This morning, a Mannheim Regional Court granted an injunction against Apple’s implementation of push email in iCloud and its predecessor, MobileMe. Sought by Motorola Mobility, which claims Apple has infringed its European patent on a “multiple pager status synchronization system and method,” the injunction could force Apple to deactivate push email in iCloud in Germany, though it will leave the broader service intact. Assuming it stands. And at this point, it’s not yet clear that it will. Apple, as one might imagine, is fighting it.

“Apple believes this old pager patent is invalid, and we’re appealing the court’s decision,” a company spokeswoman told AllThingsD.

The Flip Camera
San Jose, Calif. — The Cisco Flip, a beloved handheld video recorder, was killed on April 12, 2011. Its untimely death was a result of the realignment of Cisco’s consumer electronics business.

Born in May 2006 as the Pure Digital Point & Shoot, the pocket camera went through many evolutions in its lifetime, later becoming the Flip Ultra and spawning the Flip Mino and Flip MinoHD. It found a new home in 2009, when it was acquired by Cisco for $590 million. The Flip was known as the life of the party at birthday and wedding celebrations, and will be remembered for its simplistic design and pop-out USB arm. “People literally flipped for the Flip when it first came out,” a friend of its parents, Pure Digital, said. It is survived by a number of boiled-down point-and-shoots and countless smartphone cameras, as well as video-sharing apps with annoyingly cute names like “Viddy.”

Its distant cousin, the Kodak Zi8, also went missing from the Kodak store earlier this year.

Guitar Hero
Santa Monica, Calif. — For Guitar Hero, Feb. 9, 2011, was the day the music died. The videogame franchise was killed when Activision announced during its fourth-quarter earnings call that it was shuttering the business unit dedicated to Guitar Hero.

The popular game was born in 2005 to Red Octane and Harmonix, and was distributed by Activision. Later iterations of Guitar Hero, which were developed by Neversoft, had band-specific titles and also incorporated more instrumental props, so fans could play drums or sing as well as play guitar.

But Guitar Hero sales fell off, and the game was eventually overshadowed by its record-breaking Activision siblings, the Call of Duty and World of Warcraft series. Revenues of Guitar Hero fell from $1.7 billion in 2008 to about $300 million in 2010.

Guitar Hero will be remembered for its love of music, with Aerosmith, Metallica and Van Halen among its favorite artists, and for creating living-room rock arenas for millions of users.

Guitar Hero is survived by Rock Band, Rocksmith, Rock Revolution and likely many other console and mobile games starting with “Rock” that we’re not aware of or haven’t been invented yet.

HP TouchPad
Palo Alto, Calif. — That flame which doth burn brightest often burns out quickly, or something like that.

The HP TouchPad was effectively killed on Aug. 18, 2011, at the young age of just 49 (that’s days). Prior to its demise, the TouchPad was praised for its bright 9.7-inch display, Beats audio and mostly for the fact that it ran HP’s intuitive webOS mobile operating system, though the tablet ultimately saw disappointing sales during its short life.

Hewlett-Packard, its maker, said webOS devices had not gained enough traction in the marketplace with consumers, and couldn’t justify continuing to produce hardware like the TouchPad around it.

HP’s new CEO, Meg Whitman, said later on, “I think we’ve got to walk before we run here.” The TouchPad is survived by a newly open source webOS system and a cult of rabid fans, as evidenced by its post-mortem fire sales. It joins the Microsoft Kin phone in a special Afterlife for Tech Products Less Than 50 Days Old, while its operating system remains in a state of purgatory.

Dell Streak Tablets and Mini 10 Netbook
Round Rock, Texas — The streak was not a long one.

Dell’s Streak 5 tablet, which was originally demoed at D8 in 2010, disappeared from store shelves in mid-August of this year. Dell hardly had time to recover from the loss before its sibling, the Dell Streak 7, was also discontinued.

Shortly after the loss of the Streak tablet, tragedy again struck the Dell family, when Dell confirmed it would no longer make consumer netbooks, feeling the pressure of tablets as well as an emerging shift toward thin, light “ultrabooks” in the laptop category. The Dell Mini 10 was known for being small, as netbooks are, and for being that laptop you knew you could always fit on the seatback tray on an airplane.

Apple MobileMe
Cupertino, Calif. — June 6, 2011, was Steve Jobs’s last appearance at an Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. It was also the day MobileMe effectively went away, with Jobs saying the $99 dollar service wasn’t Apple’s “finest hour.”

MobileMe launched at WWDC in July of 2008, and was meant to sync calendars, emails, bookmarks and photo galleries. For individual accounts, it came with 20 gigabytes of online storage and 200GB of monthly data transfer.

While great in theory, our friend MobileMe was not without flaws. In fact, AllThingsD’s Walt Mossberg said, in his review of the service, that MobileMe was “far too flawed to be reliable.”

Apple’s Internet-based sync services since 2000 have evolved, but have never truly gone away: Like an actual ghost, we know they’re there, and we see glimpses of how they work, but they still elude many people. MobileMe, in its earliest form, was iTools, and later on, the subscription service .Mac. Even now, we’re not entirely sure whether MobileMe was killed or simply reincarnated as something new — in this case, iCloud.

Adobe Flash on Mobile
San Jose, Calif. — This is the way mobile Flash ends: Not with a bang, but a whimper.

On Nov. 9, Adobe said it would no longer be developing Flash, its platform for interactive and rich media content, for mobile devices.

Macromedia Flash was born in 1997, the spawn of FutureWave’s FutureSplash Animator. Macromedia was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005, thus becoming Adobe Flash.
As smartphone and tablet wars heated up in recent years, Flash support became one of the features that iPad competitors — mainly Google Android devices — touted to set themselves apart from Apple’s mobile products.

The tech world has contemplated what this could all mean for the future of Flash. As AllThingsD’s Ina Fried wrote, Flash’s death on mobile was seen as a vindication for the late Steve Jobs, who took a controversial stand by not supporting Flash on Apple’s mobile products. Could Jobs once again have seen the future? Flash is not a completely dead standard yet, but with developers increasingly adopting HTML5 as the new standard for Web language, it’s unclear what exactly will become of Flash.

Google Buzz
Mountain View, Calif. — A standard housecleaning session turned fatal this past October when Google pulled the plug on its social networking effort. Google Buzz, the predecessor to Google+, aimed to create a social network through Gmail.

Social and gregarious by nature, Google Buzz was born in February of 2010. Its early life was filled with strife, as users struggled to grasp the real-time social interactions that were occurring within email chains, and real privacy concerns emerged.

Despite its short life span, the memory of Google Buzz surely remains, as the search giant eventually had to settle with the FTC over privacy violations and is now committed to 20 years of privacy audits.

Memories, indeed.

Google Buzz is survived by Google+, and follows Friendster and Myspace to the social graveyard, although technically those still exist.

Readers, what do you think was the greatest tech product loss in 2011?

I am going back to school in the fall and I contacted the school to see which laptop or tablet I should be using. They replied I would need the Adobe Flash Player to run the lectures. While I love Apple, I understand the newest Apple laptops and the iPad do not support Flash. Is this correct? If so, what should I buy?

A:

There’s a lot of confusion about this, so here’s the story. Apple’s Mac laptops and desktops do indeed run the Adobe Flash Player, and thus Flash videos and websites, just like Windows PCs. While they no longer ship with the Flash software pre-installed, you can quickly and easily download and install it free of charge. Once you do, Flash videos and websites will work on your Mac.

By contrast, the iPad won’t accept the Flash Player in its built-in browser and thus cannot run Flash videos or websites. There are some third-party browsers for Apple’s tablet, such as Skyfire and Puffin, that do run Flash on Web pages, albeit clumsily at times. The latter are available in the iPad app store. If you want a tablet that runs Flash natively, you could buy one of the newer Android models, or the HP TouchPad, but be aware that some Flash videos and websites don’t run properly on the current generation of Flash-enabled tablets.

Q:

I am thinking about upgrading from an old cellphone to something where I could send/receive email, make calls in the U.S. and overseas, plus run some apps of interest such as financial, investment and GPS. Seems like an iPhone or an Android would work. Getting the lowest monthly rate is important, as usage is very low. What do you advise?

A:

First, I agree that an iPhone or Android phone would work. But, if you expect to make a lot of calls from outside the U.S., you’d be better off with a phone from AT&T or T-Mobile, although such overseas calls are very costly.

If you go with AT&T, you can get either an iPhone or an Android phone. T-Mobile doesn’t offer the iPhone. As for costs, there are so many rate plans out there, that I strongly suggest you visit each carrier’s website or store and carefully compare plans that you feel will fit your needs. A few things are worth noting. AT&T charges extra for heavier data usage. T-Mobile doesn’t, but it slows down your data speeds when you use over 2 gigabytes a month. And you shouldn’t buy a cellphone that doesn’t work well where you live, work and frequently travel, so choose a cellphone from a carrier that does.

Q:

Please advise how I can transfer my calendar and contacts to my iPad in the most efficient manner possible.

A:

There are two ways to do this. You can use iTunes and the included cable to sync your contacts and calendar from your PC or Mac. Second, you can maintain your calendar and contacts in a Web service like Google or MobileMe or Microsoft Exchange, and sync them to the iPad automatically when you are connected to the Internet.

Email mossberg@wsj.com.

When Apple’s MobileMe service goes away in June 2012, what happens to the stuff I have stored on iDisk? Will Apple still store my material someplace else remotely on one of its servers that I can access via my laptop? Will I still have some sort of .Mac mail system that I can access when on the road and using a computer other than my own?

A:

Apple says it won’t continue to have the equivalent of the iDisk online storage system, accessible directly from the cloud, after MobileMe gives way to its new iCloud service. It advises iDisk users to copy their online files to their Macs or PCs before next June. However, it says the new service will still support mac.com and me.com email accounts, and they will still be accessible via the Web. It promises details later, but has in the meantime published a document answering common questions about the transition at apple.com/mobileme/transition.html.

Q:

Is there a good program that will allow me to capture a Web video, especially a YouTube video, and convert it into an MP4 format file so I can play it on my Android-based Iconia tablet while offline on an airplane?

A:

There are numerous programs that claim to capture Web videos and convert them to formats such as MP4, which is a common and universal video file type. The ones I know about run on PCs or Macs, not directly on the tablets themselves, so you’d then have to connect your tablet to the computer and drag the files over. I can’t recommend one, as I haven’t tested any in years, but you can experiment by searching for “capture Web videos” or “convert Web videos.”

However, there’s a major caveat, a legal one. By my reading, YouTube’s Terms of Service generally bar such capturing, and other websites may do the same. I don’t advise grabbing Web videos unless their owners permit it. The YouTube rules say, in part: “You shall not download any content unless you see a ‘download’ or similar link displayed by YouTube on the service for that content.”

Q:

What is a simple way to gather, edit and label a small collection of the pictures for an album (that might later be published in a photo book)?

A:

If you own a Mac, you can do this easily by importing your photos into the iPhoto program that Apple includes on every new computer, and which includes a feature that produces printed books you can buy. There are similar programs on Windows PCs, such as Picasa, which allows you to create albums and then, if you like, send them off to a variety of vendors to be made into a book. Or, from any computer, you can upload your photos directly to an online service like Shutterfly, at shutterfly.com, which will organize them and optionally turn them into a printed book you can order.

Email mossberg@wsj.com.

In a research note this week, Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi reviewed a few of the more plausible ones, which run the gamut from the long-rumored iTunes streaming service to the back end for a natural language voice interface and navigation service for its iOS devices.

The first: an easy way of scaling the company’s iAd mobile advertising program. With its installed base of iOS devices likely to hit 200 million by the end of fiscal 2011, iAds could put quite a strain on Apple’s ad serving capabilities. Says Sacconaghi, “If iAd gets traction while serving interactive, multimedia ads then Apple’s underlying advertising platform will need to be significantly larger, and at a scale comparable to Google’s or Microsoft’s ad platforms.”

The second is a no-brainer and seems fairly likely to pan out given recent chatter about Apple’s MobileMe service going free come April: an overhauled verision of MobileMe that provides improved cloud-based synchronization of data and media, along with meaningful storage capacity.

The low-cost iTunes subscription service we’ve been hearing about for years now is the third. Again, this seems a completely plausible use for Apple’s new data center, and as Sacconaghi notes, the time may finally be right for the company to launch it. “In our meeting with Apple executives last month, VP of Internet Services Eddy Cue suggested that the reason that music subscription services had failed to receive traction with consumers was because they were too expensive, highlighting prevailing rates of up to $15/month,” he wrote. “We note that an annual subscription to Napster now costs $8/month, while the paid version – unlimited, higher-quality, ad-free – of music streaming from Pandora costs $3/month.” Add to that Apple’s 2010 acquisition of streaming music outfit Lala and the traction Spotify and Pandora have been gaining in the market recently and this seems a likely scenario as well.

Fourth on Sacconaghi’s list, an aggressively priced video streaming service. Given the popularity of Netflix’s iOS app among iPhone and iPad users, it might make sense for Apple to offer its own competing video subscription service. Or, it could simply acquire Netflix. It’s not like Apple doesn’t have the money to do it–even if Netflix’s market cap is north of $11 billion.

And finally there’s that voice interface and navigation service I mentioned earlier. This one might seem a stretch, but don’t dismiss it out of hand. Last April, Apple acquired Siri, developer of a virtual personal assistant supported by speech recognition, natural language processing and semantic Web search. And in 2009 it purchased PlaceBase, a mapping outfit that specialized in enhancing maps with private and public data sets. Put those two acquisitions together with a massive data center and Sacconaghi’s theory looks at least plausible.

“Apple could offer its own navigation service comparable to Google’s free and very popular voice-based navigation system on Android,” he writes. “The iOS device user-base could then potentially periodically upload anonymous information on routes travelled and speeds encountered, perhaps even in real-time, which would allow Apple to report back traffic conditions to its user-base.”

Sounds like a killer feature for the iPhone 5, doesn’t it?

PREVIOUSLY:

• Apple’s N.C. Data Center Intended for iTunes, MobileMe
• Apple Owns Another 70 Acres Near NC Data Center
• Was Apple Planning on Doubling Its North Carolina Data Center All Along?
• Apple Reaching for the Cloud With MacBook Air and N.C. Data Center
• That’s Apple’s New Data Center? Where’s the Giant Glass Cube?

So far, Dorsey’s story shows that the basic functionality of Twitter was quickly established and executed, with the first-ever tweet (by Dorsey: “inviting coworkers”) sent only eight days after development started.

Dorsey posted a series of anecdotes about design and implementation decisions in his first installment, including images, emails and IMs archived on other services like Tumblr and MobileMe.

Dorsey’s experiment in historical replay seems to demonstrate the promise of serialized storytelling on Twitter, this time for non-fiction, with readers invited to relive the creation of the influential service for themselves. And he already has a healthy audience, with 1.6 million followers and ample media attention (guilty as charged).

In addition to assisting Twitter’s leadership and reminiscing about its birth, Dorsey also runs his new company, the payments enabler Square, where he serves as CEO.

Printed on the invitation to the special event Apple’s holding today in San Francisco, that tagline–a smirking riff on the deluge of post-CES “Year of The Tablet” stories–leaves little doubt about what the company plans to show off today: The next iteration of the iPad.

Join us here at 10 AM PT for live coverage of the event.

9:35 am: The AllthingsD team has arrived we are waiting to be let into the auditorium at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

9:43 am: Finally inside the theater now after enduring a Tokyo subway-style queue. Spotted outside earlier this morning, Pixar’s John Lasseter and Walter Isaacson, formerly Chairman and CEO of CNN and the Managing Editor of TIME.

9:48 am: Attendees still filing in to fill what will presumably be a packed house. Beatles in heavy rotation on the speaker system. Down front, Apple’s executive bench has assembled: Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, Jony Ive, Eddie Cue and Bob Mansfield.

9:53 am: Ina here. John’s going to be doing the play-by-play and I’ll chime in from time to time with color commentary. If you have questions, feel free to tweet @inafried and I will try to answer them.

9:58 am: If you are sad you aren’t here inside Yerba Buena, here’s a 360-degree panorama of what it looks like.

9:57 am: If Cook, Schiller, Ive and Mansfield are all in the front row two minutes prior to the event, I wonder who master of ceremonies will be …

10:00 am: Looks like we’re moments away from kick-off.

10:01 am: The lights dim to “Here Comes The Sun,” and Steve takes the stage to a standing ovation.

10:03 am: “We ve been working on this product for a while and I just didn’t want to miss the day,” he says.

First a few updates …

10:03 am: 100 million books have been downloaded from iBooks in less than a year, says Jobs, adding that today Random House is adding its catalog to the iBooks Store.

10:04 am: Moving on, Jobs notes that there are now 200 million iTunes accounts with credit cards and one-click purchasing. He suggests that that number may be larger than even Amazon’s registered user base.

10:05 am: Two more metrics: $2 billion paid out to iOS developers and 100 million iPhones shipped.

10:06 am: Now a quick overview of Apple’s blockbuster products: iPod, iPhone, and iPad. “Every one of these has been a post-PC blockbuster product,” says Jobs. He adds that people initially mocked Apple for claiming the iPad as magical. “Ask our competitors what they think now,” he quips.

10:08 am: “We sold 15 million iPads in 2010,” says Jobs. “That’s more than every tablet PC ever sold….iPad generated $9.5 billion in revenue last year…and our competitors were flummoxed.”

10:09 am: More numbers: 65,000 apps in App Store that take full advantage of iPad. “Consumption apps, creation apps, games, apps for enterprise…all taking advantage of this magical interface…65,000 apps specifically tailored to the iPad. That compares to the about 100 apps most of our rivals are launching their new tablets with.” Sharp little dig there at Google and its Android Honeycomb OS.

10:11 am: Ina here, Jobs clearly is not pulling any punches, getting in some good zingers in on all of its rivals, from Microsoft to Google to Samsung.

10:11 am: Now some compliments for Apple’s retail stores. Jobs seems to feel strongly that they really drove the iPad’s stunning adoption rates. Then a quick video reel celebrating that contribution as well as the iPad itself.

10:15 am: The video’s theme: the iPad as game changer–iPad is changing medicine. It’s changing enterprise. “It’s changing people’s lives.”

10:16 am: Ina here. Powerful moment with in the video with a mom of an autistic child talking about how the iPad is helping her son learn.

10:16 am: Jobs returns to the stage. “2010 was an exceptional year for us,” he says. “What will 2011 be? The year of the copycats?” A slide appears behind him posing the same question surrounded by the names of Apple’s competitors in the space–HP, Samsung, BlackBerry. Jobs notes that none of Apple’s rivals to date have been able to match iPad on features or price.

10:18 am: Nope, it won’t be the year of the copycats, says Jobs. It will be the year of iPad 2. “We haven’t been resting on our laurels,” he says. “Today we’re going to introduce iPad 2.”

10:18 am: And there it is. What’s changed in the device? It’s got an all new design, it’s dramatically faster, it runs on a dual-core A5 processor.
Up to 2x faster CPU, up to 9X faster graphics.
This will be the first dual core tablet to really ship in volume, says Jobs.

10:19 am: Also new in iPad 2: front and back facing cameras and gyroscope.

10:20 am: Aesthetically, iPad 2 is dramatically thinner. “Not just a little thinner,” says Jobs. “It’s a third thinner … the new iPad 2 is actually thinner than the iPhone 4… all of these other tablets coming out are thicker than the original iPad, they don’t even approach this”

10:21 am: iPad 2 is also lighter than its predecessor and comes in 2 colors: black and white. “And we’re going to be shipping white from day 1,” says Jobs to applause. No mention of the white iPhone 4, which still hasn’t shipped …

iPad 2 will support both AT&T and Verizon, also from day 1.

10:22 am: What about battery life? Though iPad 2 is thinner and lighter than iPad 1, it’s still got 10 hours of battery life. “We really happy to keep that and never let it go.”

10:24 am: Battery life isn’t the only thing Apple’s preserved in iPad 2. It’s preserved the devices price structure as well. $499 is still the base model price.”

10:24 am: Jobs: “We think 2011 is going to the year of iPad 2 … so when are we going to ship it? April, May, June? No. On March 11 in the US and on March 25th in 26 other countries…this thing’s going to be everywhere in the month of March.”

10:26 am: Moving on now to accessories. The first: an HDMI mirrored video out cable that works with all apps and supports rotation.

10:27 am: Guys behind me find this very, very exciting.

10:27 am: HDMI cable is $39.

10:27 am: Next up, a smart case. Jobs notes that Apple’s original case for the iPad added bulk and made the device difficult to charge. “We felt we could do better than that.” Hence, the smart cover, a foldable cover that can be used to prop up the device and also automatically puts the device to sleep when its placed on the device and wakes it up when it’s removed.

Interestingly, the cover is held onto the iPad by magnets that evidently auto-align it.

10:26 am: For all the specs, check out this post:

10:30 am: Smart covers are available in leather or polyurethene–”the stuff space suits are made of,” says Jobs.

10:31 am: “As you see, we actually built magnets into the iPad itself and magnets into the cover as well.”

Poly cases come in 5 colors are run $39. Leather cases come in 5 colors as well and run $69.

10:32 am: Along with iPad 2, Apple is releasing iOS 4.3. Jobs brings Scott Forstall on stage to talk about it.

10:33 am: 4.3 boasts improved Safari performance via a Nitro Javascript engine, iTunes Home Sharing and a bunch of AirPlay improvements.

The next iteration of AirPlay supports video play in apps as well as the browser.

10:35 am: Another addition, allowing users to use the iPad switch as a mute button or a rotation lock.

10:35 am: And another, this one for iPhone 4 only–Personal Hotspot.

10:36 am: Moving on now to software updates. iOS 4.3 supports Apple’s PhotoBooth application with all its various filters which can now be manipulated with touch.

For all the basics on the new iOS 4.3 features, check out this post.

10:38 am: Next … FaceTime. “We support it on the iPhone and the iPod Touch and now we’re bringing it to iPad,” says Forstall adding that any combination of those devices can FaceTime one another.

“The size of the iPad is just ideal for FaceTime,” says Forestall. “Your face just fits perfectly within the dimensions of its screen.”

10:40 am: iOS 4.3 will be a free download on March 11 and it will support most of Apple’s newer iOS devices.

10:41 am: Jobs returns to the stage to talk about some new applications Apple is launching. “We like to set the bar high for developers so that they can say ‘wow, if Apple can do that, I can do better.’”

10:42 am: First application is iMovie for iPad, a new universal version for iOS that takes full advantage of the iPad form factor.

The fact that iMovie will be a universal app is nice for all those folks that have both iPads and iPhones–means they don’t have to purchase twice. (Ina)

10:43 am: Editing interface is similar to the one found on the Mac, but boasts touch editing. Tap and drop into timeline, double-tap to cut, press and hold to roll an edit.

10:45 am: Audio editing tools have been improved as well–waveform analysis, sound effects, support for multiple audio tracks and voiceover.

10:47 am: Also new in iMovie for iPad: Direct sharing with YouTube, Facebook, etc., and a few new transitions.

10:49 am: Jobs returns to the stage. “It’s awesome. It just blows my mind, this stuff….So many great features, all for $4.99.”

IMovie for iPad will be available on March 11 as well.

10:50 am: The second application Apple’s announcing today: GarageBand for iPad.

10:51 am: Xander Soren, Director of Music Marketing for Apple handles the demo.

10:51 am: the iPad’s touch interface obviously adds some pretty major enhancements to the application.

10:52 am: Soren plays a few notes on the iPad keyboard before moving on to talk about dynamics, which have been added to the application. Apple uses the iPad’s accelerometer to determine the force with which a note is played and uses it to create pretty realistic dynamics.

10:53 am: The app’s obviously perfect for keyboard, but what about guitar and drums?

10:55 am: Slick. Synthesizer panel supports a theremin-esque whammy.

I can’t play an instrument worth a darn, but the iPad version of Garage Band makes me wish I could. Amazing digital recreations of real-world gear. (Ina)

10:55 am:Drums look and sound pretty slick as well. Also uses touch to create dynamics.
“This is really great for kids who want drums,” says Soren. “They can play them with headphones.”

10:57 am: Oh wait, there are “smart instruments” for people like me. Winner (ina)

10:57 am: Classic Apple attention to detail. Laying your hand across the strings of the guitar panel mutes them.

10:58 am: “These smart instruments are like musical training wheels,” says Soren. “You really can’t play a wrong note.”

10:59 am: GarageBand for iPad’s editing canvas seems similar to its desktop counterpart, though it supports recording of up to 8 tracks only.

11:01 am: Apple’s press release on the iPad 2 has hit the wire here. (ina)

11:02 am: Steve returns to the stage. “I’m just blown away by this stuff…anyone can make music now with something so small and light….I cannot tell you how many hours teenagers are going to spend on this making music.”

Like iMovie, GarageBand for iPad is $4.99.

11:04 am: Jobs circles back now, reviewing what we’ve seen so far today. iPad 2–faster, lighter, thinner, black and white, iOS 4.3, Smart Covers, new applications …

“We think 2011 is really going to be the year of iPad 2.”

11:05 am: Rolling another video now. Apple execs lauding the new iteration of the iPad and stressing its new features. Jony Ive notes that the iPad 2 is easier to hold than its predecessor.

11:09 am: Scott Forstall recaps iOS 4.3 and new apps like GarageBand for iPad. Bob Mansfield offers some more detail on the device’s innards, its A5 chip and improved graphics performance.

11:10 am: Ive: “The original iPad defined a new category and iPad 2 will redefine it for years to come.”

11:11 am: Jobs returns to the stage to wrap things up with a few observations about the tablet market. “Our competitors are looking at the tablet market like it’s the next PC market,” he says. “But we don’t think that’s the right approach. Tablets are post-PC devices that need to be easier to use than a PC–more intuitive. The hardware and software need to intertwine much more than they do on a PC. And we think we’re on the right path with this.”

11:14 am: Then a call for applause for the employees who worked on iPad 2. Says Jobs, “As always, I’d also like to thank everyone’s families because they support us and let us do what we love to do.”

And that’s it.

Thanks for reading.

UPDATE: And here’s a video with a bit of post-event analysis.

Related Posts

• Steve Jobs Appears
• Apple’s iPad 2: The Basics
• The Skinny on iOS 4.3
• Mobilized Gets Hands-On With the iPad 2

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110302/coming-up-apple-ipad-event-liveblog/feed/ 15 http://allthingsd.com/20110223/apples-n-c-data-center-intended-for-itunes-mobileme/ http://allthingsd.com/20110223/apples-n-c-data-center-intended-for-itunes-mobileme/#comments Wed, 23 Feb 2011 21:05:02 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=58268 Apple’s finally getting ready to light up its North Carolina data center. Asked about the facility during the company’s shareholder meeting today, COO Tim Cook said it’s on track to open this spring, according to reports. And it’s intended to support MobileMe and iTunes, though it’s unclear in what capacity. Certainly that long-rumored cloud-based version of iTunes is one possibility. As I wrote last fall:

Were Apple to create the cloud-based version of iTunes that’s long been rumored–one from which users’ entire iTunes libraries could be streamed–and were it to bolster MobileMe’s iDisk and Gallery services with more robust storage, even the 64GB Air might seem an attractive option to the high-end user. And Apple’s new N.C. data center, which is nearly five times the size of the one it operates in Newark, Calif., may well make both those things possible.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Apple Owns Another 70 Acres Near NC Data Center
• Was Apple Planning on Doubling Its North Carolina Data Center All Along?
• Apple Reaching for the Cloud With MacBook Air and N.C. Data Center
• That’s Apple’s New Data Center? Where’s the Giant Glass Cube?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110223/apples-n-c-data-center-intended-for-itunes-mobileme/feed/ 8 http://allthingsd.com/20101229/whats-in-store-for-technology-in-2011/ http://allthingsd.com/20101229/whats-in-store-for-technology-in-2011/#comments Thu, 30 Dec 2010 02:03:49 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/?p=1707 It has been a big year in personal technology, from the debut and early success of Apple’s iPad, to the rise and continuous improvement of Google’s Android smart phone platform, to the continued surge in social services led by Facebook and Twitter.

So I thought I’d take a look at the challenges and opportunities facing some major players in consumer tech in 2011. As with all my columns, this one is focused only on products and services provided directly to consumers, rather than to businesses. Also, as usual, this column isn’t meant to offer investment advice or to evaluate the management skills or financial condition of companies. It is a look at the products and competitive positions of the key contenders as they enter the new year.

Apple: Coming off a highly successful 2010, in which it introduced a new category of portable computer—the multitouch tablet—and sold millions of the product, Apple will have to withstand an onslaught of competitors by wowing consumers again with the second version of the iPad. At the same time, it will have to make a widely expected transition for the iPhone from a single carrier in the U.S., AT&T, to a second, likely Verizon. This could present a new opportunity to reach lots of new customers, but the sleek phone will have to work well on different network technology. At the same time, Apple will be hoping its planned new Macintosh operating system, Lion, can preserve the surprising momentum of the high-priced Mac, which the company is trying to enhance with certain iPad-like features, such as an app store and longer battery life.

Apple’s iPad will face an onslaught of competition in the coming year.

In 2011, Apple also is likely to try to address two areas where it has been weak: cloud computing and social networking. Both its MobileMe cloud service and its Ping social network had rough starts, and MobileMe charges $100 a year for services others give away. Apple is so popular, it has a huge opportunity to link users of its family of devices and of iTunes via the cloud and social networks, but it will have to aim higher and execute better. The second area where it likely hopes to improve is in the living room. The new, cheaper Apple TV is selling better than its predecessor but still lacks much Internet content. To break through, Apple will have to strike landmark deals with media companies.

Google: The search giant, also riding high, is now in so many product areas it competes with nearly everyone. In its core search business, it must focus on fending off a surprisingly strong challenge from Microsoft’s Bing by giving consumers more attractive, actionable results. Its Android operating system is a big hit, but still isn’t as polished or easy to use as the iPhone’s software, and even a Google official admitted it is still “an enthusiast product for early adopters.” One big test will be the forthcoming Honeycomb version of Android, meant for tablets that challenge the iPad.

A separate group at Google will try in 2011 to revolutionize the PC operating-system business and muscle in on incumbents Microsoft and Apple. Its new Chrome OS will power notebooks that essentially act as Web browsers, and run programs stored in the cloud, not on a hard disk. They also store all your files in the cloud. We’ll learn in 2011 how many consumers are comfortable with that approach.

Google also may take another whack at social networking, where it hasn’t made much of a dent after its Buzz service failed to take off. And it will have to rework its overly complex Google TV effort to bring Internet video to the living room.

Microsoft: The software giant still generates strong consumer loyalty with its older products, like Windows and Office and Xbox, all of which have had updates in the past year or two. But it faces big challenges in two hot areas: smart phones and tablets. Its new Windows Phone 7 platform has some nice design features, but also some missing capabilities that need to be addressed. Initial sales seem respectable, but will have to accelerate to get Microsoft back in a game it once led. The company also is a long way from the 300,000 apps available for the iPhone or the 100,000 for Android.

In tablets, Microsoft is hinting that a new version of Windows is being designed with a tablet focus to complement its PC focus. That product can’t be too late, given the rapid rise of the iPad and the many planned Android and other tablets for 2011. One golden opportunity Microsoft has is to expand the reach of its brilliant Kinect technology for games to other forms of computing. This system can recognize individual users and interpret gestures without the use of a controller device.

Meanwhile, Microsoft hopes to seize on a surge in concern about privacy to help keep its diminishing lead in browsers by building new privacy features, unavailable so far in other browsers, into the 2011 version of Internet Explorer.

RIM: The BlackBerry maker had a good 2010 in some ways, though sales were propped up by two-for-one giveaways, and consumer surveys show enthusiasm fading for the iconic smart phone. It needs a radically new user interface to keep up with iPhone and Android, and a lot more third-party apps. But it can’t afford to alienate its fan base. The company has an answer: a new software platform called QNX, but is vague on when that will show up on the BlackBerry. For 2011, RIM’s big move will be a new QNX-based tablet, the PlayBook, which looks speedy and highly attractive in the limited demos RIM has provided. What isn’t clear is how much the PlayBook will be aimed at consumers, as company officials have consistently stressed its appeal to businesses.

HP: The technology behemoth’s laptops and printers have proved popular with consumers. But it hasn’t had any real presence in smart-phones, tablets or consumer cloud services. To solve the problems, in 2010 HP bought innovative but struggling Palm, whose smart-phone operating system, webOS, and phones, the Pre and Pixi, got good reviews but sold poorly and didn’t attract many third-party apps. In 2011, HP hopes to use its ample money and talent to revive webOS with new phones and tablets to challenge Apple and Android. A successful Palm re-launch, with the new initiatives from RIM and Microsoft, would be good for consumers by providing more choice and competition. HP also hopes to boost home printing with a new line of printers that can print anything emailed across the Internet and wirelessly print from Apple’s hand-held devices.

Facebook and Twitter: The twin leaders in social networking were red-hot in 2010, attracting vast numbers of users. They have huge opportunities for further success, but face challenges. Smaller services, like social-coupon company Groupon, continue to emerge with new social and community ideas consumers like. Apple and Google could be big headaches if they get social right in 2011. Facebook must continue its recent initiative to let members share personal details with more limited groups of friends, and to find ways to make money while offering more privacy, which has been a thorn in its side. Twitter is on a mission to get more than an active minority to post, while convincing people it is a valuable way to keep up with news and opinion even if you never post.

Despite the poor economy, the consumer-tech companies continue to show vibrancy, innovation and success. But every year brings challenges and surprises, and 2011 promises to be another fascinating ride.

For all of Walt’s columns and videos, go to the All Things Digital site, walt.allthingsd.com.

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

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101229/whats-in-store-for-technology-in-2011/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101122/apple-to-release-ios-4-2-with-free-find-my-iphone-service/ http://allthingsd.com/20101122/apple-to-release-ios-4-2-with-free-find-my-iphone-service/#comments Mon, 22 Nov 2010 15:05:49 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=53006 Apple will release the latest iteration of its iOS operating system later today, adding a slew of new features to the iPad. IOS 4.2 brings with it multitasking, folders, a unified in-box and Game Center, with which iPhone users are already familiar, along with a few other enhancements new to both devices. Among them, AirPlay, for wirelessly streaming media between devices; AirPrint, for wirelessly printing to a paired printer; and Find My iPhone/iPad/iPod touch–a missing-device location service that was previously available only with a MobileMe subscription. Sadly, Find My iPhone is a feature available only to iPhone 4, iPad or 4th generation iPod touch users.

“IOS 4.2 makes the iPad a completely new product, just in time for the holiday season,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a typically superlative-heavy statement. “Once again, the iPad with iOS 4.2 will define the target that other tablets will aspire to, but very few, if any, will ever be able to hit.”

No word yet on when, exactly the update will go live. As I write this iOS 3.2.2 is still showing up as the most recent version of the software in iTunes.

UPDATE: OS 4.2 will reportedly go live around 10 AM PT.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101122/apple-to-release-ios-4-2-with-free-find-my-iphone-service/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101023/apple-reaching-for-the-cloud-with-macbook-air-and-n-c-data-center/ http://allthingsd.com/20101023/apple-reaching-for-the-cloud-with-macbook-air-and-n-c-data-center/#comments Sat, 23 Oct 2010 10:30:13 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=51143 Steve Jobs says the MacBook Air is the future of the MacBook and the future of the notebook as well. But if that’s to be the case, the machine–and Apple’s ecosystem–needs to evolve a bit more to appeal to that strata of user tethered to the high-capacity hard drives that the Air has summarily dispatched.

This being Apple we’re talking about, that evolution is likely already well under way and perhaps–perhaps–being engineered at the company’s massive new North Carolina data center. With its 500,000 square feet of data center space (currently, sources tell me that Apple is considering doubling that) the facility has been built for something. And what better use to put it to than the cloud services that might completely eliminate the need for high-capacity hard drives and give the Air storage to match its performance characteristics.

Were Apple to create the cloud-based version of iTunes that’s long been rumored–one from which users’ entire iTunes libraries could be streamed–and were it to bolster MobileMe’s iDisk and Gallery services with more-robust storage, even the 64GB Air might seem an attractive option to the high-end user. And Apple’s new N.C. data center, which is nearly five times the size of the one it operates in Newark, Calif., may well make both those things possible.

“We believe it makes sense to have a cloud service linking Apple devices to personal photos, videos, games, music and other entertainment–eliminating the limitations and expenses of excess storage,” writes Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes. “We believe such a service would only enhance the loyalty toward Apple and the benefits of using devices in its vertically integrated model.”

Saving to disk is slowly becoming a fixture of the past and, as Apple’s recently rejiggered Apple TV business model demonstrates, streaming is the future. Which makes perfect sense, when you think of the MacBook Air as the future of the notebook.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101023/apple-reaching-for-the-cloud-with-macbook-air-and-n-c-data-center/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101006/motorola-sues-apple-over-everything/ http://allthingsd.com/20101006/motorola-sues-apple-over-everything/#comments Wed, 06 Oct 2010 18:12:17 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=24220 Motorola has filed a patent complaint against Apple that covers…a lot.

In Motorola’s (MOT) words, the 18 patents in question concern “key technology areas found on many of Apple’s core products and associated services, including MobileMe and the App Store. The Motorola patents include wireless communication technologies, such as WCDMA (3G), GPRS, 802.11 and antenna design, and key smartphone technologies including wireless email, proximity sensing, software application management, location-based services and multi-device synchronization.”

They don’t seem to be upset about Ping, though.

We’ve asked Apple (AAPL) for a response. Here’s Motorola’s release:

LIBERTYVILLE, Ill., Oct. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) today announced that it’s subsidiary, Motorola Mobility, Inc., has filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) alleging that Apple’s iPhone, iPad, iTouch and certain Mac computers infringe Motorola patents. Motorola Mobility also filed patent infringement complaints against Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) in the Northern District of Illinois and the Southern District of Florida.

Overall, Motorola Mobility’s three complaints include 18 patents, which relate to early-stage innovations developed by Motorola in key technology areas found on many of Apple’s core products and associated services, including MobileMe and the App Store. The Motorola patents include wireless communication technologies, such as WCDMA (3G), GPRS, 802.11 and antenna design, and key smartphone technologies including wireless email, proximity sensing, software application management, location-based services and multi-device synchronization.

Motorola Mobility has requested that the ITC commence an investigation into Apple’s use of Motorola’s patents and, among other things, issue an Exclusion Order barring Apple’s importation of infringing products, prohibiting further sales of infringing products that have already been imported, and halting the marketing, advertising, demonstration and warehousing of inventory for distribution and use of such imported products in the United States. In the District Court actions, Motorola Mobility has requested that Apple cease using Motorola’s patented technology and provide compensation for Apple’s past infringement.

Kirk Dailey, corporate vice president of intellectual property at Motorola Mobility, said, “Motorola has innovated and patented throughout every cycle of the telecommunications industry evolution, from Motorola’s invention of the cell phone to its development of premier smartphone products. We have extensively licensed our industry-leading intellectual property portfolio, consisting of tens of thousands of patents in the U.S. and worldwide. After Apple’s late entry into the telecommunications market, we engaged in lengthy negotiations, but Apple has refused to take a license. We had no choice but to file these complaints to halt Apple’s continued infringement. Motorola will continue to take all necessary steps to protect its R&D and intellectual property, which are critical to the company’s business.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101006/motorola-sues-apple-over-everything/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20100413/a-leash-on-mobile-devices-that-wander/ http://allthingsd.com/20100413/a-leash-on-mobile-devices-that-wander/#comments Tue, 13 Apr 2010 21:30:35 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/?p=1173 When I leave the house in the morning, I run through a mental checklist to be sure I’m not forgetting my phones (check), wallet (check), subway pass (check) and keys (check). But this routine falls by the wayside if I’m anywhere else at any other time of day, leaving me longing for some guarantee that I’m not forgetting anything—especially my phones.

This week, I tested two keychain gadgets that aim to help by working as wireless leashes for Bluetooth-connected phones: the $80 ZOMM (zomm.com) and the $60 Phone Halo (phonehalo.com). If, for example, you finish dinner in a restaurant, leave and forget your cellphone at the table, a small ZOMM device attached to your keychain would vibrate, light up and beep to let you know you walked more than 30 feet away from your phone. Likewise, the Phone Halo beeps, but its connected phone also plays “Always Something There to Remind Me,” the ’80s tune by Naked Eyes, if one device is far enough away from the other (you set the range between five and 35 feet).

The $80 ZOMM alert you if you’re leaving a phone behind.

I preferred using the ZOMM because it works with any Bluetooth-enabled phone, while Phone Halo corresponds with software that currently only installs on BlackBerry and Android devices. (A representative for Phone Halo says it will work with the next iPhone software release planned for this summer.) The ZOMM also doubles as a speakerphone, so that when the phone rings, you can answer it using the ZOMM on your keychain rather than digging through your bag to find the phone. People who already pre-ordered ZOMMs will receive them in early May; everyone else will be able to buy them in early June. Phone Halo can be purchased through its Web site.

If you’re one of those people who doesn’t always keep your keys and cellphone in the same place throughout the day, you may grow tired of this alarm. Simply turning off the ZOMM or Phone Halo solves the problem, but you would have to remember to turn them back on before leaving a location.

Phone forgetfulness has spawned its own industry, as is evidenced by the hundreds of applications made specifically for locating and remotely clearing lost devices that run on BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, Palm (PALM) and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Phone operating systems. Phone companies like Verizon (VZ), Sprint (S) and AT&T (T) sell family locator programs that can alert a system when one person’s GPS-enabled phone is in a certain location, and this could also be used to generally locate a phone. One of the features included with Apple’s (AAPL) $99-a-year MobileMe service is Find My Phone, which locates the iPhone on a map, sends a message to it or plays an audio alert on the device; this feature has been extended to the iPad.

The ZOMM, which stands for “Zachry, Olivia and Madison’s Mom,” looks like a keychain-size discus. The device was created by a mom, Laurie Penix, to solve common cellphone problems: Besides being a wireless leash to a phone, it’s a speakerphone so the phone can be answered without digging through a bag and it’s a panic button that calls local emergency services and tells help to come to the phone’s location via an automatic message.

The $60 Phone Halo

I had good luck using the ZOMM as a speakerphone. Once this device was connected via Bluetooth to my cellphone, I answered incoming calls by pressing once on the ZOMM’s center button. Built-in noise-cancellation technology tricked my friends into not knowing I was using speakerphone for calls, including one person who loathes when people answer his calls using speakerphone. While chatting through the ZOMM’s speakerphone, I tapped again on the device’s center button and sent the call to my cellphone to continue the conversation. A double tap on the center button will ignore an incoming call.

I tested holding down the device’s center button for a long time, which set off the a loud panic alarm. The company advises not doing this unless there’s a real emergency, but the alarm wasn’t as loud as I expected. A ZOMM representative says the device sold in June will have a volume measuring four decibels louder. According to the company, its rechargeable battery lasts over three days on standby and over two hours of straight talk time.

The Phone Halo is a small, black rectangular gadget that also hangs on a keychain, but the company suggests attaching it to other things you don’t want to lose, like a digital camera or even a kid’s backpack. Unlike the ZOMM, the Phone Halo lacks a speakerphone. Its free, corresponding app isn’t yet available in the BlackBerry App World or Android Market stores, so users must follow in-box instructions to download it from a URL using a mobile browser. I did this without trouble, but the process isn’t as simple as it should be and could intimidate some people.

Settings within the Phone Halo software allow for a phone to be locked as soon as it’s out of range, and will record the GPS coordinates of the lost item from the place it was last connected to Phone Halo. The phone’s alert can be changed from “Always Something There to Remind Me,” though I thought this song was clever enough to want to keep. Its rechargeable battery is estimated to last about one week, but this varies depending on how often Phone Halo is used.

The Phone Halo was developed on the belief that if you lost your phone, you’d want your friends and social-network contacts to know so they could help you find it. The app let me select people from my BlackBerry Contacts to determine who would be contacted via email should I lose my phone, and I also opted to allow the device to notify my Twitter followers if my BlackBerry was lost. This was useful when I left a cellphone at a party and didn’t know it; a friend saw the tweet and found the phone. In reality, the buzzing wireless leash alert—along with the email and tweet notifications—went off more than desired whenever I moved the phone away from the Phone Halo or if my phone’s Bluetooth turned off. Tweets and emails included specific details including the exact date and time my phone was “misplaced.”

If you don’t want to lose your phone in the first place, consider a wireless leash like the ZOMM for its multifunctionality. If all else fails and you really need to find your phone, this additional ultra high-tech method usually works: Grab someone else’s phone and call it.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100413/a-leash-on-mobile-devices-that-wander/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100301/thumbplay-moves-from-ringtones-to-mobile-music-hires-apple-exec/ http://allthingsd.com/20100301/thumbplay-moves-from-ringtones-to-mobile-music-hires-apple-exec/#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:00:46 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=16802 You might think the long line of failed digital music companies would dissuade people from launching new ones. But you’d be wrong!

Last week’s example: The venture capitalists who plowed another $10 million into MOG, an all-you-can eat Web-based music subscription service.

This week’s example: Thumbplay, which is launching an all-you-can eat mobile music subscription service on Thursday. For good measure, the company is also announcing a big hire this week–it is bringing on Pablo Calamera, an Apple (AAPL) engineer who has been working on that company’s MobileMe service, as CTO.

New York-based Thumbplay used to be known as a big player in the ringtone business, but ringtones were last decade’s Pet Rock, so it needs something new. Music subscriptions certainly aren’t novel, but no one has really been successful with them so far, so this would indeed be a novelty.

Thumbplay’s pitch sounds like those of a lot of its peers. For $10 a month, you can listen to as much music as you want, but you don’t actually own any of the tunes. If you want, you can buy individual songs at the same price points (69 cents to $1.29) used by iTunes. The company says it has licensing deals with all four big labels and a catalog of eight million tracks.

Thumbplay is pitching this primarily as a mobile streaming service, but it will also have a desktop app. The service allows mobile users to cache some of their collection, which means you don’t have to have cell service to hear your tunes. Which means the service passes the subway/airplane/“OMG I hate my wireless company” test.

The main difference between Thumbplay and everyone else is that it’s kicking off its launch by targeting Research in Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry users, who have pretty much been ignored by music services to date. Which is not a terrible strategy, really.

But the company also says it will roll out apps for the iPhone and Google’s (GOOG) Android platform later this year and will start testing them in private beta this month.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100301/thumbplay-moves-from-ringtones-to-mobile-music-hires-apple-exec/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090617/new-iphone-is-better-model-or-just-get-os-30/ http://allthingsd.com/20090617/new-iphone-is-better-model-or-just-get-os-30/#comments Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:00:38 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090617/new-iphone-is-better-model-or-just-get-os-30/ Apple Inc.’s iPhone has been a smashing success, redefining the smart-phone market and creating a new hand-held computing platform that has attracted over 50,000 third-party apps, or software programs, in less than a year. With its nearly identical sibling, the iPod Touch, it has sold a combined 40 million units since June 2007, when the computer maker plunged into the phone business.

But the iPhone is drawing increasing competition from entrenched smart-phone makers anxious to emulate the upstart. The most significant of these is Palm’s (PALM) impressive new Pre, which is off to a good start with an estimated 100,000 or so units sold since it launched on June 6.

So, like a shark, Apple (AAPL) must keep moving. This week, it is introducing two new products designed to consolidate and increase its position as the leader in this new generation of hand-held computers. I’ve been testing both and I like them a lot, with some minor caveats.

One of the new products is a refreshed model of the iPhone itself, called the iPhone 3G S. It looks the same, but offers more speed, more memory, more battery life, and a few new features, including video recording and a better camera for still photos.

The second is OS 3.0, the third version of the iPhone’s operating system, which comes on the 3G S and also can be installed on all prior iPhones and Touches. It includes a much longer list of added features, some innovative and some long overdue catch-ups to other phones. These include such widely requested capabilities as cut, copy and paste; systemwide searching; a wider virtual keyboard; and a feature called MMS that allows users to send photos and videos directly to other phones without using email.

Apple last week also made a bold business move to complement these new products. It decided to keep making the current model, the iPhone 3G, and to slash its price by 50%, to $99. That’s an unheard-of price tag for a pocket computer of this power and versatility, and gives millions of additional consumers a reason to choose the iPhone instead of a competitor.

In my tests, both the new phone and the new operating system performed well, with a few small exceptions. I believe the two strengthen the iPhone platform, make it likely the iPhone will continue to attract scads of apps, and are good for consumers.

But I also regard these changes as more evolutionary than revolutionary, and I don’t think this latest iPhone is as compelling an upgrade for the average user as the 3G model was last year for owners of the original 2007 iPhone.

Current iPhone owners can get an improved product by merely sticking with their existing phones and upgrading to the feature-laden new operating system, which is free (it costs $10 for iPod Touch owners), rather than shelling out at least $199 for the new iPhone 3G S. And many new iPhone buyers can opt for the $99 3G model, which is not only cheaper, but also greatly improved by the new OS 3.0.

On the other hand, power users will crave the new model’s much-better performance, battery life, storage and other features. And some will want the new model because, unlike the current model, it’s capable of handling a new cellular network feature that, in the next few years, will offer double the current data speeds.

The new, free operating system is available for download starting June 17. The iPhone 3G S will go on sale June 19 for $199 for a version with 16 gigabytes of memory, and $299 for 32 gigabytes of memory. Those memory capacities are double the amounts offered on the previous model last year at the same prices, and far exceed the built-in memory on most competing smart phones.

These prices are for new U.S. customers on the AT&T network, plus current owners who are eligible for what AT&T (T) calls a “standard” upgrade. If you already own an older iPhone, you could pay $200 more to upgrade, depending on how far along you are in your two-year service contract and how much you spend monthly. But AT&T, stung by criticism in recent days, has just decided to offer the lower, new-customer prices at launch to iPhone 3G owners eligible for upgrades at any time up to Sept. 30 of this year, even if they were originally told they’d have to pay the $200 premium.

Before I detail the new features and how they worked in my tests, let me state up-front what the new iPhone and its new operating system don’t deliver. The iPhone still lacks a physical keyboard. It still can’t run more than one third-party app at a time, as the Pre does. Its otherwise excellent Web browser still can’t play videos created in Adobe’s Flash software, which is widely used on the Web. And it still isn’t available on any U.S. carrier besides AT&T.

Also, AT&T won’t enable MMS until late this summer, even though dozens of other iPhone carriers in other countries are doing so immediately. And AT&T hasn’t set a date by which it will offer tethering, a new iPhone feature that allows the device to be used as a modem for a laptop. Other carriers in other countries are allowing this right away.

Here’s a rundown of the most important new features of both the new hardware and software, and how they performed in my tests.

The iPhone 3G S

Speed: To me, this is the most important feature of the new iPhone 3G S. In fact, the “S” in the name stands for speed. During my week of testing, the new model proved dramatically snappier in every way than my iPhone 3G. Its processor is 50% faster than in the prior model, and it sports a new graphics chip.

Applications opened much more quickly. Web pages loaded far faster. The camera was ready to use almost instantly. And I never once saw the occasional, annoying iPhone behavior where you strike a key while typing and it sits there, seemingly stuck, before you can continue.

Cellular-data speeds were about the same, but in repeated testing on different Wi-Fi networks, the 3G S racked up speeds 30% to 50% faster than on the 3G running at the same time on the same networks.

Battery Life: On my 3G iPhone, I usually could make it through the day, but it was often a close call, with the battery indicator winding up in the red. By contrast, the new model did much better, never hitting the red zone and rarely requiring interim charging at the office or in the car, even though, because I was testing it, I was pounding it much harder than usual, making more voice calls, playing lots of videos and music, trying numerous apps, constantly downloading email from two accounts, and syncing two calendars over the air.

Apple claims about the same talk time for the new model as on the old, and about the same Web-surfing time over the cellular network. But it says the 3G S gets about 50% more battery life when playing videos or surfing the Internet over Wi-Fi and 25% more time — an astounding 30 hours — for continuous music playback.

Memory: With the new 32-gigabyte model, I was able to store over 3,000 songs, more than 1,600 photos, 74 videos, 67 applications, 400 emails, nearly 1,000 contacts, months of calendar data, and dozens of documents, and still have 5 gigabytes left over—more than most phones offer out of the box.

Camera: The new model’s camera has a 3 megapixel resolution, up from 2 megapixels, and has autofocus and a feature that lets you tap the screen to change the focus to an object or person in the background of a shot. It still lacks zoom or a flash, though it does better in low light. It also has a macro feature for close-up shots. In my tests, all of this worked, but I didn’t think the pictures it took were dramatically better than those on the old model, and it can’t compete with phones like Nokia’s (NOK) new $700 N97, which has a 5-megapixel camera with zoom.

Video: The new video recorder worked well, even in low light, and lets you post videos directly to YouTube, among other places. You can also trim your videos right on the phone. This all worked well, but the videos aren’t high definition, and pale in comparison to those on the latest HD model of the popular $229 Flip pocket camcorder.

Voice Control: By simply holding down the new iPhone’s home button, you can dial contacts and control music playback by uttering voice commands. The phone will even tell you which song is playing. Like most voice-recognition systems, this one isn’t perfect. But it worked most of the time.

Compass: I don’t consider this important for most users, but it did work when I was walking or driving. It can orient maps in the direction you’re heading.

Small Touches: You can optionally turn on a new battery indicator that shows a precise percentage of battery life left. The screen has a new coating that resists oil and grease from fingerprints.

Downsides: The new phone crashed on me twice during my tests. Once, the voice-control feature killed the sound on the built-in iPod, requiring a reboot. But I couldn’t replicate this problem. Another time, the phone froze while downloading a TV show. Apple blamed this on a prerelease server issue, and it didn’t happen again.

iPhone Operating System 3.0

Copy, Cut and Paste: Apple is late with this common feature, but it’s the best implementation I’ve seen on a phone. In a text page, you just double tap on a word, and it is selected with little handles around it that let you expand or contract the selected area. Then, you just click on a copy icon that pops up over the selection. To paste, you tap elsewhere in the page, or even in another app, and a paste icon pops up. Click that icon, and the selected text is pasted in. It worked well in all my tests.

The feature works a bit differently for some Web pages, where you hold down your finger over an area and it selects a whole block of text, like a paragraph, but still has the handles that allow adjusting the selection. It also allows copying and pasting photos. You can also just select a word or a section or a whole page of text and delete it. And if you want to undo a paste, just shake the phone.

Some Web pages and third-party apps don’t yet support this feature, but most do.

Search: Before, you could search only in the Contacts app. Now, there are search features in Mail, Calendar, the built-in iPod and Notes. And there is a way to search the whole phone at once. You just hit the home button, slowly, twice, and a special search screen appears. Type in any phrase, and it brings up every instance in multiple apps.

This is another catch-up feature, but it works well. For instance, when I searched for the word “Phil,” it brought up songs by Phil Collins, a note about Philadelphia, calendar items mentioning people named Phil or Phillips, emails to or from people with those names, and contacts for people named Phil or Phillips.

In email, the search function will even find messages that aren’t on your phone but that are stored on the servers of certain email services. For instance, I was able to almost instantly find emails from two years ago stored on Google’s (GOOG) Gmail.

One downside — in email, search looks for words only in email headers, not in the body of the messages.

Landscape Keyboard: In older iPods, the only built-in program that supported a wider, landscape keyboard, which is better for thumb typing, was the Web browser. Now, you can turn the phone horizontally and use a landscape keyboard in the Mail, Messages and Notes programs as well.

Find My iPhone: If you belong to Apple’s $99 a year MobileMe service, you can now locate a lost iPhone on a map on any computer, send the iPhone a message saying how to return it to you, and cause it to emit a beep, even if the sound is turned off. I tested this and it worked well. You can even remotely wipe all your data off the phone.

Voice Memos: The OS includes a Voice Memo app that lets you dictate reminders or other messages, and then edit and email them. I found it worked well.

Navigation: Another catch-up feature, turn-by-turn navigation with voice prompts, is also now supported. I tested this with a third-party app called Gokivo, and it did OK, though the developer admits to a prerelease bug I encountered.

Auto-Authentication: In the new OS, the iPhone can remember your log-in credentials for commercial Wi-Fi hotspot services, so you don’t have to enter them again and again. Unfortunately, in my tests with the AT&T Wi-Fi service, this failed repeatedly in several Starbucks (SBUX) shops. Apple blames a glitch in my prerelease phone’s SIM card.

Push Notification: To make up for its lack of multitasking, the new iPhone OS has a feature where third-party apps can notify you of new events, like a sports score, or a new invitation to an online game. I tried this with a game called TapTap Revenge, and it worked fine.

Stocks: The built-in stock application now has much more detailed data, including market cap, news headlines and price/earnings ratio for each stock.

MMS and Tethering: I couldn’t test these useful features because my tests were all done on AT&T, which hasn’t rolled them out.

Minor Touches: You can now move an icon among screens with one continuous motion, instead of stopping at each screen. And there are two more screens to house icons. You can finally synchronize Notes with your PC or Mac. You also can now maintain both calendars and contacts synced wirelessly with online services and those synced via cable with your computer. And you can play games and transfer files wirelessly over Bluetooth with other iPods or Touches that are nearby.

Bottom Line: Both the new iPhone and iPhone OS are packed with features that make a great product even better. But, for many users, the software may be enough of a boost to keep them from buying the new model.

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

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090617/new-iphone-is-better-model-or-just-get-os-30/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090608/wwdc-2009-keynote-live-find-my-iphone/ http://allthingsd.com/20090608/wwdc-2009-keynote-live-find-my-iphone/#comments Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:29:13 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=18987 Oh, this looks promising: “Find My iPhone.” Cut to video clip from 30 Rock episode in which Liz loses her iPhone. “Find My iPhone” is a feature of MobileMe, apparently. Lose your phone and log in to MobileMe and the service will locate your phone for you. It will also allow you to force the device to play an audio alert so someone can locate it. And if you can’t? Remote wipe. Nice.

Check out our WWDC 2009 Full-Coverage special feature for more WWDC news.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090608/wwdc-2009-keynote-live-find-my-iphone/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090608/wwdc-2009-keynote-live-find-my-iphone-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20090608/wwdc-2009-keynote-live-find-my-iphone-2/#comments Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:29:13 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=18987 Oh, this looks promising: “Find My iPhone.” Cut to video clip from 30 Rock episode in which Liz loses her iPhone. “Find My iPhone” is a feature of MobileMe, apparently. Lose your phone and log in to MobileMe and the service will locate your phone for you. It will also allow you to force the device to play an audio alert so someone can locate it. And if you can’t? Remote wipe. Nice.

Check out our WWDC 2009 Full-Coverage special feature for more WWDC news.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090608/wwdc-2009-keynote-live-find-my-iphone-2/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090506/quickoffice-brings-editing-to-iphones-but-put-it-on-hold/ http://allthingsd.com/20090506/quickoffice-brings-editing-to-iphones-but-put-it-on-hold/#comments Thu, 07 May 2009 01:04:03 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090506/quickoffice-brings-editing-to-iphones-but-put-it-on-hold/ I am typing these words in a full-fledged word processor on an Apple iPhone. It’s a third-party app that allows you to edit, format or create Microsoft Word and Excel documents, and then send them back to a PC or Mac where they can be opened in Word or Excel. Oh, and it has cut, copy and paste in its word processor — a capability long missing from the iPhone that isn’t due from Apple (AAPL) itself until this summer.

Devotees of older smart phones, tired of iPhone hype, will be quick to note this is no innovation. Devices like Windows Mobile phones, Palm (PALM) Treos and BlackBerrys have made these abilities available for years. But, for the 37 million iPhone and iPod Touch owners, it’s potentially a major step forward, closing a hole in a hand-held computing platform that is otherwise more elegant and versatile than any other.

This new app, called Quickoffice, has some nice features. Its cut, copy and paste function is very well designed. It can save files locally on the phone. It has a built-in email function for sending files to others, and it can upload or download files to and from a PC or Mac, or to and from online storage.

But there’s a catch. While Quickoffice, which is also available on other platforms, did work OK in my tests, it has some major drawbacks that keep me from recommending it right now. The product’s maker, Quickoffice Inc., acknowledges these and is working to fix them by summer. But, especially because Quickoffice costs $19.99, a Rolls-Royce price in the iPhone’s app store, you might want to hold off on buying it until the fixes are in place.

In particular, Quickoffice can’t simply load and edit any Word or Excel file you receive as an email attachment. The company claims this is a built-in iPhone limitation, but it’s still a big problem for users. Instead, to get files into Quickoffice for editing, you have to transfer them using a Wi-Fi network from your PC or Mac, or from the iDisk online storage feature of Apple’s MobileMe Web service, which costs $99 a year.

Also, amazingly, Quickoffice shipped without any automatic typo-correcting function or spell checker. For various technical reasons, it couldn’t even use the one built into the iPhone. So, you have to do a lot of correcting of typos once the file gets onto a computer. For instance, the first words of this column, as originally created in Quickoffice, read: “I am typing these words in a full-feledged word pricessor … ” I had to clean them up in Word on my laptop.

The Quickword app on iPhone

And, while you can view a text or spreadsheet file in landscape mode, you can do only limited editing of text documents in this mode, and no editing at all of spreadsheet documents viewed in landscape.

Quickoffice for the iPhone consists of three modules. One is Quickword, the word processor. The second is Quicksheet, the spreadsheet program. These two, also separately available from the app store at $12.99 each, can handle standard Microsoft (MSFT) .doc and . xls files, but not Microsoft’s newer .docx and .xlsx formats. The third module, called Quickoffice Files, merely transfers and displays files, but doesn’t allow editing or creating them. It handles a much wider variety of file types, and is sold separately for $1.99.

Cut, copy and paste is implemented nicely. You simply double-tap to select a word or triple-tap to select a paragraph. Small dots appear at either end of the selection, allowing you to expand or contract the selected section of text. Once your selection is done, you can then cut it or copy it, or change its formatting. To cut or copy your selection, you just choose cut or copy from a popup menu. To paste, you tap once elsewhere in the document, and then select Paste from a popup menu. You can paste text copied or cut from one Quickword document into another, but not into any other app on the iPhone. (Apple will add that ability this summer.)

Quickword is the better of the two main modules. It has an impressive suite of features, including the ability to bold or italicize characters, change fonts and colors, create bullet points, and undo or redo changes. All of this formatting was retained correctly when I transferred the files to a computer, and vice versa. Quickword doesn’t have every feature of Word on a computer, but its feature set is strong.

Quicksheet has 125 functions. It also does formatting of cells well, and has undo and redo. Again, it isn’t as powerful as Excel, but its capabilities are decent. Unfortunately, unlike in the word processor, I found some problems in Quicksheet. In one simple spreadsheet I imported, it failed to properly display text that stretched across multiple cells, and failed to do a simple recalculation that worked perfectly in Excel. Also, it lacks cut, copy and paste.

Getting documents into the app is a pain. Unless you have a MobileMe account, on either Windows or Mac, you have to type a geeky numerical address into a Web browser and then choose a file from your computer using the browser page that comes up.

Quickoffice is an OK start, but it needs a lot of work.

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

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090506/quickoffice-brings-editing-to-iphones-but-put-it-on-hold/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090426/weekend-update-42609/ http://allthingsd.com/20090426/weekend-update-42609/#comments Sun, 26 Apr 2009 13:00:03 +0000 Beth Callaghan http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=16412 It was a banner week for earnings calls. Yahoo, Microsoft and Apple all got the liveblogging treatment on All Things D.

First up, BoomTown’s anticipation of pistol-packin’ Carol Bartz’s first earnings appearance paid off when Bartz dropped the F-bomb, live and uncensored during Yahoo’s (YHOO) earnings call. And in a very rare occurrence–actually the company’s first-ever year-over-year quarterly sales drop–Microsoft (MSFT) glumly laid out the facts of the recession’s toll on its business. On the musical chairs front, with Chris DeWolfe stepping down as CEO of News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace, word surfaced that Facebook alum Owen Van Natta would be stepping into the position. The news was confirmed on Friday. BoomTown has all the details, including the press release.

In the ongoing ballad of the newspaper industry, the honor of winning five Pulitzer Prizes at the New York Times (NYT) was offset by news that ad sales are down 27 percent at the paper. In further bad tidings, the newspaper industry is unlikely to get a bailout from Washington. No big takeaways from Apple’s (AAPL) earnings call–Steve’s fine and the company is still not at all interested in developing a netbook. MediaMemo has all the details in a liveblog of the call. MM also notes that Netflix (NFLX) is probably one of the only businesses to benefit from the recession so far since folks are far more likely to rent DVDs than venture out to the local multiplex during these hard times.

In Personal Technology this week, Walt Mossberg discusses the many new OS and system developments coming down the pike that should inform new computer buyers in the near future. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt lays out the details for syncing to an iPhone on MobileMe. And in the Mossberg Solution, Katie Boehret explores the new Nintendo DSi. Compared with earlier iterations of the DS line, as well as on its own merits, it wins some well-deserved praise.

More next week. And RIP, Bea Arthur.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090426/weekend-update-42609/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090422/syncing-to-an-iphone-on-mobileme/ http://allthingsd.com/20090422/syncing-to-an-iphone-on-mobileme/#comments Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:52:02 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://mailbox.allthingsd.com/20090422/syncing-to-an-iphone-on-mobileme/ Here are a few questions I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability.

---

I saw your column last week saying Apple’s MobileMe now does a better job of syncing contacts, calendar items and email. But will it allow me to sync to my iPhone directly from my company’s corporate calendar, address books and email?

MobileMe is meant for consumer data, not corporate data. Essentially, Apple’s own servers act like a company’s servers in order to bring corporate-style push syncing to consumer data that isn’t kept on corporate servers. To sync your corporate contacts, calendar items and email to an iPhone, you would use a different built-in option in the iPhone: Microsoft Exchange. Assuming your company’s IT department certifies the iPhone as an acceptable device, and your company uses Exchange, as many or most do, you can use an iPhone to perform instant two-way syncing of corporate contacts, calendar and email. It works just like a BlackBerry or Windows Mobile phone in this scenario. I have tested this, and found it worked well.

Is it possible to sync a Treo or BlackBerry using MobileMe? If not, how can I transfer my Treo contacts and calendar items to the iPhone?

While MobileMe is agnostic when it comes to computer platforms, working on both Windows and Macintosh computers, it is single-minded when it comes to handheld devices. It synchronizes data only to Apple’s own iPhones and iPod Touch devices. It doesn’t work with the Treo, the BlackBerry, or any other smart phone or handheld device beyond those made by Apple. One simple way to move contacts and appointments from Treo to iPhone is to use Outlook as an intermediary. First, sync your Treo to Outlook. Then, just plug your iPhone into your PC, launch iTunes, and sync the iPhone with Outlook. The data from your Treo should then be on the iPhone. MobileMe isn’t required.

I can’t find the location of the files contained in my Personal folders in Outlook that contain my contacts and saved emails. Can you help?

To find the location of the single combined Outlook data file that contains your email, contacts and calendar, follow these steps. First, select “Data File Management” from the File menu. A window will open showing the name of your data file, which includes its location on your hard disk. Click the button to the right that says “Open Folder,” and you will be in the folder that contains this file, with the file’s name or icon highlighted. Outlook data files use the extension “pst” at the ends of their names.

• You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online free of charge at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090422/syncing-to-an-iphone-on-mobileme/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20090419/weekend-update-41909/ http://allthingsd.com/20090419/weekend-update-41909/#comments Sun, 19 Apr 2009 08:39:47 +0000 Beth Callaghan http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=16380 A look back at the week during which approximately 40 percent of the posts were about Twitter. Or at least it seemed that way.

BoomTown got the ball rolling by making a visit to Twitter HQ bearing pies. During a video tour of the premises, Biz Stone discussed rock stars and booze, and spilled the secret of the strange green deer. Later, co-founders Stone and Evan Williams were customarily nonspecific in a conversation about their revenue plans, and BoomTown was a little bit horrified to have become one of Ashton Kutcher’s million-plus followers–maybe even the one that put him over the top in his race with CNN to hit the seven-figure mark. Still on the celebrity tip (but off the Twitter one), BoomTown took a moment to appreciate the self-deprecatory stylings of Lindsay Lohan’s eHarmony spoof and to embed the video on AllThingsD.com. Finally, was there anyone this week who missed Susan Boyle’s virtually instant stardom on “Britain’s Got Talent” via Google’s (GOOG) YouTube? BT took a look at the journey the story has taken from television to Internet, back to television and back to Internet again.

Back to Twitter, MediaMemo took a look at its amazing growth as a service and as a phenomenon–the “hockey stick,” as one early investor describes the company’s trajectory so far. MM also looked at a study from the USC neuroscience group that says despite all the hype–or maybe even because of it–the human brain just isn’t built to digest information at Twitter’s pace. In the world of cable this week, just as folks were wondering whether Congress will stop the cable companies from charging by the byte, Time Warner Cable (TWX), one of the key players in the drama, backed away from its plans to do so. MediaMemo followed that story as well.

In this week’s Personal Technology column, Walt Mossberg took a look at the latest version of Apple’s (AAPL) MobileMe, and while he found it to be a big improvement over the product launch from last summer, it’s not without limitations. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt answered questions from readers about displaying emergency contact numbers on a locked cellphone and the security of running Windows software on the Mac. And in Mossberg Solution, Katie Boehret took a look at Gwabbit, a program built to mine emails for contact info.

More next week.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090419/weekend-update-41909/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090406/hello-and-welcome-to-imoviephone/ http://allthingsd.com/20090406/hello-and-welcome-to-imoviephone/#comments Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:45:38 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=16105 As we head into the summer iPhone refresh cycle, the Mac rumor sites are fast pulling together a wire-and-string outline of what the device might look like. Last week brought with it reports that iPhone ’09, or whatever it might be called, will sport a 3.2 megapixel camera. Now comes news that
it may be built around a new Broadcom (BRCM) chip that supports 802.11n wireless connectivity. That means more efficient power management, better Wi-Fi throughput, improved reception speed and range, and perhaps even FM radio reception as well.

Also making the rounds today are reports claiming iPhone 3.0 will support on-board video editing. Seems there are some resources in the latest beta of the OS suggesting that video capture and manipulation will figure large in the next device–things like “UIMovie Scrubber Editing Right,” “UIMovieScrubberMaskLeft” and whatnot. Now, while these resources could be pointing to something else entirely, it seems plausible that they are referencing some sort of video tool (iMovie Mobile? iMovie Light? iMoviePhone?)–particularly when considered with the MobileMe “Publish Video” feature also found concealed in the 3.0 beta. That said, no mention of video editing was made during Apple’s recent iPhone 3.0 event. Perhaps Apple (AAPL) hopes to keep it under wraps until the device’s official debut. Or perhaps there’s nothing to keep under wraps in the first place.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090406/hello-and-welcome-to-imoviephone/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081216/organizing-your-web-life-in-one-place/ http://allthingsd.com/20081216/organizing-your-web-life-in-one-place/#comments Wed, 17 Dec 2008 02:06:02 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/20081216/organizing-your-web-life-in-one-place/ If you use the Internet regularly, your activities are likely spread out all over the Web. You might be sharing photos on Flickr, emailing via Hotmail, posting status updates on Facebook, following tweets on Twitter, sending instant messages on Google (GOOG) Chat and keeping a calendar on Apple’s MobileMe. You hop from one site to the next, juggling different user names and passwords.

Last month, Microsoft unveiled Windows Live, its Web-based attempt to consolidate many of these activities. Windows Live can be found at home.live.com and includes programs that cover a lot of ground: Hotmail (email), SkyDrive (online storage), Spaces (blogging), Calendar and Events (online invitations). Four new Windows Live categories — Profile, People, Photos and Groups — create a Facebook/MySpace-like feel by following activities of networked users and sharing that data with others.

If you’re using a Windows PC, you can additionally download a suite of seven free desktop applications called Windows Live Essentials from download.live.com that enhance and coordinate with the Windows Live services. These include Messenger, Photo Gallery, Mail, Writer, Movie Maker Beta, Family Safety and Toolbar. I downloaded the Essentials and enjoyed using many of them, especially Mail, Messenger and Toolbar.

But I focused my testing this week on the Windows Live Web services, which, as advertised, let me control various elements of my digital life in one place with one password. SkyDrive is a simple and approachable online-storage repository that will be truly useful for a lot of folks who want a central place to keep files. The Windows Live Profile offers handsome personalized pages with bright colors and designs; compared side-by-side with a Facebook page, it made Facebook look dull and sparse. I also used Windows Live Photos to upload digital photos onto my Profile and then shared them with friends and family in three quick steps.

New Windows Live programs include Profile, which offers personalized pages.

Microsoft (MSFT) smartly realized that most people already visit a variety of sites for online pursuits and will want to add those activities to their Windows Live Profile. Users can currently link to 12 other sources, including Twitter, Flickr, Photobucket, WordPress, Pandora and Yelp — but not Facebook or MySpace. Microsoft says that it’s working to build relationships with Facebook and MySpace and hopes to have related news next year.

But though various Web activities can be added to a Live Profile, this connection isn’t as productive as it could be. Take Twitter, for example. I added my Twitter account to my Live Profile, but on Live Profile I could see only tweets from myself and from people in my Windows Live network. To see tweets from the 50 people I follow on Twitter, I had to go to Twitter.com.

I had a similar experience with Pandora. I added my Pandora account to my Live Profile, and when I bookmarked Keith Urban as a favorite artist, this tidbit appeared on my Live Profile page. But when I listened to Christmas tunes for a few hours, nothing on my Profile page reflected this (i.e., “Katie is listening to Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’ ”).

After linking my Live Profile to my Flickr account, I posted photos on Flickr.com, and seconds later, these pics appeared on my Live Profile. But other activities from Flickr weren’t reflected on my Live Profile, such as when my contacts posted photos or when those in a Flickr group of which I’m a member posted photos. To see this, I had to visit Flickr.com.

Microsoft says that in the case of Web activities, the outside companies choose what to show and what not to show. But I can’t use Windows Live as a home base for my other online activities unless it displays useful data that save me trips to other Web sites.

Messenger displays friends’ updates.

Like many social-networking services, Windows Live gives special privileges to those who are in the network. To belong to a Windows Live network, one must first have a Windows Live ID, which anyone can get by signing up for Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger or Xbox Live.

Windows Live also allows interaction with people outside the network. For instance, I can share any of the photos that I upload to my profile with friends and family who don’t have Windows Live IDs by simply emailing a link to them. These people don’t need a Windows Live ID to look at the photos.

When I used Windows Live to share photos with my sister, who has received hundreds of digital shots from me on every photo-sharing Web site I’ve tested, she wasn’t impressed. She correctly pointed out that other sharing sites, like Shutterfly, allow full-screen slideshow views; Windows Live limits slide shows to the size of the browser window.

Windows Live Web services work best on Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer browser, version 6 and up, and a special quick-photo-upload tool works only with Internet Explorer. This uploading tool doesn’t work with Apple’s (AAPL) Safari browser or the Mozilla Firefox browser; instead, you must slowly add each photo to your page, selecting them one at a time.

If you’re using a Windows PC, the Windows Live Essentials are definitely worth installing. Photo Gallery enables simple photo publishing directly from your computer’s collection of My Pictures, and specific faces can be labeled and tagged in each shot. Windows Live Mail, which replaced Outlook Express last year, is a smoothly designed program that I rely on every day for use with three different email accounts. Windows Live Messenger links into the Live Web services specifically by retrieving the status updates for each person in your network and displaying those in a ticker-like panel at the bottom of Messenger. The Windows Live Toolbar works only in Internet Explorer but shows an at-a-glance view of your network’s updates, along with photos, email and calendar — all in the top panel of the browser.

Windows Live Essentials are still in beta, or testing, mode, and Windows Live Web services will add more partnerships next month. I’ll be anxious to see if these new partnerships operate more productively with the Live Profile. Aggregating content from across the Web isn’t worthwhile unless that content is fully and usefully accessible in its new home.

Still, Windows Live Web services and Essentials provide solid tools that can help you organize your email, messaging, photos, storage, scheduling and social networking in one place with one password. That, by itself, is a relief.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

• Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081216/organizing-your-web-life-in-one-place/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081216/aieeee/ http://allthingsd.com/20081216/aieeee/#comments Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:00:56 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=9766

[ See post to watch video ]

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