From a Starbucks in Menlo Park yesterday — and obviously hopped up on too many doppios — I talked with the Mediatwits (Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali) about the twin clown circuses going on at AOL and Yahoo this week.

That would be firebombers — Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and fired Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz — on one side and punching-bag big companies on the other.

For me, it’s obviously Christmas in September.

Enjoy the podcast:

The Apple iOS and Google Android smartphone location-tracking kerfuffle. Smarty-pants commentators. KQED’s “Forum” radio show with interviewer Michael Krasny yesterday.

Go!

The IBM supercomputer and human player, Brad Rutter, each had $5,000 on the scoreboard, while Ken Jennings, who had bested Watson in the much-publicized practice match, ended with $2,000.

Watson missed some questions and in interesting ways. At one point Watson repeated a wrong answer, the “1920s,” which Jennings had just said. Host Alex Trebeck referred to these as “weird little moments.”

Watson sprang to a huge lead early. By the first commercial break, Watson had $5,200 to Rutter’s $1,000, and $200 for Jennings. It began a serious run interestingly enough after hitting the Daily Double and making a bet. This is interesting in that Watson, in the practice match which it ultimately lost, showed a weakness in situations where betting was called for. This was a weakness that Jennings exploited to his benefit. This made it a surprise when Watson threw down and bet $1,000, more than it had on the board at the time.

I asked Stephen Baker (pictured), author of the forthcoming book on the match, “Final Jeopardy,” to call me after the episode aired for a little color commentary from the point of view of someone who was in the studio to witness it. Our conversation, which I recorded on Google Voice, is below.

Steve Baker Talks about The IBM Jeopardy Challenge, Day 1 by ahess247

Here is my appearance yesterday on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” where I pontificate about AOL’s $315 million acquisition of the Huffington Post.

Whatever you think of the purchase–and there are a lot of differing opinions–I noted: “What [the deal] does say is that news is an exciting area and it always will be. It just depends on how it’s going to be distributed.”

Very sensible!

Listen in:

Today I heard back from him. His sister, who lives in New York, had checked his messages for him, and kindly replied to my email messages. She then gave me the number of a wireless phone he has that is for one reason or another able to send and receive text messages.

I sent a message to that number and heard back from him, mere minutes after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had finished giving the speech in which he said he wouldn’t be a candidate in the forthcoming election in September.

It is one thing to see the media reports that have been emerging from that country, but quite another to hear from someone you know on the ground, especially under the difficult communications circumstances that the government has imposed. Because of that, his terse messages feel all the more precious.

In response to my first message he wrote:

Hosni Mubarak is clinging to power despite everything. There is a lot of impatience among Egyptians for him to leave office now. Protests are intensifying and they are drawing bigger crowds. I am working on some filming.

I replied that I thought at first the people would be feeling victorious following Mubarak’s announcement. He replied back:

They want him to leave this minute! They don’t want him to stall. He is already 20 steps behind the demands of the street. His time is up. Mubarak is in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh. But if he were in Cairo, he would have fled the country by now, fearing protesters might charge the presidential palace.

I sent another reply containing the phone numbers for Speak2Tweet, the service Google and Twitter launched yesterday that allows people in Egypt with working phone lines to leave audio messages that are then broadcast to the world via Twitter. That Twitter account has now carried more than 1,000 messages from people in Egypt, some of which, like the one from the young woman below, are in English. Judging by her tone, events there have yet to reach their conclusion.

For those messages not in English, some volunteers have been translating the messages into English and publishing them into a continuously updated spreadsheet on Google Docs. This effort in turn led to a site called “Alive in Egypt,” where SayNow messages continue to be translated and transcribed.

I haven’t heard back from Abdulla after his last message. Now that Mubarak has pledged to leave office in September, there is as yet no information about when Egypt’s communications infrastructure will be restored to a normal operating posture.

Meanwhile, the folks at Internet research firm Renesys, who have so deftly tracked the finer technical details of Egypt’s disappearance from the Internet, have produced yet another visualization of the peculiar event as it unfolded. The video below is a minute-by-minute graphical representation of Egypt’s four major Internet service companies as they went dark. In a new blog post, they point out that what you’re watching is the silencing of the voices of 80 million people. One of them is my friend.

[Image Via: SheKnows]

[CLICK HERE FOR LIVE COVERAGE OF THE PRESS EVENT]
But a select crowd will get to see the iPad newspaper tonight, at an equally notable Manhattan location: Rupert Murdoch’s apartment, where the News Corp. CEO is hosting a “low key” cocktail party.

Although News Corp. owns this Web site, my email invite to tonight’s pre-launch launch event hasn’t arrived, and I’m told it never will. The company hasn’t offered me a peek at the Daily, either.

But at this point I’ve still got a pretty decent sense of what Murdoch’s guests will see this evening, and the rest of us will see tomorrow: A newspaper that’s both old-fashioned and cutting-edge.

People who have gotten up  close to the the Daily describe a digital paper where many of the news stories look just like news stories you’d see anywhere else.

Others will look more like iPhone apps, featuring interactive graphics or videos, or photos you can swipe, pinch and zoom–with perhaps almost no text at all.

And there’s more! There’s no 3-D video yet, though it’s on the agenda. But there will be an audio feature so you can have stories read aloud to you. And there’s a crossword puzzle! And Sudoku!

A Daily-watcher who thinks the thing is amazing compares it to the Daily Prophet, the magical newspaper read by Harry Potter and his wizard pals.

More jaded observers tell me it’s more or less what they’ve seen in existing iPad magazine apps, particularly Hearst’s Popular Mechanics and Condé Nast’s Wired. The big difference is that those magazines come out monthly, and the Daily will get beamed to your iPad… daily.

Still, the most striking thing about the Daily has nothing to do with any technical bells and whistles. It’s Murdoch’s insistence that he can sell a digital newspaper app to consumers trained to expect that digital news is what you get on the Web, for free.

The Daily is almost defiantly anti-Web: It will have a free site, with a grudging sample of perhaps 10 percent of the newspaper’s stories, but that’s it. While Web news sites increasingly focus on aggregation and filtering of other people’s content, the Daily will focus on making its own stuff, even though plenty of other people are already doing it.

And while News Corp. officials have tried to argue that the Daily isn’t a newspaper but something else, it is most definitely produced using a newspaper model: Six sections, written once a day–the Daily team is particularly excited about its sports coverage–and delivered in the wee hours of the morning.

The Daily will allow for some midday updates, but it’s really designed to land with a digital thud on your virtual doorstep, just like the newspapers Murdoch has loved all his life.

Murdoch will charge 99 cents a week for a subscription, and he’s certainly going to get some takers at the start, especially since the Daily will be free for the first two weeks after tomorrow’s launch.

Which will be a noisy one. The press will give it plenty of free promotion, and News Corp. will augment that with a digital ad campaign, in addition to offline marketing donated and/or bartered from other Murdoch properties. Perhaps there’s a way to mention it once or twice during Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast on Fox.

Much more important will be the endorsement from Apple, which is using the Daily to roll out a new “push” subscription feature.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who was supposed to appear onstage in San Francisco with Murdoch to bless the launch, will send content boss Eddy Cue to New York tomorrow instead.

That’s still Apple’s seal of approval, though, and I can’t think of another time the company has so conspicuously blessed a single third-party product. That alone will be enough to prompt an enormous number of people to try it out.

Remember that Apple already has a customer base of  some 125 million iTunes users–if you do want to buy this thing, you won’t need to pull out a credit card. A few button clicks will do.

The real question, of course, is how many people are going to pay for the Daily a month down the road, when the buzz is gone. And there’s no way to guess at that when you get your first look at the thing. No matter when that happens.

Most impressive: Searchable audio that lets you sift through all of the network’s daily audio output to find mentions of your favorite teams, players, etc. So you can leave work, head to the gym and download, um, all of the day’s Clay Matthews news, without having to waste time Web surfing through the day. (Yes, you’re going to Web surf, anyway.)

The Disney-owned sports network isn’t changing the app’s price, which will stay at $2.99. ESPN says it has sold “hundreds of thousands” of the apps since it launched in September 2009. 1-800-FLOWERS.com has signed on as the exclusive sponsor for the relaunch.

Meanwhile, ESPN.com’s audio ventures seem to be doing well across the board: ESPNRadio.com reaches more than three million listeners per month, while multimedia star Bill Simmons’s podcast racked up 42 million downloads last year. (I’m responsible for a couple hundred, at least.)

ESPN says a version for Google’s Android platform is on the way.

Sorry, joining slightly late. Jen-Hsun Huang is walking through Nvidia’s recent announcements.

And also some history. 1995 was important because the personal computer really became personal back then. (I assume this relates to a Windows release but not clear why.)

At the time, we thought we’d be a $300 million company in five years. But we got a lot bigger.

Ina Fried: You’re expanding beyond graphics, but how big is that business?

JH: We’ve shipped one billion GeForce processors. That’s a lot. We’re also doing Quadro processors for high-end processing. We’ve got the new Tesla business, where we use our GPU for general technical computing. It’s being used for the world’s fastest supercomputer.

Our newest business is the Tegra business. Using our expertise for a new class of mobile computing.

IF: Earlier versions of the Tegra were used in the Zune.

JH: And the Kin.

IF: I wasn’t going to mention the Kin.

Now JH is talking Intel. Which started with move into building chipsets, 12 years ago. Started with Xbox, then AMD platforms, then we wanted to scale out so we started talking about Intel. Now we’re in a dispute.

IF: So where do things stand with that?

JH: [More or less a non-answer here.]

IF: Okay, let’s talk about the future!

JH: Cool. 2011 is a big year, a year that computing is getting redefined because of these mobile products.

IF: That sounds like hyperbole, but I sort of agree. There’s some amazing stuff being shown off this year. But explain what’s different about this stuff.

JH: We like to call the new phones superphones. Time to do a demo.

JH is plugging in a new Android handset into a dock. It’s taking awhile. Complains about his vision. Okay, there we go. Showing off multitasking, apps, etc. Showing off 1080p video that looks cool. No audio, though. “This is a full-on computer.”

JH: We think these will really change things, because they can be laptops, or a media center, etc., simply based on where you dock it and the kind of accessories.

IF: So you have cellphones basically being able to replace a computer. But Microsoft is also announcing that Windows will run on ARM processors, including ones you make. How important is that?

JH: If you’re a software company of any kind, your primary focus is to target processors, anywhere. At this point, it’s a foregone conclusion that ARM will be the largest installed base of processors in the world.

Then the important thing is the operating systems: Andriod, iOS and RIM are incredibly important.

IF: So Windows is fourth most important?

JH: The most important CPU architecture going forward is likely to be ARM. At this point, you have to embrace ARM or you’re going to miss out on a very important market. Now they have a huge growth market that’s opened up to them.

IF: Again, explain the importance of Windows on ARM vs. Intel, etc.

JH: It’s huge!

Then he talks about energy dissipation, and that the designs are more elegant. He notes that the D staff backstage is using MacBooks and Airs “because they’re more elegant.”

And note that Steve Ballmer showed off a next gen of Windows running on Tegra 2/ARM. Office, too.

IF: But beyond Windows, what kind of software work has to be done to take advantage of ARM?

JH: Lots of work.

IF: Windows took a decade to catch up last time around. They can’t take this long this time.

JH: Right. That’s why we’re talking about this now, so when next gen of Windows is out, we’ll be ready.

A discussion about how the market shakes out between different chipsets.

JH: Next-gen Windows, by the time it shakes out, I don’t think it will matter what chipset you use if you’re a consumer. Enterprise will still run on x86, I think.

IF: Back to the cool stuff we’re seeing this year at CES, which seemed impossible a few years ago. What will we see in a few years that we can’t imagine now?

JH: Whatever expectation you have for game consoles, PCs, etc. will be “fully met by mobile devices in the next three to four years.”

And in the next three to four years this kind of device will likely exceed your expectations, because the supercomputer will be in the cloud.

IF: More future talk, please. 3-D on the phone?

JH: 3-D on the phone is a foregone conclusion. This kind of glass (on phone) is perfect for 3-D display. And it will work perfectly when you’re touching it. Long term, this device will have much better computer vision, so instead of taking a picture and sending it back, it might analyze the image and send a signal back, to reduce bandwidth.

IF: Except there are all kinds of problems with bandwidth. You had problems with wireless at your demo. Isn’t that a bigger problem going forward?

JH: The carriers finally have real incentive to invest in the pipe, because there’s a reason to use it, with all the hi-def video, etc. So we can take their promises seriously, finally.

Next year every phone will be a 4G phone.

IF: Talk about your fab-less approach to this business.

JH: In 1993, we couldn’t get a fab. We didn’t have a choice. And now ARM has democratized the CPU. It’s a big deal. [Missing the connection here, but perhaps it's my ignorance.]

Okay, that’s it! Thanks.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110107/live-nvidia-ceo-jen-hsun-huang-at-dces/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110105/in-4g-race-verizon-pulls-ahead-with-pricey-speed/ http://allthingsd.com/20110105/in-4g-race-verizon-pulls-ahead-with-pricey-speed/#comments Thu, 06 Jan 2011 02:03:48 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/?p=1713 One of the biggest technology trends in 2011 will be the expansion of new, faster cellular networks called 4G, or fourth generation. These networks promise a big increase in speed and capacity to handle the surge in streaming video, audio and Web surfing from hot-selling devices like super-smart phones and tablets, as well as from laptops. But you’ll have to buy new phones, modems and other connected consumer devices to get the higher speed they offer.

Wireless carriers and handset makers will be touting their 4G plans and compatible devices at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but it will be a couple of years before 4G networks in the U.S. achieve the same coverage as the current standard, called 3G.

The move to 4G from 3G began last year, with Sprint leading the way and Verizon Wireless joining in the last few weeks of 2010 with a limited deployment. But 2011 will see the service spreading to more and more cities, and is also expected to see the entry of AT&T. T-Mobile hasn’t announced an actual 4G network rollout, but is instead relying on a souped-up version of 3G that it is marketing as 4G because it claims it can deliver similar data speeds with its approach.

I’ve been testing the 4G network of the latest entrant, Verizon, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., which is one of 38 metro areas (plus 60 airports) where the company turned on its 4G network in December. My verdict is that it’s wicked fast—the fastest 4G network I’ve tried—but also potentially costly. In my tests, with a laptop modem, it proved dramatically faster than Verizon’s 3G network, and recorded speeds on a par with some land-line Internet connections.

But 4G from Verizon won’t be cheap. For laptop modem users, at least, Verizon is charging $50 a month for up to 5 gigabytes of data use and $80 monthly for 10 gigabytes. If you run over, the company will bill you $10 for every extra gigabyte. Such data limits aren’t new, but, with 4G’s much higher speeds, users may find themselves sending and receiving more data more often, and thus breaching the limits more regularly. For instance, in my tests, I was easily able to download a nearly 600 megabyte TV show, something I wouldn’t even try with a 3G modem. That one download would have eaten up more than 10% of my monthly cap under the $50 plan.

Verizon’s first LTE laptop modem, the LG VL600, has a flip top that reveals the USB connector.

Verizon’s variant of 4G uses a different underlying technology than Sprint’s. It’s called LTE, for Long Term Evolution, and is also the 4G system being adopted by many other cellular operators around the world, including AT&T. (Technically, this first version of LTE isn’t considered true 4G by the engineering standards body that rules on such matters, but that makes little difference to consumers looking for faster connections.)

The company says it chose LTE because it is not only fast, but is less prone to interference, can provide better battery life, has less latency, or lag, and can better handle multiple users simultaneously. The LTE system doesn’t affect voice calls on Verizon’s network—it’s only for data, and operates in tandem with the current voice network.

Verizon claims its new network is up to 10 times faster than its 3G network and says consumers will see speeds of between 5 and 12 megabits per second for downloads and between 2 and 5 mbps for uploads, in “real-world, loaded network environments.”

As of this writing, Verizon doesn’t offer an actual LTE-capable smart phone, only LTE USB modems that plug into laptops. But the company is expected to offer a sneak peek at CES this week of several LTE phones that will roll out in the coming months, as well other planned LTE devices, from a variety of manufacturers. Again, I want to stress that your current Verizon phone or laptop modem can’t be upgraded to work with LTE. You’ll need a new one.

For my tests, I used Verizon’s first LTE laptop modem, the VL600 made by LG of Korea. It sells for $100 after a $50 mail-in rebate with a two-year service contract. This modem can handle data over slower 3G networks, if you happen to stray out of one of Verizon’s 4G service areas. For now, it works only on computers running Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. But the company says it should have Mac-compatible LTE modems in a month or so.

To use it, you have to first install, from an included CD, a new version of Verizon’s cellular modem software, VZAccess Manager. Older versions won’t work. My test machine was a Lenovo ThinkPad X301, which worked fine with a Verizon 3G modem. Installation was relatively quick and smooth, though I was immediately instructed to download an updated version of the software, so I had to go through it twice.

I disabled Wi-Fi on the ThinkPad, plugged in the LTE modem and ran 10 tests using the popular Speedtest.net website. The results were impressive. Verizon’s 4G network averaged just a shade under 16 megabits per second for downloads and 6.6 mbps for uploads. That was 15 times the download speed, and 13 times the upload speed, of a Verizon 3G modem I tested immediately afterward using the same method in the same location.

To relate these speeds to real-world scenarios, I downloaded from iTunes a standard-definition episode of the TV show “The Good Wife”—a 588 megabyte file—in just seven minutes, instead of the two hours or so iTunes predicted it would take when I was using the 3G modem. I streamed several long videos, including two in HD, from the Web, and they played smooth as silk.

But there are caveats. For one thing, hardly anyone is using this new Verizon network yet, and it’s likely to slow down as it gets crowded, especially with smart-phone users. Secondly, laptop cellular modems typically deliver faster speeds than phones, so my results don’t necessarily predict phone or tablet performance.

Also, speeds can vary by city and distance. My tests were mainly conducted against a server in my local D.C. area. But I also tried a few tests against a server in San Francisco and only got about 6 mbps download—within Verizon’s claims, but much slower.

Still, if you can afford it, and if it works well in phones and tablets, Verizon’s new LTE network could be a great boon to your digital lifestyle.

Find all Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, allthingsd.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110105/in-4g-race-verizon-pulls-ahead-with-pricey-speed/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101229/wi-fi-hotspot-safety-and-mac-viruses/ http://allthingsd.com/20101229/wi-fi-hotspot-safety-and-mac-viruses/#comments Wed, 29 Dec 2010 22:50:38 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://mailbox.allthingsd.com/?p=805 Q:

I have had a little disagreement with my IT guy. He says that when taking my laptop out in public, I should never type anything with passwords or confidential information. He says that someone can pick up my information. I say that I can’t believe that everyone in public is totally exposed. There must be some way to protect yourself while on a public network. Who is right?

A:

There’s no single correct answer. It’s true that thieves in public places can and do steal passwords and other sensitive information transferred over public Wi-Fi hotspots. But it’s also true that methods like Virtual Private Networks can mitigate this problem, and that most public hotspots are, just by the odds, unlikely to harbor these thieves at any one time. However, my advice is to avoid doing any sensitive tasks, like banking or stock trading, while using public hotspots. And, if you’re doing anything confidential on your company or home network remotely, use a VPN, which is like a secure tunnel through the internet.

Q:

I recently purchased a new iMac and am considering installing anti-virus/spyware/malware programs on it. Reader forums in MacWorld magazine say it’s not needed. A local newspaper computer columnist says he’s had Macs since the early ’80s and has never run an AV program and has had no problems. Other online computer advisers say Macs are always vulnerable and advise to run AV programs. Any recommendations here?

A:

No computer is inherently invulnerable to malicious software, and that includes the Macintosh. However, nearly every malicious program known is meant to run on Windows and simply won’t operate on the Mac operating system. The handful of Mac viruses and other malware that have been discovered are either proofs of concept, or have spread to very few users and done little or no damage. Most Mac users I’ve known don’t run third-party security software and haven’t had malware problems. So I don’t routinely recommend Mac security software.

There are two caveats, however. If you are running Windows on your Mac, you should install Windows security software, to run while Windows is in use. Also, Mac users are just as vulnerable as Windows users are to online scams, or to insecure public networks. So, even though you may never get a virus, you still have to be careful about doing sensitive Internet tasks via public hotspots or careless behavior like clicking on links sent you by unknown email senders.

Q:

My car has an audio jack that integrates any input into the sound system. I know that Kindle has a text-to-speech feature. Would I be able to use that feature via the audio jack in the car?

A:

Without having tested your car’s input jack, I assume the answer is yes. The Kindle has a standard headphone jack.

However, note that the text-to-speech feature works only on certain books, not all of them. Publishers have the right to allow or disallow it for any book.

Also, even if it’s enabled, it isn’t the same as an audio book, which is usually read by a trained narrator or by the author. Instead, it’s a computer doing the reading.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox and my other columns at the All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101229/wi-fi-hotspot-safety-and-mac-viruses/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20101216/larry-to-hp-and-ibm-were-coming-for-your-server-customers/ http://allthingsd.com/20101216/larry-to-hp-and-ibm-were-coming-for-your-server-customers/#comments Fri, 17 Dec 2010 01:16:06 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=740 It’s not exactly a news flash that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is one determined and competitive CEO. But it’s another thing to hear him say it. During tonight’s quarterly earnings call, as Oracle reported earnings that handily beat the expectations of analysts, Ellison several times slammed competitors Hewlett-Packard, IBM and SAP, and promised to best them all in the marketplace.

But he sounded particularly determined when articulating his vision for Oracle’s plans in the high-end server business, which is based primarily on the hardware business Oracle got as part of the Sun Microsystems acquisition.

Naturally, Ellison’s plans are nothing less than total domination in the world of high-end servers. Below is an audio clip, about three minutes in length, in which he articulates his vision.

In fairness to HP, which as usual bears the brunt of Ellison’s trash-talking, it has dismissed the benchmark about which Ellison is so proud of beating HP as outdated. Time will tell if that ultimately matters.

The clip begins with Oracle President Safra Catz congratulating Ellison on winning so many sailing races before giving him the floor.

Larry Ellison speech by ahess247

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101216/larry-to-hp-and-ibm-were-coming-for-your-server-customers/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101110/samsung-galaxy-tab-tablet-review/ http://allthingsd.com/20101110/samsung-galaxy-tab-tablet-review/#comments Thu, 11 Nov 2010 02:02:56 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/?p=1610 After seven months of unchallenged prominence, Apple’s hot-selling iPad now has its first credible competitor in the nascent market for multitouch consumer tablet computers: the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

The Tab is being introduced over the next week by three major U.S. wireless phone carriers at $400 with a cellular data contract, or at $600 with cellular capability but no contract. The iPad starts at $499 for a Wi-Fi model with no cellular-data capability or contract, and is $629 for the least expensive model with cellular data capability but no contract.

Like the iPad, the Tab, which uses Google’s Android operating system, is a good-looking slate with a vivid color screen that can handle many of the tasks typically performed on a laptop. These include email, social networking, Web browsing, photo viewing, and music and video playback. It also can run a wide variety of third-party apps. But it has major differences, most notably in size.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab has less than half the screen real estate than that of the iPad.

The Tab has a 7-inch screen versus the 9.7-inch display on the iPad. That may seem like a small difference, but the numbers are deceptive, because screen sizes are always described using diagonal measurements. In fact, the actual screen real estate on the Tab is less than half of the iPad’s. That’s a disadvantage, but it allows the overall unit to be much smaller and lighter, and thus more easily used in one hand, something some users will welcome.

The new tablet will be introduced in coming days by Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, with a variety of cellular data plans. AT&T also will carry the Tab during the holiday season but hasn’t announced its timing or data-plan pricing. Although it is being sold by cellular carriers, the Tab, like the iPad (which offers optional month-to-month cellular data through AT&T) can’t make cellular voice calls.

I’ve been testing the Tab for a couple of weeks and I like it. It’s a serious alternative to the iPad and one that will be preferred by some folks. It includes the three most-requested features missing in the iPad: a camera (two in fact); the ability to run Web videos and applications written in Adobe’s Flash software; and multitasking, though, to be fair, the latter feature is coming to the iPad imminently via a software update. Another strong point is that like Apple, Samsung has rewritten some of the standard apps, such as the email and calendar programs, to make them look more like PC programs and less like smartphone apps.

On balance, however, I still prefer the iPad. For one thing, I like getting twice the screen size for a little more money up front—as little as $29 for the no-contract model with cellular capability. For another, the iPad has vastly more apps specifically designed for a tablet versus a smartphone—about 40,000 according to Apple, compared with just a handful for the Tab. And it can run about triple the apps overall, if you count smartphone apps that aren’t optimized for tablets.

Also, in my tests, the iPad’s battery life was about five hours better than the Tab’s, its maximum storage capacity is higher, and its aluminum body is more rugged than the Tab’s plastic casing. Finally, the iPad can be bought in a Wi-Fi-only model that frees you from any entanglement with cellphone carriers. The Tab also has Wi-Fi, but, so far, no Wi-Fi-only version, though Samsung is promising one next year.

Still, the Tab is a very attractive product and I enjoyed using it. For buyers who want to spend less up front, don’t mind the smaller screen, prefer the more compact dimensions and one-handed usability, and place high value on the cameras and on Flash, it may well be a better choice.

Hardware

The Tab is a rectangular slate about two inches shorter and three inches narrower than the iPad. It is also a tad thinner. It weighs less than a pound, compared with 1.5 pounds for the iPad. While its screen is smaller, it has almost the same resolution as the iPad, so almost as much material can be displayed on it.

The screen is sharp and generally responsive to touch, though, in my tests, a bit slower than the iPad’s screen. The Tab comes with 16 gigabytes of flash storage, the same as the base iPad. But with some carriers, this storage is internal and in others, it’s on a removable memory card. The card slot comes on all models and can hold up to 32 gigabytes at extra cost. The iPad, also at extra cost, comes in versions that go up to 64 gigabytes, all internal.

With its lighter weight and smaller size, I found the Tab easy to use while standing and moving. It easily fit in one hand, though for many tasks you’ll still need two hands.

Battery Life

Samsung and its partners make wildly varying battery claims for the Tab. The former says it can last up to 13 hours on a single charge, while T-Mobile claims just eight hours. I gave the Tab the same test I used for my iPad review: I put the screen on nearly full brightness, left the Wi-Fi on to collect email and played back-to-back videos until the unit died. My test Tab lasted six hours, 50 minutes, though at six hours, 10 minutes the screen dimmed irrevocably to a darkness level that made it useless. In the same test last spring, the iPad logged 11 hours, 28 minutes.

Cameras

The Tab has a 3-megapixel rear camera with flash and a 1.3-megapixel front camera mainly for video calls. Still-photographs and videos I took were of average quality, but videos taken with the front camera were fuzzy.

I tested video calling using a pre-release, tablet-optimized version of Qik, the software being preinstalled for this purpose on the Tab. Results were mixed. It will work over either cellular or Wi-Fi connections, but the version I tried wasn’t tuned for cellular, so we used Wi-Fi. In my conversation with a Qik executive, the call at first failed to go through. When it did go through, it worked fine for awhile, and then failed when I tried a feature designed to hide my image. Later, the audio dropped altogether. Qik says it is fixing the problems.

Software

The Tab uses the latest version of Android, and it generally worked very smoothly, even though Google has warned that Android isn’t yet ready for tablets. I was especially impressed with Samsung’s attractive and usable rewrites of the calendar, email and contacts apps, which, like their iPad cousins, use multiple panels to make them more computer-like, while still remaining touch-friendly.

I found the Web browser to be a bit jerky in zooming into text and scrolling through long pages. I tested several Adobe Flash videos and websites written in Flash. Sometimes they played and sometimes they didn’t. In all cases, they slowed the browser down. On one site written in Flash, I got a warning saying I might want to “abort” lest the computer become “unresponsive.” In another case, the Tab crashed. So I conclude that while the Tab does play Flash, it needs work on that score.

I downloaded a few third-party apps. I couldn’t find any that were rewritten with extra features for tablets, nor any way to discover these in the Android Market. Some of my downloaded apps scaled fine to tablet size. Others were surrounded by large black bars.

Cellular pricing

On an iPad, if you opt for cellular-data service, there is no contract and only two monthly prices—$14.99 for 250 megabytes and $25 for 2 gigabytes. On the Tab, it’s much more complicated. Verizon, which is selling only the $600 no-contract model, says its pricing will start at $20 a month for 1 gigabyte of data. Sprint charges $29.99 monthly for 2 gigabytes and $59.99 for 5 gigabytes. T-Mobile has different prices for no-contract and contract models, and different rates for new and existing customers. Just two examples: a new customer under contract on a Tab can pay $30 monthly for 200 megabytes or $50 for 5 gigabytes.

So, I urge Tab buyers to do the math carefully on the overall cost of the device under various carriers and plans.

Bottom Line

The Tab is attractive, versatile and competitively priced, though monthly cell fees can add up. It’s different enough from the iPad, yet good enough, to give consumers a real choice.

Find all his columns and videos at walt.allthingsd.com Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101110/samsung-galaxy-tab-tablet-review/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101021/viral-radio-facebook-flap/ http://allthingsd.com/20101021/viral-radio-facebook-flap/#comments Thu, 21 Oct 2010 08:18:17 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=35957

Here’s a radio interview BoomTown did earlier this week on San Francisco’s KQED “Forum” show, hosted by Michael Krasny.

The topic was a report in the The Wall Street Journal that certain third-party apps on Facebook were grabbing information about users in ways that violated the social networking site’s privacy guidelines.

Privacy advocates cried foul, while others thought it was more a tempest in a teapot– which I, NPR reporter Laura Sydell and Marc Rotenberg, executive director for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, discussed.

One conclusion, which you will understand after listening: Facebook definitely does not cause cancer.

Here’s the audio:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101021/viral-radio-facebook-flap/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20101013/deleting-your-facebook-profile/ http://allthingsd.com/20101013/deleting-your-facebook-profile/#comments Wed, 13 Oct 2010 22:35:46 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://mailbox.allthingsd.com/?p=760 Q:

How do I totally and permanently delete my account from Facebook? I know that you can “deactivate” an account, but that’s not the same thing.

A:

Facebook makes it much easier to “deactivate” than to delete an account. The former option retains your profile information on Facebook’s servers, but hides you from everyone else on the service. If you choose to “reactivate” later, all your information reappears as it was when you dropped out. But Facebook says you can also irrevocably delete your account by following the link in this help page: http://on.fb.me/auz93K.

Facebook won’t immediately act on your decision to delete an account.

The company says on its site: “Our system delays the deletion process in case you change your mind and no longer want to permanently delete your account. Note that logging in to your account again will undo a pending deletion request.”

It doesn’t say how long the delay is.

Q:

I have a small weekend farm about an hour away from my home. I don’t want to get satellite service there and there is no cable or high-speed Internet service. What is the easiest way to record TV programs at home, then bring them to my farm to watch? I have an iPad and a Mac laptop.

A:

There are a number of alternatives. One simple one would be to download TV episodes from Apple’s iTunes or another source, and save them to your laptop’s hard disk. Then you’d tote the laptop to the farm and watch them there, either on the computer screen, or on a TV screen, if you plug the laptop into the TV. You can also download TV shows on your iPad and watch them on that device. Another approach: You could buy a product called EyeTV by Elgato, which allows Macs to receive and record TV shows. You could then watch these recorded shows at your farm. (You can do the same things with Windows laptops.) A third option is to forgo the computer route and record shows at home using a DVD recorder or even a VCR and play them back on DVD or VCR players at the farm.

Q:

I need to convert audio files from the “WAV” format to the MP3 format. How do I do that?

A:

There are numerous software utilities available that do such conversions, some of which are free. You can find these by doing a search on “convert WAV to MP3.” I haven’t tested any of these, so I can’t recommend one over another. However, I have done such conversions using iTunes, which is already present on many Windows and Mac computers. To do the conversion in the latest version of iTunes, first go into Preferences, then select the “General” tab, and click on “Import Settings” at the bottom right. Under “Import Using,” select “MP3 encoder.” Then, import your WAV file into iTunes, select it, and, in the Advanced menu, click on “Create MP3 version.”

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

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