AllThingsD » font

Larger Mac Font

Walt Mossberg — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 01:01:56 +0000

I bought a new MacBook Pro, and need larger font size in order to read what’s on my 13″ screen. I know I can increase font size within individual programs, but what can I do about increasing the diminutive Finder items and others within the operating system?

You can adjust the size of the text and icons in the Mac’s Finder—its desktop and file system viewer—by hitting Command-J, which calls up a menu that allows you to set the size of icons and text such as file names. In general on the Mac, you can zoom in on any screen that’s hard to see by pressing Command and Option and the equal sign key simultaneously. There’s also a way to Zoom in on just a small area of the screen. That feature, and other settings for people with low vision, can be found in the Universal Access section of System Preferences.

Windows 7 users can change the size of text and icons using the Display control panel and can zoom in on text using a magnifier tool that can be activated in the Ease of Access control panel, which contains other options for making items on the computer easier to see.

I am reading reports that the Epic 4G Touch lacks a dedicated microphone for noise cancellation. I was curious if this is true, and if it affected voice calls in your recent tests?

According to Samsung, neither the Epic, nor any of the other Galaxy S II models, has a second, noise-canceling microphone. However, as I said in my review, I found voice calls on the phone to be clear.

The Epic 4G Touch

Do you have any suggestions for new phones for those of us wedded to the old Palm interface? Now that Palm is a dinosaur, I know I must upgrade, but so far, I find that none of the software associated with other phones comes close to the Palm functionality for taking notes and categorizing contacts and tasks.

You’re not the only veteran Palm user in this quandary, and I wish I had a great answer for you. Neither of the two most popular smartphone operating systems, Google’s Android or Apple’s iOS, emphasizes elaborate functionality in these areas out of the box. However, both the iPhone and Android phones have access to numerous third-party apps that deal with tasks and notes and contacts. If the built-in functions for these things lack features you like or need, it’s likely that one or more of these apps can help.

Email Walt Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com.

Is Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 the Bing of Smartphones?

Kara Swisher — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:00:37 +0000

When Microsoft introduced its refurbished search service called Bing two years ago–at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, in fact–there were a lot of raised eyebrows about whether it could make any headway into a market in which it was a mere pip-squeak.

And, while it has been a costly effort, few can dispute the fact that the innovative, interesting and cleverly marketed Bing is a perceptual and perhaps even actual hit for the software giant.

Now, can Microsoft (MSFT) do the same with Windows Phone 7, which was launched yesterday?

It will be an interesting effort to watch, given how indisputably late Microsoft has been to the smartphone party now dominated by offerings from Google’s (GOOG) Android and Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone.

BoomTown is no reviewer, nor have I spent a lot of time using the Windows Phone 7.

That said, it seems to have been born in the same green-field spirit of Bing and looks like a welcome entrant into the arena.

And I love the whole cool font thing.

That’s the same way I felt about Bing when it was released, especially since the idea of Google dominating search so completely and dictating change is a prospect I relish about as much I do the idea of living in a small South American banana republic.

Which is to say, not at all.

So, bring on the much-needed competition, even it comes from a company that invented, patented and was sued silly due to the concept of monopolistic domination in tech.

And, for all the daily slog of it, Microsoft’s Bing has been a bright spot in tech and for the company.

The service, which was built from scratch, has improved market share, added a plethora of worthy features and has even made Google sweat a little bit and work a little harder.

And now, due to a search technology and online advertising partnership with Yahoo (YHOO), Microsoft is poised to make some significant headway in its efforts to get into a strong No. 2 spot that could eventually give it the scale and size needed to make some bank.

Of course, the battle in the market for smartphones is even more uphill and difficult to pull off.

Microsoft needs developers to make apps, has to keep innovating on features and cannot acquiesce to wireless carriers, even as it must also get their cooperation for distribution.

And, of course, it has to convince consumers to switch, which is no easy task, and to feel the need for new phones to replace their recently new phones.

It’s a good thing then that Windows Phone 7 looks like Microsoft has at least anted up table stakes to play, delivering a phone that looks pretty good at first glance, much the same way I felt when I saw Bing for the first time.

“Microsoft did that? It’s so pretty,” I said to a long-suffering company exec when I got a demo. “It’s actually good good and not just Microsoft good.”

That was actually a compliment–one I hope to be able to pay again soon.

Until the reviews are all in and consumers have voted, here is a video of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announcing Bing at D7 in an interview with Walt Mossberg:

[ See post to watch video ]

Microsoft of Arabia? If Windows Phone 7 Is as Freaky as This Ad, BoomTown Will Take One Now!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:15:10 +0000

Cue the desert music, mix in some swirling dust and a mirage, use a Middle Eastern font and a mysterioso tagline of “The Revolution Is Coming,” and show it at a movie screening of “Lawrence of Arabia.”

At least Microsoft (MSFT) will not be spending its badillions of advertising dollars on the launch of its Windows Phone 7–playing catch-up in the smartphone race–without some style.

While the trailer below seems to be a one-off for an event in London, it’s still very different from the basic marketing around the Apple (AAPL) iPhone (“It’s magical!”) and the Google (GOOG) Android mobile operating system (“It’s for manly men!”).

In any case, coming for the holidays, Windows Phone 7 should prove to be a welcome respite from enduring the tiresome bickering of those two behemoths.

Here’s the video of Microsoft’s sheikh effort, followed by a recent, more-hipster video of Xbox Live on the Windows Phone 7:

Irex's E-Reader Poses No Threat to the Kindle

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:03:37 +0000

The tech industry and media are focused on Apple’s (AAPL) forthcoming iPad tablet computer, a multifunction device that includes an e-book reader. Meanwhile, with much less fanfare, other companies are pressing ahead with conventional, dedicated e-readers aimed at the leader in the category: Amazon’s Kindle.

[ See post to watch video ]

These more focused, monochrome devices aren’t as flashy or as versatile as the iPad, which handles everything from email to games. But they cost less and are aimed wholly at people who seek to read books and periodicals in digital form.

I’ve been testing one such new e-reader from a company that has been in the business for years, but is mainly known in Europe. It is called the Irex DR800SG and costs $400 at bestbuy.com (BBY)—about $140 more than the Kindle. While the DR800SG uses the same electronic ink screen technology as the Kindle, it has some major differences: in screen size, in user interface, and in the way it wirelessly downloads books and newspapers.

The Irex is shorter but wider than the Kindle, and has an 8.1-inch screen, versus the Kindle’s 6-inch screen. It’s slightly thicker than the Kindle, but about 25% heavier. It has a single, thin page-turning and menu button on the left side, while the Kindle has larger, multiple buttons on both sides. Both devices claim to hold about 1,500 books.

Irex, a Los Angeles-based company whose products are engineered in the Netherlands, produced its first e-reader in 2004, but this new model is its first aimed specifically at the American market and its first to use the cellular 3G network for downloading content.

The Irex DR800SG

The new Irex has some advantages over the Kindle. Its larger screen makes for a better reading experience, allowing many more words to show on the page, at similar font sizes. The screen also seems slightly sharper.

The Irex looks sleeker than the Kindle, because it has a much thinner bezel around the screen, due mainly to the lack of a physical keyboard. It also does a better job of organizing your reading material, grouping items into separate folders for books, newspapers, and personal documents.

And, instead of being linked to a single online store, like Amazon (AMZN), it uses a “mall” concept, designed to allow users to choose from many different online stores, though only two are available now. The principal merchant in the mall so far is the Barnes & Noble e-book store—the same one used on the Barnes & Noble (BKS) Nook e-reader—which claims about a million titles. The other store is called NewspaperDirect, which claims over 1,000 newspapers.

However, in my tests, I found the Irex much clumsier to use than the Kindle and, because of that, I still prefer the Amazon device. For instance, the Irex requires a stylus—an ancient and fading navigation device—for some operations. Yet it lacks a holder for this pointer except in the leather cover, so the stylus is easy to lose. The Irex also lacks a Home button, a note-taking function, any way to highlight text and a built-in dictionary.

More important, I found the mall concept for downloading books to be frustrating. Because the Irex isn’t seamlessly linked to its own online store, I had to establish, or sign into, four different accounts to test the device fully. Even after that, each Barnes & Noble download required multiple steps. On the Kindle, ordering books is a breeze, and they appear almost instantly after you click a single “Buy” button.

This last issue is a trade-off between greater choice and simpler, quicker functionality. Some readers will be willing to make that trade-off, especially if Irex is able to add specialized stores in the future that offer, say, a large selection of non-English-language books. But, for most Americans with typical book needs, I find the current trade-off unacceptable.

For example, books I bought from Barnes & Noble appeared slowly on the Irex. The device seemed to have to turn on its radio and establish a new connection each time. Also, until I opened each book, they appeared on the screen identified only by a geeky file name. And, after I opened each, there was a long delay while the device did something called “counting pages.”

The company says that some of these shortcomings will be fixed in a software update due as soon as next month. It promises there will be a note-taking function, speedier wireless connections and the elimination of the counting-pages delay. It also says it is working on a universal log-in system for its mall of stores. But highlighting and a dictionary are only being “considered” for a future revision.

On the bright side, I was able to easily plug the Irex into a PC and Mac, and manually drag onto it personal PDF files, pictures and even a free book I bought at a Web site.

Irex says it is working on a color model for next year. I hope it works more smoothly than the DR800SG.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free of charge, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

The Entire BoomTown Video of the Mossberg-Jobs Chit-Chat at Apple iPad Launch!

Kara Swisher — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 05:03:38 +0000

A video BoomTown posted earlier this week–following around my All Things Digital partner Walt Mossberg at the launch of the Apple iPad–has gotten an awful lot of attention, due to a little over two minutes of him kibitzing about the device with CEO Steve Jobs.

I get the interest in the video, since it is not often you see the highly controlled Jobs just chit-chatting and even making the case about an Apple (AAPL) product, as he does in the video.

Since the Jobs section of my longer video was in the middle, I decided to put all the Jobs clips I had together, all done in my usual shaky spycam style and which you can see below.

In the video, Mossberg asks Jobs about the iBooks application and the price of e-books, and Jobs insists the price will be the same on Apple as on Amazon (AMZN).

“The prices will be the same,” said Jobs, before getting in a little dig at the maker of the Kindle e-reader. “Publishers are actually withholding their books from Amazon, because they’re not happy with it.”

Jobs also told Mossberg that the iPad will have “140-something hours, I think, of continuous music playback” and that the 10 hours of battery life for the iPad was more than enough for anyone.

“It’s all about the display….Our chips don’t use hardly any power,” said Jobs.

He also said consumers don’t necessarily need even more battery time “because you just end up pluggin’ it in. You end up docking it or whatever you’re going to do with it. It’s not a big deal. Ten hours is a long time, because you’re not going to read for 10 hours.”

Mossberg also asked Jobs if he should pen his review of the iPad on the iPad and if he could convert it into a Word document, which Jobs endorsed.

“Write it in Pages, you could make a Word version and send it in an email to your editors,” Jobs said.

Asked Mossberg: “All from here?”

“Yeah,” said Jobs.

I also had another video of Jobs talking to Mossberg about why he used the iPad name, which has been made fun of my some.

Unfortunately, my Flip camera ate it–after I watched it and took notes–when I was transferring it.

But, according to my notes, Jobs dismissed all the incoming flak he said he expected to receive about the name.

“You forget, but they made fun of iPod name when it came out,” he said, in part. “What matters is the product and what it means to consumers.”

Jobs noted that in a year’s time, the name iPad would become rote to people, as long as they like the mobile device and consider it innovative and its software useful.

In addition, he said it was an inevitable brand extension from iPod and iPhone.

“Plus the fonts look great together…iPod, iPhone, iPad,” he said.

That particular exchange is not in this video, but here’s what I did shoot in the demo room at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco after the launch Wednesday:

[ See post to watch video ]

How to Tweak Outlook Email To Work for You

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 22:26:03 +0000

If you have a job, chances are you use Microsoft Outlook.

But are you using it to your best advantage?

Despite the popularity of Microsoft Outlook, several of its functions aren’t noticeable unless you dig around in menus or try out keystroke shortcuts. Many of these tricks can be found by reading a user manual, but users would rather be spending their time in Outlook responding to or writing emails.

[ See post to watch video ]

In last week’s column I reviewed a program called Postbox, which displays email and its contents in unique ways. In that review I mentioned that Outlook, too, has extra functions, but that these aren’t always as obvious as they should be. Below, I’ve compiled a list of what I consider to be some of Outlook’s lesser-known talents. I focused on Outlook 2007, which many people currently use, and I also included a handful of notes about what Outlook 2010—due out late spring or early summer—will include. With any luck, you’ll find a few tips here that make your time in Outlook better spent.

Search Me

Rather than simply entering a word into the Outlook search box, you can help the search engine narrow its results by giving it specific parameters. For example, if I remember that my friend sent an email with “LSU tickets” in the subject line, I can type “subject: LSU” to pull out all emails about the Louisiana university. Or if I want to find all emails from Molly, I can write, “from: Molly.” This works with several other terms including “to,” “sent,” “cc” and “message size.”

Search Folders, shown in the folder list with a magnifying glass icon beside them, offer a way of saving the searches you perform most often. If, for example, you often search for flight confirmation emails, you could make a Search Folder called “Travel” that would contain a constantly updated list of emails containing the names of airlines.

New folders can be set up by right clicking on the Search Folders icon, selecting New Search Folder and following steps to select a type of folder from one of many pre-set types of folders—such as “mail sent directly to me,” “large mail” or “mail flagged for follow up.” Or you can create a custom Search Folder by telling it to search for certain words that appear within specific message fields.

Color Coding

To make certain emails stand out in a large list—like emails from your boss or messages addressed only to you—you can set up a rule that makes the email show up in a specific color. Or you can set certain emails to appear in bold font, or in a specific font type and size. Just think of all the emails from your mom that will never go unnoticed again thanks to red type, 14-point font and underlined text.

Setting up the way emails are displayed can be done by going to the Tools menu, selecting Organize, Using Colors and then choosing specific colors for emails from specific people. More advanced automatic settings for applying font type and size to emails can be added by selecting Automatic Formatting in the top right corner of the Using Colors screen. Click “Add” to create more rules.

Souped-Up Calendar

The Outlook Calendar can be organized to look the way you want it rather than the way it’s set up by default. For example, if you like looking at your day in hourly intervals rather than Outlook’s default 30-minute blocks, you can right click anywhere you see hours shown and select 60 minutes. Other increments are also available, like five, 10 and 15 minutes.

Outlook can also display other time zones right beside your own time zone by right clicking on the listed meeting hours, selecting Change Time Zone and checking the box labeled Show an Additional Time Zone. This is helpful for people who often work with distant colleagues, saving them from making a mistake and not factoring the right time zone for the other person. A Swap Time Zone button here quickly changes from one set zone to another, which could be a boon for people who regularly travel to different places and want their Outlook settings to reflect that they’re working from there.

Like color-coded emails, calendar events can be automatically sorted into pre-set categories like Personal, Travel and Family by setting formatting to look for certain words like Tennis (Personal), United (Travel) and Mom, Dad or Allison (Family). Added events that use these words automatically get labeled with a designated color to give your calendar a visual way of distinguishing different types of activities.

Another useful calendar tip: You can hold Control while selecting certain dates on the small view of the calendar and you’ll see only the schedules for those dates. So if I want to see Sept. 19, 22 and 24, I hold Control while selecting each date to see the three days’ activities displayed in the right viewing panel.

Visual Contacts

All Contacts in Outlook can be labeled with a photo of the person, which you add by double clicking on the small head icon in someone’s contact card and then choosing a photo from your collection. People who work in the same company and use Outlook can add their own photo to their contact and it will show up with their emails.

The top right corner of each contact card shows what a person’s digital business card would look like; this is an image that can be edited and copied using a right click, and then it can be copied and pasted to any email signature.

Looking Ahead

In Outlook 2010, due out next year, Microsoft (MSFT) says it hopes to streamline work in Outlook, creating smarter rules that do more with less manual work.

One example of this approach is that emails in the next version of Outlook will be, by default, sorted into conversations—a little like Gmail’s current system. An Ignore button will move all future emails related to the same conversation into the Deleted Items folder. That will include those with changed subject lines because Microsoft uses a special identifier to know which emails are associated with one another. A Clean Up button moves all redundant replies to the Deleted Items folder, leaving just the most recent message in the conversation.

Another feature is Reply with Meeting, a button in Outlook 2010 that will let users create a meeting out of an email. Selecting Reply with Meeting automatically invites those included in the email to attend a meeting.

The title of the meeting is the same as the subject of the email. If the users are in the same corporate network and they all use Outlook Calendar, this tool also looks for the next available time and date on everyone’s calendar.

Quick Steps, another streamlined feature of Outlook 2010, are one-click shortcuts that simultaneously perform several common actions that people take when handling email. If you select a Quick Step called Reply and Delete, it replies to an email and deletes the original. Users can create their own personalized Quick Steps like one labeled Social that, when selected, marks the email as read, moves it to a special folder and labels it under a certain category.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

Write to
Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Yahoo Homepages Over the Last 15 Years: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Really Ugly)

Kara Swisher — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:59:44 +0000

Tomorrow, Yahoo will officially unveil the latest redesign of its homepage, an almost complete rejiggering of the look and feel of one of the most trafficked sites on the Internet.

The latest launch comes after about a half-dozen redesigns the homepage since Yahoo was founded, the last one in 2006.

You can read the full story of the new page here, but BoomTown thought it might also be instructive to take a look at what has come before it, seeing how the Yahoo (YHOO) front page has evolved since 1994.

Incredibly, that was 15 years ago.

Personally, I like 1994 and 1995, which were clean and clear with big font sizes, due to Yahoo positioning itself as a directory of the Web, although the 1995 logo and swirly buttons are wacky.

The one from 1997 is also an improvement, in the same list theme.

But in 2000, the whole page suddenly started bloating badly, with too much color and too many links.

Weight gain continued in 2002, and the page got even more colorfully confusing with ever-smaller font sizes in 2004.

The 2006 version was, thankfully, much simpler, but still a packed-out mess.

That new incarnation from the Silicon Valley icon, which you can see above, is a more back to the basics in style.

The latest launch, which Yahoo had previously said was coming in the fall, rolls out today for the hundreds of millions of users in the U.S. and will be extended to France, the U.K., Germany and India later this week.

Here are the screenshots of all the Yahoo pages in order, from 1994 to 2006 (click on the images to make them larger, and please excuse some blurriness–I got these shots from Yahoo):

1994:

1995:

1997:

2000:

2002:

2004:

2006: