group receive an initial text message saying they’ve been added to a group, not invited to a group if they choose to join. If it’s a person’s first time using GroupMe, he or she receives another text that explains GroupMe and how to opt out.

The secret behind GroupMe is that it assigns one phone number to a group, so the most basic cellphones will be able to send text messages to this number, like it’s one person’s phone when it really represents several users. People can also call this single number to initiate a conference call. Considering what a pain it is to set up normal conference calls, people might use GroupMe just for this feature.

My GroupMe friends chatted a bit in groups, but something about the multi-person forum seemed to shut up even the most gabby group members. I found myself creating more groups of two people than large groups of friends. In certain situations, like on a family trip or during a wedding weekend, the idea of chatting with several people at once could be a serious help. But I found that most of my friends were inclined to prefer one-to-one conversations.

Unlike BBM, GroupMe can’t show you when another user is typing, though like BBM, files such as photos can be sent from one person to the whole group.

Clever codes can program the group to behave how you want them to behave. For example, if you’re going into a meeting, you can type #mute to the group and this will mute the conversation so you don’t continue receiving text messages. Typing #unmute after the meeting will turn on your group chat notifications again. The #topic command lets people change the overall group name, and #list automatically sends you a full list of people in the group.

One of the ways GroupMe is trying to market itself is by associating with live events or popular shows; in other words, things that give people reasons to digitally congregate. Some examples include music festivals like South by Southwest and the upcoming Lollapalooza, as well as TV shows like Showtime’s “Dexter” and music artists like one of my high school favorites, the Dave Matthews Band. People who create groups related to these sponsors could get special offers or possibly the chance for celebrities from a show to chat with the group.

If you have a solid group of people who feel comfortable with one another, you’ll probably make good use of GroupMe. And its biggest plus is that it works without alienating one person because he or she doesn’t own a certain smartphone. But the familiar habit of one-to-one text messaging could be hard for GroupMe to change.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com

Courage for Lion Users

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 22:58:01 +0000

Apple’s Lion has roared onto Macs, with one million downloads of the new operating system in the first day it was available. IPhone or iPad users will be familiar with Lion’s nod toward navigating with gestures. But for others, Lion could be uncharted territory. I’ve compiled some helpful shortcuts and tips for using Lion and some of its less-obvious yet useful features.

For those people frustrated by Lion, I’ll also include instructions on how to revert some features to work the way they did in Apple’s previous operating system, Snow Leopard. If all else fails, I’ll tell you how to uninstall Lion altogether. But all new operating systems require an adjustment period, so give yourself some time with Lion before giving up.

[ See post to watch video ]

Heads or Tails of Scrolling

Probably the one feature that will take the most getting used to is Lion’s new way of scrolling. Rather than placing two fingers on the touch pad and moving them down together to navigate down in a Web page, list or document, Lion does the opposite. Think of reading a real piece of paper: As you read down, your eyes would move down and you’d push the paper up. So now, scrolling down happens by putting two fingers on the touch pad and moving up. Scrolling up works by moving two fingers down the touch pad. The scroll bar disappears when you aren’t scrolling.

If you’d rather switch back to the classic way of scrolling, go to System Preferences, Trackpad, Scroll & Zoom and uncheck “Scroll direction: natural.” Also go into System Preferences, Mouse, Point & Click and uncheck “Scroll direction: natural.” If you desperately miss seeing your scrollbar, go to System Preferences, General, Show scroll bars and choose “Always” in the top of the middle section.

Uncovering Exposé

If you’re like me, you loved using Snow Leopard’s Exposé, which took a four-finger downward swipe to expose all running apps. Lion has a more robust way of viewing all the things on a Mac, called Mission Control. A feature called App Exposé uses a three-finger downward swipe to expose all windows running in an app. This isn’t on by default, so go to System Preferences, Trackpad, select the More Gesture section (top right) and check the box for App Exposé.

To use a four-finger-swipe for this, I selected the tiny arrow in this command’s description and chose “Swipe Down with four fingers.”

Several new gestures are built into Lion for navigating to things like the Desktop, Launchpad and Mission Control. But if you don’t want to learn a bunch of new gestures, you can try Hot Corners. These let you navigate to these features by just moving the cursor to any corner of the computer screen.

Set up Hot Corners by going to System Preferences, Desktop & Screen Saver, select Screen Saver and then click on Hot Corners in the lower left. Here, you can use drop-down menus to designate how each corner will function.

You’ve Got New Mail

Apple Mail has been updated in Lion to look better and work better. Rather than displaying all messages in a top section with the body of one message shown in a window below, emails are displayed in a left-hand column with bodies of those emails displayed on the right.

If you’re yearning for the way things used to be, select Mail, Preferences, Viewing and check the box labeled “Use classic layout.” If you’d like to see icons representing folders and mailboxes on the left, like the old Mail, click “Show (or Hide to hide this)” in the Favorites Bar of Mail.

Another change in mail is conversation view, which is on by default. It numbers messages in an email back-and-forth so you know what order they go in, rather than wondering which message was most recently received. To turn off conversation view, click on the View menu in Mail and uncheck “Organize by Conversation.”

Full Screen—Finally

At last, getting a full-screen view of an opened window on a Mac doesn’t have to be done by dragging out corners of the window.

Clicking on a full-screen button (two outward-facing arrows) built into many programs in the top-right corner lets the window truly take over the entire screen, like it’s the only thing that works on the whole computer.

Several apps can run in full-screen mode at once, and swiping three fingers left or right on a laptop’s touch pad will switch between these running apps.

Clean Up Launchpad

A new gesture—pinching with your thumb and three fingers—pulls up Launchpad. This resembles the iPhone or iPad home screen, with everything on the Mac represented by small icons. Some icons are already grouped into folders, like Microsoft Office programs, if you have Office installed. Others can be grouped into folders just like on an iOS device: by dragging and dropping them onto one another to create a folder and then naming that folder.

To delete these icons, click on one and hold down until all icons start jiggling. Those icons for apps downloaded from the App Store can be deleted right here, just click on the small “x” that appears to the top left of each app icon. Other programs can be deleted only by opening the Applications folder in Finder and moving unwanted things to Trash.

Give Up?

If you absolutely give up on the Lion upgrade you downloaded and want to revert back to the Snow Leopard operating system, you’ll need to erase your drive and reinstall Snow Leopard from the original installation discs.

Before you do this, back up your data in Time Machine so it can later be moved back onto the machine.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com

New Way to Stream Music Crosses the Pond

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 23:31:16 +0000

Until last week, mentioning Spotify to some music fans in the U.S. was like dangling a cream-filled doughnut before a kid barred from eating sweets. Spotify’s music-streaming service was only available in the United Kingdom and Europe, and it seemed Americans would never get to try it.

[ See post to watch video ]

Finally, last Thursday, Spotify became available here—but only by registering on its website and waiting for an invitation, which may take several days to receive. I’ve been using Spotify (a cross between “spot” and “identify”) to see what all the hype is about.

I found Spotify runs remarkably fast and does a good job of incorporating Facebook friends and their playlists—as long as they, too, use the service. Spotify could stand to improve in music discovery, as it doesn’t allow searching by genre or editors’ picks, nor does it make suggestions as you type into its search box—a useful feature if you don’t know the full name of an artist or song. Spotify’s ability to play the exact song you want rather than a collection of similar songs gives it a leg up on the likes of Pandora, but it also makes users do more work finding songs to play.

Spotify is a software program that must be downloaded and installed on a Mac or PC—it doesn’t run in a Web browser like many of its competitors. Spotify lets users search for and play specific songs from a music library of over 15 million tracks. It also imports local music files from your computer, displaying them along with the music in Spotify’s extensive library.

The options for streaming songs on Spotify on the left; the People list on the right lets users see and share music with friends on the service.

To mark the U.S. launch, people who sign up for Spotify now get a free account for the next six months that offers unlimited tracks and unlimited hours of listening. Afterward, people already registered will get 10 hours of music a month and five plays per track free of charge. People who don’t sign up now will be restricted to 20 hours of play for the first six months; after that, 10 hours of listening a month with five plays per track. All free accounts include ads.

Spotify subscriptions are available, including an ad-free, unlimited play, $5 a month account. There’s also an ad-free, unlimited play $10 a month account that enables listening to playlists offline and taking music to portable devices.

Spotify’s rivals don’t offer the wide selection of songs and free streaming at the same time. Apple’s iTunes has over 14 million tracks—almost as many as Spotify—but doesn’t offer streaming options beyond 90-second clips of songs. The Pandora Internet-radio service allows free streaming, but it has just 800,000 tracks and doesn’t let its free-account holders play specific songs—only “radio stations” customized around music that’s similar to a chosen song, artist or genre. MOG, Rhapsody and Rdio offer free streaming for trial periods. Like Spotify, both MOG and Rdio charge $5 or $10 for ad-free listening, and their $10 versions enable playing music on portable devices.

I downloaded and installed Spotify on a Windows PC and on a Mac, and in both instances the software speedily imported my computers’ music and sorted it into a Local Files category. A What’s New category has a New Releases section that suggests content based on an algorithm that combines new releases and artists that are most popular on Spotify. A feed of social-networking suggestions from Spotify and your Facebook friends are also displayed in What’s New.

While an Internet-radio service like Pandora creates radio stations on the fly that play a steady stream of music (with ads in the free version), Spotify uses a Play Queue, which is a list of songs from playlists and tracks you find and add. Play Queue consists of any song you drag or right-click and add to it. Any playlist you open and start playing, regardless of whether you created it, got it from a friend or found it on a website where Spotify playlists are shared (like Spotiseek.com) will be added to the Play Queue.

Using Facebook Connect, Spotify users can see a list of Facebook friends who use the service. The People list is displayed in a right-side panel, along with a Facebook profile photo for each person. By clicking on each friend’s name, I saw their public playlists and was able to click a button to subscribe to each list and add the songs to my Play Queue. I could also see each person’s Top Tracks and Top Artists.

People can opt to hide all of their Spotify account information from public view or make it all public. They can make certain aspects of their account public, like Top Artists or a playlist that they particularly like and want to share.

I easily shared songs with friends by dragging track names and dropping them onto a friend’s name on the People list. A message window popped up in which I wrote a note about the shared song that was sent via Spotify’s internal messaging system. An inbox in the top left corner of Spotify indicates new messages.

Another pop-up window lets people share songs via Facebook, Twitter, Spotify itself or Windows Messenger. But my friends couldn’t click on the shared link to listen to songs unless they downloaded Spotify. This is one of the big disadvantages of Spotify not running in a Web browser.

I tested Spotify’s mobile app on an iPhone, but it also works on the iPod Touch, iPad, Android and Windows Phone and WebOS devices. By connecting the iPhone to the same Wi-Fi network as the PC that had Spotify installed, my music—including playlists I made and tracks I bookmarked with a star icon on the PC software—synched over to the iPhone.

If you tend to choose music according to what your friends like and a lot of your friends use Spotify, you won’t likely have a problem with discovering music in Spotify. Otherwise, you may be frustrated by the relatively limited What’s New music selection. Overall, using this service feels a bit like someone opened a vast library of digital music and made it free for unlimited listening—at least for now.

Watch a video with Katherine Boehret on the Spotify music-streaming service at WSJ.com/PersonalTech. Email katie.boehret@wsj.com.

Corrections & Amplifications

A previous version of this column stated that iTunes has 30-second song previews instead of 90-seconds.

Going in Google+ Circles

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 22:12:13 +0000

Forget being friended on Facebook or followed on Twitter. What you really want now is to be Circled—or so Google hopes.

The company’s latest social-networking effort, Google+, lets users organize people into Circles of friends so you can choose what you share with each group. It offers multi-person video chats and a feature called Sparks that encourages users to plug into news that interests them. It integrates with Picasa, Google’s photo site.

Google+ is designed to compete with Facebook, but judging from my non-techie friends’ reactions over the past two weeks, the initial setup can be confusing. Plus, many of them aren’t eager to build another social network. This week, I’ll take a step back to explain Google+, how it differs from Facebook and just what’s with the Circles.

[ See post to watch video ]

Testing, Testing

Like most of Google’s products (think Gmail), the Google+ you now see isn’t a finished version. Rather, it’s being called a field trial, meaning it will be tweaked as more of us use it. A spokeswoman said a limited number of people were initially invited to sign up. You’ll need a Google profile—not necessarily a Gmail account—to sign up. If you’d like to be alerted when Google+ is made public, go to plus.google.com. I was given 15 invitations a couple of weeks ago when Google+ launched so I could create a network of real friends to test it.

Features Made Obvious

Surprisingly, Google+ was designed with more attention to appearance and delightful animations than most other Google programs. It feels polished and slick. I found some of its features more obvious and easy to use than those in Facebook, where settings are buried in hard-to-find menus.

Then there are the Circles. These are visually obvious ways of sorting people you know into groups: One way to add a person to a Circle is by dragging his or her photo onto a labeled Circle (i.e. Best Buds or Tennis Team). The person’s tiny, circular image rolls around the Circle and bumps up against a photo of someone else in the group. Removing someone from a Circle is as easy as dragging their photo out.

When sharing anything via Google+, users are prompted to choose which Circles they want to see this content. Only the person who created the Circle knows its name and the people in it. As far as other people know, they’ve simply been added to a Circle. As long as you have a Google profile, you can be added to someone else’s Circle. But you can opt to remove your Google profile from search results, which may mean fewer people will add you to their Circles.

You are never asked for your approval to be added to someone else’s Circle. The same goes for Facebook Groups, which are created by someone who adds you without your explicit permission. Both social networks would do better by asking rather than assuming users are interested in this group participation.

Selected sharing is also possible in Facebook Groups, which launched last fall. But the person who creates groups determines who’s in them. The entire group sees the group’s name and shared content.

The Sparks feature of Google+ encourages a person to choose things that “spark” an interest for them, whether that’s tennis or “The Closer,” and this automatically retrieves news about these subjects to one’s Google+ page.

Sparks is another example of something that exists in a different capacity on Facebook. You can type anything into the Search box at the top of the Facebook site and find information about that thing and then opt to “Like” it, which adds information about it to your news feed. Many people don’t know that searches for things other than people are possible in Facebook.

Hanging Out Online

Hangouts, or group video chats, can be initiated by anyone with a webcam, and these can be joined by anyone who knows about them. The Hangout is announced in one’s Google+ stream so others can see it and join the chat. Up to 10 people can simultaneously participate in a Hangout, and these can’t be made private. I started a Hangout but wasn’t joined by any other Google+ users.

To add a person to a Google Circle, drag and drop their photo into it.

Privacy Options

Publicly shared content in Google+ can be seen by anyone, even people you’ve blocked, so I found it helpful to use a box labeled “View profile as…” on my profile page. Here, I could type the name of anyone else with a Google account to see what of mine was visible to that person. Or I could select “anyone on the web” to see how my Google+ page looked to people not in my Circles. I kept almost all of my information limited to my Circles.

If you receive an email notification that someone added you to a Circle in Google+, this means he or she can share with you—but you’ll only see their shared content if you opt to do so and they’ll only see what you opt to share publicly.

A stream in Google+ shows shared content including photos, videos and status updates. But if someone has recently commented on an old post, it will bubble to the top of the page like it’s new. If you’d rather not see the continuous stream of comments made on a post, you can mute the post.

Mobile for Google+

Google+ also offers mobile features like Huddle, which supports group texting—much like BlackBerry Messenger—for up to 100 people at once on any device that uses SMS. Facebook currently doesn’t have anything comparable to this. And Instant Upload lets people send any photo they capture from their Android device (running the 2.1 operating system or above) directly to Google+.

If you’re suffering from Facebook withdrawal, a browser extension from Crossrider (http://j.mp/orEmrG) can be used to display your Facebook stream in Google+.

Email katie.boehret@wsj.com

Judging E-Readers by Their Book Readability

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 23:39:01 +0000

If you’re heading to the beach this summer and you plan to read an e-book, you won’t want to take your iPad. The screen of Apple’s otherwise enjoyable tablet has a glare that’s accentuated in bright sun, even if you’re under an umbrella and wearing a hat and sunglasses, as I learned last summer.

[ See post to watch video ]

Luckily, alternatives abound, including several devices that use E Ink screen-display technology. These devices offer glare-free, matte surfaces, though the trade-off is a grayscale display with no backlighting.

For the past week, I’ve been doing my summer reading on two E Ink machines: the newest $139 Nook from Barnes & Noble Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.’s latest $114 Kindle with Special Offers (that means sponsored screensavers bring the price down from $139). Both are dedicated e-readers and in lieu of color screens, both use E Ink’s Pearl Display, which has better contrast and sharper text than previous E Ink displays. Their thin, light dimensions make them a no-brainer to toss in a bag for reading on the go. And the Nook and Kindle are both capable of buying and downloading e-books right over WiFi.

The Kindle lets gift givers preregister a device for people who aren’t tech savvy.

But the new Nook has something the Kindle doesn’t: a touch screen. While Amazon’s Kindle has a physical keyboard for inputting text, and directional buttons for painfully sluggish navigation, users of the Nook can make their way around it using screen taps or swipes; its on-screen keyboard appears when needed.

With the Nook, Barnes & Noble proves that a basic grayscale-screen e-reader doesn’t have to feel antiquated.

It has been 10 months since Amazon brought out its last Kindle and the company is likely to introduce a new version of this product in the next three months, as well as a much anticipated iPad competitor. And there’s a very good chance the new Kindle will include a touch screen, so the Nook’s advantage may be short-lived. The current Kindle also comes in a $164 version with a free 3G Internet connection; the new Nook is only available with a WiFi connection.

At least for now, the Nook is in the lead. Even without its touch screen, the Nook has a few other features that the Kindle lacks. Its company-estimated battery life is two months when used for reading an hour a day with WiFi off, or twice as long as Amazon’s Kindle under the same circumstances. It enables lending books to friends directly from the Nook, while Kindle users must initiate lending books from a PC. And library books can be borrowed and read on the Nook (albeit using a side-loading procedure); an Amazon spokeswoman says library books are coming to Kindles later this year.

Still, the Nook isn’t flawless: After I read with it for about 20 minutes one night, its touch screen stopped responding. Thankfully, page turns can also be made using hard buttons on either side of the screen. I could keep reading, but I couldn’t navigate through the rest of the device without access to touch-prompted menus. The biggest problem came in the morning when I tried to use it after the device went into sleep mode overnight. I couldn’t get it out of sleep mode without being able to use the on-screen sliding gesture that unlocks the touch screen.

The Barnes & Noble Nook.

A Barnes & Noble spokeswoman said the company is aware of this touch-screen problem occurring with a small number of devices and that an over-the-air, automatic update will be sent to all Nooks over the next two weeks to fix it. (Users won’t have to do anything except have the Nook in WiFi range to get the update.) In the meantime, my touch screen eventually started working again, but holding the Nook’s power button to restart the device should fix this problem.

Physically, the Nook and Kindle have the same six-inch diagonal screen size. But the Kindle has a longer top-to-bottom design to house its physical keyboard, much like the shape of a novel but only about three-tenths of an inch thick. The Nook’s overall shape is squatter than the Kindle, and it’s slightly lighter—about 7.5 versus 8.5 ounces. Both e-readers are so lightweight that I forgot I had each one in my bag at different times.

I didn’t mind holding these devices while reading for long periods of time. The back of the Nook is slightly thicker on its sides, which makes it easy to hold, and the shape of the Kindle makes it feel well balanced in the hand. I sat on city benches and on pool lounge chairs with both devices, reading glare-free, Caroline Kennedy’s “She Walks in Beauty” with the summer sun above.

On the Nook, a tap of the “n” button below the screen directed me to a Home screen, where I could see my Nook Friends’ activities, like what books they rated, recommended or quoted. The Nook easily imports contacts from Google, or connects to Facebook and Twitter for sharing news about books with friends. Kindle allows sharing of book highlights, ratings and notes to friends through Facebook and Twitter, but the steps for connecting to these networks are buried in layers of Kindle menus.

By tapping the center of the Nook screen while a book is opened, five options are displayed at the bottom of the screen, including Go To, which now tells users how many pages are left in a chapter instead of just telling the number of overall remaining pages in the book.

One big plus for the not-so-tech-savvy book lover: Kindles can ship pre-registered for a user, which is helpful if you’re buying a device for someone who doesn’t have a PC or doesn’t know how to set up an Amazon account on the device.

Newspapers and magazines can be delivered wirelessly to both devices, and Kindle and Nook apps can be installed on various other devices to access reading materials, including Windows PCs, Macs, iPads, Android tablets and smartphones.

If you’re loyal to Amazon, you’ll probably want to hold out a few months for a new Kindle. If you’re looking for an e-reader now, Barnes & Noble’s new Nook has great social networking and a touch screen that makes it a cinch to use.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com

The Fine Print on E-Readers

Here’s how the latest Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook compare:

Amazon Kindle With Special Offers		Barnes & Noble Nook
$114 or $164	Price	$139
WiFi or WiFi + Free 3G	WiFi or 3G	WiFi Only
Yes, 14 days, must do from PC	E-Book Lending	Yes, 14 days, direct from Nook
No*	Library-Book Borrowing	Yes
7.5″ x 4.8″ x 0.335″	Dimensions (HxWxD)	6.5″ x 5.0″ x 0.47″
8.5 oz.	Weight	7.48 oz.
1 month	Battery Life (1 Hour/Day Reading Pace, Wireless Off)	2 months
4GB, or 3,500 books	Memory	2GB, or 1,000 books
No	Expandable Memory	Yes, microSD slot
E Ink Pearl Display	Text Display	E Ink Pearl Display

* Library lending expected later this year.